15 Tips to Dominate Instagram for Emergency Rooms in Houston Texas
Instagram is an excellent tool for medical practices like emergency rooms to build and develop relationships with their target audience as discussed over at runrex.com. These relationships will help lend credibility and authority to your practice, while also boosting your online presence organically. This article will look to help emergency rooms in Houston, Texas dominate on Instagram through the following 15 tips.
- Create a Business Account
As explained over at guttulus.com, there is a difference between a personal Instagram account and a business account, and if you want to create an Instagram account for your ER, then you should go down that business account route. By creating a business account, you will have access to analytics, will be able to ‘boost’ posts to reach targeted accounts, will be able to get a ‘contact us’ button for your profile, and with 10,000 or more followers, you will be able to add a ‘swipe up’ feature to go directly to your website. This is why it is important to create a business account for your emergency room.
- Complete your profile
Once you have created a business account for your ER, you must complete your profile if you are to be successful on the platform. Make sure to add your ERs location, or locations if you have various offices in Houston, contact information, and so forth. You should also include an address that links to a map when on clicks it to help users looking for your ER to find it more easily. Also, don’t forget to include a tagline for your ER as well as any branded hashtags you are using.
- Include a link to your website and get the profile photo right
It is also very important that you choose an appropriate profile photo for your ER’s Instagram account. Your profile is your ER’s first impression on Instagram and you need to make sure it shows you as being professional and welcoming. As per discussions on the same over at runrex.com, consider using a professionally-taken photo of your ER team, your logo, or your offices. Additionally, don’t forget to add a link to your website while completing your profile.
- Know what to post
Once you have set up your account, and your profile looks great, you may be wondering what are some of the things that you should post on Instagram. Here, some of the content you should consider putting up includes informative videos, day-in-the-life posts from your team, quick tips for health and wellness, updates on relevant research, commentary on health-related news and stories, and so forth. Such content will both engage and educate your audience and will help boost engagements.
- Use relevant hashtags
If you are to be successful on Instagram and ensure that your content is being shown to relevant audiences, then the gurus over at guttulus.com recommend that you use the right hashtags for your posts. You can use hashtags tools to conduct some research and help you figure out which hashtags are the most relevant and work best for your content. Additionally, you can take a look at some of the hashtags your competitors are using to get an idea of which ones are relevant in your niche.
- Use local and branded hashtags
As an emergency room in Houston, Texas, you must use local hashtags to connect with people in your area looking for services like the ones you are offering. Hashtags such as #HoustonER and so forth will help connect you with relevant people in your area looking for medical emergency services. Additionally, you should also consider coming up with your own branded hashtag so that people can know the hashtag to use if they want to find or engage with your content.
- Leverage Instagram Stories and Story ads
As explained in detail over at runrex.com, Instagram Stories is one of the most powerful features available to users on Instagram. Posting to your stories is a great way to showcase your ER, its culture, and staff, helping you to build trust and loyalty with your audience. On a related note, you should also consider using Instagram Story ads which appear seamlessly in Stories, are engaging, and affordable, with 20% of Story ads resulting in direct messages from those who see them.
- Post regularly
If you want to grow your audience on Instagram as far as your ER is concerned, make sure that you post consistently. The more you post, the more you provide your followers and audience with value, which will build your name on the platform, and help grow your account while at it. Avoid posting intermittently on your account if you want to be successful.
- Know when to post
It is also just as important that you find out the best time to post on Instagram if you are to be successful on the platform as per the gurus over at guttulus.com. Posting at the right times will ensure that your posts have the maximum impact and that they have maximum reach. For an ER, weekends are just as important as weekdays, particularly since most other health practices close during the weekends and yours may be one of the few that is open. Use analytics to find the best time, and days, to post on Instagram.
- Have a style for your content
People must be able to make a connection between your content and your practice to build a connection with your audience. You should come up with a style, tone, and language for your posts, and be consistent with it to allow you to come up with posts that are consistent with your ER’s values and brand voice. Also, use the same color palettes for your graphics like the ones for your ER for uniformity.
- Automate as much as you can
While it is true that most medical professionals are too busy to continuously monitor their social media marketing, ER physicians are probably the busiest of the lot. Therefore, as per the gurus over at runrex.com, if you are to get the best out of your Instagram efforts, you should automate as much as possible. You can automate your posts so that they go up when the time is right and come up with template responses to the most frequently asked questions. Using a post scheduler will ensure that you post consistently on Instagram while still focusing on serving patients.
- Engage with your audience
Instagram is a social media platform, which means that you should live up to the ‘social’ part of it and ensure that you are engaging with your audience as much as you can. Post content that promotes engagement, like asking them questions, and then ensure that you reply to all of your followers’ comments as quickly as possible.
- Follow privacy regulations
As a medical practitioner, you should know that the HIPAA rules still apply even on the internet as outlined over at guttulus.com. You should, therefore, ensure that you and your staff follow all patient privacy regulations when posting on Instagram to ensure that your ER doesn’t end up falling foul of the law, which could damage its reputation and trust among its audience.
- Join in on awareness days
Awareness days are important for any healthcare organization, including emergency rooms, which is why you should always ensure that you join in on the same. Set up a social media calendar so that you can be notified of the same, allowing you to take advantage of the content opportunities such days provide.
- Take advantage of Insights
If you are to dominate Instagram as an ER in Houston, Texas, you must find out which posts resonate on Instagram, something you can find out by taking advantage of Instagram Insights. This will allow you to track which posts do better, as well as allowing you to carry out testing ad figure out which strategies work and which don’t.
In addition to the above tips, another one that will help you dominate Instagram is bringing in the highly-rated runrex.com and guttulus.com for expert help as they are the two best agencies in Houston, Texas for such services.