Chiropractic Marketing | Google+ communities for patient relationship management

Patient relationship management without a doubt makes up a key ingredient in any chiropractor’s success formula. Since online communities provide an incredibly useful vehicle for building relationships with your patients and getting valuable feedback from them, it only makes sense to use free Google+ communities to achieve your chiropractic business goal of building your dream practice.

Naturally, it will be close to impossible for you to maintain more than one online community in between patient treatments and practice management activities. For that very reason it’s important to pick the most effective platform for building your online patient community. Just how can you determine which social media site is the best fit for your chiropractic clinic and patient personas?

For starters, choosing a site that most people are already familiar with, such as Google, will certainly help getting your existing patients involved. Also keep in mind that not all of your patients possess the same level of internet savvy, so simplicity is a must. Once again, as the most popular search engine used worldwide Google has already proven that it provides user-friendly and effective features.

Building on the success of Google search engines, the new Google+ communities make it easy for chiropractors to strengthen their relationships with existing patients while also attracting new ones and increase the patient flow at their clinics. By providing free chiropractic patient education and allowing patients to share their personal experiences or ask questions, your online community can function as the go-to place for expert information on various chiropractic topics. Ultimately, interactivity will be a catalyst for community growth– online, as well as off-line at your clinic.

How to use Google+ communities for your chiropractic patient relationship management:

1. 1. Identify patients who have a specific shared interest (patient personas)
   2. Select an effective name for your community that will attract patient personas (e.g. ‘Tennis Elbow Relief,’ or ‘No More Headaches’). You should avoid using your clinic’s name for this online community since that will not attract people looking for info on the health issues you treat.
   3. Decide if you want the community to be an open or closed (exclusive membership for existing patients) group. Open communities will help you attract new patients while closed ones have little to no potential for growth.
   4. Choose if people who find your group via Google search need your permission to join.
   5. Edit your group’s profile information and set up categories for discussion and content sharing.
   6. Promote your new online community on your chiropractic website and in your patient emails.