Are you looking to get started posting on social media and want to know what to avoid? Maybe you’ve been posting for a while but aren’t getting the traction you expected?
Either way, knowing the top mistakes people make when it comes to medical device social media marketing could be extremely helpful
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to audit your social media accounts to see where improvements could be made and come up with a strategy to start posting the right way.
The top 10 social mistakes we see made in medical device marketing are (there may of course be others, but this is our experience):
- Not having a goal
- Not knowing your audience
- Getting swept up by trends
- Posting on too many platforms
- Posting the same content across all platforms
- Not varying types of posts
- Being over-promotional
- Not interacting with users
- Not being consistent
- Measuring the wrong metrics
1. Not having a goal
The first step of social media is often one that is forgotten, and that is determining your goal. What is it you’re hoping to get out of social media marketing?
This will dictate where, when and what you post and if social media is, in fact, the correct platform for your marketing efforts. Are you looking to raise brand awareness, create a community, drive lead conversions or supercharge your recruitment?
Whatever it is, clarifying your goal will help to quickly determine your strategy.
2. Not knowing your audience
Similar to being clear on your overall goal, you need to be clear about whom you’re targeting on social media, which means knowing your audience well.
Your audience personas should be specific, including information like their typical ages, job titles and geographies. This will also be useful if you decide to run any paid social media, as you can tell each platform which people to target.
More importantly, though, you need to know the interests of your target audience, the problems they face and the issues that they care about. This information will inform you what you should be posting about.
3. Getting swept up by trends
From time to time, companies jump on the bandwagon of the latest trend. Although this can be useful for getting eyes on your post, if they’re not the eyes of your audience, what’s the point?
You should only take part in trends if the circumstances are right and you’re able to post content that is relevant, authentic and on topic in your field.
Again, it comes back to knowing your goal. Everything you post should help you achieve that goal, and having lots of impressions on your post doesn’t necessarily help you to do that if they’re not from the right people.
This is where vanity vs. sanity measures come in. It’s critical that your measures are a meaningful indication of you meeting your goal (e.g. Impressions vs. conversions).
4. Posting on too many platforms
You might think the more platforms you post on the better, but that really isn’t the case. Posting on every single social platform can be like shouting into an empty room. Your audience isn’t likely to be engaged and listening on every platform.
In Medical Device, platforms like Pinterest and Instagram aren’t necessarily the best places to post. Despite their popularity, it’s not really where HCPs are looking to engage with you. If you’re looking to communicate with patients, Instagram and Facebook may be more appropriate but your content will need to be different.
Instead of trying to post on as many platforms as possible, focus on posting on selected platforms and doing it well. Prioritise the platforms where you know your audience is. That way, you won’t waste time creating content that won’t contribute to your end goal.
Check out our article on the best social media platforms to help you decide where to prioritise your time.
5. Posting the same content on every platform
In a similar vein, you might think it’s a good idea to save time by reposting the same content across multiple platforms, but you’ll quickly find it doesn’t really work like that.
Not only might it look lazy to people who follow you across those multiple platforms, but it can also appear unprofessional, as your audiences consume different types of content depending on their chosen platform.
Additionally, different platforms have different design requirements, so at a minimum each post will need to be optimised accordingly.
Finally, you might find that different types of posts will perform better on some platforms than others. For instance, posting videos on Twitter might get more engagement, whereas static visuals do better on LinkedIn. In this case, you should prioritise and post accordingly.
6. Not varying types of posts
Posting on social media is hard work and it might be tempting to continuously take the easy route and post similar visuals again and again. That can be damaging, as you’re not giving yourself room to experiment and find out what works best for your company.
There are so many different post types out there, such as videos, audio clips, PDFs, GIFs and so on. Social media gives companies the chance to get creative and do something different, so seize that opportunity.
Try out different ways of delivering content, so that you can learn what your audience finds the most engagement. This will help you to see better results in the long run.
7. Being over-promotional
One of the biggest mistakes we see is when companies are too promotional. It might sound counterintuitive to say, but medical device marketing isn’t only about promoting your device, it’s also about building trust with your audience by showing that you care about the same topics and problems that they do.
If your audience wants to know about the features and benefits of your device, they will seek that information out (which should be easy to find), but to capture their attention in the first place, you need to engage them with something they already care about.
Again, this is where knowing your audience comes in. A post about a problem they face every day is more likely to make someone stop scrolling than the latest data on your device. That is the only way to cut through the noise and get noticed on social media.
We are not saying you shouldn’t be promotional, but it needs to be in moderation. Think about how you want your audience to view your company. You need to make a mosaic in their minds of who your company is, and each social media post is a part of that mosaic.
If all posts are promotional, your company may be perceived as over-promotional and uncaring, however, if they’re interspaced with posts about your company culture and educational events, then a very different picture will be formed.
As a rule of thumb promotional content shouldn’t make up any more than 10-15% of your feed. The rest should be adding value.
8. Not interacting with users
You may have heard the phrase “don’t post and ghost” and it really is one to live by in social media marketing. It refers to the act of publishing content and then forgetting about it, failing to engage with users who have commented.
You should always respond when you receive mentions or comments on social media, because it shows your audience and the algorithms that you’re present and involved in the conversation. Otherwise, your social media efforts can seem impersonal and inauthentic.
This is even more important just after a post is released as the more engagement you get early on in a post’s lifecycle, the more popular the platforms will think it is. This can mean that your post is shown more widely, beyond your immediate network.
Finally, engaging with your audience is a fantastic way to start building a community. Make sure you thank commenters for their support or answer their questions and get involved in their debates. If all goes well your community will develop with you at the centre. Trust (and sales) will naturally follow.
9. Not being consistent
Inconsistency is easily the biggest issue across social media. A common misconception is that it’s okay to post sporadically when time allows or an idea appears, but this can do more harm than good.
Algorithms determining what content shows up in newsfeeds don’t reward sporadic pages, and people are also less likely to follow a page that doesn’t post regularly.
Posting consistently allows your social media efforts to gain the momentum they need to bring you success.
There are many articles out there that indicate the idea cadence for posting. This can be from 3 times per week to 5 times per day.
However, this is not always possible as it takes a significant amount of time to create a content plan every 3 months, write the copy, design the posts (or film a video) and schedule and monitor them all.
We delve further into planning content in our medical device social media guide, which discusses everything you need to know about planning your strategy.
10. Measuring the wrong metrics
When you post and forget about it, you end up ignoring a whole wealth of data that’s available to you, that will allow you to get the most out of social media.
You can look at metrics such as impressions and engagement to gauge how people are responding to your content. This will initially help you to optimise your future activities, but ultimately you want to set conversion goals so you can truly measure how your activities are impacting your technology adoption.
Additionally, platforms like Hootsuite will provide more information, such as the days when you are seeing the most activity, and therefore when you should prioritise posting.
If you would like to learn more, check out our article on the importance of social media reporting.