You may not have noticed, but recently LinkedIn added a new feature for Company Pages, called Showcase Pages. So how does this affect social media in eye care and your practice's social strategy?

• If your eyecare practice maintains a LinkedIn company page, and you have multiple product or service offerings, you can create a Showcase Page for each offering. That way, your followers can receive updates for the specific products they are interested in.

• If you follow VisionWeb on LinkedIn, but are only interested in either our Online Ordering Solution, Electronic Claim Management Solution, or Uprise Practice Management & EHR you can specifically follow that page, and get only the information that relates to that offering.

We now have separate pages for each of VisionWeb's services, check them out:

• LinkedIn Showcase Page: Online Ordering
• LinkedIn Showcase Page: Electronic Claim Management
• LinkedIn Showcase Page: Uprise Practice Management & EHR 

Social Media in Eye Care:
Benefits of Using LinkedIn for Your Practice

While LinkedIn may not be the most obvious choice of social media for your eyecare practice, it still has a variety of benefits that you should be aware of. So even though it might not be the most powerful network for reaching your customer base, check out these benefits of using the network:

Establishes Credibility

LinkedIn is a great avenue for building credibility within the Optical industry. Building credibility isn't important only with your patients, but also with your peers and colleagues. This is a great network for connecting with others in the industry and sharing valuable resources. The more credibility that you can build within the industry is going to help your practice become more visible and credible to your community.

Attracts New Talent

LinkedIn is a great space for searching for the next employee at your practice. There are specific career pages that help you showcase your employment offerings to users who are actively searching for new opportunities. You can also use your LinkedIn page to direct people to your website to learn more about any job offerings you might have available.

Increases B2B Networking

As an eyecare practice you are going to have relationships with several
vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, and other third parties that you need to keep in touch with to keep your practice running smoothly. LinkedIn was created to connect people and companies based off of interests, so feel free to join interest groups on LinkedIn to get connected with potential business partners! 

Scopes out Your Competition

Visiting other company pages and social profiles is going to let you keep up with what your competitors are up to. Keeping an eye on your competition is an easy way to measure your social successes against others.

Boosts Your SEO Rankings

Search engines, like Google, rank LinkedIn pages, so posting updates and statuses with link backs to your practice's website is going to help boost your results on search engines. The stronger your SEO is, the more likely you are to see an increase in your website traffic. This is an important factor when facing competition online. A majority of customers who are looking to make an appointment at a  new eyecare practice are likely to turn to the Internet when evaluating their options.

Looking for more social media resources for your practice? Make sure to follow us on Facebook to keep up with the latest updates!