We've spent some time this year talking about different ways to market your practice. More specifically we have written a handful of articles about social media marketing. Social media marketing is so important for small independent eyecare practices because it is an inexpensive way to connect with your patients, and future patients.

But we also know that if you own or manage an eyecare practice you don't have a ton of extra time to spend focusing on social media efforts. So we collected the top three articles we wrote about social media this year to help give you some fresh ideas for how you can save time and make an impact on your social presence in the year to come.

Optical Marketing Tips to Boost Your Social Presence in 2016

Take Your Optical Marketing to the Next Level with Canva for Work

One thing is true about social media - images are king. In fact, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets. But, it's not always easy finding the right images to share on social media, which is why we love Canva so much.

Canva is a great, free online tool for creating your own images to use in a variety of ways. Even with little design experience you can create powerful brand images to use in your marketing strategy. And, for a small fee you can upgrade to Canva for Work which allows you to create a brand kit, save fonts and colors, and reuse templates so that everyone in your practice can help create powerful and consistent images.

Improving Your Reach on Facebook without Paying for It

If you manage a business page on Facebook, you understand how hard it is to get your posts seen by your followers without paying to boost the post. And as a small, independent practice you probably don't have a very big budget when it comes to social media marketing. While it can be relatively inexpensive to promote your Facebook page, we want to offer up some ways that can help you improve your organic reach over time.

Social Media for Optometrists: Finding Content for Your Business Page

Getting into the world of social media for your business is a commitment. To create a business page or a twitter account only to ignore it is the last thing you want to do for your business. And, it does take some time and effort to build a presence and community.

Finding content worth sharing isn't always easy to come by either, and you don't have a lot of time to spend searching for, or creating it. So we came up with a few different ideas of where you can find relevant content worth sharing with your patients on your social pages. Your patients want to do business with people and companies that they like and can relate to, so it's important to be active and engaging online to build trust and relationships with your patients.