How to Get Your First 1K Instagram Followers- Chiropractic Edition

Instagram- a great place for pictures of food and selfies or a great place for business?

As a chiropractor, it's a GREAT place for business and building an audience of people who know, trust, and like you.

Today we're going to break down five things you can do starting today to get your first 1,000 followers on Instagram. We all know to be an influencer you need to be on Instagram. There are over a billion active users! So regardless of what demographic your targeting of your specific healthcare niche, Instagram is a place where you should be to build, connect, and ultimately grow your brand.

And there are five things that you can start implementing right now to get on your journey to that first 1,000 followers.

1. Consistency Wins

The first step is to post consistently. Consistency wins the game whether you are posting once a day, or even if you only have the time twice per week. Staying consistent with your post is a great way to start expanding your brand and expanding your message on Instagram.

2. Tagging People and Places

Your second step is to tag people and places. If you stop by a healthy restaurant; tag that restaurant! If you're hanging out with a colleague, be sure to tag that person! Tagging others can accomplish a couple of different things. First, if you tag a specific business or place it "geo-targets" your location which means people searching for that business or place will be able to see your post — more opportunities for exposure= more followers. So tagging the places you visit is crucial.

It not only helps people find you through research, but it is much more likely that those businesses are going to share your post/content across their platform which will further amplify your message and get more new eyes on your channel, your content, and your profile. So be sure to tag people and tag places.

3. Collaborations

Collaborations with influencers can really explode your follower count. Search out the popular people in your community and reach out for a collaboration. Perhaps it's a post that both you appear in. Maybe it's a story, or it could be just sharing content back and forth. And remember micro-influencers matter. You probably won't be collaborating with Jay-Z or Beyonce anytime soon- so but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. Micro influencers in your community 5,000-20,000 followers will be happy to do collaborations with you because they are also trying to grow their audience and profile. So find collaborators do collaborative stories and host to help expand your message.

4. Engage With Others Content

Number four engage with other people's content. The more engaged you are on the platform, the more likely it is that people are going to notice you, recognize you, and follow your profile. So engage with other people's content. One way to do this is to find five hashtags that are relevant to your industry and add a comment onto the top 10 posts with that hashtag each day. Once you do that for 30 days, I can guarantee you boost your follower count and be "known" in that circle of influence.

You will become somebody that everybody recognizes by name, and in turn, you will have people coming back to your profile following you and engaging with your content. So take five to 10 minutes at the beginning or end of each day, search up you hashtags that are relevant to your business, your industry, your circle of influence comment and engage on that content.

5. Hashtags

Number 5 is hashtags. Hashtags are not dead; they are a great way to search out relevant content that you can contribute on and also for other people to find the content that you are putting out. So one best practice that I've seen lately is to create the first comment on your post and load it will up to 30 individual hashtags. You don't need to do 30 every single time, but if you choose appropriate hashtags, it helps amplify your message people will see your content and again more people will follow you.

Those five steps will help you get as quickly as possible to 1000 Instagram followers. It's how I've done it. It's how thousands of other people have done it. When you get started on Instagram, it can seem daunting to get the first 50 or first 100 but if you follow these five steps- post consistently, tag people and places, do collaborations with other influencers, engage with other people's content, and use hashtags; you will be well on your way, and you will be smashing a thousand Instagram followers before you know it.

A Chiropractor’s Guide to Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC (pay per click) or "Google" advertising is an important part of a holistic approach to marketing. These campaigns aren't designed to necessarily build your brand (which is also crucial), but rather convert people who are looking for your service.

In other words, if someone types "your town chiropractor" into Google, and your listing pops up first (THAT'S THE AD!), then it is quite likely they will click to learn more.

DOWNLOAD THE CHIROPRACTORS GUIDE TO PPC ADVERTISING HERE!

Below is a transcript of Matt Adams from Empirical360 and I discussing PPC advertising for chiropractors and their new guide to help make it easy.

Jeff: Hey what's up everybody Jeff Langmaid here and I am talking with Matt Adams from Empirical 360 today. We're going to discuss some PPC advertising and how you can maximize your results. Today they've just released a guide specifically for a chiropractor's, and that's what we're going to dive into. So Matt, who is this guide for?

Who is the Chiropractors Guide to SEO for?

Matt: It's dual purpose. It's specifically for a chiropractor-number one. But number two, it's for chiropractors who might have an agency relationship or for chiropractors that don't have an agency relationship but want to get into PPC marketing. If you have an agency, then it might offer some checks and balances to make sure that they're doing their job. If you're a chiropractor that's not doing PPC right now, this can be extremely beneficial regarding how to set up a PPC campaign and do it in the right way to actually monetize and get some new patients coming in a pool.

I've worked in healthcare marketing for quite some time, and chiropractic has been a significant portion of that. Coming to work for Empirical 360 as their director of client access, I really see a market in need. Chiropractors are great physicians who actually want to treat and make people feel better. I want to help them actually find patients and get them into their practice.

Jeff: And as we break this down in a moment step by step just recap for anybody that didn't check out the previous videos. What's PPC advertising in a nutshell?

Matt: So PPC advertising is a pay per click. Basically, it's when you use a search term in Google, like for example "chiropractor near me" and the first four results that come up are going to be advertisements. That's a chiropractor who is in PPC marketing. They're actually bidding on those words and queries so that their site can come up and a consumer can find them when they actually need them.

Jeff: Well let's dive in and take a look.

Matt: So basically this is going to be a step by step guide to PPC marketing. And again we didn't want to make this overly technical. We want it to be professional enough so that you know you're going to do things the right way and you get the point behind it is. But we want to drill things down enough to a fundamental standpoint so you can actually get to understand it.

Anybody who wants to be found on Google they're going to be using pay per click typically. So moving on down the line here we kind of get into the genesis of a campaign which is your keyword selection strategy. And you know there's a couple of things that we get into that are going to be for things that you want to avoid and things that you want to do. We talk about the keyword planner in there.

PPC Keyword Selection

Jeff: The keyword selection is absolutely essential. I mean it's really where everything else stems from. What's the biggest misstep you see chiropractors taking regarding keyword selection?

Matt: It's really leaving things too broad. If you're going to start with a campaign, we always recommend starting small. In most markets when it comes to PPC for chiropractic, depending upon the size of your demographic area, the overall budget may be 500 to 1000 dollars per month.

Also, don't use terms that are super broad. Because you may be lumped in with interventional pain management for example, which could drive up your cost. Just focus on people who are looking for chiropractic care.

Jeff: It's almost like reverse engineering what people are searching for. If you are the answer to what they're looking for, that helps in every aspect of your marketing. Number one, you don't need to feel cheesy or corny trying to sell them on something. If an individual is looking for a service that you offer, and you're there when they're seeking, then it's a perfect match.

Segmenting Your Audience When Marketing Chiropractic

Matt: This probably is this is legitimately one of the most important things in setting up a PPC campaign When you segment an account the right way it's done by device. If you have a campaign that is specifically for "chiropractor near me" and you realize that is performing particularly well on mobile then you can cut out some of the budgets for your other campaigns and funnel a bigger budget back into what's performing the best. That helps your cost per click go down. It's going to help the actual cost per lead go down as well, and you should be getting more new patients because you're using the money the right way.

Jeff: That's great. That's important because a lot of times it's overlooked. Being able to understand if something is converting better on a mobile vs. desktop is essential because it helps you gain efficiency.

That's a key component for anybody that's out there already involved in PPC advertising. Is your agency fine-tuning your campaigns?

Matt: Yeah. It's like a kind of like the stock market and diversifying your portfolio right. If you don't have that diversification in your average portfolio, you're not going to be able to allocate things the right way. So this is this is paramount. If you read this here, spend all your time on it.

Jeff: Then it comes to writing the actual ad copy.

Matt: In particular I want to talk about relevance. So if you're going to use something like spinal decompression, your advertising copy needs to be related explicitly to the efficacy of the treatment.

All About Ad Copy

Having relevant ad copy is going to increase your quality score on Google, and thereby you're going to get a lower cost per click lower cost per lead and more new patients coming in.

Jeff: Any time I think about copyrighting it's good to be creative but not good to be too cute. In other words, you can be creative with how you structure your copy and how you talk about it. But be direct, it's not the time to get drastically esoteric. You have to be able to lead the person from "I'm looking for this" to taking action.

Let's talk about landing pages. When we're talking about landing pages, if you have ad copy that related explicitly to spinal decompression, you really want somebody to fall at the landing page that talks about spinal compression and breaks it down. They see the spinal decompression apparatus. They see a patient that's actually getting spinal decompression. They know a testimonial about a patient that benefited from spinal decompression, and then they've got a form to be able to contact you right there dead center. So they can actually communicate with you and engage.

And once you get those landing pages of what some of the next steps as far as optimizing so optimization?

Matt: So let's say for example somebody search for "chiropractic university." You probably don't want somebody to click on your advertisement if they've searched for "chiropractor university." So you need to go back into your account and add a negative keyword which will exclude it from being shown. So this is done on an ongoing basis as dealing with competitors. So if somebody was searching for a specific chiropractor, you want to exclude that particular chiropractor as a negative,e so that you can refine your strategy within Google ads.

Jeff: That's that's a really really crucial point, especially when we talk about the competition on some of the large pain management groups and some of the large surgery groups. These are people that have bottomless pockets that can dump a ton of money into their online advertising that you just can't compete with for dollar for dollar. It's challenging.

Matt: Well the other piece of that puzzle is that it's not just that big pocket competitors that you're worried about. You're actually worried about Google as well because Google's job let's not forget 92 percent of Google's revenue comes from paid search. They are getting paid billions and billions of dollars for their advertising and the Google ad platform. If you don't put checks and balances in place and you don't have those negative keywords, you're not doing things based upon the exact match, and you don't actually set in a budget.

Jeff: That's very very very well said.

Dynamic Call Tracking with PPC Advertising

Matt: Also, we use a particular platform that enables dynamic call tracking. If you have a consumer that has reached a landing page, then we have a unique phone number that we can attribute back to the actual advertisement. So that call tracking data we want to pump back in to see that this particular campaign is doing really well-generating calls for you. So when the drive is doing really really well the next step is to say. All right. Perfect. This is working great. We've got the right recipe. Let's go ahead and funnel more of our budget into that campaign, and we should expect to yield the same results. So it's rinsed and repeat.

Jeff: Love it. That has been a complete breakdown of the entire chiropractic pay per click guide.

Looking for Neck and Back Pain Relief? Try adding Chiropractic!

If you visited a medical doctor for low back pain, you definitely want to consider adding chiropractic.

In 2012, Spine Journal released a research study where they found 73 percent of people who added chiropractic care to medical care had their pain much better or even completely gone. If you had medical care alone, you only had a 17 percent chance to get those same results.

Chiropractors are trained to work on your muscles (soft tissue), your spinal alignment and range of motion motion to help reduce pressure on the nerves that exit your spine. Also, chiropractic adjustments have been shown to decrease pain by stimulating your central nervous system and brain, without having to resort to taking dangerous drugs.

So if you're struggling with back pain and maybe you've gone to a medical doctor definitely consider adding chiropractic care. It is going to drastically increase the likelihood that you get the results you desire.

What is an Annular Tear and How Can You Find Relief?

Have you been told you have an annular tear on one of your spinal discs and it's causing you back pain? 

In this article, we'll explore what an annular tear is, how long it takes to heal, and what are some of the best treatment options.

Most commonly these tears can occur in the lumbar spine at L4-L5 and L5-S1, which is part of your low back or lumbar spine.

Annular Tear Causes

Annular tears happen to your spinal disc. The discs of your spine are located between the bones of vertebrae; like a sandwich. The discs are designed to act as small shock absorbers and disperse the impact or load of gravity as you move your body throughout the day. 

Every single segment of your spine moves a little bit in each directly- forward (flexion), backward (extension) and side to side (lateral bending and rotation). The cumulative result of each segment moving a little bit is our full range of motion! 

 But as we age and encounter injuries, sometimes small micro tears can happen on the outside of your spinal discs. Those outside rings of your spinal discs are called the annular fibrosis, and that's why a tear in that portion is called an annular tear. 

When annular tear happens, it does not mean that all the fluid inside your disc immediately gets push out. The inside portion of the disc, called the nucleus pulposus is more like crab meat and less like water. 

Your discs are pretty tough but when a tear occurs it often results in immobilizing, debilitating pain. Many patients that I've spoken with just feel their back lock up when the tear happens, and they're unable to move. That can be really scary. But usually, after a few days, you can slowly get back to their normal patterns of life.

Annular Tear Treatment

Controlled careful motion actually helps heal your discs after a micro-tear happens. Medications or injections for torn discs can sometimes take away the pain, but they don't really promote actual healing. That's why conservative measures like chiropractic care, light exercise, and sometimes even light traction can be a great way to keep your spine mobile and improve your healing. 

Using LinkedIn to Grow Your Chiropractic Practice

LinkedIn can sometimes get a bad rap. We all have had our inboxes flooded with marketing "experts" who guarantee new patients leads every month. This type of marketing is exceptionally annoying and rarely results in a productive conversation.

But, there is a way to use LinkedIn as a platform to market your practice in a way that is effective and professional. 

For instance, LinkedIn is a professional level platform with thousands of other chiropractors engaged. So don't hesitate to connect with other docs. If you are a student, the sooner you begin building the bridge and build your network, the better opportunities will await you down the road.

When you're looking to move back home, or even somewhere entirely new, you might already have a connection there, which will be invaluable as you start your practice. 

Also, be sure to utilize LinkedIn groups, such as the Chiropractic Professionals group that has 20,000+ members. I have found LinkedIn groups are vastly underutilized and can be a great way to distribute your message and content.

Similar to Facebook, the groups offer a place to get more reach for your posts and drive more engagement. 

And remember, LinkedIn is a professional level platform, so don't be afraid to get technical. Topics that are over the head of your audience on Facebook may be just right for LinkedIn. Going deeper on nutrition, adjusting technique, how an adjustment works, radiology,  and advanced imaging and all great topics for LinkedIn posts. 

Connect with me on LinkedIn!

LinkedIn currently has over 500 million active users (up from 450 million just a few months ago).

The reach of over 500 million month active users is why every chiropractic marketing plan needs to have a LinkedIn strategy.

It's highly likely that most of the business leaders and influences in your community on active on LinkedIn. 

Education, entertainment, and engagement. If those three words get you excited, then LinkedIn may be the perfect platform for you to build an audience.