A hammer, screwdriver, and saw are simply tools until they are put in the hands of an expert contractor.

At that point they become an extension of that person and save them large amounts of time they’d have to normally devote to a project without them.

How does this apply to you?

If you’re wading into the digital marketing waters for the first time, you’re surely asking yourself, “What tools can deliver a cost-effective means of competing in the healthcare industry?”

Being conscious of your time and busy schedule as a physician, I’ll jump right into it.

Graphic design and Healthcare digital marketing

Let’s start with a couple of free tools you can start using right away for your medical practice.

The first is Unsplash.com which offers royalty free images to incorporate in social media, blogs, etc. It’s good practice to give credit to the photographer when you do use an image, and they offer citations to copy and paste on your site or blog.

Aspiring and established photographers display their work here, so you’re guaranteed to only find the highest quality pictures.

This first tool starts you down the path of portraying a professional image in all your content.

Another is Canva which has plenty of features available on the free plan, although your options are significantly expanded when you upgrade to a paid plan. It doesn’t take a graphic designer to create beautiful images or videos when you take advantage of this easy to use tool.

Why I like the paid plan is it allows quick resizing of the graphics you create for every online channel. Add your practice logo and download them for sharing.

You’ll also have access to a vast image library to pull from for your posts and graphics.

social media and healthcare digital marketing

Creating engaging social media posts can end up being time-consuming.

For auto-scheduling social media posts across various platforms, I use Hootsuite both personally and professionally. The free plan allows you to connect three social media channels, so if you have more than that you’ll want to devote some capital to upgrading.

When you take this step, you’ll be granted access to analytics and reports that you can download and review for ways to improve.

The image editor feature is amazing as it’ll quickly resize images depending on the platform you plan to post to. The time-saving alone from this platform makes it worth adding to your toolbox.

How cool is that?! 

You can plan all your posts weeks in advance and shorten links for easier readability.  Time saved can literally translate to money earned.

final thoughts on healthcare digital marketing

There are literally hundreds of tools, but either way do your research ahead of time and look at online comparisons before you invest money in any one of them. Many offer free trial periods or demos which are also nice.

What is the main takeaway from this brief review of available tools? They’ll save you tremendous amounts of time in your marketing…or you can hand off this responsibility to a proven content writer who’s probably using them already.

Hopefully this short list has been helpful and offers value towards your efforts.

Now get out there and put them to good use!

By the way, if you’re a private practice doctor who needs help with content marketing…look no further! 

Elijah Wordsmith offers freelance medical content writing to grow practices through lead generation.  

Schedule a discovery call to see if I’m the right fit to help you win in the healthcare industry.