Post every weekwithout losing your week

What you will have at the end.

One network chosen for a reason, twelve topics banked, a filming setup that lives in a drawer, and a written rule for what your team may and may not answer in public.

Organic social will not fill your schedule this quarter. What it does is settle the question a patient asks after they find you and before they book: are these people real, and do they seem like they know what they are doing.

That is a real job and it is worth doing. It is not worth doing on five platforms, three times a week, forever, which is what most clinics attempt in January and abandon in March.

Choosing the one

1. Pick the network your patients already use, not the one you find interesting

   This is a demographic question with a boring answer, and the boring answer is usually right.

   —A patient base over fifty, or a family practice where the parent books: Facebook, and it is not close.

   —Aesthetic, dental cosmetic, physiotherapy, anything where the result is visible: Instagram.

   —A younger patient base, or a service people are curious about before they need it: short-form video, and accept that it is more work.

   —Professional referral relationships rather than patients: LinkedIn, and treat it as a separate activity with a separate purpose.

   In practice

   Whichever one you pick, keep a claimed and filled-out profile on the others with correct hours and a link. Claimed and quiet is fine. Claimed and abandoned mid-conversation is not.

The topic well

1. Build the list from questions you are already answering

   The reason clinics run out of topics is that they are trying to invent content. You do not need to invent anything. Your front desk answers the same twenty questions every week and each one is a post.

   Spend one week writing down every question a patient asks. At the desk, on the phone, in the room. You will have thirty by Friday.

   —Anything that starts with does it hurt, how long, how much, do I need to, can I still.

   —Anything a patient was visibly relieved to hear.

   —Anything you find yourself explaining twice in one day.

   —Anything someone got wrong from the internet before they came in.

2. Sort them into four rotating types

   Four types on a rotation means you never face a blank week, and the feed has variety without anyone planning variety.

   —Answer a question. The core of it. One question, sixty seconds, no preamble.

   —Show the place. The new equipment, the renovation, the parking entrance, the Saturday hours sign.

   —Show the people. Who is new, who has been here ten years, who is covering August.

   —Correct something. A common misunderstanding, stated plainly and without condescension. These travel further than anything else you will post.

3. Bank twelve at once

   Batch. Filming one post takes forty minutes with setup. Filming six takes seventy. The setup is the cost, not the filming.

   Book ninety minutes once a month, film six, and you are a month ahead with a month in reserve.

Filming, without a production

1. Fix the sound first, the picture second

   People forgive a mediocre picture and leave immediately on bad sound. A clip-on microphone plugged into the phone solves ninety percent of it. Everything else is optional.

   —Clip-on microphone, worn under the collar.

   —A window in front of the person, never behind them. Behind them makes a silhouette.

   —Phone at eye height, not on a desk pointing up. A cheap tripod or a stack of books.

   —A room with soft things in it. An empty tiled room echoes and no editing fixes that.

   —Film vertically. Everywhere it goes is vertical now.

2. Use a fixed shape so nobody has to write a script

   The same three-beat shape every time. It makes filming fast because the person on camera already knows the structure, and it makes the posts recognizable.

   —The question, asked out loud in the first three seconds. Not a greeting, not the clinic name.

   —The answer, in three sentences.

   —What to do about it, in one sentence.

   In practice

   Do not open with hi everyone, welcome back to our channel. Every second before the question costs you viewers, and the clinic name in second one costs you the most.

3. Caption everything

   Most people watch with the sound off, and a meaningful share of your patients have some hearing loss. Captions are not an accessibility nicety here, they are the difference between being watched and being scrolled past.

   Every platform generates them automatically now. Generate them, then read them, because they get clinical terms wrong in ways that are occasionally funny and occasionally serious.

Comments, and the line you do not cross

1. Write the rule down before you need it

   Someone will describe their symptoms in a public comment and ask what they should do. That is the moment your clinic is exposed, and it should not be handled by whoever happens to be holding the phone.

   One written rule, three lines, given to anyone who touches the account.

   —We never give clinical advice in a comment or a message, no matter how simple the question seems.

   —We never confirm that someone is a patient, and we never reference their visit, their treatment or their file.

   —Anything clinical gets the same reply: that is a good question and it depends on your situation. Call us at <number> and we will go through it.

1. Reply to everything else, quickly and briefly

   Non-clinical comments get a reply within a day. It is visible, it is cheap, and it is the main way a page reads as a place where humans work.

   —Questions about hours, parking, coverage and booking: answer directly and add the link.

   —Compliments: thank them in one line, by name.

   —Complaints: same four-sentence structure as a review reply, then move it off the platform.

   —Obvious spam: delete, do not engage.

Knowing whether it is working

1. Measure three things, ignore the rest

   Follower count is the metric most clinics watch and the least useful one. A local clinic with eight hundred engaged local followers is in better shape than one with nine thousand scattered ones.

   —Reach among people in your area. Most platforms will show you a location breakdown.

   —Saves and shares, which indicate the post was useful rather than merely seen.

   —Profile taps through to your website or your booking link. This is the only one that connects to a schedule.

   In practice

   Do not expect a straight line from a post to a booking. The honest version is that patients who found you elsewhere looked at your page before they booked, and what they saw there made the decision easier. That is worth doing and it is not directly measurable.

When it goes sideways