Social media... Are you using this tool?

[djmatte, ADN, MSN, RN, NP]

Just thought I'd check here to see who if any one in advance practice is utilizing social media professionally? As a later gen x type, I've generally embraced it personally in small doses. ie Facebook. Never signed up for Twitter or other sites because personally I have no interest. But professionally I image there are a range of topics that could be discussed and vocalized. Outside professional organizations, you don't hear as much about pcps or other advance practice providers utilizing them professionally. Any thoughts? Do you use platforms such as Twitter or others to advance your practice? If so what platforms are you using? Also feel free to share accounts for networking.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Hmmm..very interesting. I'm a later baby boomer but still like to keep up with tech. I don't use social media (except allnurses of course :)) but am interested in how others use other platforms.

Anyone??

[LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM]

I'm a CNM, so my experience may not be super helpful to you, but I can tell you what our practice does. I'm working at a freestanding birth center---a place where moms come for their prenatal care, labor and birth here in our birth suites, recover and are discharged from here after birth, and get their postpartum care. We also do regular well-woman GYN care as well as some problem GYN care. We're affiliated with a large academic medical center about a mile away where we transfer moms/babies if complications arise at any point in the process.

Since birth centers aren't super common in the U.S. and a lot of people have no idea who we are or what we do, or what midwives are, we've had to have an aggressive marketing campaign, which has included a large social media presence. We've been open only 3 years, so the community is still learning about us and what we do and we've tried to use social media to the best of our advantage. Facebook is probably the tool we utilize the most. We have a community outreach coordinator who organizes events around town at baby fairs, kids' events, etc., and advertises all of that on FB. We invite our pregnant clients to join a private FB group just for them, to ask questions and recommendations of each other (moderated by one of our childbirth ed teachers) and we'll post info about any events we're having in there. There's also a very large FB group not affiliated with us but it's for moms in our city, and the outreach coordinator is part of the group and also advertises our events in there. We use Instagram to advertise events but also post pictures (obviously with permission!) of our new babies/families and a ton of people "follow" us. I don't believe we use Twitter but I could be wrong.

It's definitely helped us, our practice is really starting to thrive (part of that is where we're located, tons of millennials have been moving to our city). Even, for example, when we decided to hire a physician to be part of our practice to attract higher-risk moms who previously were not eligible birth center candidates, or for moms who just feel more comfortable with a practice that has an MD, we did a lot of marketing about his arrival on FB and Insta, so that our clients knew what was going on and could learn more about him. Our numbers are increasing dramatically after adding him, and many clients have said it's because they saw our posts about him.

Now---all of that may not apply to a PCP's practice, as I said. But I think having a nicely curated, professional-looking FB page is a good place to start, where you could post articles about interesting primary-care related topics, as well as have a place for people to contact you and ask questions about your practice. I feel like the more "concierge" you go, the more social media can help you attract people. I don't know if any of that is remotely helpful, but I thought I'd throw out my experience since no one else has piped in!