How To Choose Which Social Media Sites to Use for Physician Recruitment

Most physician recruiters know that they should be using social media in physician recruitment. As a great way to engage with prospective candidates and expand your organization’s reach to passive candidates. But with so many social media networks out there, it can be difficult for hospitals and health systems decide which one would be the best fit for their organization’s physician recruitment efforts.

Because of this, we’ve created this simple how-to guide to help recruiters pick the right social media network(s) for their physician recruitment efforts, all in five easy steps.

Step 1: Identify Your Target Candidate

Do you know what your ideal candidate looks like? Are they younger, only a few years out of training? Are you looking to add more female physicians to your team? Use this information to create a detailed candidate profile (age, gender, income level, etc.) in order to identify who you’re targeting so you know what to look for when assessing network demographics.

Step 2: Research Where They Congregate

Each social media site has different demographics – some skew younger, others have more female users – and it only makes sense to use the network that is used by your target candidates. Additionally, it’s  important to take into account the size of the social network itself, as well as if there is a large health care presence on it. Use your detailed candidate profile from step one along with the demographic data of each site to figure out which social network is most likely to give you access to your ideal candidates.

Step 3: Assess the Types of Content You Will Post

Different types of content work best on certain social networks. For example, articles and press releases are great for Facebook and LinkedIn, but wouldn’t work on Instagram. Decide what  types of content you’ll be posting, and make sure that your chosen social network would be a good fit for them. Below are the four major types of content, and what social networks are the best fit for each:

• Images: Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr
• Videos: Youtube, Vine
• Business Content/Articles: LinkedIn
• All of the Above: Facebook, Twitter

Step 4: Measure Engagement

You might be posting fantastic content on a social media network that tailors to your target candidate, but none of that matters if you aren’t engaging with candidates on the site. Measure your engagement on each site (clicks, comments, likes, retweets, etc.) after 3 and 6 months to see if your efforts are working.

Step 5: Assess Your Results & Make Adjustments

After trying out a couple of different social networks, it’s time to sit back and assess your progress. Go over  your follower count, engagement, and reach to see if your efforts are working. Sometimes, despite putting in the effort and selecting the network that seems to align with your desired audience, using social media in physician recruitment doesn’t work for some organizations on certain networks. Also, analyze what types of content on which sites perform best. Maybe you’re finding that your image posts perform better on Twitter than Instagram – use this information to further tailor your posts for the future.

Key Take Aways:

• You don’t need to be on every social site! Pick the ones that fit your organization best and tailor to your target candidates
• Make sure to regularly measure the performance of your social sites, as well as specific pieces of content
• Don’t be afraid to pull the plug on a social network – if it’s  not working, it’s not worth your time