Becoming a Thought Leader in the Eye Care Industry While Improving Patient Eye Health
As an optometrist, you can play a crucial role in not only educating your patients, but also elevating the profession. This ultimately improves patient eye health and can help you become a thought leader in the industry.
Advocating for eye care and eye health is essential. But it’s important to know how to communicate with patients, including how to make information about eye health digestible, allowing them to adapt the information into their day-to-day routine. The bottom line is that it’s about transforming essential information into something relatable, both in the exam room and online!
Let’s take a look at 4 tips that can help you educate the public on eye health while also elevating the eye care profession.
1 | Be Clear About Your Goal and Your Audience
First, ask yourself why you are doing this and who you want to reach. Knowing this will help determine how you will communicate information and where. You’ll also need to know the different social platforms if you want to take your content online. Audiences on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram are all very different. So do your homework and find where your audience is most likely to be and the best ways to communicate information on those platforms.
2 | Choose a Platform You Will Enjoy!
Consistency is key when it comes to public outreach. But if you aren’t having fun while doing it, you won’t be consistent as it falls off your to-do list. If this platform is where your audience is, consider recruiting a reliable staff member to oversee the efforts. Remember, it needs to be someone who will enjoy this work and won’t see it as just more piled onto their already full plate. Also, try to put a face on the practice and show the people who work there to make your content more relatable.
If you are comfortable in front of a microphone and camera, consider reaching out to local media outlets to pitch important eye health story ideas. Be sure you have several succinct, easy-to-explain bullet points about the topic. During the interview, don’t veer off on tangents or long explanations. Remember, information must be easy to digest, and always circle back to your main talking points during the interview.
If you aren’t comfortable in front of a camera, consider blogging or LinkedIn newsletters. It’s still a good way to reach people with information they want and to help you become a thought leader in your industry. Be sure to use good SEO practices and to cross promote any blogs on your other social platforms to get the most out of your content!
3 | Determine Your Brand and Stick to It
Keeping to your brand is important. This consistency allows your audience to know what type of content and tone to expect from you. In other words, it should look like the same person or practice published all of your posts, keeping a consistent and recognizable tone and theme. Your brand should be what best fits your personality and what you are comfortable with, so if you love a little humor, use it!
4 | Just Start!
Getting started is often the biggest hurdle, so just start and have fun with it! It is important to not compare yourself to other brands or practices. People want authenticity, not overly glossy videos and messaging. So keep it real and just be yourself. When getting started, don’t put a ton of pressure on yourself by creating a perfect online presence. Just start somewhere and then continue to build off of that.
Final Takeaways
Using your voice to inform patients on the importance of eye health can help elevate your industry while also improving patient health. Remember to keep your content relatable and to make it easily digestible. Be authentic online and just have some fun with it. When your audience sees you having fun, they will enjoy your content too and are more likely to remember the key information you are trying to get across!
