LinkedIn Best Practices for Podiatrists

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

So welcome back to the podiatry Marketing Podcast. With me is my cohost, big Jim McDannald. So Jim, how are you doing today?

Little Tyson, I'm feeling great. I think we're gonna have a great talk today about for for the record, I'm like five nine, one forty, I don't know Tyson, you're what, like six one, I don't know, a two ten? I don't know.

Yeah. Your weight's probably right. I usually tell people just five eleven. It's easier. It's all good if you if you underestimate your height and people meet you, they go, oh, you're taller than I thought.

But I you know, when you see people and they go, oh, yeah, I'm six foot two, and they're short, and I look at them, I go, but I'm only five eleven and you're shorter than me.

Yeah. I mean, I take some solace in like what Tom Cruise is like five foot four or five foot five or something. So I would I would I would tower over him, so I feel good about that. But, just that five ten five nine five ten range, no shame in that at all.

Yeah. I did read once that I don't know if it was Sylvester Stallone or it was Tom Cruise, and they said to me about they deliberately had shorter actors work with them. So that they looked that they looked bigger or they at certain times, they'd actually stand like in a box or something to to look more to bigger than what they were.

Well, you think about like Rocky four. I don't if you remember that one, but the Ivan Drago versus USA. Yeah. Rocky, like, Ivan Drago looks you know, Darl Dolph Longren looks like he's about six five, but I think in reality, he's, like, five eleven or five ten or something.

He's early years. I thought he was, like, almost seven foot tall based on

He might be bigger than that, but he looked huge in that movie compared to Sylvester Stallone because he's so small.

Yeah. That was a that was a good movie. I didn't mind that. I liked all the Rocky movies. So we're not here to talk about movies, which sometimes we do get carried away with.

And we haven't we haven't made a big big reveal about The Matrix, but we won't go there because then we'll we'll get right off track. So today, we are talking about LinkedIn. So what what aspects of LinkedIn did you wanna talk? Because you made mention of it last week.

Yeah. So I mean, a lot of the kind of previous social media channels, whether it be Google or Facebook, we've talked about how to use those to, you know, to look for prospective patients, to advertise on those platforms a bit. Also, Google Business Profile, we've talked in-depth about how you can use those things to really attract patients. Would say for most people, like, LinkedIn is more, like, kind of an organic or the kind of free channel for professional networking. There's lots there's, you know, there's a significant amount of doctors, both, you know, other podiatrists, other specialties that that do spend time on LinkedIn.

So building up, your network on LinkedIn is probably more the priority than, you know, trying to get patients to make appointments through the platform.

Yeah. Well, I never would have even thought about using LinkedIn for patients, but I really tell podiatrists you need to connect, and it's it's a great networking thing for, like you said, meeting with other professionals. But I used to use a lot to try and connect with local journalists in the area because if I could maintain a relationship with them, when all of a sudden, you know, a foot story came up and they're going, oh, I need a podiatrist straight away, I'd be top of mind. They go, oh, this is podiatrist who says that I'm awesome all the time. So that that's how I used to use it.

No. That's a perfect example. You just want it's more of kind of for top level awareness of, like, who you are and that you're kind of in the local community and kind of what yours you know, we talked about this in the past a little bit, kind of what your expertise is within podiatry. And and it's not something where you have to be posting on it every single day. But, you know, you know, one post a week or a post, you know, a couple time a couple posts a week can be helpful.

Yeah.

I think it's also a good thing to engage in other people's posts that either you're, you know, you're friends with that are in your network, but also people you want to get to know a little bit better. And it's not a in a creepy way. It's just, you know, liking their posts or we're not we're not we're not advocating like LinkedIn stalking here. Right? But at the same time, if there's someone that either for some reason you haven't developed meet meet in real life or maybe they're a state away or, you know, a province away where you do respect their work, it is a way to kind of get to know somebody either in your profession or in your local area that you would wanna develop kind of a, you know, professional or potential partnerships and and stuff sometimes come from platforms like LinkedIn.

Yeah. Well, some of the best articles I've read have been uploaded to LinkedIn, and you've read through them. But I think it's great. We if you read something or you see something that somebody's doing, yeah, sending them a small message and not trying to sell something to them and say, hey. You should just use me as your go to podiatrist because like, I've got the point now whenever I get someone that wants to connect with me, I look at who they are, what they do.

I click accept, and if I get a message from him in the first sixty seconds and it's them trying to flog something off to me, I just shut that down so quickly. So I think it's one of those things where you reach out to people and it's it's build a relationship over a period of time, especially if you really wanna connect with that person is give it time. Give it time to sort of build.

No. That's a perfect thing. I think, you know, at the beginning, LinkedIn was very, I'd say I I would say it was spam free, but it was like it was something where people knew what it was how to use it. And then, you know, mark marketers and other people really are using different types of automated bots and other ways of just, like, automatedly, like, trying to you know, I get them all the time myself. Know, like, I get, like, 10 a day of, like, some marketing agency that sees that I help podiatrists doing marketing, and now they want me to help.

You know, they don't either want me to have them send me clients or they want me to send them clients. It's a little like a much, so I just usually don't even engage with those folks. But you did bring up a good point there. I think there's different types of content that can be shared on LinkedIn. You know, you and I are kind of more in the the content creation game.

You know, we're making videos. We're making podcasts. We're we're trying to help educate podiatrists about topics like marketing and, you know, obviously, you have some other endeavors with with your podiatry legends. But there's also the the path of what we call curation, and that's something you touched on there. It's like, you find a great article on a topic within podiatry, what you can do is, you know, write a paragraph or a couple sentences why you thought it was a valuable article, and then sharing it on your own LinkedIn, you know, it's not gonna probably be seen by every single person that you've connected with, but enough people will see it that maybe they're gonna, like, you know, respond to it or give their own feedback.

Or I've seen people, you know, put in, like, obviously, no personal information from the patient on there, but x rays of a procedure or almost like many case studies on LinkedIn with people, you know, you know, showing kind of before and after or people critiquing different types of surgical techniques or level you know, types of treatment. So there's diff there's a lot of different ways to go about, and the types of posts you put on LinkedIn. So, like I said, as long as you're not sharing personal information of patients, that's obviously super important. But it is a way to facilitate conversation and build connection with both peers in the profession and also people outside of podiatry.

Well, one thing you said there, I thought was really important when you said not everybody's going to see it, but the person that wrote the article or posted a photo, when you share that, they will see it. And and that is the important part. If I if I read somebody's article, I thought, wow, this is really good and I share it. A lot of the times, you'll get a personal message from them saying, oh, thank you for sharing that. Although comment on that, oh, thank you for sharing it.

So and that's what I mean where if there's certain people that you do wanna connect with, it's a it is one of the best. Well, I think LinkedIn is a great way for connecting with other professionals. If you have a look at your whole professional referrer list that you have, how many of them have you actually gone to LinkedIn to see if they're there and sent them a message? Yeah. Every GP, every physiotherapist, are they on LinkedIn?

If they are, why aren't you connected with them? It's it's an unutilized resource, and it's surprising where I never did it when I actually had my podiatry clinic. I didn't utilize LinkedIn as much as I should on that side of things. I did with journalists, but I didn't with other professional referrers.

Yeah. That's a good point. I think I think a lot of people are using LinkedIn more as a broadcast tool. Like, you know, like, I have a message and I want everyone to see my message. But really, like, you're gonna move a lot further and make more connections and make more meaningful connections when you're really I mean, you don't have to be, like, spend hours a week on this.

But when you are engaging with other people's content, giving your feedback or, you know, thanking them for sharing it or liking, it's almost also like it's it's not too dissimilar from Google reviews where if someone does like a post of yours or does have a comment, you know, start a conversation about it. Or if someone thinks that you, you know, you put up an x-ray and your your procedure is the wrong one to do, like, it's a it's a chance to engage in a, you know, civil way to kind of build community and just really kind of like, you know, be a part of this overall community as opposed to, like I said, it's more about engagement than it is about broadcasting.

Are you sort of indicating it's good for, say, a podiatrist to to start with it? They haven't used LinkedIn a lot to comment on what other people are doing and engage with them at their level. Then once they get the confidence up is then start posting their own information with their opinion or post information and ask ask a question.

Yeah. That's a good that's there's different ways to approach that. Right? Like, I think there's obviously there's there's being connected with other individuals, like, in your profession is is one way of doing it, and like we talked about previously, also people in your community. But there's also, like, kinda like brand pages or publication pages, for example, in podiatry, like podiatry today, APMA, ACTFAS.

I'm sure the Australian podiatrist association or other other groups you're associated with Tyson have their own pages there on LinkedIn. So they will sometimes share information. So it's, you know, by you liking it or making a comment on, like, the for me, it'd be like the AP May. In fact, there's some initiative I think is very beneficial, or I like a piece of news, like writing out a sentence or two along with my like. You know, it gives me a bit of visibility in other people as well.

But it's just a matter of, like, figuring out what type of information like like we talked about, kind of identifying where your area of expertise is and kind of how you're kind of not you're being, like, super strategic, but, like, you don't wanna just do try to do all the things in LinkedIn. Maybe it's first you just wanna focus on reconnecting with some of your podiatrist school classmates or reconnect in a genuine way with your residency residency mates plus some of your attendings. There's different ways to kind of gradually build up that that network of people. But you'll notice though that there are these different levels of the connections. Right?

Once you have the 50 of your podiatry classmates that you're friends with, now they have a one level connection you're away from, you know, 50 more. Each of them have 50 more podiatrists they're connected to. So it can be it's that kind of network effect that link LinkedIn can provide. Like we talked about previously, like, not everyone's gonna see every post that you do, but just, you know, starting small, you know, connecting with five people, you know, having genuine conversations or, you know, sending them messages about, hey, I'm link on LinkedIn now. I'm practicing here.

I'm doing this. Like, how are you doing? That's much more effective than trying to blast or broadcast your message to a bunch of people.

So okay. So we've gone through a lot of what you should do. Do you have any what you should not do on LinkedIn? Do you a list?

Like we talked to well, the the first list is, like, don't expect this to be like a patient, like, appointment generation tool. Like, it just either from an organic or a or a paid per per per per per I think yeah, maybe if you connect with enough local businesses and enough people in your professional network, maybe that could lead potentially to some patient referrals, but it's really gonna be tough to kinda nail down whether that came from LinkedIn or not. So if you're really expecting this to be, like, patient revenue generating from day one, like, you're gonna be sadly mistaken. Also, on the paid side, it's just gonna be way too expensive. Some of the targeting can be interesting.

I don't know if you have, you know, most podiatry appointments or new patient visits. You know, the cost you're gonna be paying for per click is gonna be significantly higher than you would pay on something like like Google Ads. For example, on Google Ads, you may be looking somewhere between depending on what where you're located at, like somewhere between 5 and $10 a click to get a potential patient. The targeting is more based off of, like, what someone's profession is, or, you can do locations and things like that on LinkedIn, but people are aren't really looking, if to receive an ad on LinkedIn about make an appointment or they're not really need even, like, casually looking for, kind of, for podiatrists to take care of their foot problems on LinkedIn most likely. So and these are much more expensive.

You're probably looking at somewhere between 20 and 40 dollars per click on LinkedIn. So this is really more for, like, people that have high dollar businesses. I mean, if you're a podiatrist in The US that has, like, an imaging center or

Yeah.

There's some kind of high dollar b to b type opportunity that you have that you want other podiatrists to know about, that's something where LinkedIn might make sense from an advertising perspective. But just for patient generation or even just like getting your message to more podiatrists, you're you you definitely want to avoid paid channels on LinkedIn.

Yeah. Well, when you said there a bit well, and you said it right from the start that LinkedIn is not a place where you're probably going to find your patients hanging out. They're going, oh, is there a podiatrist here that I can make an appointment with today? But the professional connections that you make over a number of years, like I know when I was using here in Cairns and I'd connected with different journalists, and the boss of, say, the radio stations and the chamber of commerce and all those connections that I did find, a lot of those people, they did become patients over a number of years. So to me, you can get patients from LinkedIn, especially in your local area, but it's it's the long game that you're playing with them.

It's not you're there when they need a podiatrist, you'll become top of mind because you've act been actively in their life.

No. For sure. I mean, that's why, you know, I that's the reason why I put our podiatry marketing podcast videos onto LinkedIn is that, you know, I just want to show people kind of what we're doing in a in a authentic way. We're trying to educate and help, you know, people in our profession, you know, market their practices and have successful practices. And, you know, if every other post was me saying, like, okay, now, you know and and it's important to know that I am a you're in a business and I'm in a business that can benefit from some of these things and just being transparent about it.

But, you know, if every other post is me saying, hey, like, let me do your website. Hey, let me do Google Ads. Like, I will be tuned out very quickly because people realize that. But you have to bring bring the value like we have with this podcast so people can either, you know, learn about it, choose to do it themselves, or in the future, if they want some coaching, they'll they'll come to you. And if they want some services, they know where to find me.

So it's it's it's finding that right balance of transparency and also just being genuine and authentic about the type of information you're sharing, whether it's with other podiatrists or people in your local community. It is a way to showcase your expertise in a kinda authentic way.

And like I said before, and it is the long game using LinkedIn. It's constantly like, I've been posting stuff on LinkedIn now, like, say, as a a business coach just for podiatrists for a number of years now. And I will still get people that will send me an email and say, oh, I read an article on LinkedIn, for example. I was wondering, do you do business coaching? I go, yeah, I do.

And I'll direct them to my website. They go, oh, I didn't realize that information is on your website. But on my website, it has business you know, coaching. So it it is it it's one of those things that whether it's LinkedIn or other platforms, you gotta constantly be putting your information out there and and knowing that they might see it ten, fifteen, might be 50 times before they may connect back, yeah, connect back with you in, like, sort of real terms, not just a like. You had a comment, some form of engagement.

But I think you have to you just have to keep putting yourself over. Just joining LinkedIn and sitting back and doing nothing is not really joining LinkedIn.

Well, it's that combination like you talked about. It's kind of like the combination of awareness that you do exist and you provide a certain type of service, but it's also just building trust over time. You know, like, you are a reputable reputable person. You do have this for example, for you, you do have, like, you know, your podiatry business owner's club that that you pay a lot of attention to, that you're attentive to the needs of those people in that group, and they would % vouch for you there. But people don't know about it, then they don't know to go there, or they don't know about that I provide, you know, websites, Google Ads, and those things.

Like, and you just do this one off every six months. I post like, hey, I'm the podiatry marketing guy, or hey, I'm the podiatrist in your local area. Right? Like, there's no consistency there. You haven't built awareness over a long period of time, and therefore, there's nobody that really naturally trusts you.

So it's it's the same thing with, you know, patients or local businesses in your area and potential referral partners, whether they'd be professional referrals or the, you know, the nonprofessional referrals like we talked about in the past.

I know some businesses, when they're quiet, they market their business. And then once it gets busy again, they stop. And then it drops back down. Once it gets quiet, they market again. And they're going up and down, up and down uses so much so much more energy where if you're just consistently marketing your business, you don't tend to have the same ups and downs.

And I find LinkedIn is the same. The more I'm just consistently on there, and like you said, you don't need to be on there for hours. It could be fifteen minutes a day just reading some posts, making a few comments, might upload something yourself a couple of times a week, and that's all you really need to do to maintain those relationships.

Yeah. It's like a fifteen minutes a day or, you know, couple, you know, maybe an hour a week of so just a way to network in a quick and effective and, you know, efficient way instead of having, you know, especially know, in the past, you know, the last couple years has been a little tough to get out to in person events. And it's almost like sometimes having, like, almost like a mini conference or or or like a mini speaking gig on a consistent basis, that kind of platform of LinkedIn kind of provides that. But I think like you talked about awareness, trust, and engaging with other people's content and and having it be authentic are hugely important on the LinkedIn platform.

So if somebody does not have a LinkedIn account, is there a couple of steps or somebody might be listening to this and to go on, Actually, I'm not I'm not even on LinkedIn or I am on LinkedIn with four people. I've just held up three fingers. Four people. Is there is there a way that they should get started if they don't have a LinkedIn account?

Yeah. That's a great point. I think, you know, get started, you know, obviously go to linkedin.com.

Yeah. Don't go to Facebook. Go to LinkedIn. Sorry.

Make sure you have a good a good professional looking profile photo. You don't want something like you wear in your hoodie or or, you know, it is kind of a more professional social network.

I'm so glad you said that. I've seen some photos. I have the LinkedIn photo and it's a photo of their cat. And I'm like, no. I don't wanna connect with you.

Although they're and they're got the hand sort of covering their face, looking something or it's dark and shadowy, and I'm going, you look shonky. I don't wanna connect with you. So good photo. I like that. Good start.

Yeah. Good photo. And fill out your bio. Make sure that, you know, your kind of your resume your LinkedIn resume is filled out. And I would say, initially, just focus on that that personal profile.

There are ways to make a profile for your clinic as well. But I think that for those first steps are, you know, obviously seeing who you're connected with already. You know, like I talked about, go back to your podiatry classmates. You can look look at them, search for them on their search feature there in LinkedIn. Look for your residency classmates.

Look for attendings. Look for other people, like, within podiatry that you're close with. And then also, like, you talked about Tyson, your nonprofessional, maybe your local, or your local professional network as well. You know, what primary care doctors are you working with? What physical what physios or physical therapists?

You know, what's the running shoe owners he on there? You know, just kinda building that out slowly. And like I said, it doesn't necessarily have to be, like, blasting 200 people on day one and expecting, like, the clouds to open up, the sun to come down and and to shine, you know, you know, good graces upon you and your clinic. But maybe it's maybe it is just five people you haven't connect reconnected within a while from your podiatry school class and sending them a personal note saying, hey. Check I'm checking out this LinkedIn thing.

I'm practicing here doing this kind of work. How are you doing?

Yeah. I was gonna ask you about that, about when you connect with people, the importance of putting a short note with you know, because when you go connect, it says, would you like to send a message with it as well? Yeah. I always prefer that myself when somebody says, I wanna connect you. And even they say, I'm a podiatrist that such and such, or they just they just give me something.

I feel it's a little bit more authentic than, oh, they saw my picture. Connect.

No. A %. You need to have, like and I think also the first email can't be some kind of ask. Like, it has to be, like, genuinely wondering how they're doing or like

Can I have your kidney? Yeah.

Exactly. Like, going for the kidney on the first LinkedIn message is probably gonna be a low hit rate on that. But yeah. So, like, just those genuine messages can be helpful. And then, like, as you, over time, grow out those people that you know directly, at some point that will your network will probably end at some point Yeah.

Then you'll have all those second second level connections. And maybe there's someone that you're currently not linked linked up to or linked into, and you can talk to that friend or that connection about that person. Say, hey, I saw so and so wrote a great article about, you know, hallux limits or big toe joint pain or something like that. I would love to just talk with that person about this subject. And having that warm connection is is a way to also build out your network even further.

I mean, you can jump past that a lot of times. And if you do say, hey, like, you know, I know Tyson Franklin, you know, I saw his connection of yours, like, I really like that you did this article. That's another way of doing it. But it's kind of whatever people are comfortable with, and there's no necessarily a wrong or right way as long as you're not spamming people.

Yeah. I was gonna say the door might open wider if you don't mention my name. Just joking. Just joking. Partially joking.

So I think this has been good. It's it's information that like I said, when we talk about LinkedIn, we know it's a professional connection, and it's not specifically about attracting patients, but I think the long game of the people well, we say it's like the the saying on my back wall. Yeah. The next connection you make could be the one that changes your life. And if some people can't see the video, it's it's printed on my back back wall of my office.

And and I just think that is so true. The next connection could be the one that changes your life. And I've had people on the podcast that I've met purely through LinkedIn, on the podiatry legends podcast. It's to me, you've just gotta open yourself up and and connect with people in a professional way, get to know people over a period of time. It's no different to how you and I first met, then connected, and now, you know, to me, you're just big Jim.

I won't call you little Tyson again. That was a that was a little bit of a low blow there.

Yeah. That was a really low blow. Yeah. Yeah. Don't call me that.

That's what's funny is my my all my brother's friends are not I call my mom. Mom's we call mom Big Trish. Not that mom's big, but I was very quick to tell you a story. My brother is quite large. Yeah.

Six three and a half, big dude. So when he was at uni, when he was doing dentistry, he used to talk me up all the time to his friends. I bet, you know, because I used play football and I was, you know, bit rough and rugged and and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, I turned to the dental school for them to meet me, and I walked in. They said, oh, who are you?

I said, oh, I'm Tyson. I said, who are you? And I said, Tony's brother. They went, you're Big Ty? So because everybody used to refer me as Big Ty.

So from that point onwards, they used to call me Big Ty. And then when they met mom, mom was just automatically Big Trish. So yeah. So my son On the tease. Yeah.

My son, who's called Tyson, we called him Little Ty. So when you call me Little Ty, it was just funny. Anyway, that's enough about me. I just derailed the podcast.

No. It's all good. It's all good. I think this is a great conversation. We should leave it there until next week, Tyson.

Okay. Bye.

Alright, Tyson. Talk to you then.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McAnnold. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.