Should Your Podiatry Clinic Use Threads?

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

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me today is big Jim Mack, all the way from Canada, my trusty cohost. Jim, how are doing today?

I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for the amazing introduction as always. I'm pretty pumped up. One month from now, you and me are gonna be in Chicago, Podiatry Marketing Live, October Twenty First. Yeah.

I'm just super excited, not only to talk to you tonight, but, you know, in a month from now, hanging out in Chicago in person with, you know, 20 to 30 other podiatrists talking marketing, helping people really improve their practices. It's gonna be a great time.

I'm really looking forward to it. And I think anybody who is going to be free on the October 21, and you're anywhere near America, just jump on a flight and come on over. Like I said, it's rare that you get, like, two of us to get us to have never met. When we actually arrive at the event, we're the first time we actually meet in person. But I just think if you're going to be in that area and you wanna improve your marketing, just block the time out and come along.

And if you're overseas and you're looking for an excuse to go to America, have a bit of a holiday, tag this onto it and make part of your trip tax deductible.

It's good advice. Good advice. It's no. I'm super amped for for next month. So, you know, everyone, if you're interested, you should go to podiatrygrowth.com.

There's a big blue button in the upper right hand corner. Click on that to learn about what we're gonna be talking about and to register today.

And it's only $4.99. 4 hundred 90 9 dollars US dollars, which is like it's like the cost of an orthotic. If you if you come if you're sitting there going, oh, I don't know if I can afford to go, then you really need to be there. Because what what you're gonna pay to to what from what you're gonna learn, you're you're gonna make so much more afterwards.

And it's not just gonna be us, you know, you know, talking at people. Right? We're gonna really, you know, gather information from the people at the event, the attendees. Obviously, we're gonna have some small group breakout sessions so you can learn from some other podiatrists. So, yeah, it's gonna be a great, great event, and we hope to see you in Chicago on October 21.

Okay. So let's get on to today's topic, which is

Should a yeah. So should your podiatric clinic use threads? And if you don't know what threads are, I'm not talking about Twitter or the new app. I guess they call it XNOW, you know, these kind of multiple tweets that are in a row. You know, there's one more social media platform.

Right? Just when you think that you can't have enough social media platforms, Facebook decides to create a new platform called Threads. So today we're gonna jump into a little bit about what Threads is, what is it for, and is it worth your time. I don't know how you feel about another social media platform, Tyson, but it seems like every month or two, there's a new one that pops up. So

Well, what's funny is I remember when TikTok came out a few years back. And when that came out, everyone's going, oh, do we really need another video platform? But then check what happened with TikTok. Yeah. How many people are on it?

How many people have have done really well from it? So I look at threads, and I'm like, oh, do we really need another thing that sort of looks like Instagram, Facebook? I don't know. It's sort of blended together, but I've I've got an account.

Well, I think most people do. If you have a Instagram account, it's it's pretty easy to create a threads account. I think they were actually prompting people that that when they started it in July, I think they they got like 30,000,000 users right away just because it was so easy to make an account from your Instagram account. But for those that don't know what threads is, so basically, you know, Facebook, Instagram, their their parent company is Meta. And Meta has decided to kind of go toe to toe with Twitter.

And this threads app is basically an an iPhone or iOS app that basically has a lot of the same functionality as Twitter. So you create mostly text based posts up to like 500 characters. You can share photos and videos as well, and the videos can go up to to five minutes long. But this is something that is really, like I said, trying to compete with Twitter. After Elon Musk built you know, bought Twitter, there was like something like $44,000,000,000.

He purchased that a social media platform. It's been a it's been coming more of a place where there's a lot of, you know, know, flame wars and people getting, you know, ultra political or, you know, lots of kind of I wouldn't necessarily call it cyber bullying, but there's a lot of people just kind of it's not the nicest or the most calm place on the Internet to try to have a conversation with someone or even for a clinic, try to talk to your patients. So the thought behind Meta, I think, going after Twitter or X now by starting threads is to really see an opportunity to maybe make it a little bit more civil. Maybe people that, you know, our Facebook friends or Instagram friends that feel like they maybe know each other a little bit are gonna talk to each other in a more civil and more calm manner, but who knows? Facebook has yeah.

Facebook has a history of really moderating content unlike Twitter, which is kind of the wild wild west. But we'll have to see, you know, what happens when people start liking, commenting, reposting, and sharing the threads on this, you know, Meta or Facebook threads platform.

Yeah. And that's what I said. It's it's one of those things that I jumped on, I think, day two. And it's because another friend that I have that's in IT just said, set up your account. Whenever a new platform comes up, they will say, set up an account to try and get your real estate, your name, or whatever handle that you actually want to use.

So therefore, you've got it. You may never use it, and it may crash and burn and and disappear. But if it doesn't, at least you've got that important real estate of either your business name or your personal name, whatever it is you wanna do.

No. For sure. I think that's where the the tie in between Instagram and threads is real makes it really easy. Basically, if you already have an Instagram username, you can get the same username on the the threads platform. So it's not something you would have to go battle out someone for that that that that handle that you wanna have on threads.

I think that the question though is like, you know, what is it for? You know, I I think if if some people this seems like that of all the social media platforms, while you can do photos and video, you know, Twitter and threads are are really based on text. And is is, you know, text based communication kind of in in a more kind of general comments or general information about your clinic. I think it can be a good way to if you already have, like, a social media software that kind of distribute some of this content places, I don't think it's gonna hurt maybe to consider doing that. But, you know, I don't think necessarily that Twitter or threads is the best place to really kind of be visible or kind of deliver kind of your stamp of authority as far as whatever type of practice you're gonna have.

There's you know, obviously, we've talked about in the past that number one, the most important thing digitally is your website. And, you know, beyond that, we'll talk a little bit down the road here on this podcast about whether we think it's worth your time or not. But, you know, there there's probably, you know, text based, you know, kind of displaying your expertise. It can be a little bit of a tricky thing, especially in social media when there's just so much noise out there.

I I know it's one of those things, like you said, it's another platform. And I know a lot of people are gonna sip and go, I'm just gonna wait and see what happens. And do I have the mental capacity to actually want to take on another social media platform? Because they might already spend time on Facebook. They might already spend time on Instagram, and I know it's gonna suit different different ages.

So I think it's one of those platforms that you should probably be talking to your patients about and go, have you heard about this? And you may find there might be a certain group of patients who go, oh, yeah. We're on that, and this is how we use it. The thing even TikTok when TikTok first came out, only thing I ever saw were young girls dancing and waving their arms about to somebody else's music and dancing. But then I saw it move on from there where all of a sudden people were giving business advice and other people were doing showing technical skills.

So it sort of adapted and evolved. So threads might do exactly the same thing. It's there for a certain purpose, but depending on the demographics that use it, it could actually change.

I think that's a really important thing you bring up there is the demographics of the patients you're treating. Right? If you're mostly taking care of senior citizens, you can probably just automatically just skip this. Right? But if this is something where you live in an urban area, people are on social media.

I've used I've been a Twitter user since I think 02/2006 or 02/2007. So I've been on that platform for a long time, but it's never at least for me personally, it's never been something where I was, you know, I had a toothache when it was happening to, you know, going through tweets and I and I saw something for a dentist or had a, you know, a foot problem or, you know, some kind of medical related issue. It doesn't seem to me like that's a that's a great place for discovery. You know, maybe you're following your your favorite sports team or, you know, you wanna have the latest news on some type of subject. And Twitter can be relatively good for that, but as far as the really building expertise and authority for medical practices, like I said, I am not sure that that's really the place.

Tyson, have you what have you ever used Twitter much in the past? Or if you have, like, you know, what what kind of things have you used it for?

Yeah. I well, I refer to it as Twitter, like InstaCrap. And and the thing is I I prefer like, I'm probably on Instagram. I'm on Facebook probably more just for business and staying in touch with family and friends. But Instagram, I use more for just entertainment, like flicking through stuff.

I love watching all those videos, all files. You you can't help but love watching somebody do something and totally stuff up, and it ends badly. Twitter, on the other hand, I've got an account. I post a few things on it, but it's usually got to do with the podcast. This episode's just come out.

If you wanna go and check it out, here's the link. But I never go on there just to see what anybody else is actually doing. I don't one's no one's that important who's not in my life that I really wanna know what they're doing on a regular basis. And that's the part where I've seen Twitter where a famous sports person or actor or actress go, hey, I'm just walking into this shop to buy myself a new shirt. And that they're constantly just telling people what they're doing.

I'm having a coffee. I'm just like, I don't care. My life is busy enough, but they're doing that. But for other people, they really want to know they wanna get into the lives of other people. But I don't know in podiatry if any podiatrist is really that important.

No. I think it's a good point. I think the this platform started off as kind of what they referred to as like a microblogging platform. Yeah. And they they used to have a question back in the early days of Twitter.

It's like, you know, what are you doing? And that that that was like the main question that wanted you to answer when you're using the platform. And like you said, somebody just don't care. And and sometimes, you know, the the a couple sentences is not really that interesting. But I guess it comes down to it as as, you know, is this platform, know, worth your time or your staff's time?

And kinda where does it rank as an overall priority on the kind of the social media or the digital landscape? And I would say, like we mentioned previously, you gotta you gotta really know your clinic's demographics. You know, if you have young people that are, you know, on social media all the time, like I said, get get the handle, have the account, maybe just kind of watch and wait and see what happens. But I don't think the majority majority of clinics do not need to worry about threads at this current time. And and unless you have some type of software and there are these different types of software.

Right? Like Sprout Social is one of them. There's some other types of software where you can basically you know, if you're gonna write a a Facebook post or you're gonna write an Instagram post, it almost makes it easy to kind of duplicate duplicate the content and kind of put it out onto these other channels. Yeah. And you feel like that's something you wanna do, like, I don't think there's any harm in doing it.

But it definitely is not something where I think you should be dedicated to making original content on threads. And so where's the ranking priority? I would say it probably ranks somewhere along along along the lines of as as far as like patient recruitment, you know, I would say, or trying to like be visible to patients, probably kind of at the very lowest rung, I would say right now. It's the newest, so it probably doesn't have that much reach. Facebook is also notorious for really limiting how many people see your Facebook posts, your Instagram posts, and probably your threads.

They like to really throttle those things down. At the current time recording this podcast, there's not a way to advertise on threads that I'm aware of yet. Maybe down the road, that might be something that is added as an option to Facebook advertising or to Instagram advertising. But at this point in time, I would say it's more of a watch and wait. If you're interested to mess around the platform, I don't think there's any harm in doing it except from just kinda wasting you and your staff's time.

Well, like I said before, I I think get the important real estate. Register your business name, your personal name if what you're currently using in Facebook or Instagram. But, yeah, I think the same thing about have have just a bit of a play around with it. One of those things when you're sitting on the sitting on the can and you get a couple of spare minutes. Know a few people, that's the only time they're on Instagram.

Not mentioning any names at all. No one's putting their hand up here. But it's to me, it's have a look, post a couple of things, have a look what other people are posting, but I wouldn't waste a lot of time on it right now. But like I said, if if it's owned by the Facebook guys, you know there's gonna be some money to be made in this somewhere down the track.

Well, that's the thing I think is kinda funny about this is that, you know, Elon Musk buys this for $44,000,000. Just all this backlash against him in some ways, how he's kind of changing the platform. And then the kind of the the knight in shining armor is this platform that back, you know, in the '20 what, 2012 or twenty sixteen US election was kind of a a way to, like, you know there's some tampering or there's a lot of kind of shady stuff going on with Facebook, you know, as far as taking user information and having people being targeted with specific types of ads. So now they have another platform where people are putting in, you know, what are you doing, where are you at, those kind that kind of information where they're just building this database of who you are. I think social media can be very powerful, but you also need to know whatever you're sharing is gonna be monetized by Facebook in some some fashion.

Right? There's a reason why it's free, you know. Right? Like, it's a it's a free product because on the back end, they're finding ways to make money with all of your data. So that's not to scare you or say that social media is bad necessarily, but just know that, you know, if you're not paying for a product, then you are the product and Mhmm.

Making sure that you're you're, you know, be being safe as well. Right? Like, you know, sharing your your location live or saying you're doing something, you know, while while we're not you know, while we're podiatrists and we like to think the world can be a safe place, you know, sometimes it's not safe to share, you know, your exact location at a certain time. So I think it is important to, you know, take take a step back sometimes from these social media channels. It's great to share and be genuine with your patients and show them your personality, but also make sure you're practicing social media in a safe safe way, not only for you, but for your family.

Yeah. I think with all social media platforms, it is one of those things when you're posting something and you're looking at the pyramids in Egypt. When you paste that, you're basically telling everyone, I'm not at home. And and even though you like to think that the people you're connected with the most, your close friends, aren't gonna come and rob you while you're gone, but you just don't know who knows who. So it to me, it's just it's just a lot of common sense sometimes with with what you're doing.

Yep. But that's all I've got today, Tyson. I just wanted to kinda introduce this relatively new social media platform. I've had some people ask me some questions about it, and hopefully that cleared up exactly what it is, what it does, and maybe, you know, whether it's worth people's time or not.

So you're on threads, I take it?

I am at mcdanald. So, yeah, if anyone wants to hit me up there, that's where I'm at.

I'm on there too. Tyson Franklin sixty six, So easy to find. But like a friend of mine said, many years ago, Facebook, whoever's gonna use that rubbish, that won't take off. And that was the same person that told me, just register for threads because you never know what what may happen. It it could be you may remember when I remember when Google started.

Google? Well, on Google, use Yahoo. But we're using all

these AltaVista.

Yeah. Using all these other ones, AltaVista, and you're thinking, Google? Now, Google is just it's the thing that we use. And in five years' time, ten years' time, everyone will be like, Google. Oh, I remember Google.

So things are adapting and changing. Like I said, I think it all comes down to who's using it and the people that are creating it, the back end, how are they gonna use use it to make money. Because if there's no money in it, they're not gonna keep it going. It's it'll be pointless.

Yeah. For sure.

So there's gotta be money in it somewhere. So, Jim, once again, fun catching up and talking, and I am looking forward to meeting in person. Ready to give you a big manly hug on the October 21. And anybody else that attends, I am a hugger, just to let you know. I will shake your hand if I don't know you, but by the end of the day, we will hug it out.

Sounds like a plan, mate.

You might just put people off.

We'll we'll find out soon enough.

Okay, Jim. We'll talk to you next week.

Alright. Bye, Tyson.

Okay. Bye.

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