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7 Reasons to Use LinkedIn for Your Independent Eyecare Business

It’s not just for job hunting, but a hugely effective and under-utilized hub for targeting patients.

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LINKEDIN HAS LONG been touted as the “professional Facebook” and a great place to find employees or colleagues, but it is so much more than that. It’s no longer just a place to list all of your education and workplace experience. It’s a professional networking site, a business hub, a jobsite, a news feed and a directory of any professional who is smart enough to create a profile. But how does this work for an eyecare practice?
Here are seven ways you can use LinkedIn for your business:

1. Create or claim your LinkedIn business profile. Every day we see unclaimed business profiles, which is such a missed opportunity. Company profiles list the basic information about the business but also allow you to describe your services, link to your website, link to all your employees who have a personal profile and post job openings. Searches for companies are growing on LinkedIn and are forecasted to continue increasing in 2021.

2. Encourage making personal profiles for the optometrists, opticians, owners, and employees. Completing a personal profile offers the business a ton of value as well. If a patient is searching for a particular OD, the personal LinkedIn profile or page will show up in Google Searches as well as in the LinkedIn search field. This gives you a professional, expert link via the internet that allows your current patients and potential patients to find you. From here you can also connect to your business page now giving you the opportunity to drive people to your website and book an appointment.

3. Post informational posts on your business profile page. LinkedIn is more professional in nature than other social platforms, so posts tend to be more informational, educational and business oriented versus promotional. Followers to your business page are expecting to hear about the practice, services and information about eyecare, eyewear and eye health. Posting here can assist in brand exposure as well as engagement.

4. Post educational posts in your personal feed. Similar to posting on your business page you want to keep posts to a professional nature. However, different than your business page which only actual followers to that page can see, posting to your personal page allows all of your connections to see your post. You can share directly from your business page to your personal profile or post separately on your personal page. Personal pages are also a great place to share achievements, accomplishments and success stories.

5. Do a LinkedIn ad. LinkedIn ads have the ability to get geo targeted for both location and demographics. For example, say you want to run a promotion advertising multifocal contact lenses and decide your target is the 40+ professional female. You can literally build your targeting on those exact qualifications, so your ads only show to women over 40 in your community. Very effective and very under-utilized in eyecare.

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6. Connect with patients and other businesses in your geographical area. Salespeople use LinkedIn to connect to clients and prospects. But businesses often don’t do the same. Yet, it can be equally as engaging and opportunistic as other platforms and, in some cases, easier to find your target audience. Invite all your current customers to follow you on LinkedIn and actively search for patients and “ask” them to connect.

7. Join LinkedIn groups in eyecare and optometry. There are tons of industry related groups on LinkedIn. Some have 20,000+ members. Some are targeted to a specialty like dry eye. Some are more general. But most have industry engagement and informative posts. Again, different than Facebook groups, these rarely see casual posts. They tend to be very professional, informative and resourceful. To find groups, type keywords into the search field and make sure it is searching groups not just people.

If you need help claiming or setting up a LinkedIn business page, personal page, or pretty much anything LinkedIn, visit their help center at linkedin.com/help/linkedin.

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