My friend is an independent consultant in an area allied to healthcare/wellbeing, more or less. (I'm not trying to be mysterious by not naming it - it's just that there aren't many people doing it and I don't want my STW bickers to be associated with her business if someone searches. It's not crystal-bothering, it's legit practice).
She has a functional, accessible website that is more or less fine. It's a little bit like an "online brochure" in that the content is all static but honestly that's unlikely to change because a) she doesn't have a lot of time to update it and b) client confidentiality means she'd never be able to put much new and interesting info up there. It looks fine. Her question to me* is whether she ought to have a Facebook page and/or Twitter feed for the business.
On one hand, she's specialist enough that if someone was on Twitter or Facebook and searched for her activity, I'm confident she'd rank pretty highly. She's comfortable with Facebook (uses it constantly for personal stuff) and Twitter won't be too hard.
On the other hand, what she does is really niche and she gets most of her business from referrals from "gatekeeper" health professionals. You probably either need what she does or you don't; it's not like a hiking holiday or something where you stumble across it and think, "ooh, I've always wanted to go hiking in Nth Wales, maybe I'll go next week"; and it's not like a bike shop where you go and search "bike shop in Portsmouth" to get recommendations or whatever. I'm not sure if her clients would necessarily friend her and channel traffic in - and there's also a problem with managing what other people say bc some of her clients are a bit "particular" (goes with the industry).
Does anyone here use social media in quite a niche consulting/specialisation role? How does it work out for you? DO you feel comfortable linking to it here so I can see what it looks like? Any major risks she should be aware of? Was it difficult to integrate into the main website (I know basic html and could edit it in if it were useful)? Or should she spend whatever time she'd have to spend on it doing something else to build the business e.g. just chasing down other professionals to give her other referrals?
* For some reason she thinks I know about t'internet. She is obviously confusing messing around online constantly with actual useful skill. And I actually know relatively little about Facebook so...
