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…

Personally I would find FB and twitter on the site of a healthcare professional who I would want to be discreet and confidential a bit offputting.

If the general populace aren’t going to use her and it is mostly referral by practitioners then FB/twitter style social media probably isn’t the way I would go. Wouldn’t some of the more professional oriented networks (Linkdn, etc) be better where you can build up a network of professional associates and the like?

Well your currently using ‘Social Media’ to ask the question. If she is specialist and wants to engage with people then it’s a valid part of the marketing communication piece.

Suitable ‘bike designer’ niche but Brant/Shedfire/Ragley does it very well indeed.

http://www.shedfire.com/
http://twitter.com/shedfire
http://shedfire.posterous.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shedfire/
http://www.facebook.com/RagleyBikes/

There are lots of ways at looking at it but it’s more about being accessible to respond and have a conversation with your customers and peers than active ‘ram it down your throat’ marketing.

Get her to have a look at this quite nice deck about SM

http://www.slideshare.net/puyolino/wtfissocialmedia5090716070117phpapp01-1822535

If she’s going to do it though she’ll need to invest time to build it up, it’s not an overnight win.

If she just wants to use social media because other people are and it’s big at the moment, tell her not to bother.

If she wants to achieve a particular goal and Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Linked In, Blogger or whatever is the appropriate tool by which to do that, then she should.

shackleton: yes, you’re mostly saying what my instinctive reaction was. The slightly complicating factor is that although most of her referrals come through other allied health professionals, they don’t have to – the consumer can come to her direct, it’s not like she’s a surgeon that will only accept patients through a GP/specialist/whatever. I think my using the word “gatekeeper” in the OP was misleading.

I suppose the idea is that if people were on Facebook/Twitter/whatever looking for info or contacts in her field, she should be on there so at least she can be found.

Having said that, what you and miketually are saying might be a better idea – that is, instead of trying to have a FB/whatever page because everyone else is doing it and having the vague idea of trying to be in touch with everyone in the world, maybe the better idea is to have a narrower objective with a smaller network. And maybe that objective should be to contact more/other potential referees with a task-appropriate tool – like you both suggest.

Hmmm. Something to think about.

Also, Tiger – like you say, maybe interacting with peers is better way of raising profile than shouting into the abyss. Thanks for those links and the deck – I will forward them to her and we will read through them. The other thing I am conscious of is that she has less time than I do to arse about on t’internet and it’s probably worse to do a half-baked vague job of rambling about something on Facey.

And the client confidentiality thing makes it a little tricky to talk about interesting new things – even if the client can’t be identified as the guy who took picolax two days in a row, they still might feel a bit weird reading about themselves! 😉

Miketually sums it up well – she needs to have a reason to use the services – have a STRATEGY for using them to communicate with existing and new audiences. What will she say? What does she want to achieve? How does she substantiate her views? (Etc etc)