Meet the ex-Perts '5-Stars' Practice Building Consortium™

Practice Building Webinar Series

Right now, we'd love to introduce you to Dr. Jonathan Sykes. He will be talking today about social media and marketing along with Connie from Minneapolis, and she's been in business for over 30 years. She's very familiar with social media - so we have two guest speakers today.

Good morning and we welcome the both of you. Very happy to have you be a part of these webinars series that we are running and I know that you have a lot of good points to share with us about social media.
I'm going to start by introducing myself a little bit more, and I'm going to have Connie do the same for her.  I've asked Connie to join me one, because she's a dear colleague of mine who I've learned a lot from. I feel like one of the good things about our specialty is we teach each other and we learn from each other. We've grown many facilities together and I really respect her.  I am a facial plastic surgeon. I do both surgery and injection medicine in California.  I have two locations; one is in Northern California and the other one is in Beverly Hills - I practice in both places.

I'm also a wine maker, I make my own wine and I enjoy doing a lot of, lot of different things. I'm going to talk today about social media and how it impacts us in both positively and negatively ways.  Before I start with that, I'm going to have Connie introduce herself and I'm going to just say that she's wears a lot of hats and I'm going let her tell you a little bit about that.
Thanks Jonathan. I appreciate you inviting me to be here.  Thank you all for joining us and we're excited to share what we know with you and hopefully you can send us a lot of questions and chats to help us learn from you as well.  I've worked in Minneapolis, MN as a nurse working with plastic surgeons and the majority of my 30 plus years are in aesthetics.  I started working as a first assist with my plastic surgeon so that was my anatomy lessons early on in my life.  I transitioned from the collagen days, which is all we had back in the early late eighties and early nineties to today where we have a plethora of injectables and lasers - it's pretty exciting to see how we've all come about.

Social media didn't exist when we started which may be new to some or just getting into this, but also some of the dinosaurs like myself have had to adapt and learn things by our own mistakes because there were no teachers.  I'm excited to be here with Jonathan and hear his pearls and hopefully add some of my own.

Thanks Connie, both Connie and myself have practiced for more than 30 years so we've transitioned from when advertising was a telephone book ad to what it is presently. It's sort of the wild west. there's a new thing out all the time as to how we make ourselves popular and known to the world.

The beauty of social media and it's both a positive and a negative is we can get our message out in a very short amount of time.  It used to be that people in aesthetic medicine had to do it only by word of mouth and that was hard for people to get started with because how can you have word of mouth if you don't have any patients.  It's the chicken and egg phenomenon - how do you get started with that?

But now people with a small amount of capital can get their word out to the masses.  I've written down a bunch of tenants that I put down about marketing with social media and the first is to decide on what is important to you and develop a brand for yourself - that may be different for everybody.

For me, I started in medicine at a university for many years as a teacher- I feel that I was born as a teacher. Most people that are around me know that I'm a born teacher, so one of the things that I market is that I teach.  Other people that are looking for injections or looking for surgery like the fact that I teach or don't like the fact that I teach.

I'm a teacher so that's one of the things that I, you may want to market that you've, you take educational things and you're involved in education. You take courses, you're involved in that and you may want to market that you're involved in community things. In my case, I want to show people that I'm eclectic and that I make wine.

I have a couple of posts on my social media, but I'm a wine maker and, and I'm, I can tell you proudly, and Connie will smile hearing this, but Dwayne Wade, the basketball player just endorsed our wine heavily and so yesterday, one of the people that signed up for a wine club was none other than the Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber is the new found wine club, that's the name of my wine - New found wine.  I'm not trying to sell my wine but what I'm trying to say that if you're a person who wants to push something important to you, you can show that on social media but decide what kind of brand you want to portray.

Let that pervade your marketing whether it be your Facebook or Instagram. I do think it's a good idea to mix private, public and your professional life. I'm going to ask Connie her thoughts on developing a brand and also on the separation of private and public life and how you do that. That is something that at this very moment in time I am on the ledge. I have one Instagram page and I have been nudged by many to separate my professional and my personal data and because I have had my page for so long, you have to delete all the posts then that you don't want.

If I want to just turn that to a professional site only, I have to delete all my personal which would probably knock it into half because my lives kind of intertwine a lot. Then I would have to start my personal page over because my name is my brand.  Years ago, I had a lot of people not talking about branding back in the late eighties and early nineties and direction wasn't there.  My name then became my brand name and with that comes everything personal and professional because if you Google my name you see just about everything. Now I'm on the brink of do I separate those? and what I've found with social media is that I enjoy seeing a professional side of somebody and enjoy seeing that you like your wine, and I love seeing that you're a real guy.

I have a dad that's important to you and I've struggled with whether I take off all of the things that are important to me as a professional or do I let my patients and my colleagues know the things that are important to me and keep them together.  I do agree that if you can initially start out having separate accounts and have your business be your business and your personal, your personal, I would definitely do that.

I think those that have been in business a long time and started out a certain way - the challenge is now to get that separated and to make that happen. I do find that there are certain things that are important in social media that I think are important to branding and that is that to be authentic in who you are as part of your brand. Then you want to include those inspirational things or those stories and be clear and somewhat funny and how do you relate to your people.  Who's your audience going to be and how do you move people? and sometimes some of your personal stuff moves people because it's what's interesting about you.

I'm in full agreement with you Connie, people when they feel like they can touch you on social medial level it's important. To not only have a professional life there, we all have to draw a line as to where we place that line and how that invades our private life.

I think that's, that's absolutely right and you're the CEO of yourself to and to the world.  The biggest thing is credentialing which is important to me on my site and education is important to me and opportunities for my clients and friends.

As my own CEO, I keep remembering that when I get onto my site is what do my followers want to know educationally wise? am I credentialed well and do I present opportunities for them?  I decided to go out in this teaching endeavor more than just the lectures that I gave and I started the Sykes Face Sculpting Institute.  Now it's gaining its own brand presence and shows you can definitely brand yourself.  I would say be real and be honest, be honest about who you are because it shows through in your site and it shows through.  Be honest with your credentials, I see people that come out and they've injected for a year and a half and they're calling themselves the master sculpture injector.

Now you can do that. Uh, somebody can call themselves. One of the beauties and non- beauties of this is we can call ourselves whatever we want but the reality of it is that the world sees us as to what we put on our page and how we present ourselves on Facebook or Instagram unless we make it really private.

As stated before, the whole world sees us and that means your patients but also your colleagues.  I was the president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery a number of years ago in 2010 and 11 and we had a very wise attorney and he used to always use this term “puffery”.  Well, I didn't even know what puffery was and it was calling yourself the best at something like the best injector in town or the best injector in the state and so by saying that you're the best in class or the best in town, that's puffery.  It's something that actually isn't true so we're using something that really isn't exactly honest and misleading. Connie may be the best injector in Minneapolis or in Minnesota or in the whole Midwest, but we have no way of proving that.  So that's what I mean by don't use puffery and be honest, because the whole world sees this.  I think puffery use and we see it a lot in Instagram is kind of a fake world. You can make up anything you want and it's  like filters on photos where you can make it look like anything you want it to.

I will never put that on my site because there is no way to credential that and credentials are real credentials as if you're an MD, maybe you're a FAC member, maybe you're an Iceland member maybe, or an NP, a PA. Those are all certified credentials that are national observed - that's credentialing and with those credentials, you can put your years of experience, you can put your affiliations. I think all of those things make people understand that you're the real deal versus saying, I'm a master at this because anybody could call themselves a master injector.

I'm thinking, where in the world is that test that I can take that says I'm a master? and how many years of experience is needed that I'm a master?  If you've been doing this for 20 years but I only seen one patient a week - does that still make you a master of this?  We make this up in our industry and so puffery is a big thing that does happen.  I think credentialing, super important to let people know the real part of you, and that's the respected part of you.  If you tell somebody that I have a passion for this - that's okay.  If somebody comes out of school as a 31 year old surgeon, which is right at the end of your training if you've gone directly through, or you're a 22 year old nurse that just got your RN and says “I've devoted my life to this” you really haven't.   We had a guy in my town that the first year out as a surgeon when he finished his plastic surgery fellowship said, I've devoted my life to this. I immediately personally lost respect for him and what the world did they can decide on.

I think a good tenant to use is honesty. If you can really look yourself in the mirror and say, I'm not just advertising but telling the world the truth about me - that that is important and it will go a long way for you.  Don't lose respect from your colleagues and don't try and gain it from your patients and lose it from your colleagues and your colleagues often know who you are and what you are.
One of the reasons I asked Connie today is I know and I respect her and all of her colleagues respect her, and, and that's to 100% of them. We can't please everyone. But I think someone like Connie does, and she does that because she's honest.

I think the importance of being there for your colleagues, supporting them and their credentialing.  I agree that throwing colleagues under the bus will never give you a benefit down the road.  If patients or colleagues start to throw each other under the bus, I think it's best to step back from that.

And especially in social media, if you put something up that you knew you hate a certain product or you hate that those words of despise or, or, or things like that, it will definitely come back in the. It will definitely bite you in the butt down the road. So up there. So even if you think, well, I made a mistake and I took him down, somebody took a picture of that, somebody knows that somebody saw it, the waltz.

I've listed just a few things I want. And the next thing I had was just what you just said. Don't say negative things and don't do them. Obviously on social media don't even do them in your office. The same patients that comes to see you in your office and go to different offices.

Patients are fickle, they go to different offices and when somebody comes to you and says “I had a bad injector” don't jump on the bandwagon saying, and I really don't, don't like in social media when people try and use the idea I fixed this for someone.  I fixed this bumpy lip for someone you've had a bumpy lip too and I've had one.  When you try and show that in a medical or nursing conference that's one thing, but if you want to do that to gain by somebody else's negative thing and you're not really trying to educate the world.
Think of you as trying to educate and not trying to push yourself up.  If you educate, it will serve you well - absolutely.  As a matter of fact, when patients come into the office if they start saying,  Jess gave me this bumpy lip and then I saw so-and-so and they tried to break it up and they made it worse - now I'm here and you're going to save me because I've heard a lot about you.

Basically, that's a huge red flag on that patient's side.  Then you have to  step back as a practitioner and say, “okay, if you've seen those two providers whom I have great respect for then I might not be the right person either because their education, their credentials are as such and then to post on social media where it's a staple in the world where it never goes away.

If you're going to post any photographs be careful, because our ticket to the world is people who want to see what kind of work we do. We know if you're going to do that. The first thing before and after pictures is to get an informed consent that is specific for social media.

You can't just get a photograph consent and then show someone's physical features, I want a consent to take your picture and then you show it on social media. That is not enough, you have to say in your consent that this is for social media.  In that consent, it does say that we're allowed to use it for social media and what I'll do with the patient is I'll actually circle those words and have them initial it so that I can use the same consent and that I'm pointing it out to the patient if that's my intention.  

I do basically all faces and I don't do bodywork. Sometimes patients don't want to put their pictures there and that happens a lot with faces. I do a really very well with facelifts and patients don't want people in their neighborhood to know, and sometimes they'll say just don't use my name if way I won't get tagged. Often, they'll say, no you can't do that and the reality of it is when they say that it is off limits to you.  Secondarily to that, if for whatever reason they gave you consent and then they've decided that you want this down, take their picture down within 24 hours.

This is their medical photographs, it's basically a HIPAA violation to do that and it is a very serious violation to do that to someone.  I did have one patient that I totally thought that she gave me her consent, signed a consent, and somebody saw her picture up there.  She calls me and it was very happy, I went out of my way to get that, that that evening didn't come w before I got the photograph down.  Then there are situations when patients are opportunities and their attorneys are opportunists, so there are situations where you think there is no identifying stuff.

Somebody had breast surgery and it is hard to tell one person's breasts from another and had a little tattoo there.  They went to the doctor and said I want you to take that down right away and I want my money back.  He gave the money back - patients are opportunists and you have to abide by their want and it is important. If you're going to put photos up, please make sure that the lighting is as consistent as you can and that there are no filters. If makeup is done in one it should be done in the other photos so that they're consistent because I think photos can be really deceiving.  I think people have put up photos to be deceitful for marketing.
Do you have some photography secrets for the world?  I take my own food pictures but here's what I would say is to use consistent photography.  This gets into your honesty of what you're going to show every time I see a before and after lip or example.  I see non-literal lips and then a shining light that is on the lips that makes them stand out often with a little makeup or gloss.

It's not exactly honest, so if you're as an injector or as a practitioner and if you want to look at how the photography was taken and see how it was done then look at the pupil of the person's eyes.  Were their flashes? and look at the rest of the light on the face, because if you look at Connie's face right now, it's brighter.

My face is a little more shadowed, so my face shows I have more wrinkles and shows more folds.  The way you can always make somebody look worse and then better is to top light them and then front light them. Front lighting shows less wrinkles and folds and shows less shadows, but you as a person who showing off your social media you want to be really good about what you do.  It's not all about what you show, it's about what you do and you ought to be consistent photography. Learn to do that well and you want to show you are an honest person and do it honestly.

I would say 75% of the photographs I see on Instagram that are before and after photographs have some level of dishonesty. It's either positional such as this is the before face lift and this is the after-face lift and so you have to decide what your level of honesty is.
I don't try to overwhelm them with before and after photographs, even though patients like to see lots and lots of them.  I like some things that show the other side of me and some of the other side of me is teaching which is also professional.  I want to show some personal things, I did a little post in my backyard about this is a time for us to band together and do the right thing and to not think about going into our office.

I some colleagues were going into their office and doing Botox because they could and this is the time to do the right thing and to not do that.  If we band together, we'll get through this and I did some posts like that lots of people have, but I have a combination of some posts like that.

I don't have an exact ratio between professional and private, but I do think the style that you do your Instagram and if you start out it helps you frame the picture. If you put them in a box that's a little less than the full size, you want to do organize them where you want to stick with a consistent color and decide how you want your page to look.

I used to do mine with, showing three pictures of the patient across like a front side and an oblique view. Then when I did the next post I might say how family's important and have a saying of my father's in the center and I'd have the words always in the center. Well, my new Instagram person decided she wanted to have not three posts, but one post where you slid across and saw the other two.
She thinks that people get overwhelmed when they see three posts as opposed to a slide. You can decide what you want stylistically for that and that brings me to the next topic.  Do you do this all yourself or do you use a professional and how does that work in your practice?

Before Instagram became a thing in my world, I had what was called a website with a blog. I had hired somebody to do the blog, and what I found was that I would have to read through the bloggers information before it was posted and it became such drudgery.  I would have to cancel on a post, decide to agree with one and then it didn't even sound like me or how I even speak so I felt like it was kind of a false persona of who I was.  I decided blogs weren't in Instagram, and I believe Facebook was first, right?  Facebook became a mishmash of family and friends and colleagues, and then Instagram so I do all of my Instagram myself.  I don't love it - I would say I have a love hate relationship with all social media.

I know it's necessary because that's how we reach each other across the world and we have our connections and it's awesome that we can connect, but I do it myself now.  If I could hire it out and know that that person thought like myself, I would love to have someone take that on for me, but I still haven't been able to let go.

That brings me to another topic that there are a lot of people that want to sell you marketing of some type. They want to sell you that they're going to do, I don't know how to do a website and how to do that. I don't actually know how to post a picture, if I took a picture of the screen right now - I don't know how I would post that.

I think the whole idea that you get some large company and they siphon off one person to do your stuff and I feel it would be hard to pay them enough to make them really interested in you.  I find these bigger companies, you get interested in the people that are paying the larger monthly fee, and there's a lot that gets sold to you in marketing.

We want our reputations to be good. I've found if somebody happens to post something that's negative that this industry is the next day. Somebody that talks about credential management will email me and I've actually been on panels where I've said to these reputation management firms do you think that sometimes firms post negative things about individuals? and they say of course they do.

Then ironically, the next day you hear from a reputation management firm, they're drumming up their own business.  I've noticed if I receive a negative post sometimes, I can identify this person and they are not even a patient.  It's very hard to get these down on Yelp and these negative things can affect the business - that's a whole other topic of how to deal with your reputation.  There are a lot of people out there that want to sell you who they are and I also would say if you have a dissatisfied client or patient try and deal with them before they get to social media. That's not how you're doing your social media, but the most damaging thing that a person can do to you today.

You now write something bad about you, it is all over the place because they have an open voice and you want to in your office - deal with your dissatisfied clients. Not always do we know that they're so dissatisfied and not always can we deal with them.
I have gotten DMS from patients of other practitioners that have said, I think I need to see you and #name did my work and I'm not happy with her or him, and you've been recommended. Many times, I'll go back to them and say to go back to your practitioners, I would appreciate as a practitioner that you would come back to me if you had a problem.  I could see my results and I would then learn from my results because I have also created trouble and I need to learn from my results.  I would appreciate if you would go back to your practitioner and see if you can rectify your result with your practitioner and after the fact, because I don't see new patients right now.

We can talk about where you can go to be seen, but I really encourage those patients to return to their providers. Their providers can learn from them and they can work those things out, but they definitely can post things negative online and when they do - that's a challenge. You almost have to let that just bury itself because if you try to chase that down sometimes you can make it worse for yourself.

I would say if anything negative comes up on social media, don't try and do a big engagement.  The way the world looks at it, we can't be correct in this.