Don’t Just Wing It—Wing Eyecare Shares Strategies for 8 Social Platforms

 
Wing Eyecare uses photos of its many locations on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. via Facebook.com

CINCINNATI, Ohio—Social media, social networking, social marketing…let’s face it: today’s consumer is all about socializing online, and they expect their favorite brands and businesses to be there, too. Some optical professionals are mystified by the purpose and the platforms of social media. This is not the case for Wing Eyecare. The independently owned practice, which recently opened its twelfth location, has almost as many social media profiles as it does dispensaries. Digital marketing, social media and IT manager Brett Ball told CLICK how Wing Eyecare has made its social status soar.

CLICK has reported recently on the photo-centric phiz of Pinterest, the image-driven connection on Instagram and the potential benefits of a YouTube channel.

Wing Eyecare, however, illustrates that managing multiple sites is optimal for optical when each site is approached differently. In the end, Ball told CLICK, what works best depends on your time commitment and brand.

Wing on Facebook

“Wing Eyecare uses Facebook to build relationships with our patients and prospective patients. We also use it to advertise and protect our reputation. I originally started creating Facebook pages for the company back in 2007. It’s currently what we use the most for social media.We have the most interaction on Facebook. With the decision makers of the house typically women, we primarily target mothers, but also try to appeal to a broad range of individuals.

Our most successful posts tend to be for any giveaways. I’ve also found, as of late, that posting things about our city is very popular as well. For example, by sharing articles like ’12 Reasons I Love Cincinnati’ we notice a lot more interaction. People do not want to hear about your brand all the time. You need to connect with them on other levels. We’ve found that actual advertising campaigns have not worked to well for us. You get impressions, but not many clicks.

Facebook provides detailed analytics in which you can see how successful you are with your strategies. Most social media platforms don’t have the detailed analytics Facebook does.

Facebook is very easy to use. I love that people are able to check in using Facebook and essentially advertise to their friends that they visit our practice for their eyecare needs. We have offers set in place that give patients $5 for checking off for checking in.”

Wing on Foursquare

“Foursquare doesn’t seem to be too popular for us, but we do occasionally see people check-in and because of that we make sure we are setup with all of our offices. We think it’s important to be on as many platforms as possible.

As a person responsible for posting and responding on social media among other responsibilities, I simply do not have the time to maintain every single social media platform and I have to draw the line somewhere. Since it seems people primarily use Foursquare to check-in, you don’t have to worry much about posting anything. Being on the platform and checking it once in a while seems to be enough for us. We offer the same $5 check-in offer as we do on Facebook on Foursquare.”

Wing on Google+

“Now that Google has merged Google Places with Google+ it’s made things a lot easier for us. We don’t use Google+ like we do Facebook. Most of our target audience isn’t going to be found actively using Google+. We do however make sure our Google+ information is accurate; this ranks very high on our priority list. This information is directly displayed in Google search rankings. The more information you have filled out, the better you’ll look to Google. This year we had Google Virtual Tours done for each of our offices. While Google doesn’t say how much this helps in search ranking, they have acknowledged it helps.”

Wing on Instagram

"Instagram has been very popular for us. It provides an opportunity for us to promote new and current eyeglasses and sunglasses in a fun and creative way. We’ve been very successful in gaining followers on Instagram by doing giveaways. Our first couple of giveaways helped us generate an additional 400 followers. We also focus on getting followers from our area. Since we do not sell our products online, there really isn’t any benefit to us by being followed by people outside of our metropolitan area.”

Wing on LinkedIn

“LinkedIn is one of the platforms we don’t use a whole lot, but we do have our company profile listed and would like to get into it more. I try to make sure I occasionally post about our company vision plan that we offer companies who do not have vision insurance. If a company has 10 or more employees apply [to a job], they can potentially qualify for some pretty nice savings and benefits.”

Wing on Pinterest

“Pinterest is a platform that we decided to get on a couple of years ago. It’s another social media outlet that we would like to use more, but simply do not have the time. We have boards ranging from sunglass frames to photos I’ve taken from places I’ve been to. Our most popular board seems to be Tiffany & Co. There are a couple of frames that have had a tremendous amount of activity. Pinterest seems to be a lot harder to keep your target audience in focus.”

Wing on Twitter

“We primarily use Twitter for brand reputation, but we’ll also use it to see what people in our area are talking about using specific eyecare related keywords. We’ll also use it to post content similar to Facebook. We make sure we thank every patient that checks in. We’ll also ask them how their visit went, hoping to continue to build a personal relationship with them.”

Wing on Yelp

“We see the value with Yelp, especially after partnering up with Microsoft to appear on their search engine for reviews. We’ve made sure all of our offices are active and that we try to encourage people to check us out and ultimately post a (positive) review. It drives me crazy how Yelp’s system works. It seems like anytime someone posts a positive review that may be new to Yelp, the review will get flagged. And if someone who is new posts a negative review, it doesn’t get flagged. Though we’ve been approached several times, we currently do not advertise with Yelp. Yelp is a smart business; in order for others’ ads not to appear on your profile, you have to essentially pay Yelp to protect yourself. We do see some value in doing this, we just haven’t yet.”