NEW YORK—Effective and consistent messaging to patients and customers has evolved into a daily, weekly business essential for independents, but not everyone has the bandwidth—and staff resources—to really stay on top of these. However, there are a few services which could be helpful to manage those ideas and workflow for independent ECP emails, social media platform posts and appointment follow-ups. Yes, it’s a good idea to speak to your appointment and practice management software supplier partners to see what resources can be hooked into such communications. These are helpful for tuning eyecare-focused posts and content for you. An increasing number of suppliers of lenses, contact lenses, frames and eyecare specialties are escalating what you can use, too.

Here are a few other digital services to check out:

  • DIVVYHQ.com is geared to small and large content teams but there are ways you can leverage their digital tools and they offer a free trial here. The monthly fee creates a central hub for content planning. You can adopt messages to this format and it helps you review your messaging and posts over time so that you can be sure to balance out the angle of the messages and gear them to certain platforms and times of year.

  • Monday.com is another option. You choose the components that make the most sense for your practice or optical shop. The service is used by some really big companies but elements can work for small independents and regionals as well. Click here to find out more. 

  • Falcon is a service suggested by Sprout Social and details can be found here. It also offers a free trial and is geared to the needs of small businesses. It offers a central scheduler and ways to look at analytics and plan content out by the month. Teams can also share tasks.