In the Loop: Social Media Mastery for Doctors of Chiropractic
FEATURE
PHILANTHROPIST AND ENTREPRENEUR , DR. MATTHEW LOOP HAS CREATED A REPUTATION FOR AGGRESSIVELY USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO HELP PEOPLE BUILD THEIR MARKETING PLAN. WITH THE CHIROPRACTIC PROFESSION IN DIRE NEED OF ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO COMMUNICATE TO POSSIBLE PATIENTS ABOUT THEIR PRACTICE, DR. MATTHEW LOOP HAS BEEN ABLE TO TAP INTO THIS VIRTUAL POSSIBILITY, AND HAS PRODUCED A CONSULTING EMPIRE.
IN AN INTERVIEW WITH CHIROPRACTOR DR. JAY GREENSTEIN, DR. MATTHEW LOOP EXPLAINS HOW HE ACHIEVED EXPONENTIAL
GROWTH THROUGH THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES INCLUDING
FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, AND TWITTER
Dr. Jay Greenstein: Welcome, everybody. We aie so happy to be here today. I’m with my new friend, Dr. Matthew Loop, and today we’re going to talk about a very important topic to all of you—social media. Dr. Loop, how aie you doing today?
Dr. Matthew Loop: Excellent, Jay. How aie you?
Dr. Jay Greenstein: I’m doing great. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a very long time. Just to give the audience/readers a little context, I was on a conference call with my three good friends and cofounders of our POWERPlay in Sports Program, Dr. Cindy Howard, Dr. Spencer Brown, and Dr. Alan Sokoloff. We were having a conversation when all of a sudden, Cindy
mentions this guy, Matthew Loop. So I asked, “Who’s Matthew Loop?” And she said, “You don’t know who Matthew Loop is?” I was like, “No.”
While I was on the call, I googled Matthew Loop and I realized, “Holy cow, this guy’s the real deal. He’s got like 12,000 followers on Facebook! ” So, I really appreciate the opportunity to interview you today, and this is really about helping docs out there be more successful in practice. You aie a social media leader, so let’s get right to it!
Dr. Matthew Loop: I stepped into practice m 2004 back in Atlanta because I had quite a few friends here. I practiced for ahnost a year before social networking even came on the scene. I certainly wasn’t successful from the start. I had to leant many “hard knocks” about business like most chiropractors do. I found out early on that I just couldn’t hang a sign and expect patients to just walk in. I discovered I needed to proactively promote myself and chiropractic to get the message out títere, so I became a student of marketing. Unfortunately, at that time, I tried a lot of different marketing mediums that were expensive—radio, television, newspaper ads. Some produced pretty well, some didn’t. I was spending a lot of money. My credit cards were maxed and I got to a point where there was very little revenue coming in for a time. No one told me in school that you had to wait a couple months for insurance reimbursements.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: That was an important little detail that we didn’t learn about in school!
Dr. Matthew Loop: You know, when you’ve just graduated and are fresh out of school, all you want to do is to help people. That’s all I thought about. My situation was pretty bad, though. At one point, my credit cards were maxed. I had $1,000 in bills due the following week, too. It got so bad that my ex-girlfriend’s father had to cut me a $2,000 check to float me along for the following week. That was a very humiliating point in my life, but it really got me to say, “All right. I’ve got to figure this game out. I’m a good chiropractor getting amazing results, but I’m not getting referrals like I want.” Right around that time is when social media started to snowball. Do you remember MySpace?
Dr. Jay Greenstein: I do!
Dr. Matthew Loop: I was attracting patients into my office from MySpace in 2005.1 didn’t realize how powerful the system that I had created was. All I knew is that this new medium was a fun way to meet and interact with people. So, I stalled “friend requesting” local residents in my community. At that time, you could do it within five miles of your zip code, which was fantastic. I met thousands of prospective patients very quickly. Naturally, one to two percent would see that I was a chiropractor and be motivated to schedule an appointment regarding their chief complaint. As I started getting referrals, eight, 10, 12 patients per month, word got around to my friends and they were like, “Hey, how aie you doing this? How can we use this network to build our practice?” I
connected with guys like internet entrepreneur Yanik Silver, other professional internet marketers, and people who were making a huge impact. It taught me a lot about selling online that I could then pass on to doctors of chiropractic.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: I went to your website and clicked on the Facebook podcast. I listened to it and was blown away. You have a lot of great content on your site that helps doctors, and the reach is exponential. What aie some of the steps that DCs out there can take to learn more about you and what you’re doing?
Dr. Matthew Loop: I have a great blog at http://DCincome. com/blog. You can also reach it just by going to http://MatthewLoop.com. I have hundreds of free trainings that ai e available for chiropractors. If you scroll down on the blog, you’ll see a category called ''chiropractic markering.” It consists of video trainings and blog posts that jump-start you into hie successful social media promotion. You don’t want to take everything all at once. If you do, you’ll get overwhelmed.
I’ve been hiere. So many doctors I consult with say that social media didn’t work for them in hie past. They’ve taken hie wrong approach and have gotten totally overwhelmed. It’s important to take things system by system. My blog is my home online. Even on individual blog posts, I’m always answering comments and questions, just like on a Facebook fan page. My Facebook fan page is Facebook.com/MatthewJLoop, and you can connect with
me there as well. Obviously, if you have social media questions, I’m more than happy to answer them for you.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: Your follow-through has been great. I purchased your program and I followed your steps. It literally changed my ranking on Google search that second. It was unbelievable. What ai e some of the mistakes that DCs have made on social media that aie common, where some of hie viewers/readers out there may think, “Yeah, I did that. I tried that and now I know what he’s saying.” What aie some of those mistakes?
Dr. Matthew Loop: Yes. There aie a lot of mistakes. I would say one of the biggest mistakes is holding off. Right now, I would say, if I had to estimate, maybe 30% of hie profession is not probably doing social media at all, which is still surprising to me. We, as chiropractors, need to start marketing for the year we actually live in.
We need to put ourselves in front of our patients in this particular medium because you ai e less trusted if you don’t. Why? If you don’t have an overwhelming presence on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, etc., you’re sunk. If patients can’t find you everywhere, and if you haven’t managed your reputation accordingly, people just trast you less. So naturally, you will not get nearly as many referrals as the chiropractor who is immersed in social media. I get a lot of doctors who approach me and say, “My website is not converting.” That may be trae, but in most cases, they’re just not getting enough website trahie to really assess how well
tlie site gets people to pick up the phone. They need to know this.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: In the age of healthcare reform that we’re in, and the consumerization of health care, everything is changing at a rapid pace. By having relevant content that provides value to consumers, you become a trusted resource, whether or not they’re going to be a patient at that point in time or not.
Dr. Matthew Loop: Absolutely. Understanding that most people are not going to come in and see you immediately, we need to build systems on the back end of our marketing funnel that allow us to communicate with prospective patients. Then, we can make offers in between delivering immense value. That’s what I’ve done with my list.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: So, for most practices, how long will it take for a DC out there to see results by leveraging this technology?
Dr. Matthew Loop: The results will vary. I’ve had doctors use this information and attract patients in a matter of minutes. For example, on Twitter, you can literally tap into real-time conversation down to the second by your location and by a specific keyword. Typically, I do a fast-track call for every chiropractor who invests in our Social Media Elite training. I’ll get on the phone because eveiy practice is different. We figure out which strategy is more high-leverage than the others based on the practice, so we can implement that first.
One of them could be a simple Google map strategy, and attain some Google reviews. Depending on the search volume in your city, that can happen in a matter of days. People aie seeing the reviews, and then boom, they call you up. Our best doctors get over 30 extra new patients per month by using all of the systems contained within Social Media Elite. The average doctor does anywhere from 12 to 15 additional each month.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: That’s great. Last question: Any final thoughts for our readers today?
Dr. Matthew Loop: Just get started. Take it bit by bit, piece by piece. Take one social media marketing system, get that mastered and implemented in the office, and then layer on top of it.
Dr. Jay Greenstein: We’re seeing approximately 8.4% ofthe population at any given time. Social media is the way that we can have much greater reach, much greater impact. Before we leave, how can our viewers/readers get more information about your programs?
Dr. Matthew Loop: It’s simple. Just visit http://DCincome. com to download my blogging success blueprint for free. That will help you attract more patients from Google, get more local traffic to your chiropractic website, and set up a top-ranking blog that ranks you first online.
Chiropractors can also visit my blog at http://DCincome.com/ blog and scroll down until they see the “chiropractic marketing” category. There aie hundreds of free trainings there that will jumpstart any type of chiropractic practice. [
Jay Greenstein, DC is the CEO of the Sport and Spine Companies (www.ssrehab.com) - Sport and Spine Rehab, a multi-location, multidisciplinary, evidenced-based practice in the Washington DC Metro region; Sport and Spine Athletics, a state-of-the-art health and fitness facility; the Sport and Spine Rehab Clinical Research Foundation, a 501-c3 dedicated to high quality, clinical research; and Kaizenovation® Consulting which coaches businesses on Six Sigma, human capitalmanagement and the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS). To contact Dr Greenstein, email him at [email protected].
Matthew Loop, DC is an author, chiropractor, speaker, and the highest paid social media revenue strategist in North America. He’s the president of DCincome, which is the world 's largest social media training company for chiropractors. Since social media's infancy in 2005, he's been successfully teaching doctors and entrepreneurs how to reach and impact more. Dr. Matthew Loop may be contacted at info@DC income, com.
