Since 2012, Instagram has grown to become one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, hitting over 1.4 billion users. Due to the reach of this popular social media tool, many businesses have opened business accounts and pay for ads to reach a larger number of potential clients.
Instagram has been especially popular with plastic surgeons, who use the tool to put their “craft” online for prospective patients to see. The goal is to get a sharp increase in post engagement and number of followers, which can then turn into new patients.
Like any other sector that has heavy social media influence, new hot trends emerge involving the industry. One such trend was the “Instagram Doll,” which encouraged users undergoing cosmetic surgery to document their experiences on Instagram with their plastic surgeon. This trend and other posts that showcase patients with their surgeons create added business visibility and target high-interest potential patients.
For the patient, surgery content creation helps add new followers and interactions. Meanwhile, the surgeon receives more exposure, which can generate new patient leads.
Instagram has been proven to be one of the major social media tools used for plastic surgeon feedback and exposure, as well as another way to connect with the plastic surgery community at large. When most patients need specific surgeon services, they use hashtags to search for pictures that have what they need. By maintaining a strong and well-documented body of work, plastic surgeons showcase their results and can interact with interested patients in meaningful, accessible ways.
How Is Instagram Changing the Plastic Surgery Business?
Research done during the 2020 pandemic found that there was an increase in public interest in rhinoplasty and other cosmetic surgery procedures, and the prevalence of social media likely played a large role.
Before social media, the main way for plastic surgeons to gain referrals was through word of mouth. Once social media became more prevalent and accessible, prospective patients have greater access to information and surgeon results than ever before. Someone can search for a particular hashtag relevant to their research and find both results and testimonials that fulfill the same role as word of mouth referrals.
“A substantial portion of our business comes from prospective patients who seek out our results on social media,” says Dr. Sacha Obaid of North Texas Plastic Surgery. “We leverage Instagram as a tool to not only answer questions and show results, but also as a way to get first-time patients excited to come and see us.”
For plastic surgeons, social media platforms focused on visuals, like Instagram, provide an important stepping stone in building the patient-surgeon relationship. Instagram allows users to easily find tagged or linked posts that involve a particular surgeon and the algorithm will provide related posts that can help serve as research.
As a result, prospective clients learn more about their procedure options, the results of different plastic surgeons, and better set expectations accordingly. This can empower a new patient to ask more thought provoking questions and take a better lead in his or her aesthetic journey.
In turn, plastic surgeons who are able to leverage Instagram as a tool to showcase their work can attract prospective patients who know what they want and what the results may be, thereby making the leads generated through social media better refined and higher quality than those found through other means.