LinkedIn for Healthcare: How Can Companies & Physicians Best Use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has more than 199 million U.S. users. Those users are your employees, colleagues, potential patients and future job candidates. If your healthcare company isn’t giving LinkedIn the attention it deserves, you’re missing out.

LinkedIn is a great tool for healthcare organizations and providers. It offers access to public-facing networking opportunities that you can’t get from Doximity, which is for medical providers only.

Learn how healthcare companies and physicians can use LinkedIn to drive social engagement and professional networking.

How Companies Can Leverage LinkedIn for Healthcare Marketing

There’s a misconception that LinkedIn is only for B2B companies and job seekers. Let’s dispel that.

The professional networking platform has its fair share of crying CEOs and marketing bros. But it has even more healthcare organizations, physicians and health tech companies. Believe it or not, healthcare is the largest industry on LinkedIn.

Find out how you can use LinkedIn to connect with the massive healthcare audience that’s already there:

1. Engage With Employees and New Audiences

Your employees are your best brand ambassadors. That makes LinkedIn a great place to share public-facing announcements.

When you share a post about an award your organization won or an initiative you’re rolling out, your employees can repost it to their networks. This multiplies your visibility and boosts the excitement around your organization.

At the same time, sharing announcements on LinkedIn helps employees stay engaged in what’s going on with your company. People can miss an email or internal memo. Being active on LinkedIn keeps your company connected and aligned.

2. Use LinkedIn for Networking and Referrals

Doximity is commonly used for professional networking in healthcare, but LinkedIn acts more like a traditional social media channel in creating connections.

Use LinkedIn to expand your healthcare organization’s network of hospitals and providers. LinkedIn newsletters can grow your reputation for thought leadership and your followership. See how a smart newsletter strategy nearly doubled one academic medical center’s audience.

B2B healthcare companies can also take advantage of the vast audience of healthcare decision-makers on the platform through their company page.

3. Connect With Potential Customers and Patients

Your future healthcare customers and patients are on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn Ads aren’t the only (or best) ways to connect with them.

Just like on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, you can use LinkedIn for healthcare marketing. The best part is that LinkedIn’s organic reach is stronger than Meta’s products. You can reach more of your followers on LinkedIn — without paying to boost your posts.

4. Post on LinkedIn for Recruitment

Don’t sleep on LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. Potential candidates can apply to your company directly on the platform and learn about your organization, too.

Before candidates apply for a position, they often look at the company page to see what the organization is about. So use your page for employer branding. Show, don’t tell, about the kind of environment people can expect to work in and why they’d enjoy a role at your company.

Using LinkedIn for Healthcare Professionals

Is LinkedIn worth it for healthcare providers? More than 7.3 million physicians, nurses, pharmacists and PAs think so. That’s how many healthcare professionals you’ll find on the platform today.

Here are 2 ways physicians can use LinkedIn: Create opportunities for your company — and yourself — and stay on top of the latest industry news:

1. Open new doors as a thought leader

Why is LinkedIn great for healthcare professionals? Using the platform for thought leadership can open doors to a new position and, better yet, opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Hear what Alan Shoebridge, Associate VP of National Communication at Providence St. Joseph Health, says about LinkedIn creating new opportunities:

Keep up with the healthcare industry

Beyond networking and opening doors to potential speaking engagements, physicians also use LinkedIn to keep up with their industry. With more than 137 million LinkedIn members using the platform daily, it’s a great tool for bite-sized daily professional development.

Factors to Consider When Using LinkedIn for Healthcare

Are you looking to better use LinkedIn for your healthcare organization — or for yourself? Before you commit to the platform, here are some tips and ideas to consider:

• Define your content strategy before you begin: Don’t create a company page with just a few posts in mind. Align your strategy with your business goals, document it and create SOPs for this social channel like any other.
• Devote time to engagement on the platform: LinkedIn’s algorithms are tickled by engagement. Prepare to commit time to posting regularly, replying to comments and commenting on other accounts’ posts to get better reach.
• Adhere to patient confidentiality rules and guidelines: Follow the same confidentiality and consent standards your organization adheres to on Instagram and Facebook. Document these as part of your social governance toolkit.
• Develop policies for responding to comments: Commenting back is important for reach and also builds trust. Customers and patients may use comments to ask questions or share concerns. Create SOPs that govern how you respond to these situations, as well as to inappropriate or abusive comments. (LinkedIn is still social media, after all.)

Audit Your Social Channels and Refine Your Strategy

Not sure where to start with your LinkedIn content strategy? Or do you already have an account and want to align each of your channels?

Audit your social media profiles and sub-accounts with us to see which channels are performing. After your audit, we create a custom toolkit that helps you align your messaging and standardize your social workflow.

Let’s get each channel optimized and working toward your overall goals.

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