Social Network For Doctors: How To Build Your Brand

April 11, 2022 | Alisha Shibli


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Having a strong online personal brand can help you kickstart a great career and add value to your professional life. Here's how to build yours.

Building a personal brand as a doctor on social media can be a great tool especially when it comes to job search and building your career.

This is an edited version of a story previously published on Dr. Bill.


Building a personal brand is great for two reasons:

  • First, it helps define yourself and establish your voice and beliefs.
  • Second, it's your chance to highlight strengths on your CV, build a network of professionals you want to interact with and pave a way that opens more opportunities for professional advancements.

There's a lot that goes into building a personal brand. It starts with learning how to clean up your social media footprint and building a profile that adds value to your professional life.

3 Top Benefits Of Social Networks For Doctors

Most of the opportunities today are discovered digitally. While interpersonal interaction still holds its value, doctors today have multiple other platforms to share their work, communicate their skills, and exemplify their aspirations. Being present on social media drastically improves the likelihood of your work being noticed, and gives potential employers more insight about your style, voice and past experiences. Here are three important benefits you can gain by building a personal brand for yourself on your social networks:

  1. It Attracts Great Opportunities - A strong personal brand promotes word of mouth which in turn can open up opportunities for referrals. Professionals in parallel fields, friends, and colleagues are more likely to recommend you to prospective decision-makers.
  2. It Gives You A Strong Competitive Edge - As a doctor, you can showcase your specialties and approach by answering questions that users are posting on popular online forums. Using social networks for doctors is a great way to make yourself visible and reach employers who aren't even actively searching. If they see you and remember you, they're more likely to consider you or recommend you.
  3. It Establishes Your Skills And Qualities - Building a personal brand is all about highlighting your top accomplishments and skills. It takes credibility and talent to tell the world about yourself, and share aspects of your personality and your values. The more you make these qualities visible, the easier it'll be for someone to choose you.

How To Clean Up Social Media For Jobs

Before you start building your personal brand, it's crucial to understand how to clean up social media presence so that you can ensure that the information that's available about you online is recent and worthwhile.

Here are five tips that will help you clean up your social media footprint.

  1. Change Your Account Status To Private – The first step to cleaning up your social media for jobs is to go on your profile settings and choose “only friends" so that only your friends can see your activity. Keep this status set to private until you've deleted all the unnecessary content and then change the settings back to “public" if you're looking to grow your social network for doctors.
  2. Delete All Old Accounts - A crucial step in how to clean up your social media identity involves deactivating all the old accounts. If you don't want hiring managers to discuss your college life, then it's better if those accounts are not active. One of the best ways to find these (and similar) accounts is to Google yourself.
  3. Share A Professional Bio - This is one of the most effective ways to highlight who you are, what you do, what makes you great, and why you're the perfect hire. Keep it short but share what you're most passionate about.
  4. Add A Good Photo - Your photo is one of the first things people will see. Consider adding a professional headshot that makes you look credible and professional. If your photo is more than a couple of years old, consider adding a recent one. Also, ensure that you have a plain background (it's best to go with white) and that there aren't too many distracting elements in the photo. Face the camera straight on and smile!
  5. Share Industry-Related Information - Post and share information about the healthcare industry that is useful and new or that you have a strong interest in. Share your opinion on it, if possible. Follow the thought leaders and top physicians in your industry and interact with them. When a hiring manager sees that you're on top of the latest developments in your industry, you'll improve your chances of getting selected.

LinkedIn For Doctors: How To Leverage The Social Platform

There's no better social platform to build your professional profile like LinkedIn. However, be a little mindful when building your profile on LinkedIn. Avoid making it a carbon copy of your resume and instead make the most of the other features that the platform offers such as connecting with other like-minded healthcare professionals and potential employers, joining groups and discussions, and showcasing your skills and experience.

Here are 5 ways LinkedIn can help you build your brand.

  1. Join Industry Groups on LinkedIn - Find and join groups on LinkedIn that are most relevant to your specialty and the ones that spark your interest. You could consider joining a few region-specific groups and a few larger groups where you can connect with healthcare professionals from around the world. You could start by introducing yourself and then actively participate in conversations and discussions that are happening in the group or initiate your own. Providing valuable information on topics that are your specialty will not only help you get noticed but will also establish your credibility as a medical professional.
  2. Establish Yourself As A Thought Leader - LinkedIn is a fantastic forum to share good-quality content and establish yourself as a thought leader. It offers a feature called 'Write Article' that you can use to share your personal insights, industry news, your opinion on the latest healthcare trends, and more. By consistently sharing good content that's unique and useful, you'll be able to add a ton of value to your personal brand and establish greater trust among peers from the industry.
  3. Craft a Great Profile Summary - Writing a good summary of your profile can be challenging. However, look at it as your sales pitch. When someone visits your profile, after looking at your photo they'll read that section which is a great opportunity for you to create the perfect first impression. Ensure the summary you craft highlights your doctor specialty, your experience, skills, interests, goals, and accolades (if any). Make it as unique and personal to you as you can.
  4. Use It For Research - LinkedIn is a wonderful tool to conduct research about the healthcare market, emerging technologies, job hunting trends, opinions on the latest healthcare improvements, and more. All this information can give you rich insight into the current market which you can then use to leverage and land a job.
  5. Make The Most Of The Recommendation Feature - LinkedIn allows you to create something called 'the economy of favours' through its recommendation feature. To receive value, you have to start by giving value. Find your old colleagues and peers and write them a strong recommendation on their profile. More often than not, they'll be happy to return the favour by giving you a striking recommendation. Not only does this spread good faith but also helps you build a strong reputation.

Once you have understood how to clean up social media presence, you can then explore all these social networks for doctors to build a strong online personal brand that not only helps you kickstart a great career but also continues to fuel all your advancements in the future.

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