Dr. Kaplan on Instagram Live with New Beauty

This is huge and you don’t want to miss it! The award winning, widely read self-care and cosmetic “bible,” ie NewBeauty Magazine will be interviewing Dr. Kaplan on Instagram Live! Sarah Eggenberger, editor-at-large of NewBeauty and Dr. Kaplan will discuss all things breast augmentation.

Dr. Kaplan is thankful to Breast Implants by Mentor for making this possible behind the scenes. So where will you be on Tuesday, November 10th at 9am PST? The same place you always are – looking at your phone! Just make sure you’re tuned to @newbeauty or @breastimplantsbymentor on Instagram Live for the details on breast augmentation.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Dr. Kaplan joining NewBeauty on Instagram Live! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Why buy bots followers and likes?

Why buy fake followers and likes in the first place? If you’re a plastic surgeon like me, there’s seemingly no point in using bots to create fake likes or followers because none of those fake people will ever become real patients!

Even though I have never bought fake engagement via bots and the like, I think the reason others try it has to do with the Instagram algorithm. The idea is that your post will be shown to more real people if it appears that it initially receives a lot of engagement. So if you have a lot of bots and fake followers that immediately like a new post, the hope is that you’d fool Instagram into showing your post to even more real Instagram users. And that would result in more real engagement. This may have been true at one point. But Instagram continues to improve its artificial intelligence to recognize this kind of inauthentic activity.

As an aside, in our practice, we “work” this algorithm in a more legitimate way by utilizing “Like Pods.” These are made up of real people that will initially like and comment on our posts, hoping that will show increased engagement and a resulting greater reach. I don’t know that it leads to a greater reach, however, it is nice to spark engagement from real people. But I digress.

The problem with relying on bots

Now that Instagram is removing those robotic likes and followers, some Instagram accounts are going to lose 100s or 1000s of likes and followers overnight. This could be slightly embarrassing if their “influence” is now called into question. If you go from thousands of likes to 50, followers will realize the discrepancy is due to fake followers and likes.

Increasing engagement with real people

There are ways to increase engagement with real people without having to resort to buying bots. Aside from the Like Pods mentioned above, there are also “giveaways.” These are contests that followers can enter if they like, follow and tell friends about your page.

Sure this could be considered buying someone’s interest but whatever, at least they’re real people that Instagram won’t delete. And keep in mind, after the contest ends, those real followers may unfollow you.

Giveaways are big business for companies that run them. For example, Scott Disick, an adjacent member of the Kardashian clan works with Curated Businesses. As you can see in this example, Kylie Kardashian did a handbag giveaway in May 2019 in conjunction with Disick and Curated Businesses. The idea is that if you liked and followed all 70 people that were “sponsoring” the giveaway, you could win all of the handbags plus $20,000. Where’s the financial benefit to Kardashian, Disick and Curated Businesses? Word is that the 70 sponsors each paid $25,000 to be part of the giveaway.

And what’s the benefit to the 70 sponsors? More real followers leads to more brand awareness. While some of those followers will unfollow the sponsors, some followers may like what they see and become a client to one of the sponsors. For example, one plastic surgeon that participated in that May giveaway grew from 10.9K to 230,819K! Sure his follower count fell back to 149K about 10 days later. But I bet, somewhere in those 149,000 followers is a few patients that will make his $25,000 investment worthwhile!

Summary

Everyone will tell you that you should “simply” grow your following through engaging content. But that usually takes longer than our short attention spans and patience will allow. So consider Like Pods and giveaways. Whatever you do, don’t buy bots follower and likes, because if your following disappears overnight, you’ll have some explaining to do!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Thank God I didn’t buy bots, followers and likes! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Social media is to blame, or take credit, for everything these days! The effects of social media are evident across a variety of spaces. For example, it’s changing political discourse, feelings of inequality (you always knew the Kardashians had more money than you but now you know how much more!) and how a business goes about generating, well, new business. Specifically, to stay competitive, aesthetic practices are increasingly relying on social media and changing their referral patterns.

Social media’s effect on changing referral patterns for aesthetic practices

When patients go to a particular doctor for a medical problem, it’s typically because they were referred there from the emergency room or another doctor within the patient’s same insurance network. But when it comes to practices in the aesthetic space, it doesn’t work that way. The emergency room isn’t referring patients to doctors for botox treatments or a breast aug! Aesthetic physicians (plastic surgeons, dermatologist, etc) have wholly different referral patterns.

In the old days, aesthetic physicians would advertise in the yellow pages or send out print mailers. Those days are long gone. Over the last 15 years, consumers were relying solely on internet searches to find their doctor. With the rise of social media, referral patterns are changing significantly.

This is good news depending on your perspective. How well prepared are you? How diversified are your marketing channels? If you’re active on social media, then great. If you haven’t taken the plunge, then it’s going to be a long arduous trudge building your social media following after so many years in practice. And if you were a Facebook fan, that is now a pay-to-play game. Organic posts to your business page will be seen by about 6% of your followers, For any traction on Facebook, you’ll have to boost, or pay, for anyone to see your posts.

Engagement through Instagram and Instagram Stories

For now, Instagram is where it’s at. And it doesn’t cost a thing…for now. What I’m learning from my Instagram account is that posts aren’t enough. Sure I can have engaging posts and strive for 1-2% of my followers to engage by liking or viewing my posts. However, based on my experience, views of Instagram Stories (the 10-15 second video clips that tell a story and then disappear after 24 hours) is the new gold standard.

While I often get less than 1% likes on my posts (and my followers are real people, not bots), I get over 1,000 views on my Stories in a 24 hour period each week (I’m not even bragging but 1,000 views in a 24 hour period turns into real patients!). How do I know that likes on posts aren’t the recipe for success in my case? Because as the pie chart below shows, my number one biggest referral source at 28% is social media (Instagram and Snapchat). My social media efforts include the content I’m uploading day in and day out on my social media accounts and also my weekly collaboration with Dr. Michael Salzhauer. Also known as Dr. Miami (@therealdrmiami on Instagram and Snapchat), Dr. Miami posts my content on his affiliate page, @drmiamiland for a monthly fee.

He has over 2 million followers collectively on his social media accounts. When he gives you a “shoutout” on one of his accounts, it results in referrals that further emphasizes the new-found importance of social media. Social media as a referral source has become so critical that, as this article explains, even though I had a 62% drop in traffic to my website from April to June of 2019, my social media engagement and revenue increased year over year.

Diversify your marketing channels and building an email database as a backup plan

Thankfully I diversified my marketing channels between internet search (Google) and social media. If I had put all of my eggs in the Google basket, the consequences on my practice could have been devastating. I weathered the Google algorithm updates of March and June 2019 because I had two “arrows” in my quiver. I had my social media presence and a growing email database to protect me.

No matter what technique you use to “make it rain” (Google, Bing, social media or social media influencers like Dr. Miami), you need to make sure you have the right “bucket” to capture as many leads as possible. That way, if your luck changes with Google or social media, you still have a huge email database to show for it and you can reach out to followers directly. Read how I generate leads on my website via price transparency here – http://modernaesthetics.com/2017/12/loading-the-sales-funnel-through-price-transparency#1.

Moving forward

The growth of my social media presence saved me as my web traffic dropped. Unfortunately, I’m not done. I must now build my web traffic again to ensure I remain in a favorable position if my social media presence, specifically Instagram, was to go south.  Cautiously consider each new marketing opportunity in case it’s the next “big one.” Marketing trends will continue to evolve. To remain relevant, providers need to be nimble and able to adapt to the times. Because in 10 years, we’ll be writing about you-know-what that’s changing referral patterns!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Changing referral patterns in the age of social media first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Agree to be on social media

The short answer in my case, is no. We do not give the patient anything to coerce them into being on social media. We simply ask. And if they have concerns, we delve into what those concerns are. If we can allay those concerns in one pass and they agree, great. If not, that’s end of the conversation. We don’t shame them or hold a grudge.

But under no circumstances do we offer any favor or treatment or money in an effort to get them to agree to be on social media. There are several reasons for this. We don’t want them to feel pressure. If there is some renumeration, there’s a risk they would regret it and have buyer’s remorse.

There’s also a power or education gap between the patient and doctor. The doctor is in a position where their mere presence can cause undue pressure on the patient to make a decision they normally would not.

Ironically, you don’t have to offer the patient anything to be on social media. By the time they reach out to our office, they’re already following us on social media. They’re already learning from us. And for that reason, they want to be on social media. Just as they learned from other patients that agreed to be on social media, they want to pay that education forward.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Why would patients agree to be on social media? first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

If you’re in or around Sacramento tomorrow or already attending the California Society of Plastic Surgeons’ (CSPS) Annual Meeting, don’t miss Dr. Kaplan’s 1-hour social media course! But Dr. Kaplan only has 25K followers on Instagram, you say? What makes him an expert worthy of giving a course?! He doesn’t consider himself an expert but he’s in the trenches utilizing social media on the reg so he has something to offer. Continue reading to find out what!

Social media course at the CSPS Annual Meeting

The CSPS Annual Meeting is a wonderful gathering of the best and brightest of plastic surgeons in California. And with so many plastic surgeons in California active on social media, it only makes sense to have a social media course.

Because Dr. Kaplan (aka @RealDrBae on Instagram and Snapchat) is very active on social media on a daily basis, he suggested a course on the topic. Surprisingly, one had not already been scheduled. But after giving a well-received presentation on social media to the Greater Sacramento Society of Plastic Surgeons a few weeks ago, he got the opportunity to give a similar course at the CSPS this year.

While hesitant to refer to himself as an expert, his presentation reviews the nuts and bolts of social media. Through a mix of video and screenshots of the various platforms in action, Dr. Kaplan’s course will provide a great overview to the social media novice and explore some of the more engaging aspects of Instagram. Since social media is a rapidly changing space, he always has more content to add from presentation to presentation and that also means that even the most seasoned social media user can learn something new.

Course Description

The newest plastic surgeon right out of training can get busier, faster simply by being social media savvy. That means we all need a basic understanding of the power of social media. Dr. Kaplan, aka @realdrbae on Snapchat and Instagram, will give a thorough overview of the social media platforms that are transforming plastic surgery practices across the country. You don’t need to have a ton of followers to be successful. You don’t need that X factor. Anyone can do this. But you should try to be the best you can be.

By attending this course, you will: 1) gain a basic understanding and the differences between Snapchat, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Instagram TV and Facebook Live; 2) receive ideas for clever content to be used on social media; 3) become familiar with various engagement tools on Instagram; 4) learn how to create content once and then repurpose on all platforms; and 5) monetize your leads by capturing the contact information of your followers

Space in limited – don’t miss this opportunity to hear the latest trends on social media.  Cost for the course is $45 and it is free to Residents/Fellows/Medical Students. Register online for the course on the CSPS registration page  OR if you have already registered for the Annual Meeting, contact the CSPS Executive Office directly to add this course to your registration:  cspsoffice@att.net or (510) 243-1662.

Hope to see everyone there!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Dr. Kaplan giving social media course at CSPS Annual Meeting first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

The language spawned by social media is bizarre to say the least. Snaps, posts, likes, tags, giphys, stickers and the almighty bitmoji. We’re not talking about just lingo or coined terms within social media. It’s the combination of lingo with normal everyday speech that make for very strange, surreal conversations.

So many bitmoji, so little time

A typical day within a practice that heavily incorporates social media into their marketing and patient education can make for unintended but entertaining comments and imagery. For example, “the fat from the liposuction looks like a banana smoothie,” with the resulting image below:

These humorous, albeit off-color comments/images can supplement the purpose of all of this: combining education with entertainment. But not everyone is impressed. This author thought this imagery was in poor taste. Oh yeah, well what about that time the removed skin from a tummy tuck looked like a tortilla?!

If all of this engagement and education seems silly and wrong, then I don’t wanna be right!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Put the swimming bitmoji on the liposuction canister. Wait, what?! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

I’m not suggesting Google and their AdWords revenue model have anything to worry about. But I believe the way in which a consumer chooses a doctor is changing drastically. The consumer is no longer satisfied with the curated pages of the doctor’s website.

The perceived power of social media over traditional websites

Now, the patient in the research phase of finding a doctor will want to see the plastic surgeon perform surgery and see their results in some variation of real time. And the best way to do that is by watching them on Snapchat, Instagram Stories or Facebook Live.

The “truest” impression of a doctor, as far as the consumer is concerned, is on the physician’s social media where informal 10-15 second video clips build into a 24-hour story that reveals the doctor and staff in their natural habitat of the operating room and clinic.

It’s not about dancing in the operating room or dressing up in silly outfits which some doctors do. That’s just a distraction from the real power of social media in this context – education.

Some physicians will disagree. They’ll see ‘education’ as a just a euphemism for shameless entertainment. Well, here’s a thought…maybe it can be both!

There’s disagreement on the plastic surgery societal level as well. In a noble attempt to protect doctors from themselves and protect the reputation of the specialty, there are instances of the societies admonishing doctors for some of their social media posts. Determining what is and is not appropriate is such a futile exercise that even the Supreme Court outsourced those decisions when it came to obscenity. It comes down to a community standard. In other words, who is that doctor’s audience and what does their clientele want to see?

Our country is one of diversified opinions and tastes. Attempting to regulate or punish doctors for their social media tactics is futile and unnecessary. If a doctor posts something inappropriate, punishment in the court of public opinion will be swift, uncompromising and fierce. Ask anyone in Hollywood.

The Education War

The other risk the societies take in attempting to curb their own member’s activities on social media is their total lack of control for doctors that are non-members of those societies. There’s a battle out there over who is educating consumers.

A recent Aesthetic Surgery Journal (ASJ) article pointed out that most consumers following plastic surgeons aren’t following plastic surgeons at all. In fact, the most popular cosmetic surgery accounts and posts on social media were from plastic surgeons only 17.8% of the time. So while the plastic surgery societies may want to regulate their own members, doctors not subjugated to the same rules have the consumer’s ear.

As Dr. Clark Schierle points out in a recent Chicago Tribune article, his study in the ASJ mentioned above should serve as a “wake-up call” for board-certified plastic surgeons. “We’re losing the information war, and (we’re) being drowned out by these other players.”

Plastic surgery societies understandably promote the importance of board certification. But I’m afraid those board certification warnings are now falling on deaf ears. When the consumer sees an amazing result on social media, particularly reproducible results day after day on a doctor’s Instagram feed, results will win out over “board certification” every time. Can you blame the consumer for choosing their doctor based on results?

The plastic surgery societies should encourage their members to embrace social media and its educational benefits wholeheartedly. Don’t bother offering warnings, restrictions or caveats. Doctors are adults and are responsible for their actions and shouldn’t have to rely on a society to make good decisions for them. If a doctor can’t police themselves when it comes to social media, maybe they shouldn’t be operating on anyone either.

Dr. Jonathan Kaplan is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in San Francisco, CA and founder/CEO of BuildMyBod Health, an online marketplace for healthcare services that allows consumers to determine cost on out-of-pocket procedures, purchase non-surgical services, and in exchange, the healthcare providers receive consumer contact info – a lead, for follow up.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Social media wake up call for plastic surgery societies first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Quick Primer on Snapchat

For those of you not familiar, here’s some background. Snapchat was originally a messaging app. One person could message a selfie, photo or video to a friend and after 10 seconds, that message would disappear. It caught on because your shenanigans weren’t kept online in perpetuity like Facebook. Those 10 second disappearing clips evolved into folks piecing together multiple 10-second clips into a story. Snapchat stories, a compilation of as many 10-second clips as you want, expire and therefore delete after a period of 24 hours.

These videos are different than YouTube because they’re posted to the network right after you “film” the video, not days later. It’s not technically live video, but definitely more real-time than YouTube. You record the video and then choose whether to post that clip or maybe re-record it. Once posted, you can still delete it but otherwise, it’s there for 24 hours along with the rest of your story.

Your followers and viewers can watch your story and even message you questions based on specific clips within the story. This allows for interaction with the story, not just passive viewership. Additionally, you can manipulate the video by making it go faster, slower, posting emojis on it and even include filters that highlight the time, temperature, where you are or even place humorous “lenses” or masks over your face.

At this point, if you don’t understand, that’s ok. If you think this sounds contrived, I actually agree with you. However, there’s no mistaking that hundreds of millions of people enjoy the app. To better understand what this is all about, consider downloading the app and trying it out for yourself. Now, onto why this app transformed my practice, and maybe yours too.

Patient Rapport

Many of our patients have already watched us on Snapchat before they come in for a consultation. By watching us in our “natural habitat,” the prospective patients feel like they know us. We seem more approachable. By the time they show up, there’s more rapport between us vs patients unengaged with us on social media. They’ve already seen our office staff interact in humorous situations. They know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. But at the same time, they see our professionalism when watching video of surgery.

Patient Education and Transparency

Yes, we record 10-second clips of our surgical procedures and create a “surgery story.” We explain what tumescent solution is, how we perform liposuction and our technique for breast augmentation. We answer questions they submit through the app during the operation. By showing the operation, they know we have nothing to hide. Even more fascinating than the ability to provide education to viewers, we’re educating the patient and the patient’s family! Let me explain.

Normally the family leaves after we take their loved one back to surgery. Several hours later, we call them to return when the procedure is complete. Because the family is able to watch the operation while the operation is occurring on Snapchat, they’re fully informed by the time they return postop.

In the past, I would go out and speak to the family and explain everything we did. Now, when I go out to speak to the family, they’re ecstatic, telling me which parts of the operation was their favorite and complimenting the team on the work we’ve done. Since we show intraoperative before and after photos, they see the early results of the procedure before the dressings and garments are placed on the patient. And when I call the patient that evening to check on them, they’ve watched the operation themselves! That level of transparency and patient education was unheard of, until now.

Generating Leads

One of the most common questions we get through Snapchat while the viewer is watching the operation, is how much does that particular operation cost. We could reply with a figure but then we’ve lost an opportunity to generate a lead. Because Snapchat, like Instagram, only shows the patient’s handle – the screen name they’ve chosen – the viewer’s contact information is not readily accessible. You don’t know their real name and certainly not their email address.

Therefore, we direct them to that specific procedure-of-interest on our website’s Price Estimator. Once there, they add that procedure to a virtual wishlist and submit their wishlist along with their name, email address, phone number and ZIP code. Immediately and automatically they receive a cost estimate for at procedure in their inbox and we receive their contact info for follow up – a lead.

Between their phone number and email address, we can call to see if they have further questions or follow up via a monthly email newsletter. Without this method for converting consumers to leads, we’re simply interacting with a bunch of anonymous viewers.

“Pay it forward” Mentality

One of the first questions I get from other doctors is, do patients balk at having their surgery filmed? While someone out there that may not be comfortable, they’re the exception, not the rule. A majority of patients have watched videos of surgical and non-surgical procedures before the consult and certainly before their own procedure. Just as they learned from someone else’s willingness to showcase their procedure for the purposes of education, many of these patients are willing to do the same. For that reason, they sign a photography/video consent to pay it forward for others watching at home or work.

Referrals

This next part may be a little hard to explain but Snapchat has geofilters. These are images or words or even ads that are accessible to the user to showcase where the user is located. For example, you can only use the “San Francisco” filter when geographically located within San Francisco. Hence the term geofilter. Similarly, a business can design their own geofilter so that consumers can include the filter on their snapchat when in that business’ vicinity.

As seen in the photo, my practice designed this geofilter so that when someone is near the office, they can use our filter. They don’t even need to be a patient. If they simply like our graphic and it represents an area they’re in, our filter is available to them. Ultimately, all of their friends and followers see where they were and see our filter.

One day, a woman saw me on the street and told me that she goes to a clinic in my building. Because she noticed our filter, she included it in her story last time she went to see her doctor. Subsequently, a friend saw her story, noticed our filter and came in for a consult! So while word of mouth referrals are a known entity, self-referral after seeing a Snapchat geofilter is something altogether new.

So what does it all mean?

I recognize that many physicians out there are against social media in the operating room. That’s fine. They don’t have to do it. I’m actually not trying to convince anyone to use social media in the operating room, or out. But for me and my practice, this level of communication, information sharing and improved rapport with the patient is unattainable otherwise and has transformed my practice in an undoubtedly positive way.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post 5 Unexpected Ways Snapchat Transformed My Practice first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.