5 Tips for Growing Your Practice Through Social Media

5 Tips for Growing Your Practice Through Social Media

A Conversation with Kati Kleber, RN, Nurse, Blogger and Entrepreneur

Are you interested in expanding your nursing practice? I’ve expanded my practice through social media and it’s given me an exciting and even lucrative way to build my career as a nurse entrepreneur.

I began dabbling in social media when I was three years into my nursing practice and feeling the need to explore my nursing career in new ways. Writing and talking about nursing was always exciting and it was a natural path to launch a nursing blog where I could share my on-the-job pearls of wisdom for new nurses.

It wasn’t long before the blog took off and there were thousands of followers who sent many notes of encouragement and appreciation for the posts. One nurse sent a message of thanks for sharing a post about an experience with identifying the earliest signs of decline in my neuro patients. With this knowledge I shared, she was able to see the signs in her patient and contacted family members in time for them to say goodbye.

Lessons Learned

In the five years since starting the blog, I’ve learned that the possibilities open to nurse entrepreneurs are only limited by our fears.

When we gain the courage to speak up and learn how to use social media to connect with our nursing community, we can find new ways to support each other and share our unique perspectives on all aspects of nursing—from the nitty-gritty practice details of our specialty to advocacy efforts that apply to all nurses.

Ready to incorporate social media into your nursing practice? Here are five important tips.

Be Responsible—Once you put an RN behind your name online, you are representing your profession. If you share patient stories, you have to change them enough and remove all identifiers to protect your patient’s privacy in accordance with your hospital policy. Social media policies can vary widely from hospital to hospital so be very familiar with your hospital’s specific policy on using social media.

Be Authentic—To really connect with your community online you can’t sound sterile or give canned responses. Success lies in honing your message to feel genuine and resonate with other nurses.

Be Strategic—Choose a few online platforms to focus on and master, even if they feel intimidating. For example, Twitter can take time to understand, but it has a really active community of nurses. Start by following nurses on Twitter and re-tweeting a tweet you like.

Be Ready to Disconnect—With social media, it’s important to establish boundaries and stick to them—for yourself and for your followers. As a nurse, wife, and mom, as well as a nurse entrepreneur, I commit to only looking or responding to social media communications at designated times in my day. I’ve also established an understanding with my followers that I will reply within a certain time span and not immediately.

Be Brave—You might feel intimidated to speak up on social media but I encourage you to think about the extensive practice knowledge you can share and gain with nurses all over the world. Then get connected and start sharing.

You can follow Kati and other nurses with hashtag #AORN2019. Participate in AORN’s Instagram contest during the month of September for a chance to win a free registration.

To read Kati’s blogs, go to https://www.freshrn.com/blog/.