An eye exam and a new pair of frames get bought in completely different ways. The exam usually gets booked by someone who searched with a reason already in hand, benefits to use or a problem to fix. Frames get browsed, compared and often shown to somebody else before anyone commits, and that is the half of the practice a feed can actually move.
Book a free consultation →On the exam side, the path runs through a phone: the service and the town typed into a search box, a check on whether you take the plan, and a booking with whoever has an opening this week. None of that passes through a feed, and no caption changes it. Winning that moment is local search work, and how search, the site and everything else fit together for a practice is laid out on the optometry page.
The optical is where a feed has something to show. Frame lines turn over by season, plenty of them carry brand names people already recognize, and the same patient comes back for a second pair, prescription sunglasses, or the progressives a new prescription now calls for. A post of this month's arrivals, shot on the board where they actually sit, gives someone a reason to come in and try them on. It is also the half that usually gets ignored in favor of a stock photo of an eye chart.
The second job is staying familiar between visits. Patients are meant to come back on a schedule the doctor sets, often a year or two out, and a page they already follow keeps the practice in view through the months in between. What a feed will not do is fill an exam schedule with strangers, and no follower or reach target will appear in anything we send you: those numbers are the platform's to decide.
Somebody taps a post about a new frame line and lands on a homepage about exams and insurance, with nothing on it about the frames they just saw. That dead end is how a good post goes to waste, and fixing it is site work rather than social work. When we build an eye care site, everything below is in the scope from the first draft.
Exam-side posts come out of writing that already exists. When we are writing for a practice as content marketing, each page breaks down into a few plain posts. A page on what a comprehensive exam includes becomes a short run on the parts patients never see. A myopia management page written for parents becomes the back to school run. A page on how vision benefits work becomes the reminder before the plan year closes. The writing is ours to do; for a sense of the volume, our blog's learning library runs to 361 in-depth guides.
Frame posts are the other source, and they can only come from inside the building. The frame that came in Tuesday. The optician your regulars ask for by name. The trunk show a frame rep is bringing next month. No outside writer can invent those, so the written routine is built around your optical's real week. Say frame orders get checked in on Thursdays: the optician shoots the new arrivals on the board that afternoon, the caption follows a short template we write with you, and the post points at the eyewear page. If Thursdays are chaos, the routine moves to a day that is not.
Social puts patients in public conversation with the practice in ways a website never does. A patient posts a selfie in her new frames and tags you. Someone comments under a dry eye post that the drops the doctor gave them finally worked. A regular leaves a recommendation on the practice's Facebook page. Each one invites a friendly answer, and a friendly answer that thanks a named person for coming in has confirmed that the person is a patient, which a practice account should never do.
So the rule goes into the written routine before the first post. A public reply never says or implies that someone is a patient. It never mentions their visit or appointment, a diagnosis, a treatment or procedure, or anything about their eyes, and it never argues a clinical point in public, even when the commenter has the facts wrong or raised the details first. Resharing a patient's frame selfie counts as confirming too, so it waits for that patient's written authorization. Under a post, a reply that stays inside those lines is a short thanks, one sentence about how the office works for everyone, and the office number, or no reply at all.
Reviews themselves get asked for the same way from every patient, with nothing offered in exchange; how that ask gets built is the subject of reputation management for optometrists.
Photos carry the same exposure. A recognizable face trying on frames in your optical tells anyone scrolling where that person was, so nobody identifiable goes in the feed without their written authorization, or a parent or guardian's for a child. Check the background as carefully as the frames: a retinal image left up on the exam lane screen, a job tray with a name on the ticket, the pickup drawer with its labels facing out.
Captions get the same restraint on claims. No post promises that a lens will slow a child's myopia or that a dry eye treatment will end the symptoms, and your state board's rules on advertising make no exception for captions.
One decision belongs before the account opens: direct messages. Appointment requests, plan questions and the occasional description of symptoms will land in that inbox whether you invite them or not. Either somebody at the practice checks it on a set schedule and moves anything clinical to the phone, or the bio says plainly to call the office or use the request form on the site. That form is built with HIPAA-conscious intake in mind, which describes how we build it rather than any certification.
Eye care practices sell, merge, add associates and change names, and the social pages are often the last thing anybody updates when they do. The Facebook page still carries the name from before the buyout. An associate set up the Instagram handle on a personal email and never passed the login along. The optical has a page of its own from a stretch when it was marketed separately, still promoting a frame line you dropped. A duplicate nobody at the practice created lists the fax line as the phone number.
Before anything new gets posted, we track all of it down and note who controls each page, whose name and logo it shows, and which suite, phone line, hours and booking link it lists. One page becomes the practice's page, and we work through the rest, correcting or closing each one we can get control of. The details on that page should read exactly as they do on the website and the Google listing, down to the suite number; the listing work itself belongs to Google Business Profile for optometrists.
It comes first because a stale page does its damage quietly. A patient comparing two practices finds a page with the pre-buyout name and a number that rings the fax machine, and moves on without ever telling you why.
We do not sell social by the month or by the post, and we do not staff anyone to answer the practice's messages or reply under its posts. The general case for sizing social this way is on our social media marketing page. For an eye care practice, the work lands in one of these places.
Nothing ongoing carries a long contract: it runs month to month, and the pages, photos and captions stay the practice's. The free what should you pay tool gives a range for a website build or SEO work only; it does not price social work. Our guides to what a website costs and what SEO costs break those two numbers down further. For a real number on your practice, ask for a quote or text (407) 694-2055, and if seeing beats reading, ask for a free mockup of the practice site first.
Usually, or whoever in the optical checks in the frame orders, since that person sees the new arrivals first and hears which ones patients keep asking about. We set up the pages, clean up the old ones, build the site side, write the rules for comments and photos, and hand over a routine that fits around a frame delivery. Nobody at Kelly WM posts for the practice day to day.
Only with that patient's written authorization, or a parent or guardian's for a child. A recognizable face in your optical tells everyone who sees the post that the person was in your office, and that is not the practice's to share without permission. Frames on the board, a staff member who has agreed to it, or a try-on shot framed so nobody can be identified carry none of that exposure.
Not from the practice account unless she gives written authorization first. Posting it was her choice, but the practice sharing it confirms she is a patient, and the account does not confirm that for anyone. The safest public response is none at all. If the photo is too good to pass up, ask her by phone or at the counter, and get the authorization in writing before it goes anywhere.
Usually not. Two accounts means two feeds to keep current, and the one that goes quiet tends to be the one a patient finds. A single page showing both sides tends to serve a practice better, since the same person books the exam and buys the frames. A group with a genuinely separate retail identity is the exception, and that is a staffing conversation first.
We would not build one. A follower count bought with a prize fills up with people who wanted free frames, not people likely to book an exam, and follower growth is not something we sell. If the entry asks for a review, the giveaway also trades a prize for reviews, which is off the table entirely: every patient gets the same review invitation with nothing attached.
Not a social one. Posting is not something we sell by the month, so there is no social number to quote. The site side comes with a build: $3,500 to $12,000+ one time. Exam-side posts come out of pages written for ongoing SEO, $1,500 to $3,500/month for most practices. Cleaning up the old pages, the written rules and a first run of posts are quoted flat after a free consult when you want them on their own.
Social Media services · Optometrists: industry overview · SEO for optometrists · Local SEO for optometrists · Websites for optometrists · Google Business Profile for optometrists · Reputation management for optometrists · What should you pay? (free tool)
On a free consult we look at the frames you are stocking now and every page that turns up under the practice name, then say which parts of this are worth paying for. Text or call (407) 694-2055, or write to [email protected].
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.