A #BrandPT Challenge!

For the last few months, much discussion has been devoted to the branding of the physical therapist's service identity. With Vision 2020's due date drawing close, and, with yet another vision statement issued by the APTA's House... I felt it was high time for a grassroots, social media movement.

I'd like to propose an organized #BrandPTchallenge! ... A weekly challenge to be precise. Personally, I see physical therapy practice to encompass four key elements: movement, health, pain, performance. Sure, there may be subspecialized segments that may appear to be outside of these four descriptors, however, I think the general consumer can appreciate these four to keenly represent who we are and how we can serve them.

And so, without further ado, let me issue my challenge! The weekly #BrandPT challenge is to utilize any and all of your social media outlets to link #movement, #health, #pain, and #performance with #physicaltherapist. Additionally, you are to discuss (in person) the content of this challenge with one allied healthcare professional who is NOT a physical therapist.

Examples:

"Living with #backpain? A #physicaltherapist can provide manual therapy and corrective exercise to reduce #pain & improve your daily #movement."

"Need help with a #sportsinjury? See a #physicaltherapist for rehab and regain your #performance!"

(In person): "Hello Jane! How has your neck been feeling? I remember you complained about some pain last week...." etc etc etc.

However, it isn't THAT simple. I wrote in a guest blog post via WebPT: Four Critical Rebranding Concepts that branding need to be systematic and repetitive. If we all ran out there and started to hit up any of the four key concepts without a concerted front, the grassroots movement via social media would quickly lose momentum. This challenge requires longevity, consistency, and organization.

So the challenge will be to utilize the #brandPT hashtag on (but not limited to) the big three: Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Every Sunday, reach out to the PT community using the #brandPTchallenge hashtag & propose an area of expertise; say spine/back, ankle, shoulder, dizziness, balance, pain, hospitalization, joint replacement, etc. I'll more-or-less "randomly" select the area and challenge you to tweet, share, and post about. Link your thoughts with #brandPT, one of the four key elements, and #physicaltherapist. The real challenge is to do this once a day, every day of the week!

Every Sunday, we'll all shout out another segment/area of expertise... say #strengthandconditioning which I'll continue to select and roll through the submissions. As you all know, I'm mostly a Twitter kind-of-guy - so - this will require for me to grow and expand my reach further into FB & G+ (a good thing!)

The secondary challenge is to look into those areas of expertise; many social media users hashtag things like #arthritis and #jointreplacement or #totalkneereplacement because they are or are about to experience some health/life event. It is wise for us to survey the market and see what people are interested in such that we can build awareness of our availability to serve them.

So, once again, we'll identify the topic of the weekly #brandPTchallenge using the aforementioned hashtag. Shout out your suggestion & I'll announce with something like:

"This week's #brandPTchallenge is: #fallprevention."

For sake of consistency, let's use #brandPTchallenge as the hashtag to discuss the organizational aspect of the challenge; we'll save #brandPT for the external marketing efforts.

Savvy...?