How Chiropractors Are Using TikTok to Generate Billions of Views | Podcast Ep. 327

Foreign hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langme. This week we are back with the research and it is a fun one. This study is titled Analysis of Acute Non Specific Back pain content on TikTok an exploratory study. So if you've been following docs that have blown up on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and or TikTok, in this case, this is a podcast episode you're going to want to pay attention to because there are actually some unique characteristics of docs that have done so. And I always think there is a lot that we can learn. Whether or not you look out there and you see what docs are doing on social media and you love it or you loathe it, the bottom line is they're doing something if they're getting the attention. And there are always things that we can take from that, we can learn from that and we can apply in our own way for the benefit of our own practice. This episode is brought to you by the smart chiropractor. The smart chiropractor powers your patient journey to provide you with more qualified leads, more new patients, better patient retention and consistent reactivations without spending any money on advertising. We always think about teaching and inviting consistently. We happen to power that through social media, through email, through patient education in office, video streaming, et cetera. But a lot of that ties into what we're gonna talk about today. How can you teach and invite online in a way that you can be proud of, number one, but also in a way that actually makes an impact. And this study was released just really between last year and this year, depending upon this publication date. And it was in an article called Curious C U R E U S. I have not heard of this journal before, but again the title is Analysis of Acute Nonspecific Back pain content on TikTok an exploratory study. So what they did is they found the 150, roughly 157 most viewed videos available with the hashtag back pain available on TikTok. And they did this in September of 2021. And basically they wanted to say, hey, is there commonalities amongst these? Who is putting the content out and what kind of content is it? Is it evidence based content? Is it content that people are just making up on their own and analyze that and then showcase the results in the study? I love it. Because communication does not stop. The evolution of patient communication doesn't stop. Now am I a big TikTok guy? No, I'm not. But There certainly are plenty of docs out there building pretty substantial followings, utilizing an array of social tools. So don't be like, bummed out on it just because it seems like it's a pain in the butt to learn new stuff. There's no question about it. There is no question that it seems like, oh, gosh, they're all like teenagers and kids on this thing. Maybe, maybe not. However, platforms do evolve over time. So Instagram was very much the same thing when it first started. There was a lot of individual. It skews older as time goes on. In other words, usually Facebook the same way. It started as a college tool, a college. Only you actually had to have an Edu email address to sign up for Facebook back in the day. And you see these things evolve over time, these platforms, and some of them do great. You know, Facebook, Instagram, billions of users, some fall off the wayside. There's been video apps and things like that that just haven't cut it over time. And some end up somewhere in the middle. But they're all an opportunity to connect with people, to teach and invite consistently. So the gist of it was that the researchers said, hey, low back pain in adolescents and young adults is a significant risk factor for low back pain in adulthood. So if people that are younger are getting information now, is it contributing to their better health later? Is it contributing to worse health later? What's going on? And I love that approach with it. So researchers had suggested that anecdotal information on social media, things like view count, comments and likes, may influence healthcare decision making. And I think that's a fair thing to say. Now, I want to make a little bit of a difference here between Facebook and Instagram, your traditional now social platforms, YouTube as well, and TikTok. TikTok has been, I want to be super clear, as with any newer platform, they juice the results. So what I mean by that is that don't have FOMO either. You know, there's a balancing act here between being engaged on platforms and not trying to run to the new thing. So quite often what we've seen, I've talked to so many docs, including those that have gotten a lot of views on TikTok. A lot of views on TikTok does not necessarily translate to action, activity, to patients in the practice, to purchases. Facebook and Instagram are much, much more stable and linear. TikTok is definitely juicing their results, meaning you might receive hundreds of thousands of views. But many, many of those views are not going to move the needle in any meaningful way in your practice currently. That's not to say it couldn't evolve in the future, but you can't really compare apples to apples. My thing with this is if you shoot a TikTok video and you see, wow, this got 5,000 views and the Facebook video I put out got 50, TikTok is where it's at. I must put in all of my time, effort and energy there. I'm going to say you can do that, but be careful, be a little bit wary. They're definitely juicing their results to get traction right now, which is not a bad thing. But I know that conversions are off of TikTok have been super, super difficult. Every ad agency guy and gal I talk to, they're like, oh my gosh, getting the conversions is super hard. And the content producers, chirofractors as well, have had a lot of difficulty really turning those numbers into anything meaningful. So just a word of caution there. Now with these 150 top videos with the hashtag back pain, they range in duration from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. So you could clearly see these were not 45 minute. These are not 45 minute or 10 hour presentations on the history of spinal disc issues at all. You know, 15 seconds to three minutes is a short amount of time. They're in and out. They're really getting that information out there. So how big is TikTok? Well, in December 2018, TikTok globally had more than 270 million users and over a billion billion active users by September of, of 2021. So there are a lot of people there in 2021. 2021, excuse me. YouTube was the second most popular social medium and most popular video video medium. So Google of course owns YouTube. So understanding video on TikTok. All platforms have a little bit of difference between how to best approach them. But you've heard me say this for years now. You see this every single week within the smart chiropractor every day. With what we put in the group. In terms of video scripts and opportunities to connect with your audience, video is powerful. Yes. It's uncomfortable for those of us that just don't have that natural knack for it. Yeah, it seems a little bit weird sometimes. As an introvert myself, it's like, I don't know, is this like, am I just like ego? Like, what am I doing? What am I doing here? But video is a great way to translate and transmit your, your unique health information, to empower people in your community to showcase the benefits of your care. Nothing does it better than video so they had a few questions when they did this study. They were coming in, they're saying, what are the metadata characteristics of the videos that are in these top 151, 57? What are the creator identities as well? And do these videos for acute nonspecific low back pain reflect content themes? And. And what are the characteristics if we do a cross reference sheet as far as best practices. So those were really the questions they were looking to answer. And if you want to sit down here, I have something to say. By September 2021, TikTok videos with the backpain had produced 1.3 billion views. So there is a lot of action on the back pain. We see that on every platform. We see that on, on Instagram, we see that on YouTube. Super competitive term to track for and rank for on YouTube. And why is it because 90% this, this ties into a lot of the data and stats that we talk about each week on this show that seem a little like, okay, you know, it almost seems flippant, right? It's like, okay, 90% of people deal with back pain, all right? It's the number one cause of global disability. Okay. You know, people have recurrent back pain, so they keep coming back to understand more about how they can take care of it. Okay. And it seems like we just hear that so much, it's almost can go in one year and out the other. But when you see this in terms of a billion views since September 2021, just on the hashtag back pain, this is something people in mass are searching out answers for. So the question becomes, do are you providing the answers? And this ties to the heart of the smart chiropractor as well. How do you teach an invite consistently? How do you use your social channels to your email channels, your patient education to proactively answer and address the questions people have about their health in their community? The more that you do that, the more attention you'll get. And that attention can turn into people in your practice, to online sales, whatever it might be. You build your audience and you build your audience by putting out great content consistently. So in the chiropractic space, if we look at the hashtag chiropractic on TikTok, how many views as of September 30, 2021 for the hashtag chiropractic? 3.8 billion views. So there are a lot of people viewing content. Now, again, you know, don't over index this and say, well, okay, everything needs to go there. There have been historically some conversion issues off of TikTok it's not optimized for that. However, if you're looking just for raw view count, there's probably no better place that you can gain traction right now as easily as TikTok. So they looked at these videos and they said okay, is it education, exercise or treatment? So is a majority of the video dedicated for education to the discussion of back pain or physical and mental and health considerations around back pain? That's what they deemed education? Or was it more exercise? Was more than 50% of the video dedicated to real time exercise or was it treatment? Was more than 50% of the video and hands on treatment. That was really how they looked to stratify things. And they found videos created by chiropractors were consistently among the most viewed, commented and shared. So that's powerful. People are searching out chiropractic content. Whether the chiropractors are doing a great job optimizing or whether people are searching out chiropractors. It remains to be seen, however, chiropractors on TikTok are producing the most viewed, commented and shared videos related to back pain. Now here are some stats for you on we they found on average, chiropractic TikTok videos had the most views for mill over almost 5 million. Shortest duration, interestingly 20 seconds where the oldest 317 days. Hilarious that the platform's oldest videos were less than a year old, had the most likes, shares and comments. The least popular TikTok videos were produced by physiotherapists. Physiotherapy TikTok videos were the least viewed, least like, least shared and have the fewest comments. And the longest videos were created by physicians, meaning MDs with a mean of one minute. So these videos were fast and furious. And when you look at the top 150 videos, chiropractors accounted for 50% of them. That's substantial. 72 out of 157 fitness professionals, influencers, physicians, physiotherapists and other totaled the other 50%. So chiropractors are crushing it on TikTok and we might like what they're putting out, we might not like what they're putting out. However, and we want to talk about the not like portion. Here's here's one other thing they found. Quote further Chiropractic TikTok videos frequently feature young female patients wearing tight or limited clothing. So we have all seen this, we've all probably rolled our eyes at this. However, when they look at these top 150 videos, it's what's being searched out, not Saying that's right. But I'm saying that the market is checking out those videos, they're sharing them, they're commenting on them, et cetera. So the final stats, I guess, or final statements regarding this study were there's researchers found there appear to be several opportunities for healthcare professionals seeking to use TikTok for the dissemination of back pain information. So chiropractic TikTok videos typically have younger women or AS. Mr. And they, as they say they represent a novel health care marketing phenomenon. Now I think we all want to be within the bounds, I hope we all want to be within the bounds of what's appropriate. Like how are you positioning yourself? All these things matter. This isn't, shouldn't be, you know, anything you can do for view counts is a really bad idea. It was a bad idea. I mean we used to talk about this 10 years ago on Facebook where there was some tricks and hacks you could do to gain view count, but it was fleeting at best. And I think this plays into some of the conversion as well. If people are just looking at your videos for whatever alternative reasons they're looking at the videos, they're probably unlikely to take action. And that's where you can get a lot. You can get big view counts, but it might not turn into actual impact and action. And I think as chiropractors we need to really walk this line and understand that anytime we're putting out content there is an entertainment aspect of it, whether we like it or not. Of course we want the content to be educational, entertaining as well or engaging as well. But there is an entertainment aspect of anytime you put out content on the Internet that entertaining content will over index dry and boring content. It's just the way it is. But there is plenty of creative ways to do that. And I think a lot of times chiropractors that have been successful on and this is, there's a lot of, this is not everybody. In other words, there's a lot of exceptions to this rule. But those individuals that we're going to roll our eyes at that we think put out content that's like, ah, this is just, you know, not exactly what I would want to put out or what I'd want people to regarding our profession. You know, I think there's a lot of creative opportunity around doing just that. That can be, that can get view counts that can be entertaining. You don't have to go to the lowest common denominator to really be able to get those views. Lowest common denominator being for lack of A better way to say it, scantily clad women. So when you're able to really teach in a way that's educational and entertaining, you're going to see really great results. So contrary to what might seem Obvious, they found TikTok videos created by chiropractors rated poorly by the coders against the acute back pain reference checklist. I have some bones to pick with exactly how they did that, but I wanted to bring it up because it was in the study and the final conclusion that they had were the most viewed. TikTok videos about acute nonspecific low back pain were not produced by mainstream health professionals. So this study was actually looking at it in terms of our MDs and DOs creating the most popular. And to probably no surprise, of course there's exceptions to this rule. The answer was no. Believe me, I speak with a lot of surgeons, a lot of medical doctors, and it's hard to have a conversation with them, never mind them thinking about creating content. Of course there are the exceptions to those, and those doctors have, not surprisingly, done. I mean, these are docs getting tens of millions of views, if not hundreds of millions on YouTube because of their credentials and their ability to communicate. But my point of that is that as chiropractors, we have a distinct advantage. We tend to be better communicators overall. And we do have such a deep body of knowledge that I'm going to encourage you. If you've been sitting on the sidelines with social media, get out there. The knowledge that you have can really help people. It can help them live a better life, but most importantly, it can also help your business stay in business. It can help your business stay in business. And that's a beautiful thing when what we do is the best option a majority of the time, with the exception of acute red flags. So getting out there, not only can it change the people's lives in your community, it could change your life. And we've seen it time and time again with docs that have got out there, built a big following, they've been able to really accelerate the growth of their practice. It's opened up additional revenue opportunities, additional business opportunities, and all it takes is getting started. So think about how you can get started today. If you need help with that, head over to smart chiropractor, hop into the group. We talk about this kind of stuff all the time. I'll drop that link below. If you need guidance and you want some us to do some of that for you, then become a member. But getting out there by teaching and inviting consistently. It's no joke. Billions of searches, billions of views. You need a shred of that to really impact your practice. And TikTok is one channel. We love YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as well. So hopefully this opened your eyes. We'll drop a link to the paper in the show notes in the paper they also list the exact TikTok accounts of the people who produce the top 150 videos. So if you want to check out their accounts or follow them, you can check out the paper and I'll link that down below. Now, before we wrap up, I want to say a few words about Power Step Orthotics are frequently used to address foot pain and alignment issues, but not all patients need or can afford customers. Orthotics. This is where Power Step Pro tech orthotics come into play. My father personally uses these and has had really, really fantastic results. He's had continual lumbar issues, foot issues, neuropathy issues, you name it. And he's gone through a lot of orthotics over the last 10 years. And I can say the Power Step products, when I received them in, I shared it with my dad, we looked at it, we got it in his shoes and I keep asking him and he is thrilled at their ability to provide support. He's thrilled at their ability to provide relief. And if you want to grab a sample pro.powerstep.com samplepro.powerstep.com sample go check it out. Have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to go faster, visit the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.