Social media marketing has transformed the way brands communicate with people. Its rising popularity has made it an integral part of the consumer lifecycle. In fact, studies show that people spend over 2.5 hours per day scrolling through various social media platforms.

Social media platforms not only play a significant role in helping buyers learn about more businesses and their products but also provide brands with the opportunity to establish strong relationships with their customers and find out what makes them tick.

Clearly, social media marketing is here to stay. But if your Facebook or Instagram marketing efforts aren’t accessible to all users, you’re alienating a large demographic of potential customers. To put this into perspective, 26% of American adults currently live with some type of disability.

Unfortunately, most social media marketing efforts aren’t yet fully accessible to people with disabilities. If you’re one of them, you’re losing out on a huge market of prospective customers. Here are some tips on how your brand can leverage social media marketing to connect with people with hearing disabilities and grow your customer base.

Why Is Social Media Crucial to a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy?

Before we delve into how you can make your social media marketing efforts more inclusive, you might be wondering if your business or practice actually needs a social media presence. Here are a few reasons that might convince you of the potential social media platforms hold in effectively attracting hearing-impaired customers.

First, social media is an inherently text-driven and visual platform. Consumers with hearing disabilities can easily reach brands through messages via Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct chat. People can also express themselves through visual forms of media such as GIFs, photos, reels, stories, hashtags, and several other forms of written and visual communication.

Popular channels like Facebook understand the value of building a community of like-minded people with shared interests and experiences. These social media platforms have provided the deaf and hard of hearing community with the opportunity to come together and connect.

Social media has the power to let the world know about your business and your products and services. If used correctly, it can cater to various communities and groups with special needs. That being said, when marketing to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, you need to think beyond the standard run-of-the-mill approach. Keep reading to learn more.

Social Media Accessibility Tips to Reach More Patients

Here, we’ll take a look at some of the most valuable tips you can leverage to stand apart from the crowd and cater to your target audience with extreme care. These tips will help you boost content reach and brand visibility and ensure that your social media content can be easily accessed by everybody.

Tip 1: Always Include Open or Closed Captions in Your Videos

According to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, videos are the new 'megatrend.' Research further indicates that the number of people watching branded video content has increased by 99% on YouTube and 258% on Facebook.

On the other hand, video tweets on Twitter are 6x more likely to be retweeted than a photo tweet. Video marketing is clearly on the rise. To ensure your video marketing efforts reach hard-of-hearing people, make sure to include open or closed captions in ALL your videos.

Google launched Live Captions, a new feature on Android Q, to make its products more accessible. So what does this feature do? It showcases captions in real-time for any audio or video being viewed (irrespective of whether the user has an internet connection or not.)

Moreover, live or closed captions empower users to view videos without putting on headphones. If you're still second-guessing this hack, consider what Facebook has to say about closed captions: As per data by Facebook, videos with closed captions boost viewing time by about 12%.

Tip 2: Ensure All Your Social Media Content Has Image Descriptions

An image description, or AltText, makes your content accessible to everyone, particularly visually-impaired people. An AltText helps the screen-reader to understand—and describe—what the image is all about so that blind users can navigate your social media posts better.

Instagram rolled out two new features in 2018 to make it easier for people with visual impairments to use the platform. These include:

• Using automatic alternative text so that visually-impaired people could hear descriptions of photos via their screen reader when they use Feed, Explore, and Profile.

• Using alternative custom text so that users can add a more detailed description of their photos when they upload them. Same as the previous feature, people using screen readers can hear this description and easily access the post.

So how can you use this feature? Head over to Advanced Settings and scribble down a brief description of the image in the AltText section.

Tip 3: When It Comes to Your Content Formats, Mix It Up

Another handy tip to remember is that it’s best to offer your users different forms of content. For example, don't simply post a series of static photos. Instead, use a mix of videos and images to pique your audience's interest. As a rule of thumb, always include videos with transcriptions to make it easier for people with hearing disabilities to read them.

Tip 4: Understand Which Platforms and Pages You Should Be Active On

With the growing number of social media platforms, it can be hard for brands to decide where they should direct their digital marketing efforts. Brands need to understand which platforms and channels their target audience most frequents. The next logical step is to formulate a customized social media strategy that caters to the unique needs of your hearing-impaired user base. Here are a few handy tips to remember:

• Solidify Your Brand's Social Media Presence

This step involves thorough auditing and optimizing of your existing social media pages to understand which platforms your customers are actively using to interact with your brand and your competitors’. Perform a thorough review before you create a killer content marketing strategy.

• Focus on Driving Audience Engagement

When it comes to connecting with patients who have hearing, going the community way can make or break your social media game. In simpler words, do your research to understand which kinds of hearing loss pages and communities are active on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. You can then advertise your brand on said pages and boost the audience reach.

• Create Value-Driven and Meaningful Content

This hack is relatively straightforward but equally important. If deaf and hard-of-hearing patients do not find your social media content useful or helpful, no amount of marketing can help. You need to think about your audience's pain points and brainstorm ways to build content around the same. Make sure to include relevant hashtags and keep your posts consistent.

The Takeaway

It goes without saying that accessible marketing is the future, and the future is here. Building a long-term and organic relationship with your special hearing care customer base can be tricky. If you are looking for a seasoned marketing agency that can offer a modern and transparent form of hearing care marketing, the experts at Ear Level Marketing are all ears.

We understand how it can get hard to see the forest for the trees, and the social media marketing arena is no exception. So, contact us right away and get your brand the care and attention it deserves in the diverse multiverse that we can use on social media.