Social media guide for healthcare professionals

These photos were published in an article chastising the student doctor for her allegedly unprofessional conduct. The article even went as far as saying that Mexican doctors were overpaid!

Sadly, medical professionals across the world know too well what it’s like being underappreciated and underfunded. Furthermore, attacks in the media often lead to physical attacks in real life.

When these photos were published they hit a nerve with many healthcare workers in Mexico who were all too familiar with the challenges of their profession.

Thus, the #YoTambienDormi social media movement was born.

Doctors and nurses across Mexico posted photos on social media and in blogs of themselves and their colleagues sleeping to show solidarity with their colleague and to highlight the demands of the job.

The #YoTambienDormi story highlights how necessary it is for healthcare professionals to participate in the discourse on social media. When competent people stay silent the space is taken up by grifters and innocent people get scammed and hurt.

Unfortunately, reputable news organizations are also easily duped by charlatans. In 2026, The New York Times published an article about Medhvi calling it a one-man billion dollar AI company.

The author of the article, Erin Griffith, essentially wrote a puff piece that failed to mention key facts that other publications such as Futurism had already reported.

• Medvi allegedly sold GLP-1 products that were pharmacologically inert or ineffective.
• Medvi used AI-generated fake doctors.
• Medvi stole real people’s photos and doctored them using AI.
• Medvi was warned by the FDA
• Medvi allegedly violated California’s anti spam laws

These are serious issues issues, but even an institution like the New York Times failed to address adequtely.

Let’s start with a few key questions. The goal is to understand your preferences and find the most suitable channels and formats for you as a content creator.

What is your goal?

• I want to inform and educate people.
• I just want to have fun and enjoy social media.
• I want to create or be part of an online community.
• I want to support and amplify social causes.

How much time do you have to create content?

• I can shoot at least one Reel or TikTok video per day.
• I can publish at least one blog post per week.
• I can shoot, edit, and publish at least one long-form video for YouTube.
• I have someone who can help me shoot or edit my videos.

How much time can you spend interacting with your followers and other social media users?

• I can regularly write comments on other user’s videos or posts.
• I can respond to comments under my own videos and content.
• I can react to real-world events or trends either by posting a video or a image post.

Based on your your answers we can identify the social platforms that best fit your lifestyle and goals.

Long-form video content

Creating long-form content requires both time and money. You need to invest in video and audio equipment as well as video editing software.

It takes time to write an engaging and informative script. It takes even more time to shoot and edit the video content. You will get better for sure, but it will take time.

For this reason, the volume of long-form content you can realistically produce is very low.

However, long-form content has many advantages that are worth considering.

1. Long-form content is prioritized by the YouTube algorithm.
2. You can better monetize videos over 8 mins.
3. Long-form video content is great for SEO as it appears in the search results (SERP).

Short-form video content

TikTok’s rise in popularity has fundamentally changed how users consume video content. Almost immediately, both Meta and YouTube immediately copied TikTok.

According to YouTube’s official press blog, Shorts generate 200 billion views per day.

Research by GWI, highlighted by Data Reportal, shows that 87% of adults say they watch short-form content weekly.

Making videos for TikTok, Reels, or YT Shorts requires less time and technical resources, but here are some other factors that you need to know.

1. There is nearly zero potential for monetization. You can generate billions of views and earn under $100.
2. Short-form video content is highly dependent on platform specific and community based trends.
3. Interacting with your followers is an absolute must. You have to engage with your audience daily. That means replying to comments and even creating video replies.

Image-based content

Until 2006, most of the content on the Internet was text and static images. Today, things are considerably different.

According to Ericsson’s Mobility Report social media-generated videos constitute 70–80 percent of all mobile video traffic viewed on smartphones. However, image-based content can still be an engaging format and has it’s place in your marketing strategy.

Here are the main pros and cons of image content.

1. Creating image content is vastly easier than video, so you can publish more frequently.
2. Algorithms do not favor image content so your audience might be limited.
3. Finding engaging image content consistently will become more challenging with time. Avoid AI-generated or stock photography.

Each piece of content you create needs tailored towards one of the following tactical goals:

• Growing your audience or reach
• Building and interacting with your community
• Generating action or transaction

Some platforms and video formats are better than others.

Types of video content

When you are considering what type of content to create, the key is to find something that you naturally enjoy doing.

Your first videos won’t be great, but the more you do the better you will get. Here are several formats that you can try. Click on the thumbnails to go to the full videos.

Educational content

Interview / Podcast

Debunking

Reaction / Interaction

Q&A or AMA

Entertainment

Which are the leading social platforms?

The choice where to publish your content depends on where your target audience is active. However, it’s important to know these platforms as a user first before trying to become a content creator. If you have no idea what FYP means on TikTok, you won’t stand a chance. Although this might sound a bit hyperbolic, it’s crucial that you understand how these platforms work and how users communicate with content creators.

YouTube dominates, but Facebook is still top-of-mind when it comes to social media.

YouTube’s global reach is 2.65 billion monthly active users (MAU), which puts it ahead of Facebook.

TikTok has already surpassed Instagram 2.39B MAUs vs. 1.99B respectively.

LinkedIn has surged in monthly usage over the past several years and now sits at 1.43B monthly active users. Today, many healthcare professionals and researchers use LinkedIn to discuss their work and key topics related to the medical field.

What about the Algorithm?

As users, we are subject to the whims of the algorithm. It not only determines the content we see, but it also impacts how we feel about ourselves and others. It is no coincidence why Elon Musk bought Twitter or why TikTok was forced to sell its US operations to Oracle.

As content creators we are constantly looking for ways to game the algorithm so that our posts reach as many people as possible.

One of the most important steps in succeeding on social media is to make a small, but important change in your mindset.

Social platforms do not have one singular algorithm. Instead, they have dozens of inter-connected algorithms that determine what content is shown to users.

41% of our Facebook feed is suggested content from profiles and users that we do not follow.

Today, just 14% of the content in our feed is from our direct friends.

You can check even more stats in Meta’s Widely Viewed Content Report.

Although, these stats are for Facebook if you review your Instagram or TikTok feed it’s very likely that you will see the same story there too.

Instagram’s algorithm

The key thing to know about Instagram is that it’s algorithm is adjusted to fit the platform’s goals for each specific placement (i.e. feed, stories, explore page, reels, and search)

One of the most important changes in 2026 was Instagram’s updated policy on so called “unoriginal content”.

Here is what will get you in trouble:

• Videos with watermarks from other platforms like TikTok
• Engagement bait content that generates low-quality comments
• Reposting the same content multiple times
• Creating compilations using other people’s videos

Doing any of these will suppress your Instagram content’s performance.

We’ve all felt that Instagram favors video content. That is not going away. The head of Instagram Adam Mosseri is a great resource for knowing where the platform is headed.

So, earlier this year we reviewed a random sample of Adam Massori’s posts.

• 33 videos
• 13 image carousels
• 4 single image posts

What about TikTok’s algorithm?

TikTok’s algorithm evaluates many signals to determine how much reach to “allocate” to a video.

User interactions have the highest weight in the algorithm. These include likes, shares, follows, comments, watch time, and video completion rate.

TikTok has been trying to incentivize users to post longer content, so they have increased the importance of metrics such as watch time, video completion rates, and replays.

If users overwhelmingly click on the “Not interested” button that will also have a major effect on your reach unless your likes overcompensate. In other words, do not be afraid to publish polarizing content as long as there is value and you believe it will resonate with your primary audience.

A video’s technical specifications and information also impacts your reach.

Consistently adding captions or subtitles will help your content be more accessible to users and, thus, more likely to be recommended.

TikTok also recommends using trending audio and posting about trending topics.

Do hashtags matter?

The simple answer is no. But you don’t have to take our word for it.

This is what you should be doing instead:

• Add alt text, captions, and descriptions to your image and video posts
• Add subtitles to your videos
• Geo-tag your content
• Comment on other people’s posts
• Use between 3 or 5 hashtags when referencing something very specific like a product launch or an event

YouTube

A key decision with YouTube is whether you will focus on long-form or short-form content. This decision will impact your growth and longevity on the platform.

• Watch time, average view duration, and audience retention
• Comments, shares, and other interactions with the video
• Thumbnail click-through-rate
• Is the video about a topic or event that is recent

LinkedIn

You might be surprised, but many healthcare professionals use LinkedIn as one of their primary content platform.

Some of the most interesting medical research and news I’ve seen has been on LinkedIn.

In recent years, LinkedIn has been fighting so called “engagement pods”. These are WhatsApp groups made up of LinkedIn users who interact with each other’s content as soon as its posted.

Because LinkedIn places a lot of importance on the signals generated in the first 60 to 90 minutes of a posts’ publication, engagement pods have been able to successfully “game” the algorithm.

Although, the strength of engagement pods has waned in recent years, LinkedIn has been plagued with another problem: low quality AI content. This is completely LinkedIn’s fault as they actively promoted using AI to “enhance” your posts.

Now, they are trying to push back and reduce AI slop.

The first thing that the LinkedIn algorithm looks at is whether your post is spam. If you’re posting too much, if you’ve tagged too many irrelevant people or if your content is poorly written you might trigger the spam filter. That will, essentially, suppress your post.

LinkedIn also discourages engagement bait tactics like farming for comments or likes. Avoid asking users to comment a phrase under your post to get something from you.

Once LinkedIn has determined that your post is not spam the platform audits other key signals.

• Likes, comments, saves, and reshares
• Dwell time and revisiting the post later

Additionally, LinkedIn weighs audience characteristics such as:

• Industry, skills, location, experience
• Their past engagement with similar content
• Who they follow

You can find a far more comprehensive guide on Hootsuite’s blog.

What you can do on LinkedIn is post your opinions about trending healthcare topics and news. Provide an informative and interesting analysis of current events in your field. Share new peer-reviewed research.

LinkedIn offers more formats than TikTok and Instagram, which makes it easier to experiment with your content.

Posts about your milestones or the conferences that you’ve attended usually generate a lot of engagement and reach.

Final words

In summary, social media is surprisingly an area where healthcare professionals can succeed.

The key is to create content that you are comfortable with on platforms where you enjoy being yourself.