Dagny Zhu, MD, on how physicians can establish a social media brand

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Hi everyone. I'm Femida Kherani welcoming you to "Our View," our Healio vlog at the beautiful Hawaiian Eye meeting.

Hello, and I'm Cynthia Matossian here at the Hawaiian Eye meeting. And we have a guest we're interviewing today, Dagny.

Hi everyone. I'm Dagny Zhu. Thank you, ladies, for having me.

Dagny, we would like to ask you a question. You have a big, wonderful presence in social media. We would like to know how you became passionate about this topic.

Well, to be honest, when I first joined social media, I had no idea how it worked when I started my Instagram account. I had just graduated from training, and I bought a private practice, and it seemed like a good way to introduce myself to the community as a cornea refractive surgeon. But honestly the platform that I initially adopted was one of mentorship, and that's how I grew my account in the beginning. Because I wanted to share some of the experiences that I had as a recent and a recent graduate going through medical school, as a first-generation immigrant, being brought up by a single mom, all of the hardships that we went through. I felt like there wasn't a good way for a lot of women, especially, in medicine, to find mentors, and to find people who had similar experiences. And so, I actually shared a lot about my background growing up, and how I got into medicine when I first started my Instagram. And I think a lot of people related, and that's sort of how I built up my initial following.

That's really wonderful that you shared your passion and purpose on social media, and it's inspiring.

Thank you so much. And then eventually, I ventured more into the original reason for joining Instagram, which was to market my practice. So now in addition to that, I do provide a lot of eye health education. You know, about the latest technologies. And I try to fight a lot of the misinformation that's out there on social media. So that is what I'm trying to do now with my platform. It's sort of multifaceted.

That's wonderful. Can you share with our audience about the study on social media?

So, I've been privileged to work with many students whom I've actually encountered through social media on several social media studies. We were one of the first to publish a study looking at ophthalmology content on Instagram. And we did similar projects later on with Reddit and TikTok and looking at the extent of misinformation on those platforms, and how we can do a better job as healthcare providers to fight that information. But actually one of the studies that we did together, Femida, she was a co-author on a study, was actually looking at how ophthalmologists use social media, specifically how women use social media, to no only advance our own careers and find networking opportunities, but also to find work-life balance because I think a lot of use social media to share tips on being a mom in medicine, things like that. So, I think social media has been helpful in many ways, not just for career advancement, but for just bringing more balance to our lives as a whole.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's great. Thank you, Dagny, for sharing that. And would you have two to three pearls of how to get started in social media, how to enhance one's presence. For maybe other colleagues who aren't as active in it as you are.

I know that it sounds very intimidating for many people, and we don't have the time, but honestly we're not out there to become "influencers." I think we should just be online and have a social media presence for our patients so that they can find us, and learn a little bit more about us, and what services we offer. So, the easiest thing that you can do number one, is just to choose a handle, and just register that handle across all accounts. Even if you don't use it, I would highly recommend claiming that account name. TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, even YouTube, because you never know. One day you may expand your niche. Number two, I would say hire a third-party agency to help you with a lot of these tasks. I think a lot of it can be very time consuming especially when it comes to video editing. It certainly helps to have a social media assistant. Sometimes students can be the best hires as they're interns looking for medical experience. And they're very social media savvy. And I would say number three, just figuring out what your passion and reason is for being on social media, whether that's mentorship, sort of as how I started. Or education, or simply sharing surgical videos. Figure out your niche and do it so that it brings you joy. Don't make it a chore or job. And I would just follow your passion, and I think you'll learn to enjoy it, and find it to be useful to your practice as well.

Thank you for your information!