How Your Practice Can Help Spread Awareness About Diabetic Eye Diseases

As an optical health care provider, one of our primary roles is educating people and spreading awareness about different eye problems that they should be on the lookout for. Some of the major issues that have become very concerning in recent years are diabetic eye diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, cataracts, and glaucoma.

The road to early detection and prevention starts when our patients are aware and sufficiently informed about these eye diseases. Suffering from symptoms should not be the trigger by which they should start caring. Therefore, our patients should have ample foundational knowledge about this group of eye problems that has come to affect millions worldwide.

So how do we help spread awareness about diabetic eye diseases? Check our suggestions below.

1. Pre-schedule their appointments

The best way to prevent diabetic eye disease is by having a yearly dilated eye exam. However, this is not something that most people are aware of. As an optical business, you can pre-schedule your customer's eye exams and even send them reminders when the time to book their next exam comes. By establishing a regular routine for your customers, you can guarantee that they will continue to be aware of the dangers of this disease while also helping them stay healthy.

2. Create social media posts

If your practice is not on social media yet, then you might be missing on a very effective opportunity for you to spread awareness about diabetic eye diseases and other vision problems, not to mention promote your products and services.

Patients would surely appreciate you providing tips, reminders, and valuable information about this eye problem so start exploring Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, which people normally are many times within the day.

Couple your post with catchy photos or well-designed imageries. If you do not have access to a graphic designer, you can use easy-to-use designing tools like Canva. You can access amazing photographs or free stock photos from different photo-sharing sites like Unsplash.

3. Create informative blogs

Having professional blogs on the topic can help you bring tips and steps that are important for diabetic eye prevention to your customers. Simple blogs like "5 tips for preventing diabetic eye disease" or "Why a yearly diabetic eye disease exam is important" can help bring this topic to a broader audience. By establishing a good information base on this topic, you can also redirect your customers to the right resources to ensure that they are adequately informed.

These blogs can be posted on your website. You can also set up your practice’s Medium account. Medium is an online publishing platform where you can publish your own blog for free. As you build your library of helpful blogs, you are also building yourself as a reliable source of information and a trusted authority when it comes to eye care.

4. Send eNewsletters

If you have an email list, you can create a newsletter that will go out a few times each year in which you will inform your customers of the main things they should be aware of when it comes to preventing diabetic eye disease. You can also remind them to schedule regular eye exams to avoid problems with their eyes in the future. An eNewsletter is an excellent way of reaching the people who are already within your customer base. By receiving regular newsletters those same people will also feel like your business is caring for them and want to assist them by preventing serious eye problems for them in the future.

Have you already tried sending eNewsletters or EDMs (electronic direct mail) before? Please write to us at marketing@opticare.com.au if you want us to write about this topic next.

5. Flyers in your store

Informative flyers about preventing diabetic eye disease can be placed throughout your store. Anyone walking in your store can pick up one of the flyers and learn more about the importance of having eye checks, maintaining their blood sugar levels, controlling their blood pressure, and the warning signs for this disease. Simple bullet points covering all of these important points can often make the difference between people being aware of what they should be looking out for or not.

6. Short educational videos

Do you love making short videos using your phone? Well, you can record some regarding diabetic eye diseases, edit again using Canva, and then upload to YouTube, Vimeo, or even on TikTok! See here that many from all over the globe are utilising this platform to reach out to potential patients and educate them about various issues affecting vision and eye care.

Creating more awareness about diabetic eye disease can be a great way of not only bringing more customers in but also keeping your customers healthy. As a practice, showing your clients that you care can be the first step towards further business growth.