Based on a PracticeCare® podcast conversation, Sheikh Ali on Building a Referral Network on LinkedIn, with Sheikh Ali, founder of SC Medical Media, a LinkedIn marketing company for clinicians and healthcare executives.
How underused is LinkedIn among clinicians and healthcare executives right now?
Most treat it like a resume site, Sheikh Ali says. He’s the founder of SC Medical Media, a LinkedIn marketing company for clinicians and healthcare executives, and his estimate is that only 30% to 40% of the people who should be active on LinkedIn are actually using it well.
That’s not a small gap. The platform skews older and wealthier than most social channels, and it’s built specifically for B2B networking. A practice that shows up consistently is competing against a mostly empty room.
Does LinkedIn only work for B2B-style practices, or can referral-based specialties use it too?
It works for both, and referral-heavy specialties are a natural fit. Ali points to orthopedics, neurosurgery, and cardiology as examples — specialties that live and die on primary care referrals.
The advantage is scale. LinkedIn lets a specialist build relationships with referring physicians nationally, from their own office, instead of relying only on local lunches and conference hallways. For ortho and neuro specifically, there’s a second audience worth targeting: medtech, where the overlap in spine and device work runs deep.
What does an effective LinkedIn strategy actually look like?
Ali breaks it into four steps:
- Set goals first. Pick two or three points about why you do what you do and who you want to reach. Everything else follows from this.
- Fix the profile. Rewrite it to address those two or three points, not to list credentials.
- Create content for the audience, not about yourself. Speak to their pain points and the outcomes you help them reach.
- Do outreach that’s curious, not pitchy. Engage with someone’s posts first, connect, then start a real conversation — the same way you’d work a room at an in-person event.
What’s the single biggest mistake private practice owners make with their profile?
The headline. Most people put their job title under their name — “CEO of [Practice]” — and that tells a referral source nothing about what’s in it for them.
The headline’s first 40 to 50 characters are what show up every time someone posts or comments in someone else’s feed. Ali’s advice: write it around the outcome you deliver, not the title you hold.
What pitfalls should a practice avoid once they start posting?
Three, mainly:
- Expecting fast results. LinkedIn is a marathon, not a sprint — it typically takes six to twelve touchpoints before someone is ready to work with you.
- Going quiet. Ali’s rule: if you don’t post, you’re a ghost. Consistency matters more than frequency — once a week is fine, as long as it’s steady.
- Writing a resume instead of a narrative. A profile that’s just a bulleted job history doesn’t tell anyone why you do what you do or who you help.
Why do clinicians resist building a referral network on LinkedIn, and what’s the actual payoff?
Two objections come up constantly, Ali says. The first is time — clinicians are already stretched between patients, staff, and meetings. The second is that they don’t see the value next to direct patient acquisition.
But B2B networking isn’t about replacing patient marketing. It’s about building relationships with colleagues who send you business you’d never generate on your own — a practice owner who’s retiring and refers out their patient base, a local business owner met through a comment thread who becomes a referral source. None of that shows up if you’re not present.
What are two simple things a practice owner can do today to get started?
Make a list. Write down who you want to be seen as professionally, and figure out your target audience — usually a blend of what you’re passionate about and where the money actually is.
Then search LinkedIn for people with a similar title to yours and study their profiles. The goal isn’t to copy them. It’s to see what’s working and build your own version of it.
A final note from Carl White
LinkedIn isn’t a shortcut, and it isn’t optional if referrals matter to your practice. It’s just another place where the same rule applies: people do business with people they know. I’d rather my clients spend an hour a week being visible to the colleagues who send them patients than spend zero hours and wonder why the phone doesn’t ring.
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