A social media cheat sheet for dentists.
As a dentist, you know how important social media has become over the past few years. Do you know the difference between a personal and professional website, and how to tell the difference?
Planning a dental practice is a bit like creating a Facebook site – you have to play around a bit before you get it just right. We have compiled four phases that will ensure your social media marketing success.
Phase 1: Get your staff on board.
Before you start any social media activities, you should ensure that the practice team agrees with the idea. Ideally, you have their full support.
- Your team needs to be convinced that social media is critical to the continued success of the practice, assign it a high priority, and understand the importance of advertising the practice on Facebook and Instagram using original and diverse content.
- At least one employee – in addition to the practice owner – must confirm that they are willing and able to publish marketing content independently and answer questions.
Phase 2: Review your existing marketing documents.
Marketing agencies will help to freshen up your brochures, find testimonials and revitalise your online presence. Agencies will also draft informative and useful content or take other digital measures to achieve your marketing goals.
Phase 3: Learn the rules and guidelines of the different social media platforms.
Some social media users have multiple profiles on various platforms. However, each social media platform has its own rules and guidelines. For example, you can only create posts that are 280 characters long on Twitter, but you can be much more expansive on Facebook. Take the time to investigate these guidelines and rules on each social media platform that you want to use in advance – this will make sure that you avoid future disappointment.
Start a conversation with your customers and secure brand awareness by interacting frequently on social media. Reciprocity is key – if you interact with social media users, they will also interact with you. The ability to communicate directly on Facebook allows you to build strong relationships with both current and prospective patients.
Tip: Design a daily/weekly social media schedule to build a solid relationship with your community.
Your practice, industry or brand could come up in conversation at any time. Social media makes this type of discussion very easy to follow and moderate. You must actively “listen in” on these discussions if you want to be successful. You will obtain a wealth of information on the opinions and interests of your patients.
It is always important to listen to your existing patients, but listening to prospective patients will give you insights to revolutionise your entire marketing strategy. Always keep an eye on your competition and observe how they behave in these situations. They might be able to teach you a thing or two!
Tip: Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) is a simple tool to keep an eye on things online. Enter a search term (practice name, industry, city, etc.) and select how often you want to be informed when and where this term has appeared.
People go online to be entertained or find a solution to a problem. Position your practice as an expert in your industry by providing information about cutting-edge procedures or products, tips, hygiene and so much more.
Meaningful and interesting content, such as “What can I do to get rid of toothache?”, will help you find more prospective customers for your Facebook page and website.
If someone is not online to learn something, then they are online to be entertained. A little humour goes a long way. However, if humour is not your strength, just be yourself – this creates a real connection between you and your customers.
Phase 4: Design a daily/weekly schedule of your social media activities.
Schedule your social media activities to keep your audience on Facebook and other platforms happy and engaged. Let us start with two fundamental strategies:
- Publish two updates a week: Make your post stand out with a combination of text and images – post news or relevant statistics on one side and images on the other. This will appeal to your customers. A small handful of marketing specialists may say otherwise, but there is really no specific time that will ensure that your post is a hit. Experiment with different times and find out what is most fruitful for you.
- Call your followers to action by frequently asking for likes, comments and shares: Explicitly tell your followers to actively engage with your posts. Encourage them with sentences like: “Share this image if you have flossed your teeth today!”.
After reading all this information, you might be thinking that social media will take up more time than you have to offer.
Do not despair – Facebook and Instagram allow page owners to schedule posts. This allows you to create posts and publish them later, at a specific time. You just have to click on the little clock in the lower left corner of the post.
This is a great way to prepare your posts in advance and be sure that they will appear at a certain time, particularly if you are pressed for time during the week. You may also choose to hand over your social media activities to experts who have a deeper understanding.
Give our recommendations a try, go through all four phases and make a great first impression on these social media platforms.