Do you really need social media for your dental practice?

There is a lot of talk about social media marketing for business. Some dental practices are jumping on the social media bandwagon. Other dental practices have an intuitive hunch that there is something to all of this, but they’re just not yet sure what it is. In the blog I will include from dental social media tips to get you started.

With social media, dentists can easily share their knowledge and become a real person, not just a name and a logo. Regardless of where your practice is in its social media marketing evolution – just starting out, or already an expert – here are some strategies that will help:

Why do you need to think about social media for dentists now?

• Create a credible and real image – show that there are real people behind the dentistry, and you are on top of all the latest techniques and research.
• Using social media helps boost your website traffic – include links in posts to your website. If people are interested in your services, they will click through to discover more about your practice.
• Social media improves your SEO rankings – using relevant keywords and tags.
• You can have fun – get creative with your social media accounts, make dentistry more familiar and approachable to patients.
• Keep up with your competitors as this is the future of marketing. Get on top of social media to attract the potential patients searching online before your competitors do.

Forward-thinking dental practices are beginning to understand the significance of being visible on social media.

Dental social media tips

Tip 1 – Attract new dental patients through visibility

Marketing has changed. Today, marketing is about engaging with communities and delivering products and services with stories that spread. Increased top-of-mind awareness with existing patients leads to more referrals.

Word-of-mouth advertising has been around forever – but today the widespread use, ease and scalability of social media tools has meant that work of mouth has moved online.

Studies have shown that a very low percentage of your existing patients actually know (or think about) the scope of services that you offer. Publishing content and educating current patients about a wide variety of related topics through your blog and social media directly leads to increased knowledge, awareness, referral potential and greater case acceptance.

Tip 2 – Increase dental patient loyalty through culture

In the old days, most practices believed that their brand primarily centred on a logo and static website. Not anymore. Successful practice brands are about online connections, likeable transparency and dynamic content.

They also pick up on a very powerful message – that you listen, care, are open and honest and that you treat people, not teeth. The perception is that you are leading edge in everything you do – including your dental services.

Promotions, offers, contests, check-ins and deals create interest and viral buzz – people enjoy sharing them! Contests and giveaways can range from extremely simple and inexpensive to more complex and costly. Either way, when compared to traditional marketing (magazine ads, direct mail, billboards, etc), these types of promotions provide great value and traction.

Tip 3 – Create dental practice growth with a mindset change

By embracing social media marketing strategies effectively in a dental practice you can attract more clients. By thinking about your clients in this way through social media, a dental practice develops mindset – an attitude about doing business and marketing which is independent of tools.

Social media storytelling reinforces through text and visuals (photos and video), that what you are doing matters. And while we don’t mean to oversell this benefit, we have seen these outward manifestations of in-practice cultures not only strengthen patient relationships and increase business but also positively impact team dynamics as well.

The dental practices that most successfully use social media marketing are the ones committed to business on a deeply personal level. These are the practices that consider revenue increases both in terms of traditional, short-term ROI and as a natural, long-term outgrowth of better serving people.

Tip 4 – Have fun

The most successful and ‘liked’ activities on social media have some common threads. Use these as guidelines for your activity

• Fun – Successful practices make this fun for team members and patients. It’s not a chore.
• Do The Unexpected – Throw out the boring and be a little adventuresome. It won’t kill you.
• Be Involved In The Community – Nearly EVERY thriving practice does some good in their community. And, they talk about it online.
• Highlight Individual Patients – Patients are typically HAPPY and ANXIOUS to help you in your efforts. Just kindly ask!
• Share Team Members’ Personalities – Patients and prospective patients become loyal to people they KNOW and LIKE.

Tip 5 – Work with a dental marketing expert

We know that you are busy, so we can take the hard work out of keeping your dental social media pages fresh with our dental social media marketing services. We will post content to keep your social media profiles current while giving your patients and prospective patients the right mix to educate, inspire and inform while sending the patient back to your website to find out more about you.

Not only will we create new social media content for you, we’ll also schedule and post on your behalf. Find out more about our dental social media marketing services.