A Beginners Guide To Using Hashtags for Your Dental Social Media

Hashtags are used on social media channels and are important in your business – you may be missing a trick if you’re not using them. Here is some info about what hashtags are and why you need them!

What are #hashtags?

• A word that beings with a hash symbol ‘#’ (sometimes called a ‘pound’ symbol)
• A way of categorising content
• A way of filtering content (e.g. click on the hashtag to find all updates with this hashtag)
• A way of making your content a little more fun/interesting (e.g. #justsayin)
• A way of letting people know what you are talking about (e.g. using the hashtag of an event or a TV program)

Why are hashtags useful?

Hashtags are a great way of grouping a related conversation together on social media channels.  For example, you might be at a conference and there is a hashtag for the conference.

You can filter out the conversation to engage with people at the conference, promote your products/services using the hashtag and more. But if you use too many hashtags – or the wrong ones – that is not going to help you get the additional exposure you want.

What platforms do you use hashtags on?

• Twitter – Very popular on Twitter and well worth using.  Use no more than two hashtags for any tweet and try not to use really broad hashtags (e.g. #sport).
• Instagram – You wouldn’t leave home without your umbrella in Ireland and you shouldn’t share Instagram posts without some hashtags!  Instagram is where hashtags are used the most.
• Facebook – When you come across a hashtag on Facebook, you can click on the hashtag and view a filtered list of updates that include that hashtag. As hashtags are not always considered on Facebook, you are probably only capturing a very small percentage of the conversation on Facebook.
• Pinterest – They are clickable within pin descriptions but not searchable.
• Google+  – When you click on a hashtag, you see a list of communities, people and posts relevant to the hashtag.

Using #hashtags

You may also want to use hashtags in your posts and promotions. Use hashtags sparingly, do not put too many in your posts on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. When using hashtags with Instagram, you can use more than on other social media platforms.

The following are the most commonly used hashtags relating to dentistry

#dentist
#dentistry
#dental
#dentists
#dentalmarketing
#smile
#teeth
#cosmeticdentistry#cosmeticdentist
#dentistoffice
#lovedentistry
#dentistforkids
#dentistrylove
#pediatricdentist
#dentistappointment
#dentalassistant
#dentalhygiene
#dentalhygienist
#dentalcare
#dentalwork
#dentalclinic
#dentaloffice
#dentlhumour
#dentaltechnician
#dentalimplant
#dentalsurgery
#dentalhealth

Dental social media marketing

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.