While connecting with friends and family on social media is very cut and try, effectively using these sites for businesses is much more difficult. To make matters more confusing, the tactics used for B2B companies can be vastly different from what will work for local. With so many different ways to engage an audience, how is a dentist supposed to know what will work for his/her practice.
Implementing a robust social strategy can take a lot of time and money, so we thought we would start small. Below are the 3 easiest things you can do to start implementing a social media campaign for your dental practice.
1. Have a Great Business Profile
Having social media profiles that look great is extremely important. People are going to judge the quality of your dental services by what they see online. We strongly recommend hiring a professional outfit to come in a design a custom FB & Twitter profile. This will ensure when people visit your page, at the very least, they won’t get a negative impression of your professional ability. Below are the 3 things that must be done right with your business profile.
- Great Looking Profile & Background Images – Within FB and Twitter, you have the ability to add a custom profile & background image. It is absolutely critical that these look professional and represent your practice in a positive way. Make sure you avoid using an outdated, ugly logo or background pictures that don’t make sense.
- Robust Catalogue of Pictures – Current and potential customers that engage with your social profiles are looking to get to know your dental practice. Having nice looking pictures of you and your staff make it much easier to form an emotional connection.
- Accurate Practice Details – I can’t tell you how many dental profiles I seen on FB that don’t have the right business information. This could be anything from the correct address & phone number to accurate operating hours. To take full advantage of social media, it’s critical to provide the right business details.
2. Give Users a Reason to Follow Your Profile
You have a few different options with how you can give users a reason to follow your business on FB & twitter. However, the two easiest ways is with exclusive promotions and/or interesting updates.
- Exclusive Promotions – This is the easiest way to start generating social engagement. If you offer some kind of promotion users can only get from your FB or Twitter profile, you will definitely start getting some followers. If you are just starting to leverage social, you may have to promote these special offers offline. Having a small print ad customers can pick up when they come in your office is an easy way to start getting some traction.
- Interesting Updates – Offering interesting updates can vary from practice to practice. This seems to work better for the dentists that offer a more technical service; however, the general idea is the same. You want to start providing answers to people’s questions. This could be about the latest dental practices or about new medical research. The idea is to be the expert in your space and offer a perspective that the general population finds interesting.
3. Contribute to the Dental Community
There’s no question Google is rewarding dental practice that are effectively leveraging social media. When they see your business profile is getting likes and shares, it’s a social signal of engagement. One of the easiest ways to start driving some new, qualified likes is within the dental community.
FB Groups are a great way to contribute to the industry. We encourage you to spend 30 to 60 min a week interacting with the different communities. This will give you a chance to network with others in your space and drive some additional engagement.
There’s no question social media affects how your website performs in Google and the other search engines. If you create a nice looking profile, offer promotions/interesting content, and interact within the dental community, you can start to see the benefits from FB, Twitter, and Instagram.