Oh, the magic of Social Media! Don’t you love it?
Did you know how Gen Z searches for products and services?
No, it’s not Google! It’s TikTok!
What does this mean to your practice? It means that the mediums we use to communicate with our audience change and will continue changing. And as with most things, staying ahead of the game helps you to stay in the game.
This is why we have compiled a few tips to help you navigate through the social media realm. Chances are that you have a marketing agency or a dedicated in-house team but we also meet a lot of dentists who post on their social media platforms themselves or with the help of their teams. Whatever situation you’re in, we hope that those tips will inspire you to objectively look at your practice’s (brand’s) online presence and see if applying a tweak here and there can boost your number of new patients and increase loyalty from your current ones.
Be authentic.
Authenticity breeds trust, and trust is the currency of social media interactions. Show your practice’s day-to-day, give your audience a sneak peek behind the scenes. Show them the fun side!
While your exam rooms should always be polished and manicured, your content doesn’t. Make it real, show your and your team’s funny and light side, and watch your engagement grow.
Focus on building rapport and trust with your audience rather than on selling. Offer genuine advice, share insights, and actively listen to their needs. Engaging with your followers makes them feel seen by you and creates a connection so reply to your followers’ comments or better, comment in a way that encourages further conversation.
Be consistent. Post regularly, it’s advised that you do it at least 3 times a week. To help you with this, create a monthly content calendar with “buckets”: As an example: Mondays- motivation, Tuesdays- behind the scenes post, Wednesdays- education: “Did you know…?” or “How To?” post, Thursdays- Patient/team highlight, Fridays- fun reel/ post. You can mix in 1 question team interviews, Doctor’s Tip Tuesday, patient testimonials, practice news, your neighborhood news (related to your practice), etc.
Watch trends– can any of the current trends apply to your practice? Again, you don’t need to hop on every trend but if an Instagram trending audio matches your practice’s voice- use it!
Ensure that your potential patients know how to reach you. Provide clear contact information, including your website, email, phone number, etc. in your profile’s bio. Linktree is a great tool for providing links and additional info that doesn’t fit in your bio. Consistency is key, so use the same handle across all platforms for easy identification, ideally you want your handle to match your practice’s name.
Monitor your brand aka social listening. Regularly monitor discussions and mentions related to your practice or industry. Address any comments or complaints promptly and professionally.
Make sure you follow hashtags that relate to you, like your practice name or slogan.
Giveaways are a great way to boost your visibility on social media. A power flosser combined with a gift card to one of your local businesses can turn people who didn’t know you existed into lifelong patients. And that’d for a very minimal cost, the potential ROI on this can be huge!
Be consistent with your branding. Think of your favorite clothing brand. Can you imagine their logo? Their social posts or their website? You would probably be able to recognize their branding even without their name on the post. Strive to treat your brand the same way. Stick to your brand colors, image style, tone of voice, etc. Use Canva to help you with this and check out our own Instagram page to see how we’re doing it!
Absolutely not!
Each marketing approach done right will result in growing your patient base. Social media is free, and it’s estimated that over 5 BILLION people use it in 2024. That includes your ideal patient who doesn’t know about you yet.
