Are you looking to take your dental practice to the next level? Do you want to use social media for dentists to grow your business?
There are over 3.5 billion social media users online, equating to 45% of the total population. This number does not show any signs of slowing down or stopping. There is no denying that social media is the new way to connect and communicate in this digital age.
Now, are you leveraging social media to the fullest?
As with most successful businesses, social media plays a vital role in their marketing strategy.
After reading this comprehensive article, you will be able to clearly answer the following:
- Why is social media important for dentists?
- What are the best social media applications to focus on?
- What are the best social media practices to keep in mind?
If you think you won’t have enough time to dedicate to social media marketing, our experts can assist you.
Benefits of Social Media for Dentists
Social media provides many unique opportunities that your business can make great use of.
Reach More People Online
With everyone spending more and more time on their phones, social media provides you with an outlet to showcase your dental practice to the world. This can reach thousands of potential customers that you may have not been aware of. It serves as an extension to increase the visibility of your dental practice.
Especially as a small business, it is an easy and effective way to get your dental brand noticed. With increased traffic to your website, it means that you are getting more opportunities to attract new patients.
Develop Long-Lasting Relationships
Building trust is an important foundation in creating meaningful relationships. Not only can social media drive traffic, but it can also establish your dental business as a reputable and credible authority. As a result, people are more inclined to trust your small business.
By engaging with customers and followers on your social media pages, it provides another line of communication for your audience base. They become more confident that you care about their needs, and this is another way to build trust.
Gaining consumer trust is critical to strengthening and maintaining your patient relationships. Their loyalty is valuable and can help grow your dental practice.
Improve Your Reputation
When people are searching for healthcare providers, they scout the web, reading reviews, and checking websites, to see if the healthcare option is trustworthy. Similar to the last point, trust is essential in fostering meaningful relationships with new and existing clients. Fortunately, social media allows you to build credibility and manage your reputation.
With patient reviews and social proof, building a positive reputation in your community will attract new dental clients and increase traffic to your business.
Top Social Media Platforms to Get Started On
Now that you understand how social media can expand your business, you can start creating dental social media accounts for the various platforms. With trending social media applications exponentially growing in terms of users, each medium has a unique audience. By catering your content to the different audience groups, you maximize your chance of converting potential customers.
It can be overwhelming to pick what social media channels to begin on, but this section will tell you that and more.
Over 1.6 billion users visit Facebook daily. This solidifies Facebook as one of the most popular social media outlets. It has over 2.4 billion monthly active users and contains a wide demographic.
With this size and number, having a social media presence on here is a must. Also, it is a great place to build strong relationships with your audience and collect customer reviews.
Some ideas you could do on Facebook are:
- Respond to customer reviews
- Link to blog posts or relevant news related to dentistry
- Provide updates about your dental practice
- Share meaningful information with your followers
- Provide tips on dental care and oral hygiene
From a business perspective, Facebook can attract new customers through ads and marketing campaigns. Facebook Ads offers dentists an affordable and effective way to promote their business by targeting audiences based on gender, location, age, interest, and other factors. Learn more about retargeting these ads for those who have already visited your website. Having highly targeted ads ensures that your dental practice gets your ad content to the right people at the right time.
This maximizes your chances of converting them into a client. Additionally, Facebook lets you spread your content to friends of friends. When your target audience sees your Facebook content, their friends see them as well, increasing the reach of your marketing efforts.
200 million daily Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily Instagram is another powerful platform to grow your business with. Although it is owned by Facebook, there are unique features that differentiate it from other social media applications.
The demographic on Instagram primarily consists of relatively young people. Over 67% of adults under 30 years old use Instagram. This demographic is a market opportunity for you to appeal to younger clients by focusing on the beauty side of dentistry.
A unique aspect of Instagram is that it is highly centered around visuals, both images and audio. It is the perfect platform to highlight your dental practice and tell your brand story in a visually appealing manner. For example, you can post before and after photos of dental procedures like teeth whitening and filling.
View this post on Instagram
Other Instagram dental content ideas are:
- Team member spotlights
- Behind the scenes footage of your business through Instagram Stories
- Repost images patients take in your office
- Customer appreciation posts
- Event promotion
Do you want more Instagram content ideas to maximize your success on this platform? Book a free appointment with us!
YouTube
With over 2 billion login-in monthly users, YouTube competes with Facebook in terms of usage and audience size. Many people use this platform as their preferred media content source.
This is a great opportunity to display your dental practice to millions of people. This level of visibility is something you should not pass by upon.
A benefit of YouTube is that it enables your dental brand to access an unlimited amount of video hosting. This means that you have a consistent and affordable way to publish video content that can drive traffic to your website and influence conversions.
Some YouTube dental content ideas are:
- Dental procedure walkthroughs
- Patient testimonials
- Office tours
- Dental tips and best practices
- Q&A sessions
Creating informative, educational, or entertaining videos will help you form trust with potential and existing customers. This trust can develop into a long-lasting relationship between you and your clients. Here are other ways to do video marketing as a dental practice.
Social Media for Dentists – Top 4 Tips
After you have decided what social media platforms to focus on, now it’s time to create a dental social media marketing plan. Social media is more than just posting pictures and using trendy hashtags. It requires skills to get effective results and meet specific goals.
Regardless of what social media outlets you choose, these general tips are applicable to the top social media sites.
Create and Share Engaging Content
One of the best ways to increase the visibility of your dental practice is by sharing and creating valuable content. If you think about it, people go on social media to be entertained. You can create videos, surveys, contests, polls, blog posts, or Q&A sessions to get your audience involved. Manage your social media initiatives by using a dental social media calendar.
Focus on creating original content that appeals to your audience and their needs. By doing so, you are more likely to get their attention. For example, Instagram is a highly visual platform and so visually appealing content is best here.
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The key point here is to provide your audience with meaningful content and information. This will keep your followers engaged and bring more interactions to your social media accounts. If the content is entertaining or useful, followers may even share it with friends and family.
This is also a great way to position yourself as a knowledgeable and credible figure within the dental industry. Once again, as people are more likely to trust what you say, you can build strong relationships with your clients.
Some dental content ideas are:
- Create appreciation posts for staff members or loyal customers
- Discuss different dental procedures
- Debunk common dental myths
- Highlight a surprising fact about dentistry
- Share positive customer reviews
- Offer promotional deals to new patients
As you can see, there is an endless amount of ideas that you can create content around. If you need more inspiration on how to engage your current and potential clients, we can help you with that and more.
Be Consistent
Especially with the rapid pace of social media, people can easily lose interest in your dental practice and move on to another one. It makes it that much more important to be consistent with postings and comments.
Depending on your goals and resources, you should aim to post daily or every other day. Being active on social media shows that you care for your clients and their needs. Becoming inactive or less responsive can negatively affect your dental practice.
A way to remain consistent is to create a content calendar. A content calendar will help you plan ahead and prevent you from running out of content ideas.
For your calendar, you can assign topics to specific days of the week. For example, Thursdays can be reposting old content that did well. Saturdays can be a weekly appreciation post.
The main takeaway is to stay active on social media to maximize engagement.
Be Personal
Although the purpose of your social media accounts is to drive engagement, not all of your posts have to sell your dental services. People want to see the human side of your social media pages. A great way to do this to be personal in posts interacting with clients. You can also send home dental newsletters to your patients.
Creating posts personalized to your brand and audience can greatly benefit your dental practice. Posts that encourage interaction through likes, comments, and shares are also an easy way to boost engagement. Keep in mind that you want to talk with your followers, not at them.
View this post on Instagram
Following HIPAA guidelines, you want to add dramatic before and after images to showcase your patients’ stories and emphasize how your dental clinic helped them. The ideal case is when patients post on their own social media accounts and you can simply share it.
There is a balance between being professional and personal on social media. If all of your posts are clinical or professional, patients may find your content lacking and unfollow. On the other hand, if your content is all personal, your followers may feel that there is no information on here that would help them.
Also, it never hurts to include a dental joke or meme every now and then.
Generate Reviews
Over 90% of people read online reviews. This means that online customer reviews play a critical role in influencing our decision to purchase a product or service. As a business owner, leveraging customer reviews can attract more patients to your dental practice.
It serves as social proof to prospective customers. Conveniently, this is a also good way to establish trust and credibility in your dental brand. As the amount of customer testimonials increases, so does the level of satisfaction from choosing that business.
A simple way to generate reviews is to ask satisfied clients to leave reviews on your social media pages. They are more willing to do this because they are happy with the results of a dental visit or procedure.
Most importantly, this shows your followers that you value their opinions and thoughts. Their problems and concerns matter to your dental practice and you want to help them solve their problems.
As a result, by choosing your dental practice, clients know that they will be a top priority here. They feel comfortable and safe in choosing a dental business where they are valued.
Recap of Social Media for Dentists
Being in a digital age, social media has become ever so more important in connecting people across the globe. If you see the significance of building a social media presence, you can start implementing social media into your marketing strategy.
By building an online community, you create a space to share your dental practice’s story and show what you can offer to prospective patients. You can begin to form worthwhile relationships and establish yourself as a figure of authority.
Interested in learning more about how to leverage social media for your dental clinic? Our experts at YoYoFuMedia can help you strategize a dental marketing campaign to reach your goals.
Suggested Resources for Your Dental Practice:
