So much has been written on the Practice Builders blog about dental marketing ideas. However, one aspect that often gets overlooked is a more generic approach to using social media to growing your dental practice.
What should dentists or dental practice marketers be thinking about? What are the sure-shot strategies dentists can implement to get a healthy ROI on their social media investment? How to create and share effective social media content?
After interacting with dozens of dental practitioners, we’ve compiled three super important social media tips that dentists should consider to make the most of their social media presence. Let’s dive in!
Get expert tips here if your current dental social media plan isn’t delivering results.
Ways to Grow Your Dental Practice With Social Media
Successful social media marketing is achieved when you set clear goals, understand your target audience, create and share relevant content, choose the right platforms, and commit to making every marketing campaign driven by social media.
1. Commit yourself
The first thing dental practice marketers can do to ensure success is to commit themselves to improve their social media presence.
Like any other form of healthcare marketing, social media for dentists can be a real challenge. It’s hard to grow a target audience, create compelling content, and increase user engagement. All too often, we see dental practices giving up on social networks after just a few months.
Our experience says that it often takes months to really get the hang of social media marketing. Not only to ensure a regular content stream but also to figure out what your target audience wants and what they don’t.
It all starts with social media planning for dentists. Create a social media strategy and communicate the same to your marketing team to hold them accountable. Your strategy should include a mission statement, content plan, and short- and long-term goals. Most importantly, your strategy should include a powerful statement on “why” people would follow your brand on social media, what type of content you plan on creating and sharing, and what results you are hoping to achieve.
2. Don’t spread yourself too thin
Social networks are lucrative. You might feel tempted to try every platform and be everywhere at once. We recommend that you don’t succumb to these urges! You need to understand that you’re strapped for resources, and trying to establish a presence on every single platform will be financially and mentally draining. Also, by focusing on several social networks simultaneously, you won’t be able to do justice to any of them.
It may seem counterintuitive, but try to focus your efforts on two or three platforms that give you the best return on investment. Creating content specific to each platform is essential because the content that will attract clicks and shares on LinkedIn is different from what works on Facebook or Instagram, or Twitter.
3. Offer patient support
Patients are increasingly turning to social networks for service, which can be intimidating to a dental practice that is not offering online support. We understand that offering online patient support can be a challenge, but it can also be a significant opportunity for your practice.
For starters, the simple belief that online patient support is becoming standard for most dental practices means that not offering this service may put your practice at a disadvantage. On the flip side, dental practices ahead of the curve can win patients’ points for being accommodating and available. The more helpful you are as a doctor, the more positive word of mouth publicity will spread across the various networks.
Online patient support can help your dental practice marketing efforts by improving your practice’s online reputation.
Conclusion
Remember, there is no “secret” for leveraging social networks to grow your dental practice. Instead, there are small tips and strategies (we’ve just shared with you three of the many such tips) that can help you build a strong presence on platforms that are prime for patient engagement. Also, your passion will help you generate unique content.
Success on social networks is a long road. As we mentioned, it will likely take you months of hard work to get to a point where you feel good about your social media presence. If you do not have experienced dental practice marketing professionals to manage your social media presence consistently, contact the experts.
Practice Builders specialized dental marketing company in helping dental professionals leverage social networks to grow their practices. Our experts are experienced in planning and implementing social media strategies that help dentists get the desired results. Ready to grow your dental practice using social media?