Many professionals in the medical industry don’t think of social media when listing ways to market themselves and their businesses. But with so many people on social media these days, it’s hard to think why medical professionals skip creating a presence on a platform where millions interact everyday, every minute, every hour.
Dentists fall victim to the “social media isn’t for my business” trap all the time. They focus their marketing efforts elsewhere, not realizing they are missing out on free access to an entire audience filled with people who all have teeth and will inevitably need a dentist at one point.
In fact, Dentistry iQ reports that 71% of consumers are likely to make a decision for purchase based on social media referrals. Meaning, when people need to make a decision to use a new business service, they are turning to Facebook to find reviews of that brand. Keep reading to get tips for social media for dental practices.
Tips to Help Your Dental Social Media Marketing
Get on the right platforms
Most businesses, especially dental practices, don’t need to be on all the social media platforms to have a good presence. However, your dental practice should be on the most popular platforms:
- Google+
Facebook is a great for business. With over 1 billion users and increasingly expensive options for business promotion, every business should find themselves with a Facebook business page. Twitter is a great platform for learning about new products and services. With over 200 million users, there are plenty of people to reach on Twitter who are looking for your type of service.
Google+ is the kicker. Sure, it’s not as popular as, lets say, Instagram. But your brand should be connected to Google in more ways that one. From Google Analytics to Google maps, your brand should be all over Google (including Google+). Plus, who wants to see nothing but pictures of teeth on Instagram?
If you’re still a little wary of these social spaces, there are super-easy-lemon-squeezy social media recipes out there to cleanse that timid palate.
Generate referrals
As mentioned above, social referrals are used by people to find new businesses all the time. If your dental practice focuses on building relationships with patients that lead to positive social media reviews and referrals, your social platforms will start gaining popularity quickly.
Use advertisements
To be truly successful in the social media space, sometimes you gotta pay to play. Facebook advertising campaigns can laser target people in your dental practice area with your desired demographic. Utilize ads strategically to gain likes, reviews and new patients to further reach your target audience.
Blog
If you are unsure of how many dental social media posts your dental office could possibly create everyday, one innovated marketing strategy you can try is adding a blog section on your website, creating weekly blog articles, and posting links to that blog on your social media. Creating blog posts on your website that relate to your audience (and are SEO friendly), and posting those blog post links on your social will actually increase your website traffic and overall web presence. But blogging is for the more sophisticated internet marketing campaign and is not necessary to start building an active presence on social media.
At the end of the day, what do have to lose except for a little time and creativity?
