Social media is an extremely powerful tool in any industry—and this includes dentistry. There are a lot of advantages to social media and, if used properly, it can help with both growing your business and retaining your current patients.
Below is more about why you have to use social media in dentistry, along with how you can better use social media to grow your dental practice.
Why You Have to Use Social Media in Dentistry
There are a variety of advantages to using social media in the field of dentistry. Some of these include…
Marketing
Social media is a great way to get the word out there about your business! There are a variety of ways in which you can use social media to market your business—from organically connecting with patients and potential patients to paid ads.
Social media is another tool in your arsenal to grow your practice and retain your current patients.
Connecting with Patients
Along with reaching patients for marketing reasons, social media also helps you to connect with patients for bookings, answering questions, and more. You may find when you post something on your Facebook that a patient has a question, or a potential patient may reach out via messenger to see if you provide a specific service. These are just a couple of examples of how you can use social media to connect with patients.
Educating Patients
Social media can be an excellent educational tool. Many people follow social media accounts about dentistry to learn more about the field of dentistry in general, and others check these accounts to learn more about upcoming procedures. By posting videos and other content about the field, you can better educate your patients.
Announcements and Practice Updates
Sometimes you need to make announcements about your practice in a public way. This may include needing to close for a day, new hours, additional services, and more. Social media is a great way to make these announcements and ensure they are visible.
How You Can Use Social Media
Now that you know why social media is so important, let’s take a look at how you can use social media to grow your practice…
Post Fun and Relevant Content
Retention is important in any social media campaign. If you want to grow and retain your audience, you need to make sure you are posting fun and relevant content that your audience can connect with and enjoy.
This content may be a mixture of entertaining, educational, and otherwise helpful videos that encourages patients to visit your social media page again and again. With well-made content, you can also grab attention and drive new patients to your website.
In order to get patients to your website, you need to give them a reason to go there. While some of your content may be a little more general and focused on driving traffic to your services, other social media content can be focused on driving traffic to educational materials like a blog, videos, or even a podcast.
The point is staying front-of-mind with your patients and grabbing the attention of new patients. You can highlight your services, establish yourself as the best dentist in your area, and increase your bookings!
Stay Consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to social media! By keeping a schedule, your followers will know when to check for uploads and will consume more of your content. Social media companies also prefer consistent and frequent posting. The more you post on a consistent schedule, the higher the likelihood of getting in front of your audience more often.
Run Paid Ads
One major advantage of being on social media as a business is the ability to run paid ads. While you definitely want to grow your organic presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even YouTube, you will also likely need to run ads to get in front of a bigger audience. It’s no secret that social media platforms (especially Facebook) have throttled organic reach for company pages for years now. If you want to build your following on social and drive traffic to your website to increase bookings, you’ll need to run some paid ads.
With the right targeting, you’ll find that you can actually get leads for a reasonable price. Just make sure you fill out the demographic information and location you are looking to target. You don’t want to get a bunch of views and interactions from other states or even other countries!
Once you run a few ads, you can look at the analytics to see what is and isn’t successful. You can then optimize your posts and better your social media marketing campaigns.
Social Media Videos
Social media videos can be extremely fun and engaging. If you have a big personality, you can star in these videos and inform your patients about different dentistry services with a big smile on your face! Even if you aren’t great on camera, you can at least use some video of services you perform and narrate. If you have someone in your office that is great with social media and is fine being on camera, see if they are willing to shoot videos for you!
It’s also a great idea to ask your staff for their thoughts and bounce video ideas back and forth. You may find your staff (especially your younger staff) have some great video ideas and even ways to improve your videos!
Like with other types of social media posts, make sure you stay consistent with video posting as well. Social media platforms are pushing short-form videos right now, so it’s a great time to jump on the trend!
Start Posting!
Put together your social media calendar, brainstorm some post and video ideas, and start posting today! With the right social media campaign, you can see a big boost in bookings from both current and new patients!
