Run These Dental Office Facebook Contest Ideas For Growth
Social media engagement from patients and fans grows your dental practice’s audience and gives you top-of-mind awareness. But with so many posts flooding followers’ feeds, sometimes you need to give them a compelling reason to interact with your content.
An important measure of the effectiveness of a dental social media post is how much engagement it gets. Whether it’s Likes, shares, emoji’s, comments, or clicks, these types of engagement signal to other users and Facebook’s content algorithm that what you’re posting is worth people’s attention. Thus, engagement leads to MORE engagement as more people in your community take notice of a post and Facebook displays it to a wider audience.
Getting consistent engagement on your posts helps ensure that your fans continue seeing your posts — keeping you at the top of their minds — and your practice’s name reaches more of the people most likely to become new patients.
Engagement is crucial to growing a business with social media, so one of the most important questions is “how do we get our fans to interact with what we post?” The answer certainly isn’t tacking “Please Like and comment!” to the end of everything you post. Mostly, it just comes down to regularly sharing things that are useful, relevant to followers’ interests, or just something that makes them smile!
However, quality content alone doesn’t always guarantee engagement. So, occasionally you can take a more strategic approach: run a campaign or contest to give fans a clear reason to Like, share, or comment on a post.
Run Facebook Contests That Give Fans A Reason To Like And Share
People love the opportunity to win a prize or support a good cause just by interacting with a social media post! Even the chance to win a $10 gift card or have your practice donate a can to a local food bank is enough to get patients and fans to Like, comment and share.
The reason we recommend doing this weekly rather than daily is that you don’t want patients and fans to feel as though your social media pages only exist to “farm” Likes. Daily asking for engagement can annoy fans and cause them to unfollow. You’ll want a good mix of dental practice content. We believe that the 80/20 rule applies. About 80% of your content should be fun and engaging content and the other 20% should be educational and clinical.
Depending on the size and nature of your dental practice, don’t feel limited to only writing about dentistry. In fact, if you get creative with your content, you will reach the most people in your local area. Try to write about different things that affect the lives of your dental patients. If you can get them thinking about your practice in a completely personal way, it could be the factor that convinces them to check out your website and give your office a call.
Done correctly, practice contests and campaigns can do wonders for increasing your audience and online visibility, especially if you’re just starting out on social media for your dental practice.
Small Giveaways Are Great Social Media Icebreakers
If there’s one thing none of us can resist, it’s an easy opportunity to win a cool prize. So, if you feel like your dental marketing efforts have fallen into a rut, mixing a few small giveaways into your social media routine is the perfect way to spark some engagement!
Plus, you don’t have to spend a lot on prizes. You’ll get much the same results with a $20 prize as with a $50 one. Taking note of this, many of our client practices give away a small prize every week — some call it “Win It Wednesday” — and only spend $40 per month on prizes, a small part of their marketing budget that offers great returns.
So get creative with your team and brainstorm some small prizes that fans would appreciate and fun ways to enter to win. Promotions give patients and fans a good reason to stay engaged with your social media pages and share your practice with family and friends. Also, check out these essential tips to running a giveaway that helps you accomplish your marketing goals.
Dental Office Facebook Contest Ideas Give Fans a Reason to Engage
Some of the best dental office Facebook contest ideas are highlighted in our Practice of the Month winners. This is what Kathy had to say about the success they’ve found with campaigns and contests:
“Call-to-action posts are the ones that are most successful for us, even if the content does not include a giveaway. People like commenting on our posts when there is an end goal that they can help accomplish through their interaction.”
—Kathy Graham, Treman & Treman Family Dental Care
So as you run dental office Facebook contest ideas and build your social media mix, make sure to run the contests by asking followers to Like, share or comment — and give them a good reason to participate. Earning consistent engagement will keep your practice’s name showing up in the news feeds of your patients, fans, and ideal potential patients.
One easy way to encourage engagement is by including an incentive with the contest. Facebook contests can be anything from simple trivia questions (which dentist has appeared on the cover of People Magazine?) to photo contests (your friend’s favorite breakfast cereal) or even sweepstakes giving away prizes like free dental work.
This example from Dr. David McSurdy and Staff is a great example of promoting healthy habits and tying that into a dental contest idea. Dr. David McSurdy caption the photo: “ARE YOU UP FOR THE CHALLENGE? Summer is in full swing and we want to make sure everyone is staying hydrated! Comment below with the words H20 for a chance to win a new McSurdy cup! Two lucky winners will be chosen at random on Monday, August 19th. #drinkmorewater #drmcsurdyrocks #weloveourpatients”
The use of hashtags helped this post reach more people – Check out all of those comments!
Getting consistent engagement on your posts helps ensure that your fans continue seeing your posts — keeping you at the top of their minds — and your practice’s name reaches more of the people most likely to become new patients. As you run dental office Facebook contest ideas and build your social media mix, make sure to run the contests by asking followers to Like, share or comment — and give them a good reason to participate. Earning consistent engagement will keep your practice’s name showing up in the news feeds of your patients, fans, and ideal potential patients.
Find out more about how smart digital marketing helps new patients find you by requesting a free demo of our social media services!
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental social media team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping dental practices grow. Interested in learning more about the benefits of social media for dentists please schedule a complimentary consultation. And, don’t forget to read our Google My Business reviews.
