Is Your Practice Ready For Dentist Social Media Marketing?
Before your dental or orthodontic practice dives into dental social media marketing, answer the questions below. Then, determine if you’re actually ready to start publishing content and building your audience.
For some of you reading you might already be involved in social media, this article is also for you. Ask yourself these dentists social media marketing questions to see if your current dental social media efforts are valuable.
Been pitched lately by your website provider or dental SEO marketing company because they’re now “added” a social media dental marketing solution to their list of services? Was part of their presentation that you wouldn’t need to do anything, that they would take everything off your plate?
More and more naïve (best case) and/or unscrupulous (worst case) dental marketers are trying to ride the social media wave. But they haven’t spent the time or have the know how to get actual results in social media. Save yourself a lot of pain and headaches by answering a few simple questions first.
Question #1: Do you understand the difference between FAKE social media and REAL social media in a dental or orthodontic practice?
Look at the three images below. They’re a good representation of what many inexperienced, self-proclaimed social media “experts” are selling. It’s likely that the practice below (we’ve blurred the name) now believes it “has” social media marketing.
We’re not blaming the practice. This mentality comes from decades of traditional dental marketing where, for example, a practice could simply write a check for a yellow pages ad, a billboard, or direct mail campaign and then forget about it.
New media (social media marketing) doesn’t work the same way that traditional marketing works.
Look over the three images below to get a good idea of what fake social media marketing looks like:
Now, take a look at what REAL social media dental posts should look like.
Question #2: Is your dental or orthodontic practice willing to claim your own “voice”?
If you’re serious about discovering the value of social media marketing for your dental or orthodontic practice, you MUST understand what your social media voice is.
Please read our post, “3 Reasons Why We Don’t (and shouldn’t) Take Over Your Dental Practice’s Social Media Voice”. After you read it, ask yourself if your practice is ready to claim your voice. Remember, you don’t have to learn how to do it alone. We’ll show you how. But, you must be willing to participate.
Without participation in creating content that is genuine, your social media efforts may not produce any results.
This is a big deal when it comes to understanding how social media can be effective.
Dental social media advertising content must be original, which means it needs to start inside of your practice. But don’t worry about how long it’s going to take. We provide practices with all of the tools to produce great content in a matter of minutes.
Question #3: Are you ready to truly become a giving, social business?
Sir Winston Churchill wisely said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Our experience working with thousands of dental and orthodontic practices has absolutely shown us there are several common threads among the practices that are most effective in their dentist social media marketing.
One of those threads is a giving attitude and a willingness to be introspective. What this means is that they are willing to be transparent in the creation of the content about their practice as well as their team.
Tools like Facebook and Twitter come and go. But this isn’t about the tools. Thoughtful dentist social media marketing develops a mindset—an attitude about doing business and marketing that’s independent of tools. It’s an attitude that creates stories that spread. And the best stories are those about you, your team, and your patients.
If you answered “Yes” to all three questions above, you’re ready for social media marketing in your practice.
Getting Started With Dentist Social Media Marketing
So what do you do now to get started in dentist social media marketing?
One great place to start is to get some tools to help you begin creating the right kind of content.
If you’ll take a moment to check out our Free Stuff page, you’ll find tons of great resources to help you get started with dentist social media marketing.
Our dental social media marketing experts are daily scouring the web to find post ideas that are relatable to the dental industry.
A great way to get all of the new free stuff is to
We’d love to work with your practice to help you attract new patients, increase patient loyalty, and achieve greater growth and practice fulfillment through the effective use of social media marketing. And if you can’t yet answer “yes” to the three questions above, that’s OK too. But don’t wait too long. It’s the right time to keep your practice on the leading edge. Don’t let these opportunities pass you by.
Adrian Lefler is the CEO and Co-Founder of My Social Practice and a recognized dental marketing expert with nearly two decades of experience. He is a trusted voice in dental marketing, AI in dentistry, and emerging technology, and he hosts BYTE SIZED, a podcast focused on dental AI, innovation, and technology.
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