Unlocking Social Media Success for Dental Practices: Why Consistency is Key
For a lot of dental practices, social media may be a (surprisingly) effective tool you’ve been neglecting in your dental marketing strategy. To be fair, there are so many working pieces that go into a prosperous dental social media marketing strategy—it’s easy to get overwhelmed by your impact online if you don’t know where to look for results.
But in the same way that regular brushing and flossing keep those teeth and gums in good shape, consistency online can turn an underperforming social account into a lead-generation magnet for your practice.
So if you’re in the “what do I do next?” boat when it comes to social media marketing for dental practices, climb aboard—we are about to navigate the why and how behind social media.
Why You Can’t Escape Social Media
Patients will do their due diligence before they get to the “book an appointment” stage of the finding a provider process. This includes asking friends and family for referrals, checking social media pages, Google research, and reading reviews. Having an active social media presence gives you a leg up on your competition.
It might feel like leaving your dental Facebook page to its own devices is enough, but consider this: Facebook comprises 71.6% of all web traffic referrals from social media. That’s a huge opportunity for your dental practice to be driving traffic to your website.
If those prospective patients land on a Facebook page that has zero reviews, no posts since 2020, and outdated hours, you’ve given them several reasons to seek help elsewhere. Instead, give them a reason to stay, get to know you, and book their first appointment. This is what we call “social proof.”
It goes even deeper than looking alive online. Social media marketing gives search engine algorithms more channels to connect with and boost your site. You’ll rank higher on Google and Google Maps. It goes without saying that improving your SEO is a key component of your marketing strategy and any support you can get there is valuable.
What Active Participation Looks Like
Some marketers might debate the best marketing strategies for dentists, but these recommendations are our baseline for active participation online:
- Post on your social media channels 3-5 times per week (may vary depending on the platform)
- Use branded graphic designs to develop a recognizable brand online
- Balance graphics with in-house photography and video so people can get to know you and your practice
- Respond to comments (in a HIPAA-compliant manner) and engage with followers
- Repurpose social media posts and keep your Google Business profile updated
- Leverage the social media publisher for success and consistency
Your social media platforms should be the proverbial olive branch to new and current patients. It can be the place where they get to know your personality and get comfortable and confident about your practice and care.
What’s Holding You Back From Social Media Success
It sounds easy enough in theory, but thousands of practice owners struggle with finding the right balance online. With all the demands on practice owners and/or dentists, it’s easy to see why social media falls to the bottom of the to-do list.
Time and Trends
You might be feeling overwhelmed with all your platform options, keeping up with trends, understanding app functions, or having an overall purposeful strategy for social media. (No one likes spending an hour on a post that gets 2 views). If you’re ready to get serious about having fun on social media, you’ve got two options.
1. Commit to in-house social media management. Give a staff member designated time and resources to get a handle on your social media marketing. Have them start with these great ideas to improve social media for dentists. Make sure they know how to stay HIPAA compliant online.
2. Choose a dental marketing company and give yourself the benefits that come with partnering with experts. Social media marketing can be quickly and efficiently executed, all while staying on top of trends.
Graphic Design
Cute and fun graphic design is especially great for social media marketing ideas for pediatric dentists, but every dental marketer should be taking advantage of AI to help with this task. AI isn’t just for creating written content, you can use AI in dental marketing to speed up graphic design.
Lack of Consistency
Sporadic social media posting is about as effective as flossing once a year. Showing up consistently makes all the difference. You’ll have increased views and more engagement, and you’ll be surprised at how much easier it gets once you have a purposeful strategy.
Solutions for Social Media Success for Dentists
We’re consistently focusing on streamlining social media management for group practices so you don’t have to struggle with any of these issues. You just have to know where to look for help.
Outsource It
Investing in social media and dental marketing help will give you an all-over advantage. You can get back to supporting your staff and patients while being confident you are doing everything you can to grow your practice.
Connect With Your Community
Utilize the social aspect of social media by connecting with local businesses, organizations, and events. One easy way to do this is to partner for a giveaway. Take a look at how to run a successful social media giveaway.
Plan on participating in at least a couple of charitable events throughout the year. Giving practices always have opportunities to create great social media content. Everyone wins because you can get locals involved in a worthy cause while demonstrating your practice’s investment and care for the community.
Partner with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a huge (and largely untapped) marketing strategy for dentists. Influencers have a curated audience that has a high amount of trust. Their recommendations are extremely important. Find local influencers (using hashtags on Instagram for example) that you can partner with to get your practice in front of a new audience.
Create Video Content
Video content sounds intimidating, but it can be a really fun and unique way to create content. You can create tutorials, before-and-afters, interviews, patient reviews, and more on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. That’s right, TikTok isn’t just for teenagers, you can make a splash as a practice on TikTok, too.
Use AI to Your Advantage
Don’t be the last to use artificial intelligence in your dental marketing. You can use tools like Midjourney to design unique graphics and ChatGPT or Bard to help you accomplish your content creation goals. Get blog ideas and outlines or build out a month’s worth of social media caption ideas.
Build Out Your Blog
Blogging is a great way to strengthen your website performance and establish authority as a dental professional. Blogs can be repurposed on social media as links, but one blog could easily equal as many as 5-6 social media posts when broken down into small digestible pieces of information.
This is why blogging is part of social media. Unfortunately, no one wants to do it, so why not outsource it?
Rely On Your Team
Get your staff excited about promoting and sharing on social media. You can brainstorm ideas about how to get more likes on your Facebook page or run an internal competition to get more traction on social media. You have a great and creative team at your disposal—get them involved.
Why Outsourcing with My Social Practice Can Make All the Difference
Consistency with social media is a struggle. Even if you are ambitious and motivated at the beginning, things can quickly fizzle out and you’re back where you started. My Social Practice not only has a team of marketing professionals who have focused exclusively on dental marketing for years, but also the greatest tools for sourcing, scheduling, and posting on social media with confidence and consistency.
Get a demo of our premium dental social media service where we do everything for you.
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental marketing team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping practices grow through SEO for dentists. If you’d like to book one of the members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of dental SEO or our dental website service, please give us a call.
