Social Media Fundamentals for Dentists: 11 Best Practice to Help Grow Your Practice

Wish you had more social media followers, comments, and likes? Or maybe you already have a growing Facebook following, but how do you leverage that to get new patients? Social media strategy isn’t always easy for dental practices, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated either. 

Whether you’re already on social media or still in the planning phase, getting people to follow and engage with you might feel impossible. But it isn’t. This post will tell you what to expect from social media, which channels you should be on, and how to use them to get more patients in your office.

Social media can’t…

Replace your existing marketing efforts. Social media should be part of your digital marketing strategy, not the whole thing.

Deliver immediate results. Developing a following and monetizing your social channels won’t happen overnight. Patience and consistency are key. With a solid strategy in place, you will see results in time.

Social media can…

Help prospective patients find you, and decide if your practice is right for them. Many people use a dentist’s Facebook page to get a feeling for the practice. Is your office big or small? Are you into holistic health or a more traditional approach? Your Facebook page can say a lot. Potential patients may want to know your  practice’s:

    
• Address
    
• Contact information
    
• Hours

Help you develop relationships with current patients. Relevant and useful will help you keep the attention of your current patients.

Help you present yourself the way you want. Do you want to people to know you’re a friendly, progressive dentist who cares about the environment? Social media will help you communicate that.

Drive more potential patients to your website. Social media can actually help your website be more visible to search engines like Google. We’ll talk more about how that works later.

Develop a Game Plan

A key question to ask yourself is: Who do I want to reach? Think about the patients you currently have as well as the ones you would like to have.

Know Where to Post

You don’t need to have an account on every single social media site. In fact, you probably shouldn’t! As a dentist, you’re already busy enough; you don’t want to pour your energy into a social channel that won’t deliver great results. 

Which channels you should use depends on your practice, but these are the three we’ve found effective for most dentists:

    
1. Facebook
    
2. Linkedin
    
3. Blogging  

Why those three? And what does blogging have to do with social media for dentists? Let’s look at them one at a time.

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media channel in the world. In the United States, over 60% of the entire adult population is active on Facebook. If you’re a family dentist, know that a lot of parents use Facebook. Since parents are usually the primary decision maker when it comes to choosing a family dentist, it’s important to have a strong Facebook presence.

What Should I Post on Facebook?

Here are a few pointers before you start posting to Facebook:

Dental Advice

Add value to your Facebook page by regularly offering tidbits of dental or health advice. If you’re giving valuable information, people will want to follow you so they won’t miss your weekly tip. Not sure what kind of advice to offer? Think about things you do for your oral health that might not occur to your patients. Do you have an amazing brushing or flossing technique? Are certain foods especially harmful to your teeth? How can we prevent stains from coffee?

Special Offers & Discounts

Do you ever have new patient specials? Discounts for seniors or kids? Let everyone know on Facebook.

Don’t Post Too Much Promotional Content!

For every 10 Facebook posts, only two or three should be directly promoting your practice. The rest should be community content (a.k.a. content not actively trying to sell your services).

Keep Your Content Interesting

Don’t let your content get stale and repetitive. Make sure everything you post is either helpful or entertaining. Be funny if it fits with your brand.

Be Visual

Visual content gets attention. Find beautiful photos on Flickr and take photos of you and the team in the office.

If you don’t have many followers yet, try this: when current patients come in, mention your Facebook page, how to find it, and what value they’ll get from following you. 

LinkedIn

Many of your patients are probably on LinkedIn, but that’s not why LinkedIn is so important for dentists. For example, you may want to connect with a popular local orthodontist. Then you can refer your patients to her, and she may, in turn, refer patients to you.

Demographic Makeup

Not surprisingly, LinkedIn has fewer users than Facebook, but that isn’t important. We want quality, not quantity.

What Should I Post on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is different from Facebook. It’s more professional and generally more formal. Reflect those differences in your tone and in the content you post. 

Need some posting ideas?

Content About Dentistry

Remember, LinkedIn is your place to connect with people in industries similar to yours. This is the place to post higher-level articles about topics that might be confusing or uninteresting to your customer-centered Facebook audience.

Be a LinkedIn Author

Anyone can publish articles on LinkedIn. Not everyone does, though, and it’s a great way to build authority and credibility in your field. 

Here’s an example. Let’s imagine you’re using LinkedIn to find a doctor who will refer his TMJ patients to you.    

    
• Next, identify several medical professionals in your area on LinkedIn who you’d be interested in working with. (After you’ve entered a search term, also specify your location in the left search bar.   
    
• Make sure your LinkedIn privacy settings are set so people will see your name and headline when you visit their page. 
    
• Write an article and publish it on your LinkedIn page. 
    
• Then go to all those orthodontists’ pages. They’ll get a notification saying you were there, and if they click on your page, they’ll see that you’re a TMJ specialist.

Someone even wrote a LinkedIn article about finding strategic business partners on LinkedIn.

Blogging

Try searching Google for “Are blogs social media?” and you’ll get plenty of conflicting opinions. But that’s not the point. The point is, blogging can help you in many of the same ways social media can. • Creating a blog on your company website can help get traffic into your site
• Blogs provide a place for people to comment on your content and ask questions
• Blogs allow current and prospective patients to get to know you. 
• Blog posts give you content to post on Facebook that links back to your website.

Blogging is different from Facebook and LinkedIn. You choose who you want to write for (your target audience), then write about what will interest them. 

What Should I Post on My Blog?

Think about what your patients ask you when they come in the office. Do they have burning questions other dentists aren’t writing high quality and informative articles about?

Consider prospective patients too. Want patients who just graduated from college and are looking for a new dentist? Recent grads are often price-conscious, so write a post about the best ways to avoid expensive dental procedures.

For more ideas check Quora and Yahoo Answers. Just type dentistry related terms in the search bar to see what people are asking.

You can even use Google for blog topic ideas! Start typing a question about dentistry in the Google search bar. Before you finish typing, check Google’s autocomplete suggestions to see common related questions. You can use those as the basis for a blog post too.

Writing high quality blog posts takes time. Still, it’s important not to skimp on content. Aim for somewhere between 500 and 1500 words. Remember, longer, high-quality content holds up over time. It also tends to rank better in search engines like Google.

Promoting Your Blog 

How do you make sure those college grads see your post in the first place? 

One way is to post your blog posts as Facebook ads. How? 

Post your blog post on Facebook, then just click the blue “Boost Post” button in the bottom right to get started:

When you run a Facebook ad, you can target specific ages, incomes, and interests to make sure the right people see it. You can even create a custom audience for each blog post. You get that option after you click “Boost Post.”

Getting Started

Now hopefully you have what you need to craft a social media strategy that works for your dental practice. But what about tools and resources to make social media easier to master? Or examples of good posts on social media for dentists? 

Let’s look at a few of each.

Tools & Resources

            
•     

  When to Post: some general guidelines on the best days and times to post on different social sites. (Hint: Post to Facebook on Thursdays and Fridays. Post to LinkedIn on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

      
    
•     

  Hootsuite: Save time by scheduling your social media posts in advance

      
    
•     

  Flickr: one of the Internet’s biggest sources for free photos. Just make sure to select Commercial use allowed instead of Any license. If you’re going to make changes to the photo (like adding text), select Commercial use & mods allowed

      
    
•     

  Unsplash: a great source for high-quality photos you can use however you like

      
    
•     

  Canva: an easy-to-use photo editing website for making collages, overlaying text, and much more