The 5 Biggest ‘Fails’ in Social Media with Shaz Memon

FAIL 1: Right job, wrong person
WIN: Social media marketing can be fun and a cost-effective way of promoting you and your clinic. It can also feel like a drain in precious time and resources and a bit of a headache for those of us not particularly au fait with the inner workings of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like.

It can also prove a chore if you have neither the desire nor skills to create snappy, short, sharp posts and tweets, source eye-catching images and engage with others in a virtual world. As with any role within the dental team, you need to appoint someone with both passion and aptitude to make it work successfully.

FAIL 2: Lack of conversation
WIN: Interaction with clients and followers increases the value of your social presence and you need to nurture online relationships to maintain a presence.

Building a loyal network of real people (not fake accounts or ‘bots’ as they are commonly known) is not only topic-dependant, it’s reliant on frequency, too, meaning you need to ‘chat’ regularly and relevantly.

Dentistry is a fast-changing industry so stay abreast of new treatments, products and studies. Time your promotions to coincide with major events in the calendar, such as Easter, the summer holidays, Christmas and so on. Look out for key awareness days, such as National Smile Month, Mouth Cancer Awareness Month and World Oral Health Day, when there will be a spike in dental-related posts. Relate your posts to these events and relevant organisations and share with your audience, providing a link to your practice website where they can either find relevant information or how your team is getting involved in health promotions.

FAIL 3: Poor posts, few images, no videos
WIN:Of course, whoever is responsible for your social media activity must have a handle on spelling and grammar.

For those of us who may need to gen up, grammarly.com is a good online source—although do make sure you click UK English when it comes to spelling! It’s also useful to have an eye for a great picture—we’re visual beings and tweets with images reportedly receive 150% more retweets than those without.

Use infographics, an easy-to-assimilate way to help your audience digest key points of info, or add video to your accounts. Short, professionally shot films with FAQ themes, such as “Five Things You Need to Know About Dental Implants,” for example—as well as patient testimonials—are powerful marketing tools and make for fast and effective communication when it comes to brand messaging.

Finally, avoid using social media to solely ‘sell’ your services. People tire of accounts that do this, especially if the posts are repetitive.

FAIL 4: FAIL 4: Failure to comply
WIN:The GDC is very particular about how dental professionals behave online and rightly so—once something is ‘out there’, it is hard to retract, even once deleted, as a recent High Court ruling on defamation suggests.

Do seek permission and get written consent if you want to post full-face images of happy patients and their successful smile makeovers.

Ensure your business has a social media policy, so nobody is in the dark about your, or the GDC’s, expectations. As the GDC adds: ‘Your online image can impact on your professional life and you should not post any information, including photographs and videos, which could bring the profession into disrepute’.

FAIL 5: No balance or backup
WIN:Social media marketing is an affordable platform, but you need to have a balance of investment of time and strategy if you’re going to truly reap the benefits.

Nurturing your social media activity is important, but by giving little or nothing to website search engine optimisation (SEO), you risk failure to engage fully.

Your website needs to be as visible as your social media efforts in order to turn virtual browsers into real-life patients in your chair.

A recent survey by specialist web design and marketing agency Digimax reveals that 5 percent of SEOs do not have the foggiest idea what SEO is, with 42 percent believing SEO was simply about adding keywords to a website. Despite the race for social media advertising, web searches still drive 300 percent more web traffic than social media, creating more than half (57 percent) of all business leads.

Most dental practices struggle with consistent social media activity. The principal will often task social media management to a practice manager or keen dental nurse but as the workload piles up, the social posts become less frequent and start to lack consistency. The key ingredient for us at Digimax when managing client social campaigns, is how far ahead we plan. If you plan your posts up to two months in advance, you can use software such as Hootsuite to help you schedule your posts.