It is a fact of the world we live in, that social media is here to stay, and whether you are a fan of it or not, you could be using social media to enhance the revenue of your dental practice. If you choose not to, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to other dentists who have had the foresight to embrace social media.
One reason you may be reluctant to use social media is that it can seem pretty confusing to those who have never used it before, especially for business purposes. For a start, there seems like an endless number of different social media platforms, and the thought of joining up to every single one of them might not be something that appeals to you.
Let us put that one to bed and tell you that there is no need for you to join them all, for the simple reason that not all social media platforms are going to be the type that a dental practice is going to benefit from. Second, if you are operating locally, rather than nationally, then the numbers of potential clients you have is going to limited, and therefore, there is little to be gained by joining them all.
Instead, your strategy should be to focus on social media platforms where your current and potential clients are most likely to frequent. An easy way to discover what your existing clients use is to ask them to fill out a small survey the next time they are in for an appointment.
It is likely that the vast majority of your patients are going to be on the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, and LinkedIn. It is a reasonable assumption that if these sites are where your current clientele is, then any potential clients are going to be using the same ones.
Once you have a social media profile for your dental practice the next stage is to start using it to build followers. This is achieved in different ways depending on the specific platform, but generally what you need to produce is content. This can be in many formats, but the majority will be written and visual such as images and videos.
Using these you can achieve many things such as providing useful information and advice. This is where many businesses get it wrong as they assume that all they need do is try to sell something. You can have the occasional promotional post, however, if all you do is try to sell without providing any other kind of useful or valuable content, you will lose your followers as surely as someone with poor dental hygiene loses a tooth.
Imagine the difference between a dental practice constantly pushing promos every time it posts something, and a dental practice where 90% of its posts are helpful, informative, and even entertaining. For the former, most followers will be immune to any promotion and just ignore them, whereas with the latter, its followers will be looking forward to each post, and if it happens to be a promotion, will at least read it.
By providing great content you achieve many things such as building your brand awareness, you can enhance customer loyalty, and it also means that when you do run a promotion or even use paid ads if the social media platform has them, those who see the ad are more likely to read it, and respond to it.