If you haven't heard how important Social Media is to any marketing strategy yet, you must be living under a rock. Seriously, if you haven't heard this, you are definitely out of the loop at the very least and either over 70 or under 5 yrs of age. Between Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Yelp and Blogging it seems impossible that these tools haven't presented themselves to you yet. That being said, most dentists are not opting in to these marketing avenues, and I'm guessing it is because they don't know where to begin. So let’s get you started!
I personally think Facebook is the most used of these, and rightfully so. It is the easiest to set up, and will create more response than the others. Visit www.facebook.com and follow the instructions to create a business fan page (not a personal account). Use an email that is checked often, and related to your biz. I encourage you not to use a personal email address. Try info@yourdentalpractice.com or similar.
Oh, and if you don't have a website, forget about it; you have bigger issues. Call someone immediately and get a site built pronto!
After you have a FB account, if you are not familiar with how to navigate it find someone who does. I guarantee you someone in your office has an account, assuming you have any staff under the age of 40. Post something related to your practice or dentistry at least once, preferably twice per week. DO NOT make political comments or gossip!!!
Ok, so now you have an FB account. You have made some friends and you are consistently updating your page with useful info for your current and potential patients. Now what? Blog. Yep, I said Blog. What is it you ask? Click here for a definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog . Blogging is a more verbose tool that will automatically update your FB account for you if set up properly, but more importantly provides you a platform to get into more detail about specific topics. In fact, what you are reading will be posted on our Blog. Have you ever wanted to write an article? This is the place. Do you have a new piece of equipment that you must tell everyone about how excited you are to have it and its benefits to the patient? Are you a FAGD and want to tell folks how proud you are to be part of it? Are you having a toy drive for your community and need to get the word out? Blogging is perfect for these and other types of communication you want to provide your patient base. Visit
www.blogger.com to get you an account setup, design your layout/template and begin telling the world how great you are! Blogging is an excellent way to help your internet rankings in search engines as well.
Ok, I must admit, there are other types of Social Media, but I think these are the two best options. YouTube is cool to create a channel for your practice and upload videos to, but make sure the vids are at least semi professional. Twitter is cool to, but its limited amount of character space to type is a shortcoming. If you really want to get deeper into these free marketing tools try creating a Yelp and Yahoo Review page, otherwise focus on FB and Blogging. They work well together and generally have the best results. Social Media costs you nothing but time, however it can feel like you are always working on them. Franek Consulting offers SM packages in our marketing plans that allow you to focus on dentistry, and us on fresh SM content, so if you think this all seems worthy, but don't have the time, give us a call at 512-619-5590.
Set up a day or two each week to focus on your accounts for 20 minutes and then forget about it. Don’t walk around on your Blackberry tweeting and FB'ing all day, that makes you look like a kid. Oh, one other thing; DON'T set these accounts up and let them go unused. That just makes you look lazy, so if you are going to do it, do it right!
