Social media is undoubtedly one of the best yet most challenging demands of the digital world. Where wider accessibility is made possible, sudden innovations complicate adapting to every new trend.
But as a large percentage of the population is social media users, it is clear that disregarding its importance will amount to losing potential customers.
Consequently, many businesses, including dental practice, have stepped in platforms like Facebook or Instagram. However, simply creating social media profiles is not going to reap the desired results.
The content shared on social media by dental professionals should be perfectly aligned with the brand’s identity, goals, and services. Upload informative snippets and original content to showcase your authority and expertise in the subject and pictures of your team and of your dental practice to give new potential customers a good insight into your installations and crew.
However, not every point mentioned is as simple to implement. So, to assist you in developing a clear picture of what areas to work on here’s what we have gathered for you:
1. Your Content Should Revolve Around a Strong Brand Identity
A powerful brand identity is the first thing that can make your dental practice stand among others. It enables patients to distinguish and remember your services.
Also, a strong business personality is built, which thereby attracts consumers that are observed drawing toward brands like bees to honey.
But to make your brand a household name, utilizing social media adequately is the next best thing after quality services.
Make sure that a good proportion of your social media content is directed toward your brands’ identity. Remain consistent on all social media platforms by uploading the same profile, photos, and biography.
Having a logo and creating graphics that signify your unique brand color or font is another smart strategy. Some businesses have also found incorporating the primary brand colors in every post to reinforce the brand’s profile.
Your voice and tone should also remain the same in every post. Whether you want to be snarky and amiable or formal and informative is your choice, make sure every post uploaded by your team follows the same writing style.
2. Be 100% Original
Most of the pictures uploaded on social media by healthcare professionals are derived from stock photos available on google. Take this negligence as an opportunity to persuade patients by just being completely original.
You can do this by sharing patients’ testimonials, snippets of your published reports, and links to informative blogs.
Along with educating, research papers leave a strong impression on customers about your skills and qualification.
A report published by Sprout Social Data shares that around 33% of people are more interested in reading informative social ads. By sharing scraps of information on your social media platforms, you indirectly inform your customers about your command over dentistry and allow them to understand some interesting dental practices.
Another way to meet customers’ concerns is by publishing blog posts that contain detailed information about your services, FAQs, and other latest topics.
Sharing links to other articles mentioning your business can also indicate patients about your practice acknowledgment.
Last but not least, happy patients are the most valuable asset of your dental practice. Ask them if they are comfortable with sharing a picture or video testimonial. If not, convince them to at least share a written testimony.
Offer some incentive in order to get them to leave a review about your practice, this not only increases your social proof, but it can also increase your client return rate.
The rule is simple – the more success stories you collect, the closer you get to the target audience.
3. Engage with Customers Wherever Necessary
Many professionals take social media as a broadcasting channel where they can showcase their services and specialties.
Instead, we suggest you take it as a communication tool to address every query of patients actively. By doing so, your practice can have an extended online reach, better customer satisfaction, and a good business reputation. To further boost your online reach, follow and share content from other relevant profiles. Comment on other people’s content, so you are noticed by their audience as well.
Moreover, using social media as a customer service channel, especially in recent times, has proven to be very effective.
As people are more inclined to use sites like Facebook or Instagram to reach out to brands, you can be their favorite service provider by being ultra-responsive.
Whereas brands are replying to only 11% of their followers and taking 10 hours of response time on average, you can be the groundbreaker by offering fast and efficient customer services.
Besides, inactivity on social media can be troublesome at times. Imagine a patient has given negative feedback on your profile, and you were unaware of it for days.
Meanwhile, many followers were viewing it, and hence, your long struggle of maintaining reputation is spoiled within days.
So, how could engagement have helped you here? The key is, reply timely to every feedback you receive. Address the negative feedback calmly and always respect the customer’s perspective.
Also, the positive ones should not be overlooked so that a consistent approach is represented from your end.
4. Utilize the Live and Limited-Time Content
Uploading content for a specific period or going live at a particular time creates curiosity among people. Here the concept of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) validates, and your followers are likely to participate.
To build hype, utilize Facebook live, limited-time offers, or posting Facebook and Instagram stories.
During Facebook live sessions, practitioners can have a one-on-one chatting session with viewers. Or broadcasting lives videos of performing treatments like teeth whitening will let the user have an insight view of your services.
Facebook and Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours. Utilize them for better user engagement. Try out limited-time discount offers to urge customers to book appointments.
Twitter chats are also an attractive option where the public can ask questions related to a specific topic. This way, you can have an increased exposure, receive genuine feedback, and build a strong bond with concerned patients.
5. Invent in Sponsored Content
Before introducing algorithm changes on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, the organic content was enough to have sufficient visibility or reach.
But today, buying ads that appear in the news feed just like an organic post has become the need of healthcare professionals.
Using sponsored content, you can efficiently reach out to a particular audience living in a specific location and having mutual interests even if they are not following you.
Hence, by appearing in the feed of a prospective audience, the chances are that your brand awareness will spread, and more people will start to develop trust in it.
On the other hand, if your organic content manages to get good views, we will still recommend utilizing sponsored content as. Facebook forecasts that the organic reach will eventually decline to zero in the future.
Besides, there are already 53% of companies who are leveraging social advertising to expand their reach.
With the involvement of more businesses in sponsored content, it is evident that the success ratio of organic marketing will keep on declining.
The Bottom Line
Over 3.96 billion people worldwide are social media users who make 50.64% of the total population. So, it is clear-cut that most of your patients will have a profile on social sites.
This proves platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are the best channels to connect with customers.
These social media marketing strategies are generated to help you be on the ball.
By following them, you increase your chances of attracting more patients and building a business profile that will sustain you in this rapidly evolving world.