We asked Pat McCamley the managing director of Deseo, the leading online dental marketing agency, about dentist social media, why practices should use it and the role of Twitter.
“The influential power of social media is unmatched, and is one of the most successful ways for dental practices to connect with present and prospective patients. Social media marketing can benefit your dental practice in many ways, such as”:
Increased Rankings
Search engines respond positively to those who maintain an active social media account. When your Facebook pages are linked to your websites, you can help increase your search engines rankings.
Increased Brand Awareness
By interpreting a unified design throughout your site and various social media platforms, you help prospective patients better identify and associate with your dental practice.
Referral Source
As your “followers” and “friends” post the positive experiences they have had with you on their social media pages, they spread the gospel about your dental practice to their respective networks. This helps drive more patients to your website and social media pages, which eventually brings more business to your dental practice.
Positive Reviews
75 percent of dental patients are influenced by reviews posted on social media networks. By collecting positive reviews, your followers help prospective patients decide on you as their dentists of choice.
Twitter is the social media network that you need to use the most. Not only is it a powerful online marketing tool, Twitter can also be used to focus and share updates, connect with your professional peers, learn from your customer’s past experiences and even connect with your patients to see how they are doing. You can reach out and publicize your dental practice on Twitter quite easily as users who are your patients will be able to recommend you to their family and friends by following and sharing your tweets. Twitter offers the following benefits:
1. Use websites links and intriguing content using your specific keyword that is linked back to your site to get traffic.
2. Provides a platform to post relevant information to your patients
3. Fun pictures and articles can be posted and shared, particularly fun pictures from around your practice of whatever you like.
Contests through Twitter
This is the most ideal way to gain new patients through Twitter while reaching out to your present patients as well. For instance, you could post a picture that has to do with the contest you are holding and for someone to win; they must share your picture onto their Twitter feeds with a specific slogan, which could be the name of your dental practice, using a hash tag.
Using Twitter for your dental practice’s growth
Utilising all of the amazing benefits that Twitter will bring to your dental practice will certainly bring in some growth, which means new prospective patients. Saying that Twitter is popular is surely an understatement because if you are not online nowadays, then what are you doing? Dental practices have all made the move to having an online presence, among other things, which means that it is your time to shine as well.
Share your own content
Certainly there is a reason you are using Twitter, for its strategic dental marketing benefits. With this idea in mind it’s important to get your message out there as well. Twitter is a perfect way to broadcast your content to a bigger audience of followers who want to read your content.
Every article on your website should also be shared on your Twitter account. Sharing blog articles on Twitter gets them in front of many more folks who then are driven back to your blog by clicking on the link in the tweet.
Connecting with Existing and New Prospective Patients
The biggest way that your dental practice can benefit from Twitter is the connection that it provides to your existing and new prospective patients as well as other parties in the industry. You are able to place a 140-character message anytime you want that can be read by patients and other professionals in the industry all over the planet. Though this short message may not seem enough, it’s a powerful way of connecting and creating a semi personal relationship in just a few seconds, in a manner that was never possible before social media networking. This is a place where you can advertise your special rates and new services.
In addition, you can use Twitter to announce rare personal achievements, such as winning an award. This really helps your patients to feel close to you, and this personal relationship makes them far less likely to leave your dental practice.
Twitter also offers you an opportunity to be in continuous communication with other members in your profession. You can use Twitter to find out what other dentists are offering. You can also use it to share what you have learned and inquire into their practices. It’s an ideal way of connecting a variety of professionals in one place.
