Right now you might be asking yourself, why does a dental practice need a social media presence? Billions of users gather on the most popular social media platforms and businesses of all sizes use that fact to attract new clients. Leveraging social media for dental practices can help you gain a lot of new patients with the right strategy.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the three big platforms and each of them offers a business account. As a dental practice, your best choice is Instagram, as it primarily relies on visual content. But don’t let that discourage you from trying out Facebook or other apps. Let’s take a look at some ideas that you can use to promote your dental practice.

Run a contest or giveaway

Social media provides plenty of options if you’re creative. One thing that you should always focus on is providing value to your customers. After all, it’s what drives engagement. The most direct way to do that is by running a contest or a giveaway. Feel free to experiment with the entry format:

• Entering your email list
• Filling out a survey
• Giving the right answer to a question

For most participants, the main incentive is the reward. Offer your audience a discount or a free procedure (tartar cleaning, whitening, filling) that they simply can’t ignore. This will not only lead to more engagement on your social profile but also increase the visibility of your dental practice.

Share testimonials

One of the most common posts by dental businesses is before and after pictures. While the results may vary, you can go a step further and simply ask your patients to leave a review. You can then share their direct testimony and promote the quality of your dental services.

Let your patients write their own reviews and share their impressions. You can then share their review by reposting it and tagging them from your social media profile, leading to more organic traffic to your dental practice.

Invest in targeted ads

If you’re having trouble with engagement, you can always invest in targeted ads. Sponsored content mimics organic content and appears in the news feed, allowing users to interact with it just like their own posts. By using sponsored ads, your dental practice can expand its reach to individuals who are not currently following you, increasing your visibility among potential patients in our social media-driven society.

The best part is that you can target a specific audience with the tools provided by Instagram, allowing you to reach exactly the group of people you want. With targeted ads, you can promote specific services at your dental practice such as dental crowns, wisdom tooth removal and others.

Post visuals outside of the office

Each of your employees has a life outside of the office. Demonstrating that through your social profile can be a great way to add some humanity to the business. Remember to showcase your team’s spirit beyond the office by sharing photos of extracurricular activities such as group volunteering or other non-dental professional-related endeavours. This will also humanise your social media profile and make your business much more approachable.

By sharing out-of-office pictures, users can get a glimpse of the real people and the team behind the dental practice, increasing the overall trust in your business.

Create your content

For better or worse, people are always on their phones and they consume different types of content. You can always just repost the content of others but it’s usually a much better idea to create it yourself. Produce your own content in different formats:

• Blog posts – Give your existing and future patients more information about a common topic. For example, “Is brushing twice a day the minimum?”.

 

• Research – Have you published a research paper recently? Share sections from it with your audience and position yourself as a professional.

 

• Media Articles – Was your dental practice mentioned in an article? Post it on your social profile and share it with your audience.

 

• Introduce Your Team  – Give patients a tour around your dental practice and introduce the team. Provide more background info and gain the trust of the community.

 

• Live Q&A – Patients can often have the same question. One great way to answer that question and increase engagement is with a live stream.

Experiment with each format and find which one works best for your dental practice.

Conclusion

Boost your visibility and enhance brand awareness by engaging with patients on social media. As a large number of prospective patients seek to connect with you through their preferred social networks, it is crucial to maintain an active presence on these channels. By doing so, you can increase your practice’s visibility and attract a larger customer base.

How Magic can help

Magic helps local businesses grow. Thousands of local businesses use Magic to get more online reviews, win new customers, easily manage customer conversations and grow sales. Magic offers these features:

• Reviews: Get more reviews with automatic review requests for popular review sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, TrustPilot, and more. Rank high on local search and enhance your visibility on Google. 
• Inbox: Keep track of customer conversations across channels in one inbox, including SMS, Facebook, Instagram, and Gmail. Manage conversations better as a team and do more with industry specific templates. 
• Text Marketing: Drive more sales with instant text campaigns and reach your customers at the right moment with automation. Use prebuilt templates to send out text campaigns in minutes. 
• Webchat: Turn website visitors into customers with SMS powered Webchat. Chat to website visitors directly through SMS so you won’t miss a lead, even when they leave your website. 

Looking to grow your local business? Book in a demo call now. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook