Does Your Dental Practice Have a Social Audience?

If you have a Facebook page, you can use it to grow your dental practice; however, you need to know how to build your social audience. Building your social audience is vital because your Facebook page is useless if no one sees it. Accomplishing this task is simpler than you might think. For the majority of offices, current patients “liking” their Facebook page is enough.

Let Patients Know You Are Embracing Social Media

Let your patients know you have a Facebook page by having its address on everything, including:

• Appointment reminders and business cards
• Newsletters
• Emails
• Hold message or voicemail (“Or, send us a message on Facebook! Our page is __”

Ask your staff to mention your Facebook page as patients check in, especially if you offer your patients free WiFi.

Give your staff ideas as to how to deliver this information, for example:

“Our office has its own Facebook page now, Dr. Jones uses it to offer special discounts and dental tips to our Facebook fans. Here is the address, please take a moment to like our page while you are there.”

Facebook Marketing – What You Need to Know

Visualize Your Goal and Create a Strategy

Consider this scenario:

You may decide that you want to increase your sales for a particular procedure by 15 percent within the next 12 months.

Your strategy may include:

• Posting online specials with coupon codes – by offering coupon codes exclusive to your Facebook page you can keep track of your social audience
• Encouraging your patients who have had the procedure done to post photos of their beautiful new smiles (before, during and after)
• Offering tips on oral hygiene

Keep Your Facebook Page Light

Facebook is a fun place to chat, watch videos, look at photos and just relax. To become part of the community, you need to join conversations and avoid hard-sell tactics.

Encourage Interaction

Encourage your Facebook fans to comment on your posts, post about your practice or about topics that relate to the dental industry in general. When someone does post, respond within 24 hours; failing to respond quickly can negatively affect your Facebook friends’ desire to interact with you.

Regular Posts Keep Facebook Fans Coming Back

According to statistics, the average daily Facebook users in June of 2015 were nearly 970 million with approximately 65 percent of them checking their page at least once a day. For this reason, posting new material regularly is crucial. While some recommend posting something every day, core principles stipulate that you post when you have something interesting to say; in addition, you should consider how frequently your audience wants to hear from you.

Videos and Pictures

Videos and pictures are one of the most appealing aspects of Facebook; therefore, use them regularly as a means to keep your social audience entertained and interested.

For example:

If you and your staff participate in any of the trending challenges that circulate around social media networks (Ice Bucket Challenge, No Make-Up Selfie, etc.), share it on your page. Chances are, your patients will enjoy seeing you out of your element.

Get Interactive

Games, surveys and contests liven up your page; furthermore, research indicates that giveaways and discounts are frequently the reason people follow a business’s Facebook page. That said, if you choose to have a survey on your page, it should be short and provide a link that allows users to share it with their friends.

Link to Your Website or Blog

Give users the opportunity to visit your practice’s website or blog. You can set the RSS feed of your blog so that snippets are automatically published to your Facebook page.

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