There are myriad benefits of having social media pages for your private dental practice. For instance, Facebook pages drive traffic to your webpages, increase the flow of people to your practice, just to list a few! If you have already gotten a Facebook page for your practice, then you are ahead of 37% of dentists out there! Now the question is, what should you post on your Facebook/social media pages so that you get the engagement you want?
- Ask questions
- Asking questions on your Facebook/Twitter page is a great way to engage audience. However, one thing that should be kept in mind is that the customers/patients do not like to be deemed incorrect, especially on a social media site. So, in order to avoid such occurrence, ask questions that do not have a right/wrong answer. For instance, what is their favorite toothpaste? What parts of the routine cleaning do they like the most? What do they think of recent changes in your office, dental practice, webpage, etc? Social media users love discussing and potentially giving advice.
- Share stories
- This could range from sharing stories of success and photos of your staff members on special occasions such as Halloween, Christmas and New Year to sharing photos of patients who have given great testaments of your service. Photos of people are a great way to get quality engagement of audience to your social media page.
- Hold a contest
- Create a contest strictly for your Facebook fans. Maybe host a trivia contest were your fans are asked to guess something about their dental routine check-up, or even about the dentist and offer a prize to the winner. The prize could range from tickets to various places/events, or even dinners at quality restaurants. This will get the audience engaged in your social media site and will even attract more patients to your practice.
- Post content at peak times
- As trivial as this may sound, it is necessary to post your content on social media when people will be accessing it the most. Too early may prove to be disadvantageous as well as too late. However, midday may not be the best either as people are usually occupied in their daily routines. Therefore, the best times would be in the morning, or in the evening, around the times most people are off for the day.
- Offer dental tips, tricks and techniques
- This is a dental page after all! Once a week, try to input a set of dental tips for your patients. They could range from the importance of proper dental hygiene to information of dental technology around the world—there is really no limit to the amount of dental information you can have on there. However, when posting the information, ensure that the content is in simple laymen terms, as opposed to the language of a scientific journal. Simple tips go a long way, and can increase audience interest and traffic if they prove to be beneficial/ informative.
The above mentioned content can not only prove useful for a Facebook fan page, but also for other social media sites such as GooglePlus, Twitter, Instagram and even Pinterest. The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. Social media marketing, when done right, can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more conversions, and it’s here to stay, for as long as we can think.