5 Important Social Media Considerations for Your Dental/Medical Practice

As a doctor or dentist, you make diagnoses of patients every day. Through careful assessments, you take the information and develop a treatment plan. Finally, you share the plan with your patient and begin working toward their recovery.

Now, how well can you diagnose and treat your online presence? Effort and thought are essential to begin building a strong presence. While it may seem like a lot to maintain, the return in investment makes every effort worthwhile. Social media networks present great opportunities to promote your medical or dental practice. Below are five reasons to ensure your marketing diagnosis receives the right treatment.

1. Use social media marketing to socialize with patients

The fastest growing cost-effective marketing platform is social media. With an unbelievable number of people using Twitter, Facebook and other channels for information about practices, you want to ensure that your practice has a strong representation.

Comments from real patients is just one of the things people look for when searching for a doctor or dentist. Promoting your website and practice requires that you narrow down what is most popular. From there, you want to select which ones are most relevant so you can begin promoting your services and engaging current and potential patients.

2. Improve your competitive advantage with a social media presence

Using social media does not remove the competition dynamic of being in business. It does, however, help you stay ahead of the competition. A large percentage of dentists already use social media platforms like Facebook as a marketing tool. Many attribute their strong media presence with higher revenues.

When potential patients see that you are engaged with the latest technological developments to connect with them, it increases your image. Most will consider you to be a high-quality provider when you share the latest dental techniques in patient-friendly content. Another way to strengthen your social media presence is to demonstrate your expertise by commenting on relevant news stories.

Subsequently, those comments will boost traffic to your website when you include links in the posts. More visitors will go to your practice’s website, which helps to improve search engine rankings. Patients looking for your services will find you much faster this way.

You can implement those strategies yourself if you are a tech-savvy doctor/dentist. If you don’t like the DIY approach or you are very busy, you can use nationwide companies such as Solution21 which have specific services for promoting practices on social media in addition to basic website design services.

3. Accept that old marketing methods do not work

Being a traditional doctor or dentist does not mean you should stick with older methods of marketing your patient services. Telemarketing, radio and TV commercials, direct mailers and flyers all worked well in the past. Today more people look to social media for their information.

This includes accessing information quickly through a mobile device. Investment and market research will prove a good way to prepare for the growth of Internet leads. Finding a large following of potential patients become more difficult if you stick with traditional marketing channels.

4. The cost for social media marketing is FREE!

For most social media platforms, you can begin cultivating your online presence by spending nothing more than your time setting things up. Once you set up accounts on the various online channels, you can begin monitoring activity. Posting regular updates will not take all day.

You may even opt to hire someone to manage the page once your patient load increases. Keep in mind, however, that your social media presence is a representation of your practice. Therefore, make sure you hire someone who understands your practice and the image you want to project.

Keep in mind that the major social medial channels also have mobile-friendly apps. This allows you to quickly respond to a post during a lunch or coffee break.

5. Social media channels offer immediate feedback

One final reason that you should have a strong media presence is for immediate feedback. You can use the information to improve services and future marketing efforts. Perhaps a short video on preparing for a dental visit renders more likes and comments than a 30-minute video on different dental diseases.

If you post a special offer or give practical advice on keeping your teeth healthy, followers may share the content. You will be able to see responses in real-time and use the feedback to inform future posts.

Even though social media can be a cost-effective boost for your practice, there are a few pitfalls you need to avoid.

Build relationships with current and new patients by remembering your social media presence is a reflection of your practice. Remain cautious when posting and maintain high ethical standards. Never post something online that you would never say to a patient directly.

As you prepare to harness social media, remember that having a mobile friendly website is equally important. With so many people relying on mobile devices to stay connected, you want to make their efforts as easy as possible. Prospective clients should be able to view online information about your practice from their phones. If not, they will move on to the competition.