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Social marketing has become an important business development activity. Today Linda discusses important elements that must be present in every social networking campaign. How often you should post, what you should be posting, and where you should be postings information. Linda also presents the idea of personal/professional as a method for social networking.
Linda provides dental professionals actionable marketing knowledge they can use to grow their dental practice.
Linda Mettler: People go on there and they tweet short things. But this is a site where, if you want somebody to read your blog, go on Twitter and just put out a link to your blog posts that goes back
to your website or your blog is
welcome to the matalin Marketing Podcast where we will talk about marketing strategies and tactics to grow your practice. I am your host, Lynda Mettler and I have worked with dental practices for
several years now. And I want to share my knowledge and experience with you so that you can gain valuable and actionable steps on how to grow your practice. We will talk about the latest and greatest
and marketing features some guest speakers so that you can hear firsthand what is and is not working and help you unravel the complexities of the digital marketing world. I work really closely with my
clients. So we will also delve into some other issues that affect your practice from time to time, such as staffing problems, COVID protocols and similar issues. Good morning, today we're going to
talk a little more about some social media, we're going to talk touch just a little bit on strategy, which we've talked about before, but then we're gonna dive into some of the various social media
channels, and which ones are right for your practice to promote your practice on. So your social media strategy is really your master plan for how you create content, how you post and how you engage
with people on your social media strap on your social media channels. So you know you again, why do you need a social media strategy? The number one reason for that is to define who your target
audience is, I cannot stress enough how important this is you need to know, who are your ideal new patients are you looking for? Are you a pediatric dentist looking for those those kids, or an
orthodontist looking for the tweens and the young adults. And I know a lot of orthodontist do work on adults as well with Invisalign and things like that. But again, are you a family dentist, or
general dentist. So that's really important to figure out who your ideal new patient is. So that your strategy can help you reach those new patients. And you also want to strategize so that you can
focus in on just start out with just a few social media channels, there's really no need to be on every social media channel, unless you want to, if you want to, you certainly can. But if you do, if
you go with that strategy, you need to make sure that you can post to all those channels regularly, because the search engines are going to penalize you, if you've got those, those social channels out
there and you're not keeping up with fresh content. So that's why your social media strategy is so important. It's also port important because it's actually a multipurpose business asset. It connects
you with your potential new patients, and it promotes your services and your brand. So you want to make sure when you're using social media to market your practice that that experience on social media
is a positive and consistent one. You want to pay close attention to the engagement on your social media channels. So people are asking questions, are they sharing your content? Are they liking your
posts, you want to know what they're doing so that you can keep your content fresh, so that you can respond to what your new patient your existing and potential new patients are doing? And that you
can get everything right. So speaking of that content, your content needs to be kind of a mixture of things. So you want to you want to post on your social media channels three to five times per week.
And maybe you have them as a priority tier. So maybe, maybe Facebook and Instagram are your top two social media channels, while Twitter and LinkedIn are kind of a tier B, social media channels. So
maybe on Facebook and Instagram, you're posting four to five times a week. And on Twitter and LinkedIn, you're posting maybe two times a week, that's fine to have that strategy. That's not a problem
at all. But your content needs to be a mixture. So you need to have some good educational content so that you can educate people on your services. Again, maybe figure your top three to five services
and put your educational content around those. So if you are an expert in implants, break that down and educate people every week as to what implants are. What are they you know, when are you a
candidate for instance, plants and what is that process of that procedure. But you also want to have a couple posts every week, that are what I call personal professional. This is the human side of
your practice people and people will respond to this way more than they will. You'll get many more likes on personal professional postings, then you will on educational. And if you don't believe me,
just call me or email me. And I'll send you a lot of statistics on our clients feedbacks on on our analytics on that. But what I mean by personal professional is, you know, maybe you're celebrating
your hygenist birthday that day, and you guys have a lunch and you bring in a cake, take some pictures and wish her a happy birthday. And throw that on social media, you'll get a huge response to it.
Anytime you bring in your children or grandchildren, or pictures with your dog or your your pets, put that on social media, people love that people absolutely love that I can tell you on my personal
social media, when I put pictures of my biking, or my son, people love that way more than they do. They care about what I'm doing business wise, it's amazing to me, I don't find my life all that
interesting. But when I put on posts of what I'm doing, on a personal level, I get many more responses to it than I do from my business, educational content on my business. So make sure you have those
postings every week, have something personal slash professional, you know, maybe your grandson comes in to get a cleaning your your your daughter's going to have your first grandchild or you know a
picture of what you did Sunday afternoon with your pets, people love that. And then also every week put in some motivational content or some health and wellness related content. You know, just just
something to cheer people up these days, it's been a tough year with COVID. People want to find some positive, good content on social media, people love it. And also mix up your content with you know,
links to articles that people can read to videos, they can be short form videos behind the scene videos, which you guys do to, you know, clean your instruments or you know, somebody sending something
out to the lab. People love that kind of thing. So make sure you've you've got those that mix of content on your social media channels. And what channels exactly should you be on? Well, there's all
all the channels out there. So let's let's talk about the different channels for a few minutes. But again, that the answer to that question goes back to defining your target audience, you want to be
on the channels where your target audience are on. So if you're a general dentist, you want to be on Facebook, if you're an orthodontist, you want to be on Instagram and maybe even tik tok. But let's
talk about the different channels. So probably everybody wants to have a social media channel on Facebook, they have about 1.8 2 billion daily active users across the planet. That's crazy. They are
one of the most popular social media platforms, and they are the leading marketing platform worldwide.
Basically, 15% of Facebook users use Facebook to find and shop for products and services. That's huge. So that's a really good reason to be on Facebook. I know a lot of people are kind of tired of
Facebook, it's gotten a little bit a little too much commercial, maybe a little political. But with those kind of statistics, and that many people using it every day, you want to be on there on
Facebook, and you want to post on Facebook at least three to five times per week. Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook is definitely a great social media platform. And I love Instagram, and I
think you definitely need to be on it. However, it is highly visual. So it's not a platform for links to text and reading. It's a it's where you want to put photos and video content. There's a lot of
things to Instagram these days. You can advertise on Instagram, just like you can on Facebook. And it's got a place for short stories. It's got Instagram reels. So you can do short little clips on
there. But it is visual. So you do have to have a lot of visual content. So you need to make sure you're either using an agency that can provide that visual content for you. Or if you're doing your
marketing in house on your own. You've got to dedicate some time every week and Instagram is also a quick it's it's not a micro site like Twitter. People aren't looking for, for like that, but you do
want to post on Instagram almost every day, so at least four to five times per week. The the average user on Instagram is between 18 and 34 years old. And I shouldn't say the average 62% of their
users are between 18 and 34 years old. So it's a it's a great platform, you can advertise on it, the advertising costs are low. Same with facebook, facebook has a low advertising cost. So that's
another reason to be on Facebook. If you're just getting into advertising and marketing on social media, you know, Facebook, you can start out for $35 a month advertising on Facebook. So pretty,
pretty low entry point for advertising, it's great way to test ads to see what works, you can run multiple ads on these platforms at any given time and see which ones work better. Twitter, like I
mentioned before, is a good social media platform. But it's a it's a microblogging platform. It does have 330 million monthly active users. So and it's got 145 million daily users. And it's, you know,
available in 20 different countries. So it is a player in social media. But what's fit what Twitter's really good for rather than promoting content, Twitter's really good for promoting your brand, and
your reputation.
And that's because it's of its high user count and high high tweets. People go on there, and they tweet short things. But this is a site where if you want somebody to read your blog, go on Twitter,
and just put out a link to your blog posts that goes back to your website where your blog is. And that's what Twitter's really good for. That's not what Instagram Instagrams where you want to have
those photos and videos. But Twitter's really good if you just want to send out a tweet saying, hey, we've got a new blog, you know, here's the link to read it on our website. And that'll help build
your brand and your reputation. So LinkedIn is another social media platform, great social media platform, but it was created and caters, mostly like 95% towards businesses and working professionals.
However, in addition to your personal profile, you can have a company page on LinkedIn. And I absolutely recommend that you do for several reasons. First of all, it's really good at promoting your
office and your brand. You can connect with other dental professionals on LinkedIn. So it's a great tool for hiring and connecting with vendors and potential staff members in the dental community.
It's a great place to keep up with, with what's happening in the dental industry as well. There's so many articles on there from your state Dental Association, the ADA, all the associations peer for
shard Academy, you know, International Academy of dentistry, add American or Academy of general dentistry, there's articles everybody's on LinkedIn. So it's a great platform to be on. Maybe not so
much for new patients. But just as a way to network in the industry and the community. And advertising on LinkedIn, the height it's a little higher cost on on LinkedIn, but still a good platform to
have a presence on and maybe on LinkedIn, you're only posting two to three times per week. But enough to keep your presence on there and and everything so so definitely a good platform to be on. Tick
tock tick tock is a new is a relatively new platform, but it has absolutely taken off 69% of its users are between the ages of 13 and 24. It's available in 155,000,150 5 million 155 countries, and has
over 600 million active monthly users. What's unique about Tick Tock is the average time so people spend about almost 11 minutes when they're an average session time on Tick Tock. So it's you know, if
you're trying to reach that younger new patient population, and their parents, tic tocs a good platform to be on maybe you're not going to be on there every day. Maybe you're going to have a couple of
funny videos on there every week. But you can also advertise on tik tok. They've just recently promoted and launched an advertising platform so and you've got to believe that if these young kids are
on there, their parents are on there monitoring what they're doing. So those parents have an account on Tick Tock to see what their kids are looking at what their kids are doing. So you will be able
to reach those those that patient demographic on Tick Tock But it is nowhere it's definitely a place to experiment. Don't sink a huge marketing budget into Tick Tock every month until you know what's
working. But again, it's it's a good platform to experiment and and do some advertising and see what you can do with some some fun videos definitely will get the human side of your business on Tick
Tock. So with all your social media channels, I want you to make sure that all your profiles are built out correctly and complete, so that on every social media page, people can find your website.
Again, your website is a central hub of all your marketing. So I want all your social media channels to lead back to your website, make sure that everything is complete on those profile pages, there's
so many things you can do on all these different social media channels. You can advertise for jobs, post content, ad stories, you know, promote your services, but I want to make sure that you always
lead all of them funnel back or lead back to your website. So So that's kind of our discussion on social media for today. Again, if you need any help or have any questions, feel free to reach out to
me and have a wonderful day. Are you
Ed Bejarana: committed to the growth of your practice that learn marketing can help at medtner marketing. We help dental practices gain new patients, increase referrals and maximize patient retention
with customized Marketing Solutions tailored to fit your needs. Visit www dot medtner marketing.com to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help grow your practice. Thank you for tuning
in to the Mettler Marketing Podcast. Please share this episode with your friends and colleagues. If you would like to be a guest on our show, visit Mettler marketing.com and drop us a note. Remember
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