We left off in Part 1 talking about 2 of the 5 changes Facebook has made in 2012 that will help dentists acquire more new patients & retain a greater portion of existing ones throughout the upcoming year…you can read part 1 here.

The $64,000 question left dangling back in 2012 that we’ll answer now, was how could page owners (you or us) target all – or a significantly larger portion of – our fans, followers, and dental pied pipers?

Here are a few ways to do that…

When things change in the dental social media or local search world we usually don’t hear about it until after the changes have been unknowingly thrust upon us.

Whether its Facebook rolling out a new Timeline feature or Google Places metastasizing into Google+ Local, one thing is certain; customers (read: patients) of local small businesses (of which your practice is one) usually know about the social media or local search changes – and participate in them – way before the local business (read: dental practice) has had a chance to digest what the actual changes are, and how these changes will potentially impact new dental patient (read: customer) acquisition.

Here are 5 Facebook changes we noticed having a particularly beneficial impact with our socially savvy member dental practices…

Fear is a powerful emotion; it can prevent us from doing things that would benefit us greatly, but it also can keep us safe from future harm.

How do we know which fear to kick to the curb, and which fear to heed like a caveman?

When the topics turn to digital dental marketing, dental office social media, local seo for dentists, or mobile dental marketing, fear seems to be ruling the roost for a lot of dentists we talk with.

WTF? (Why the Fear…get your head outta the gutter, you’ve been texting too much!)

When it comes to social media marketing for dentists, one of the most often asked questions we hear from clients and prospective clients alike is, which social network is best for a dental practice to concentrate on primarily – Google+ or Facebook?

That question can be answered several ways, but most often the best way to answer that question…is with another question.

And another, and another, and so on…and so on and so on.

Does the Google+ Local factor make this a meaningless argument…any social media dentists care to comment?

 
As it stands in April 2012, some dentists have already heard all the over-expressive promises and realized all the under-returning results from launching their practice head first into the social media (and digital marketing) deep end.

These opportunistic if not so discerning dentists took advantage of the new patient acquisition and existing patient retention opportunities digital marketers (and dental social media blog writers) so proudly pontificated for the last few years.

We commend these forward thinking dentists for publishing their dental facebook pages & twitter profiles – and we certainly cannot fault some of them for falling victim to the less than unscrupulous if not ubiquitous