Can Dentists Get New Patients From Twitter?
Yeah, that’s right – Twitter.
Aside from the new advertising methods recently rolled out to the masses, Twitter can genuinely produce new patients for dentists consistently communicating beneficial dental health info via the world’s most popular microblogging platform.
There’s Lead Generation Cards, Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, & Website Cards. All advertising products Twitter offers to businesses interested in sniffing out some new customer (or patient) acquisition via social media.
Think about it, your patients and local prospective patients probably spend more time on Twitter (and Facebook) than they do reading the newspaper, browsing your dental website, or reading your direct mail piece.
We’ll get into advertising choices for dentists looking to up their social PPC street cred in another post, for now we’ll just take a quick look at the fundamentals of dentists using Twitter.
One of the biggest issues most dentists face is how to build their followers.
New Twitter Followers? It All Starts With A List
That list begins with your existing patients, vendors, colleagues, friends, family…at least the ones for which you have accurate email addresses – along with your Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail email accounts.
Good, now we’re going to connect all of those email addresses to your Twitter account to instantly boost your social media klout…in more ways than one.
And we’re not talking segmenting your individual followers (or competitors) into separate Twitter lists, our only goal for this post is to convey how easy it is for dentists to find new followers from people they already know.
A simple foundational element of increasing your Twitter viewership – and this has NOTHING to do with buying 50,000 FAKE Twitter followers on sites like Fiverr.
That’s nothing but a waste of $5. You’re better off throwing down on the next Powerball drawing.
Here’s A Simple Way Dentists Can Gain Followers On Twitter
It’s simple – import your email contact list by following these steps:
- Visit the Discover page and click on Find friends.
- Select Search Contacts next to your email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL).
- Enter your email log in credentials when prompted.
- When asked if you agree to share your information with Twitter, click Agree or Allow access.
- Contacts who are already on Twitter will be shown. Follow individuals by clicking Follow or follow all contacts by clicking Follow all.
Here is the email your contact list will receive:
Sounds easy enough, right?
But there are a couple of caveats here:
- The email address listed in your Twitter profile cannot be a corporate address (like drjanedoe@janedoedentist.com) – or else you may not see the option to import your contacts. Instead use a Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail address…you can always change it back after you’ve finished inviting your patients to connect.
- Although Twitter doesn’t allow importing of contact lists (via Excel CSV, text, or similar), there is a workaround…Just take your exported contact list (from your software or database), upload them to your Gmail, Hotmail, or AOL account, then use Twitter’s “Search your address book for friends” function to invite your contacts to connect with your dental practice on Twitter.
Understandably, dentists might not want to use their personal Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL account – just sign up for a new email account with one of those service providers for the purpose of using the Find Friends feature.
Once your finished importing your contact list you can just forget about (or cancel) that email account, as the only purpose its serving is for you to connect with your existing contact on Twitter.
Now, be a social dentist and go connect with your new Twitter followers!