As seems to be the case with social media and local search these days, large or small businesses that aren’t in the know are kept in the dark about most changes until they actually occur.
A few of the most important changes we’ve realized recently in the social dental media realm and local dentist search space are the Google Places changeover to Google+ Local, the Facebook Recommendations Bar, and most recently Google acquiring Wildfire.
Yes, these changes to the local social digital ecosystem affect your dental practice a great deal…but more on that later.
For now, we will wrap up the 3 Phases of Social Media Success series – this is where all the hard work pays off and results are realized. Results equal new patients in the form of digital word of mouth referrals.
Integration
By integrating your practice social media profiles into every piece of practice communications – direct mail, appointment reminders, newsletters, press releases, websites, blogs, internal displays & educational tools…even radio & TV spots, you make it easier for your patients (and prospective patients) to both find you within these social media outlets, and share your content.
As discussed in earlier posts in this social media success series, your content should consist of a homogenous mix of beneficial dental health info, engaging community & practice news, nonstop images & videos, and a good dose of humor.
The website is always there (how many dental websites are still in the dark ages??…eeek), the blog is the content engine, the newsletter reminds, and the social media profiles engage by continuing the dental health conversation with your patients when they are not in the office.
An effective dental social media presence integrated with existing patient communications essentially closes the digital dental marketing loop, allowing you to identify the connections and content most likely to generate action.
Tracking
In order to realize results, you first need to be able to calculate those results. The only way to calculate results and quantify your dental social media efforts is to track everything.
Comments, Re-pins, ReTweets, Mentions, +1s, Likes, Shares, Recommendations, Checkins, Connections – they should all be tracked automatically.
With the interest of keeping things simple, most of the social media communities your dental practice is part of will make this kind of info readily available – here are some additional tracking strategies:
Set up simple goals in Google Analytics to see if your dental social media profiles are connecting people to your website and blog. (What, you don’t know if you have Google Analytics installed?)
Use Facebook Insights – this can get a bit confusing, but with a little thing called the Open Graph, we can track everything you ever wanted to know about how effective your Facebook sphere of influence is at expanding the reach of your social dental content.
From how many appointments booked through your custom dental Timeline app, to how many people checkin with your practice, to who is talking about you…and a million other combinations of need to know social dental media info.
Unless there is adequate tracking in place, there will be no understanding of how effective (or ineffective) your dental social media communications are at present – and you will have no direction from which to build on in the future.
Analyze your progress, goals, and systems to continually refine the message you are hoping to communicate.
Buzz
From tracking, consistency, and hard work, comes results. We’ve talked with more than a few clients that were amongst the biggest anti-social media dentists at first, only to be gulping down the social media Kool-Aid less than a year later.
The key to realizing results with social media for the dental practice is to make connecting with your practice worthwhile for your patients. It is not all about you, or even dentistry – it’s about you being a local community expert and a real person all in one.
If digital dental marketing ROI is the goal, this adaptation needs to take place sooner rather than later.
To create, and ultimately benefit from social dental buzz, dentists in the know understand it’s an adaptive process – one that begins with committed consistency and ends with closed-loop tracking.
Some easy ways to engage your audience, create buzz for them to share, and ultimately realize results with your social dental media presence are:
- Contests (at least 4 per year)
- Charitable Donation Drives (at least 2 per year)
- Free Dental Health Days (up to you – good local press)
- Offers (exclusive to the social community)
- Sweepstakes
- Loyalty Rewards
- Sign-up Forms
- Fun Quizzes & Surveys
Results!
Only with the proper combination of an effective social media battle plan, an unrelenting will to win, hard-charging sticktoitiveness, and the ability to track progress, can social dental media success be attained.
But once success is defined and realized, it’s now time to turn things up a notch by combing the power of social media with the visibility of local search!
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