Human beings are social animals, and generally speaking we’re also a fairly needy bunch; we’re constantly on the lookout for attention from and approval of others. Now whether that statement applies to us individually only sometimes or all the time, it’s usually the emotional elixir of getting attention and receiving approval from others that drives the behavior.

It’s not the approval and attention we’re after; it’s the way the attentive approval makes us feel that reinforces our triggers to go seek more of it.

We all have emotions that sometimes drive our actions a little more so than they should.

That’s all well and good, but what in the H E double hockey sticks does this psychobabble BS have to do with North Korea, Dennis Rodman, or digital dental marketing new patient acquisition?

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!)

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.