LinkedIn’s IPO went through the roof, Google rolled out their +1 social sharing functionality, and Groupon is next up on the over-hyped stock watch.
And that’s just in the past week.
“Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel…”
Is Bud Fox still #winning?
Charlie Sheen references and 80s movie quotes aside, even dentists can glean some beneficial info from all of this social search, daily deals, and professional networking media buzz.
How does your dental practice possibly keep up with all of this and try to use this information to your advantage?
By paying attention and by having your ear tuned-in to your patients.
Don’t Just Hear, Listen
If you don’t take an active role in the communication habits of your patients you can’t possibly know how to best reach them with important dental health info and beneficial local dentistry.
You need to find out their likes, dislikes, favorite ways to communicate, who they most often communicate with, where they go to do their communicating, and how your dental practice can get in on the conversation.
To make it really easy, you can just ask each patient how they’d feel about receiving appointment confirmations through their Facebook page. You can also ask your patients how your practice Twitter account can be more helpful content and less inane BS. You can also direct them to your LinkedIn page when they question the high fees associated with their new set of veneers.
You can even have patients check-in on your Facebook Places or Foursquare profile to capture some discount or savings opportunities.
Sounds crazy right?
Well so does serving booze to your patients prior to their appointment. But we only know of one dentist doing that…and you should put out a little professional courtesy call to ask him how the recent media buzz has affected his practice.
There are thousands of dentists taking advantage of social search opportunity right now as we while away the hours reading (and composing) the social local digital dental news. Go talk to your patients.
Talk straight to them, they’ll know if you’re not.
The important point to remember here is that all of this communication is going on around your dental practice, and it’s high time you throw a hat in the ring. Sure there are pitfalls, like the Dental Yelp case, but the bigger pitfall is NOT having active dental practice participation in these social search environments.
Existing patient word of mouth is probably your primary new patient acquisition source. That word of mouth has been increasingly going social, local, digital, mobile, and viral.
Digital word of mouth is the new Anacott Steel…and your patients love it!
Will your dental practice learn to love it, elicit it, capture it, and syndicate it to be socially searched and shared in your local online environment?
Snide remarks and scathing comments are always welcome, why is your dental practice still straddling the fence with all this social media, local search, and digital marketing mumbo jumbo?
To your immediate left you’ll find the status quo – is that good enough?
To the right is increased online practice visibility, amplified (digital) word of mouth, and improved search engine rankings for your website.
…And a thousand other tangible benefits we’ve repeated – and will continue to do so – ad nauseam.
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