To increase social media referrals for your dental practice, one marketing rule remains true: Go where your audience goes, and the biggest meeting place remains Facebook. With roughly 324 million users in the U.S. and nearly 3 billion active monthly users worldwide, Facebook remains a key place for dental practices to strengthen patient engagement and increase online referrals.
Given the numbers, the challenge for dental practices is reaching more people in a busy marketplace. To do that, here are seven key tips:
1. Create a balance between educating and entertaining followers.
Yes, patients appreciate educational content per our blog What Patients Want from Dental Practices on Social Media. Yet the word “social” in social media imparts platforms like Facebook are fundamentally a conversational medium where entertaining posts drive engagement, page likes, and interaction with patients. Yet always post relevant content. Trying to game Facebook’s algorithm by posting a fun video that has nothing to do with dental care, for example, can do more harm than good for your dental practice reputation.
2. Post consistently.
According to HubSpot, Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes content that users will find new, interesting, and informative. Posting consistently helps expand organic post reach by ensuring users frequently discover something new from your dental practice.
3. Pre-schedule content.
Patient emergencies, no-shows, and other things can throw off even the most thought-out days. Scheduling posts directly on Facebook or using dental-specific social media management easily keeps consistent posts on track while saving dental teams time.
4. Create strong practice awareness with a branded Facebook Business page.
You’ve likely invested in a professional dental website, which is the bridge from your dental office to your online presence. Continuity between your website and a custom-designed Facebook page is foundational to establish a strong and cohesive brand image for your practice that engages with current and potential patients.
5. Don’t ignore comments.
Responding to, Liking, and engaging with feedback (both positive and negative) shows people that you actively monitor your Facebook page, which invites activity and factors into Facebook’s algorithm. According to Buffer, “Facebook loves posts with lots of likes, comments, and shares. Those interactions are signals the algorithm uses to determine the relevancy of a post.”
6. Don’t ignore negative comments.
Nobody likes negative comments, and a natural tendency is to avoid them. Yet responding to negative comments helps build practice credibility. For more on this and how to respond, read our blog 5 Tips When Responding to Online Reviews of Your Dental Practice.
7. Pay attention to analytics.
As a dental health professional, you naturally understand the importance of solid data in patient care, and the same is true for dental marketing on social media. Facebook provides powerful data and analytics about post-performance so you can adjust and tailor future posts for improved engagement.
Here’s to your practice success!
