Social media is a major component of any online marketing strategy. Operating an active social networking presence can lend credibility to your business or practice, and potentially allow you to attract new clients. In today’s blog, we’re looking at tips for attracting new likes and followers on your accounts. We also want to remind readers that our April social media kit, which provides content you can share on multiple platforms, is now available for a la carte purchase for just $99.
Category: Social Networking
5 Reasons You Need Social Media Engagement
Social media is no longer a fad or trend that’s going to go away anytime soon. As a business, you need media engagement to remain relevant and potentially attractive to new patients. At MDPM Consulting, we strive to make this easier with our free social media kit. The kit provides customizable content you can share on your social networking accounts. There are a number of reasons why your practice needs social media engagement.
MDPM Social Media Kit Gets an Upgrade
Have you had the opportunity to try our new social media kit? In January, we launched the MDPM Social Media Kit complimentary to our clients to help them boost their social media activity and engagement, in a fast, easy, and foolproof way. Now that we’ve had a chance to gauge interest and receive client feedback, we’re upping the ante in the coming quarter.
If you’re currently an MDPM client, be on the lookout for the new and improved April social media kit which will hit your inbox the last week of March. Not only will the kit be easier to download and use, it will be much more comprehensive, and the shareable content and images will be next level. Read on for details.
Who Owns My Google+ Page?
Recently, we encountered an unusual issue. We took on a new client who was transferring from another company. In response, the company, who offers local search and website services for dentists, refused to give the client access to their own Google+ page. They claimed they had the right to do this, as the Google+ page was their “intellectual property.” Is this true? No. That’s why we’re posting this blog today, to let you now that nothing could be further from the truth. So… who owns your Google+ page?
FAQs About Social Media And SEO
As a business owner, you want draw new clients to your business. To do so, you need to let people know what services you offer and show them that you are an expert in your field, someone they can trust for products and services. How do you accomplish this? Increasingly, people are turning to social networks to attract new leads and even help improve search engine optimization rankings. Do you have questions about social media and SEO?
Cause Marketing for Dental Practices
Today’s dental practice owner is faced with a number of challenges. You wear several hats as a business owner — an entrepreneur as well as a dentist or dental specialist. It is a real challenge to be all of these things at once, which can result in something slipping.
The area that slips is typically the execution of your marketing plan. The problem is this: without an effective marketing plan being executed consistently throughout the year, you will struggle to maintain a steady flow of new patient acquisitions and maybe even to retain the patients you already have.
There is an even bigger problem you face. Nowadays, even when you do all of the right things with your marketing plan — and stay on top of executing your plan — you will still struggle to grow your practice.
The main reason for this is that consumers (potential patients) are overloaded with information and give their attention to only the things that are important to them.
Your challenge is to get and keep their attention.
Assertion
One of the most effective ways to capture and retain the attention of your audience is to appeal to the things they are interested in. In many cases, dentistry is not what they are interested in, even when they need it the most.
The reality is that people have passions — things they connect with on an emotional level. It is through these passions that you will find your most successful dental marketing campaigns. One type of passion is the support of social causes on either a global or a local level. Cause marketing is the way to align your dental practice with the causes being supported by the audience you are trying to reach. Read More
You Can Buy Followers, But You Can’t Buy Social Media Love
Everyone wants to be the “cool” dentist, the one who has hundreds of Likes and a string of followers to re-tweet their updates. You know that a strong social media presence will benefit your practice by increasing your visibility and generating word of mouth. The only problem? It’s been months since you created your Facebook page, but you still have only a handful of fans. Perhaps, you think, our lack of followers makes us seem uncool. You have two options to boost your social media presence. You can do it the right way, integrating social media and blogging into your current marketing strategy, or you can do it the Newt Gingrich way.
You Mean the Wrong Way?
Exactly. In 2011, the Gingrich PR machine decided that his paltry Twitter following was unworthy of a Presidential candidate. Instead of using social media to engage, entertain, and inform voters, someone took a shortcut and paid for nearly 1 million followers. Gingrich was left with egg on his face after a staff member alerted the press to the fact that 92% of his followers were dummy accounts-for-hire. These accounts, which you can purchase on dozens of websites, are typically generated en masse and lack user photos, valid email addresses, comments, and updates.
Is Padding Your Numbers Really That Bad?
Consider:
- Social media analytics lose all functionality, because you can’t analyze an imaginary friend. You have no way to determine what works and what doesn’t.
- The number of followers has negligible influence over whether a user will subscribe to your updates. More important are the quality, frequency, and variety of your content.
- A large number of followers who don’t comment, share, Like, or post to your profile affects your rate of engagement, raising red flags in the eyes of legitimate social media users. The fact that someone “Likes” your page doesn’t automatically make it likeable.
- It’s dishonest. Period.
Social media isn’t a numbers game. I admit that I feel a surge of pride each time MDPM gains a new fan (Hint, hint), but the value of social media stems from opportunities to build long-term relationships with current and would-be patients. Quantitative data, such as what you find in Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics, only goes so far.
About the Author: With her winsome personality and affinity for cat pictures, Jill Nastasia, CEO of MDPM Consulting, doesn’t have to worry about buying Facebook friends to look cool. Sometimes she gets tired of people offering to pay her to be their Facebook friend. She’s turned down Mark Zuckerberg at least 4 times now. That guy never gives up.
How to Use Your Facebook Personal/Professional Profile in Dental Marketing
A Livonia dentist who’s near and dear to my heart recently asked Jill how his business Facebook page could like or recommend another business, or photo, or person, or anything. Her answer was, options are very limited. You’ll have a lot more opportunity doing these things as a human, but as a professional. Here’s my advice for MDPM dental website clients – and any dentist who wants to make his mark on Facebook.
Don’t Let College Joe Ruin Joseph Q. Doe, DDS’ Reputation
I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum: dentists who like to post shirtless beach photos of themselves on Facebook, and those who think Facebook is the devil. Both profiles, and dentists who fall in between, need to create a human, or personal, Facebook page, dedicated exclusively to professional interactions. So, if you don’t have a Facebook profile, create one under your professional name. If you do have a profile you use for personal stuff, create another one dedicated to the professional you.
What to Post as a Professional
Relevance. That’s what it’s all about. You must relate to your professional connections on a personal level. That’s what social networking is – sharing information as a human, and participating in the lives and ideas of others. Do not use your professional Facebook profile for ads and special offers about your practice. Leave those posts for your business page. Instead, share some of your tasteful family photos, discuss community events, the school district’s success, and congratulate specific patients on promotions, new babies, marriages, and anniversaries. Be real, but be professional.
Step By Step
- First, log out of Facebook. Read More
Social Networking Not Working for Your SEO Rankings?
When Hummingbird, Google’s last big algorithm update, rolled out in the last quarter of 2013, businesses that were doing social media right finally received some well-deserved credit. The problem is, most businesses don’t do it right, or don’t do it at all.
A Short History on SEO Fools
Since the inception of Facebook Business Pages, perhaps before then, many business owners and marketing professionals have tried to fool the system. Humans crave the get rich quick opportunity. Many people selected SEO companies based on their results, and those SEOs that successfully tricked the system were the leaders. Google’s reputation as a great source of relevant, high-quality, information was at stake as irrelevant content moved to page one of search results, and Google’s gurus had to find a way to filter out irrelevant or low-quality information.
A good example of Google’s quality issue can be seen in how the company dealt with duplicate content. Until Google became hardcore about ranking sites with duplicate content lower than those with original text, online marketers tried all kinds of quick-fixes, like keyword stuffing—adding pages of gibberish with keywords to a website—and stealing text from competitors (which is also copyright infringement). Another sneaky, now outlawed, practice was to place keywords on a website in the same color font as the background, so they weren’t visible to consumers, but search spiders saw the words as relevant for indexing and ranking a webpage.
These tactics became known as black hat tactics. Just like the bad guys in the old west, SEO villains who stole rankings from honest businesses with integrity-based SEO strategies were deemed “the bad guys.” We, “the good guys” are the white-hat cowboys, who stand for justice, honesty, and all things good and beautiful—even in our business dealings, when profits are on the line. Ultimately, the good guys win. Read More
Social Media and SEO in Dental Marketing
While MDPM Consulting does condone the use of social media in dental marketing, and we even offer an ebook on the topic, we don’t believe that social media should be the focus of a dental marketing strategy. Much like printing a brochure or running ads in a publication, social media marketing is just one element that can be integrated into a larger, full-scale dental marketing program.
If you’re interested in learning the latest about social media marketing, I recommend you subscribe to www.socialmediaexaminer.com. If you listen to the podcasts and read the blog, you’ll learn how to engage with your potential and current patients through social forums, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Read More