Tag: facebook for dentists

Social Media for Dentists: Keep It Legal, Keep It Ethical

As a professional in the dental community exploring the opportunities and insights presented by social media, you must understand that social media usage carries risks, too. Not that you haven’t always honored legal and ethical considerations for marketing your practice, but the need for transparency is even greater with social media. When we design websites and develop social media marketing strategies, we focus on five critical areas.

If You Can’t Say Something Nice…

Bad reviews happen to even the gentlest, friendliest, most brilliant dentists. Sometimes the complaint is valid, sometimes it’s nothing short of outrageous. Heck, sometimes it’s not even a review of your office—just ask any Dr. John Smith, DDS. If you respond to negative reviews, keep two things in mind. One, everyone will see your response. Everyone. Whether a negative claim is true or not is not immediately relevant.

A combative, insulting, accusatory response can derail your reputation online and offline.

Patients are generally lenient when reading others’ reviews. Most are rational enough to differentiate between a legitimate complaint and a nitpicker. You can acknowledge positive or negative reviews, but be mindful of potential HIPAA violations. Keep it general and empathetic, no names or treatment specifics. A touch of gratitude doesn’t hurt, either.

Don’t Forget the Permission Slips

When we design websites and blogs, our clients often request that we use photographs of their actual patients. Compare to a stock photo, it’s hard to deny the impact of a real-life “before and after” shot, and it’s an awesome way to show off your handiwork. Even so, using patients’ info or images without their consent can land you in serious trouble. Informed consent goes hand in hand with HIPAA and applies to full names, x-rays, photographs, and videos

Oh No, He Did NOT Just Post That

Doing business in the fishbowl of social media essentially means that everyone sees everything in real-time. An online lapse in judgment goes a long way, especially in the age of the screenshot. It’s okay to adopt an online “persona” for your practice, something to create a distinctive voice that speaks directly to your target market. It’s not okay if that persona is the type to share bikini and beer pong pics and suggestive or profane language. Leave religion and politics out of it, too.

A Little Privacy, Please

Some social media websites—I’m looking at you, Facebook—insist on implementing confusing new features and requirements that affect the way you share content and with whom you share it. Social media is dynamic, and you must be, too. The MDPM team works hard to keep abreast of privacy changes and how they affect your professional social media strategy, but it’s up to you to ensure that your separate, personal profile respects these guidelines as well.

It Takes a Village

You might very well be the most social media-savvy dentist in the land, but it counts for nothing if the receptionist is abusing social media in the name of your practice. Creating a clear, comprehensive social media policy protects your patients, your practice, and your privacy. Your policy should include considerations for HIPAA, blogging, personal social media use, and a list of each employee’s responsibility as it relates to social media and online reputation management. Periodically update your policy to reflect regulatory guidelines and/or new social media formats, and have each staff member sign an acknowledgement of the policy.

Be social. Be smart. CEO Jill Nastasia works closely with dental clients to bring their unique vision and voice online. She’s something of a social media ninja and wouldn’t dream of posting bikini and beer pong pics. Questions about social media, blogging, or SEO for dentists? Call Jill at 972-781-8861, or email her here.

5 Social Networking Tasks Dentists Can Hire a Teenager to Do

In a Biznik article, Sue Cartwright, Social Media Marketing Expert, tells us: “With 78% of consumers trusting peer reviews when only 14% trust advertisements, it is essential to be involved in your online community, to build a good reputation and know what people are saying about you. To do this effectively you need to engage in conversations, monitor the outcomes, join the debate, help others and show customers you care as a means to building a loyal network.”

Having been in dental marketing for years, I know that most dentists don’t have the staff or time to invest in an all-out social media marketing campaign. I do think, however, there are a few things your front office person can do to get your office engaged on Facebook. You can even hire your teenage daughter to do these things. Seriously, $10 an hour, 5 hours a week – not much of an investment. The return will show up, most likely, in patients being more loyal to you, giving you free word-of-mouth referrals, and remembering to keep up with recall visits and follow up with treatment. Why? Because you’ll be engaged, showing that you care!

You’ll need a human page and a fan page to make this work. Here’s how to do it: Read More

Dear Dentist: Always the Critic? You Need a Creator!

I was drawn into Dr. Larry Emmott’s newsletter, Emmott on Technology, this morning. An article entitled “Dentists Technographic Profiles” shares a brief overview of Charlene Li’s and John Bernoff’s book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Dr. Emmott shows us the five main profiles that describe how people interact with the web.

He goes on to report that Net32 profiled dentists as such: nearly half are Critics, compared to about a quarter of the general population. A quarter of dentists, compared to only 12% of Americans, are Collectors.

Also…

  • 66% of dentists don’t visit blogs
  • 43% don’t use social networking
  • 93% prefer Facebook of all social sites
  • And here’s the kicker, only 10% of dentists claim to be Creators when it comes to the web. About 18% of the American public are Creators.

Creators are the folks who build and write blogs, produce videos, and do all that original stuff from scratch. Critics like to post responses to comments or rate and review things online. Collectors are the folks who like to gather links and use bookmarks so that everything they like and need is easy to access. In addition to these, Li and Bernoff identified Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives as profiles.

We all probably have a little of each of the six profiles in our Internet personality. I’m obviously a Creator; I write at least a dozen posts a day, build blogs, collaborate on logos, and help with web design. But I also see the Collector in me. As a writer, I have to do a lot of research to come up with fresh blog content, and I have a long list of bookmarked favorites.

If you’re not the Creator type, let’s get together. We’ll round out your Internet profile. I’ll fill in for you so that you’re all things to all potential patients. Modern Dental Practice Marketing is an Internet marketing firm that caters, primarily, to dentists. We build custom dental websites, dental blogs, and dental brands in the graphic design department. Our experienced dental copywriters are word machines… they produce an amazing number of original, interesting, and clinically accurate blog posts each week. Our copywiriting department also composes social networking posts, writes or rewrites website content, and creates press releases, articles, white papers, and more. If you need a Creative side, call and talk with Jill at 972-781-8861.

I’m going to the bookstore now to buy Groundswell. Thanks for the tip, Larry!

Common Questions about Modern Dental Practice Marketing

We’re often asked if we’ll do projects for businesses outside of dentistry. The answer is: Heck Yes! Take a peek at our portfolio, and you’ll see that half of MDPM’s clients aren’t dentists at all.

While we specialize in dental content because of our experience in the industry, our clients’ businesses range from home improvement to medical consulting to property management to religious instruction. Yeah, that’s a pretty wide range of clients. Few companies offer what MDPM does, and even fewer offer similar services for such a great price.

We’ve been asked if we host websites. The answer is no. We use the trusted resources available on the internet. WordPress, which we use for our blog websites, is free source software. Anyone can use it at no cost. WordPress offers 100 design templates, great add-ons (widgets), multiple pages, and customizable features. In addition, with WordPress, we can provide our clients with visitation statistics, as well as a free smart phone version of their blog. MDPM blogs are hosted with WordPress, as well.

Some folks want to know the difference between a blog and a custom website. This article explains the answer in detail. Check it out.

Why we recommend new blogs. To keep your costs low, and to take advantage of WordPress’ search engine optimization benefits, we prefer to create new blog websites for our clients, rather than just provide content for an existing blog. This allows us the freedom to do what we believe is best for your practice’s Internet marketing strategy. We’re in control of the blog’s success. We’ll purchase a good domain name, set up the blog website with a blog on the main page, and add other pages to describe your practice, team, and services. We always recommend that our clients keep their main website if they have one. A blog is great for SEO, but it is not a showcase site. It’s a workhorse. We’ll recommend that your blog’s visitors go to your main website for more detailed information about your office.

Will MDPM write blog content for my existing blog? Yes! We can’t promise that you’ll receive the same SEO benefits if we provide content for an existing blog. If your current blog is not on WordPress, and we provide content to your web company, they have to do some backend work to ensure the blog is indexed properly on search engines. In addition, if we only provide you with blog content, you’ll miss out on the extra promotional efforts we provide with the Extreme Internet Presence Package.

What else do we offer besides blogs? A lot. Visit our services page for more info. In short, we offer full-service Internet marketing, as well as community marketing. Branding, logo design, event planning and management, press releases, social networking, team training, and more…  You might also want to complete our free assessment while you’re here. It will help you, us, or a consultant analyze your current and past marketing program.

Facebook & Social Networking Tips for Dentists

  • The Facebook movie, The Social Network, will be in theaters this October.
  • America Has Talent is doing a show on the best of YouTube.
  • Tosh.0 has almost 1.5 million Facebook fans.
  • Half of all Americans use Facebook.

Listen, Doc, I don’t want to bring you down, but if you don’t see that social networking is deeply embedded in our culture; if you think it’s a fad that you’ve chosen to avoid; if you will not leverage social networking to market your dental practice…you are putting big steel walls around your practice’s potential growth.

And, thing is, just having a Facebook page won’t do the job.

On the Modern Dental Practice Marketing fan page this week, I’m sharing daily tips and insight about social networking and social marketing. I’m not sharing the tips on the MDPM Dentists page because I want to draw people to the fan page. Why? Read More

Hey, Dentist… Which is More Important: Web or Community Marketing?

Why do you have to choose? Truth is, both types of marketing could really boost your patient base—and retention—in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. And never forget, the whole point is to leave an impression! Tried and true, good ol’ boy advertising does not appeal to the younger generation…the technical gurus who invest money in their health and appearance.

So let’s look at the balancing act between Internet and community marketing for dentists:

Internet Marketing for Dentists

  • Web marketing should start with a website that ranks well on Google for the keywords your potential patients most often use.
  • Beyond that, social networking, like Facebook and Twitter can be beneficial. However, you and your team have to use these resources correctly. Just posting random thoughts on a Facebook Fan Page and Tweeting about an article you read won’t effectively promote your dental practice. At MDPM, we offer one-on-one coaching for you and your team, so you can learn how to fit social networking into your schedule and get the most pop for your posts. There’s a simple formula that’s easy to manage, and you’ll find it highly effective.
  • You’ll also need a blog that feeds onto your Facebook page. The blog should be updated with keyword-rich, relevant posts at least once a week. The MDPM dental copywriters can make posts on your behalf, or I can teach you and your team how to write solid blog posts that appeal to dental patients and search engine spiders.

That’s a synopsis of web marketing for dentists. But when you consider that the Internet is international and your practice is local, you can see that community promotions are a necessary component to an effective dental practice marketing strategy—particularly in North Texas towns, like Keller, Colleyville, Southlake, Grapevine, Murphy, and Frisco. We’re in Texas, and what rules Friday nights? Football. That’s right. Read More