Social Media Management: What Your Dental Practice Needs to Succeed on Social Media

Did you know the first social media platform was called “Six Degrees”? 

Social media was invented in 1997, the first website (Six Degrees) was born and functioned for the sole purposes to create a profile, create connections, and send messages. This sounds familiar, does it not? That is because almost every platform still functions this way today, in 2021. Twenty-four years later, this one platform has transformed and created a new type of management, which has helped millions of businesses around the world gain global reach. 

Social media is a piece of technology that allows individuals all over the world to connect with others through the internet. This means that people can share their images and videos through various platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and more. Social media creates trends, some of which take place on current popular platforms, and on other platforms that are being invented as we speak. As things continue to develop on the social media end, there are things that need to be done behind the scenes. This is social media management, the process of analyzing every like, comment, share, and website click while also engaging with the individuals on your page. When someone interacts with a post made on social media, this creates a funnel based on the action they did, which then proceeds to put an audience together to suit your business needs. 

Social Media as an Hourglass

We like to think of social media audience like an hourglass. The top of the hourglass is the general audience. When posting on social media it is crucial to get your posts out into the world, so that you can figure out who you want to target with posts. Then there is the middle of the hourglass, that is the individuals who have interacted with the post in some way. From the individuals who are now grouped into the middle of the hourglass, we can create an ad because we have their location, age, and interests. Once all of this has been completed, a business can move on to the marketing portion. Social media marketing is all about trying to target a specific audience and interact with said audience to make your brand more distinguishable, outside of social media management. It is fundamental that a business understands social media management before they attempt to put money into the marketing or advertising. 



How to Use Social Media to Market Your Dental Practice

The most beneficial reason for using social media is the fact that an individual can make it work specifically for their business, solely based on information that is given to them through different tools. These different tools will help encourage a business to use social media to their best advantage and make it easier to understand how it works. Once a business has defined their social media management, they are able to attain their goals from it which will translate into social media marketing. There are a variety of tools that can be deemed beneficial with social media management. Some of the most prominent tools that your business can use to get one step closer to success:

Facebook Pixels 

You may be scratching your head at the word pixels because it can mean various things in relation to technology. However, this term has now become associated to Facebook, due to their new implementation called “Facebook Pixels”. This new technique uses a basic coding created by Facebook, which can be integrated into your website through the backend. Once this has been integrated into your website, it will help record data that helps you manage Facebook advertisements, optimize future advertisements, and helps you to build a targeted audience. Facebook pixels does this by tracking an individual's activity through cookies, which then presents an individual with ads that are relevant to what they have clicked on. For example, if you own a dental clinic, someone may visit your website to try and learn about what services you offer. If you have Facebook pixels integrated into your backend, the individual on your website, will now start to see ads pertaining to dental services the next time they are scrolling on Facebook. If you are running an ad during that time, it can become more beneficial because your clinic will be the one, they start to see. With pixels activated, for a long period of time, it has a better chance at recognizing your audience and gives you a better chance at creating targeting ads and having a return on investment.

Analytics

With the world constantly evolving, the online environment needs to change along with it. This means integrating analytics into basic knowledge when trying to work with marketing. When a business is looking into their analytics, they are looking at: 

• The best days of the week for engagement 
• The best time of the day for engagement 
• Where people are viewing social media posts from (demographics) 

Once we have established the analytics of a social media platform, it will help you determine all the various elements that should be used when thinking of running a campaign. If you are looking into running a campaign, it is crucial that you have implemented Facebook pixels and acquainted yourself with the analytics of your accounts. Once those two tools are implemented, you will be able to determine: 

• Which platform your advertisement should run on (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) 
• The budget you want to set aside for marketing (Usually 2-5% of your revenue). Depending where you are seeing the most traffic, this is the platform that you should direct your advertising on. 
• Where there is room for improvement. This could mean working on engagement or reverting the page to making less effort due to high success.

Profile Optimization 

Once a business has integrated Facebook pixels into their website and became knowledgeable about the depths of analytics, they should ensure their profile on all online platforms are optimized and correct. Optimizing all profiles ensures that you have a large web presence to establish authority in your industry. Elements that you should have included in your website and online profiles, to ensure that you gain more, are:

• Automatic-Reply messages so that if someone connects with you, they know that you have received their message and will get back to them within a certain timeframe (usually 24 hours).
• Pop-up message which will ask specific questions that are commonly found in your industry. This could help users get their answers quickly, rather than having to call, email or search through the website for answers. 
• Links to your various social media accounts to ensure that customers or potential customers can keep up to date on your business and create a more personable relationship.
• Contact information which will usually include phone numbers, location, hours and email information. You do not want to have clients trying to search for your contact information, so a business should ensure that this is the most accessible bar on their profiles.
• Price ranges to allow individuals to have an idea of what the pricing will be like for services and products. 
• A COVID information pop-up which will provide users with an update on a business during the pandemic. Due to the ongoing pandemic, many people are worried about the safety measures, so it is an element that should be referenced.



Dr. Marketing Can Help Manage the Social Media Profiles for Your Dental Clinic

Social media management can be a difficult concept to understand. You may have to work your way up from bottom to top to get a full grasp on understanding it. Instead of trying to do all of this yourself though, you can hire marketing agencies who specialize in this form of marketing to get you the most from social media management. At Dr. Marketing, we completely take over and manage our client’s social media. We create a foundation for social media management, which eventually can translate into social media marketing, once the foundation has been perceived. We also do pixel integration, which will pair with search engine optimization (seo) and websites, seamlessly. We use our social media management to see where people are clicking to be able to design the perfect website and content that you need, to gain more notice. We will never recommend social media marketing unless we have evidence that everything on social media management is up to par. This means we will ensure: 

• Our client has a strong following.
• We have enough data from Facebook pixel.
• We have enough analytics from their website and channels that will prove which one their social media is their best channels. 
• We make sure that they have a marketing budget that is ready to invest in social media.

If you need help with this service, please schedule an appointment HERE or call us with the button below.