An active social media presence can bring in new patients and build loyalty with current patients. What’s more, regular social posting can improve your local search rankings and ultimately drive more traffic to your website. Below we outline the benefits of being active on social media, and underline how localized social posts earn more local traffic.
Successful dentists post consistently.
Social media begins and sustains a conversation between your dental practice and your community. As you grow your social media presence, it’s important that you get into a regular posting schedule where you consistently post during times of high engagement. By consistently posting, you build an expectation for your audience and don’t risk losing followers because of inactivity.
Post regularly – at least once per week and even once every day, depending on the engagement you’re getting and the quality of your content. Post during optimal times to maximize the reach of your social posts. This tends to be about mid day or early afternoon during the week as well as around 8:00pm at night. Be sure to stick to a schedule, so that you can build and sustain audience expectations.
Successful dentists have social media accounts with shareable content.
When Google crawls your website, one of the statistics it measures is the amount of traffic that your site receives. An active, up to date social media presence can help drive traffic to your website because it features interesting and recent content. These social signals indicate to Google that your content is being talked about, and determines that you are relevant to your audience, thereby helping your overall website search rank.
Work to create valuable, shareable posts that capture your audience’s attention, and drive traffic back to your website. Blog posts should target the interests of your audience and always get shared on your social media accounts. Click here to learn how to create shareable posts.
A post with visuals and readily available insight is sure to get shared.
Successful dentists use social media to talk about their local community.
There are a variety of ways to localize your posts and get more local eyes on your website – and those are the eyes that you ultimately want to capture. To capture the most local traffic, use local hashtags, tag local businesses in your posts, and check in to local hot spots around your town. Doing so will expose your posts to different local audiences and slowly earn you more followers. By localizing your posts, you begin to interact with your followers on a different level, and reveal to them more about your personality.
When you participate in local events – share it! These posts generate great reach and connect you to your local community.
Plug an event that your practice is participating in, and invite your audience to attend!
How successful is your social media presence?
Social media is a powerful online marketing and branding tool that you can’t afford to ignore. A strong social media presence is one of the most cost effective ways to capture a local audience, drive more traffic to your website and earn better search rankings.
However, creating valuable posts for social media takes a lot of time and creativity. This where Smile Savvy can help: we create engaging social media posts about pediatric dentistry that inform and entertain your followers. We also send weekly “kickstarter” emails that give dentists actionable post ideas and inspiration for unique social media posts that you can do on your own. Click here to learn more about our Social Media packages, and how we can help you get more social with your local audience.
