smartpractice social mediaSocial media gives your office a great way to interact with and engage your patients. When your dental office is online and live, there’s a fine line about the activity of your account that should be kept in mind. Knowing where that line is will prevent you from being ignored, overlooked, or simply obnoxious. 

Not Too Much

Are your blogs, tweets or Facebook posts blowing up everyone’s news feeds? Are they so long that it takes people 10 minutes just to sit down and read the entire thing? Short and sweet is one of the best rules of thumb to follow. Give your prospective patients just enough information that they have what they need, but still need to come into your office or call the receptionists for the answers that they are looking for.

Similarly, don’t post everything back to back. Your social media presence should be spread out over the course of the week or month, not piled on at one time. Ensure maximum visibility by posting your content during times your patients could be checking their feeds, like lunch breaks or in the morning. Also, make sure you aren’t posting content just for the sake of posting content, but instead focus on taking your time to create interesting blogs or news for your followers. It’s just as easy for someone to hide or block your updates as it is to follow you.

Not Too Little

If you’re trying to manage your social media accounts on your own (or have one of your staff do it,) you have to make sure that you have enough quality time to sit down and give it the attention that it deserves. One or two posts a month aren’t going to be enough. Your online presence should be a living, breathing, active source that patients go to for the latest information. Add fun content about your staff’s lives or interesting information about your community. If your practice needs help with ideas or time saving solutions, companies like PracticeMojo have marketing solutions for social media like post ideas that deliver post ready content for social media to your email.

Just Right

If your office seems to run into issues with not knowing the right content to post or finding the time to post, investing in a company to help you with your online presence can do wonders for your patient engagement. This prevents you from taking work hours out of your day or your receptionist’s busy schedule and gives you the highest quality of proven tactics to reach the patients in the best way possible. Marketing has changed – and online social media is the future of retaining and recruiting your patients.