Social Media For Dentists In Virginia Beach & Norfolk.

These days just about everyone is using social media like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to keep in touch with friends, find out about products and services and to make business contacts. Dentists too can benefit from being involved with social media for both professional and patient related matters.

Numerous dentists nowadays understand that if they want a stronger relationship with their patients that the various social media platforms are now the place to be. Statistics show that more than 50 percent of dentists have embraced social media in order to network and to reach both business contacts, existing and potential new patients. They are discovering that these media sites have a great impact on the field of Internet dental marketing practices, as well as the areas of patient loyalty and trust.

Social Media Gives Dentists More Visibility

Having Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts helps to give a dentist and his office more visibility. Plus, since these sites are free, it helps him to save money while he is gaining this visibility. These sites can also make the dentist more accessible to his or her patients, and make the relationship between the dentist and the patient friendlier.

For instance, all you need to do is spend a few minutes a day on your Facebook or Twitter account and post a few updates, share a funny dental related joke, link to some relevant info on dental health to educate your patients, post other helpful info such as articles on dental insurance, prevention, etc. If you make your site useful, as well as give it a friendly feel, your patients are bound to interact with you and that leads to a better relationship.

You can also post before and after pictures of different procedures along with patient’s reviews on them if they have had them done, post the office schedule, or even offer discounts to your “fans” or to new patients. Once your pages get going, you will discover more and more ways that your social media presence can aid your office.

Plus, if you also have a website for your office, you can add the social media share buttons to it so your followers can “like” your Facebook page or retweet something if it is a Twitter account. This also helps to raise the page ranking of your website since Google is now using social media more to give credibility to sites and rank their homepages.

With your name being put out there via social media, it gives you some benefits that you will notice right away. The more your office name, website URL, or your own name is put out there via social media comments or tweets, etc, the more publicity this is giving your practice.

How to get started in Social Media for Dentists

Once you set up your Facebook fan page or Twitter accounts, then you have to start using them and getting others to use them in order to keep it going. This requires a jumpstart of your friends, relatives, staff, etc starting to post on it and get other people interested in joining in.  Everyone needs to share your pages or tweet about them so that your page will start working its magic for your office.

You can have the staff tell all the patients, then they can tell others. If you have a website, you can write an article introducing your Facebook or other social media account. Then others can link to the article or tweet about it. You also can tag people in photos (if they don’t mind), and this way they will appear in their friends’ posts. These are just a few ways to get that social media page going. However you do it, using social media in your office works best if it is through a team effort, so be sure to work together to help increase your office’s social media presence.

How to Get Social Media to Work For Your Office

Once your Facebook or Twitter pages get going, you have to keep up with them and make sure you are sending out quality and interesting content to keep your fans and followers. If you continuously produce good, up to date and worthwhile information, you will keep the fan or follower base intact and continue to gain even more people to your lists.

You can do this, plus send out those special offers, run a poll, or even come up with some sort of contest to get people engaged and interested in coming to your site every day to see what is new. However you use it, just be sure that you do use it daily so the material won’t get stale and old, and therefore not be working to help you engage and keep your current patients and get them to recommend you to new ones.

You can also use social bookmarking as a way to get more exposure. Check out and use services like dig, stumbleupon, or other similar sites. These let you bookmark web pages, Facebook pages, or anything that you have online that has its own URL.

Don’t Forget About YouTube

Another aspect of social media is YouTube, which has become increasingly popular as of late. Statistics say it is one of the most five visited sites on the Internet. You can get exposure for your office this way as well. Why not make a series of short videos to introduce your office and its services?

Or you can have one of your hygienists do a series on good dental heath. The ideas are endless and this gets you great exposure and builds patient loyalty. Plus, videos are easy and inexpensive form of advertising that you can post for free! Don’t forget to put a slide up at the end of each video with your office contact info!

All in all, social media is here to stay and before long everyone will be on it if they aren’t already. Don’t let this great opportunity pass you by! Join the world of social media networking to get your office the exposure it deserves!

www.SocialOneMedia.com specializes in working for Dentists in Virginia Beach & Norfolk, VA. If you have any questions, please give us a call today. ReachLocal