Connie Hopper shares her thoughts on the key things to monitor to make sure your social media efforts are bringing rewards…
Dentistry is a relationships business. The stronger your connections are to your patients, the more loyal they are and the more likely they will be to refer your practice to friends and family.
And, of course, having good relationships with your patients will make working life that little bit easier and nicer.
With social media, those relationships don’t start and end at the practice door any more. Your social media platforms can help you to strengthen your bonds with existing patients and are often the starting point for new ones with potential patients.
So, it’s important not just to ‘do’ social media, but to do it well – but how do you know if what you are doing is actually working? How do you know if it is actually benefitting your business and your patients, and therefore if it is an effective use of your resources?
Below are three ways to check:
Are people engaging with you?
Having lots of friends or followers of your page(s) is great, but if none, or only a few, of those are actually responding to your posts or getting involved in online conversations with you, it really doesn’t mean that much.
It is more worthwhile to measure your engagement – whether people are reacting to, replying to or sharing your posts (on Facebook you can use the ‘insights’ tab which will give you some figures as to how your page is performing).
Not only does this tell you that your audience of potential and existing patients are happy to engage with you online, but you will also be able to see what kind of posts do well and target your resources appropriately.
Use codes and hashtags
You can use codes or hashtags to monitor the success of certain posts and help you to track activity across your social media platforms. For example, you can create a hashtag that is the name of your practice and then use that online as well as on posters, e.g. ‘Does our service make you smile? Drop us a message using the hashtag #OurPractice.’
Codes can be used on posts that are offering some kind of special offer or discount – bearing in mind that ‘selling’ posts should be kept to a minimum. This code should be quoted or used by the patient when they book their appointment to make use of the promotion. This will allow you to track which types work best.
Is it a source of new patients?
Whenever a new patient calls the practice or attends their first appointment, ask them how they found out about you. This could be as part of a form or in conversation, but it should be recorded somewhere.
Search engines and social media are often the first port of call when people are looking for a new service, so it would be worthwhile to know if your page(s) are doing a good job when it comes to encouraging new patients to make contact.
Again, it will help to know where best to direct your time and money. For example, if more people are finding you via Facebook rather than via your newspaper adverts then it may make more sense to use your budget on social media advertising.
Like any aspect of running a business, marketing your practice via social media requires some investment in time and money. Measuring how well it is doing will make sure it is a wise investment that will bring returns of a growing list and loyal patients.
