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Second, if you’re not comfortable with social media or don’t have time to manage it effectively on your own, you can
have someone else manage it for you. Officite can write your content and post it for you – once, twice or even four times
a month. It’s a great way to outsource that service to a professional who can become your social networking partner
and build a strong presence for your practice on Facebook and Twitter. One of the things that Officite offers when we
set up your Web site is to include a blog page, which is an integral part of social networking. This blog feeds your social
networks, so all you have to do is post to your blog and then your Twitter account and Facebook page are automatically
updated with that same content. This really streamlines the entire management process.
A third way to jumpstart your social networking is to empower someone on your staff to take the lead. There’s probably
an assistant or office manager who’s already interacting on Facebook and Twitter who can create the content and
manage the social media sites for you.
It’s important for dentists to understand that those who wait to get Web sites have a much tougher time coming up in
the search results than the dentists who have been doing it the past three to five years. The early adopters are now the
ones listed high in the search engines. So, as it relates to social media, you don’t want to wait five years and be left
behind when competitors in your neighborhood are generating new fans to their Facebook pages and attracting new
patients.
MD: That’s a great point. As you listed off those three options, you squashed every possible objection a dentist could have. Because
anytime you go up to a dentist with a new idea, whether it be a new restoration or a new concept like social media, there
are going to be objections to change. And you tend to hear the same four or five objections, and I think you just answered all of
them. For myself, I was thinking that I don’t mind blogging. Then I think about my dad, who’s a retired dentist, and he would
have said, “Why do I need this? I can’t do this. I have nothing to say. I don’t like to type.” There would have been all kinds of
objections. But if you would have said to him, “Look, you can pay and have a professional do it or you can delegate someone
on your staff do it,” there are enough options so that he could have no further objections. So I don’t see any reason why dentists
shouldn’t be willing to try it.
It’s funny you mentioned the blogs because I follow probably seven or eight blogs, only one of them being dental related, and I
can see dentists being a little bit nervous about writing a blog or not really wanting to sit down and do it. It is interesting that
the blog can update these other forms of social media. So is the blog kind of the centerpiece in this strategy?
GL: Sure, it’s the nucleus; it’s where it all happens. By writing and feeding all of your messages through a blog, it automatically
sets up your Facebook and Twitter page with content. Not to mention that a blog is a great way to reveal
your credibility, engage with patients and boost your search ranking. In fact, Google now spiders Twitter and Facebook,
and the information on these social networking sites can actually appear in the search results when a relevant search
is performed.
In addition to the Facebook and Twitter feeds, you’ll notice that reviews about your practice are also visible to people
searching for you in the local maps results of Google. For instance, if you type “Dentist, Park Ridge, Ill.” into Google, the
new local Google Maps results will display what’s known as the Google 10-pack: 10 dentists in Park Ridge with phone
numbers, Web addresses and reviews for each listing. These reviews have become an extremely important factor for
dentists in terms of managing their online reputation and earning high rankings in the search results. So it’s imperative
for dentists to manage their reputation online as it relates to how their practice is portrayed on the Internet.
MD: Interesting. So, the online reputation is something that I look at in regards to, as I mentioned before, restaurants on Yelp.
And you’ll look to see what other people have written about a restaurant. If something has 200 reviews and has a 4.5-star rating,
you can be pretty well assured that it’s a quality establishment. And if you look through all of those reviews, there’d be
plenty of 5-star reviews and a couple of 3-star reviews that brought that down just a little bit, so they didn’t have a perfect rating.
But I know dentists who have told me, because of a couple random lawsuits that are going on – specifically with Yelp – that
they’re afraid to be reviewed online. However, it sounds like to stand on the sidelines and to stay away from it doesn’t shield
you from somebody who didn’t have a positive experience. And that one bad review will never be replaced with a good review
if you don’t encourage it. Explain to our readers a little bit about managing this online reputation.
GL: What you want to do is manage and audit your online reputation. There are a couple ways to do that. The first thing
you want to do is simply perform a Google search for your name and practice and see what comes up in the results.
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