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Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

September 12-18, 2011United Kingdom Edition to. Photos work better than logos in attracting people’s at- tention 2Complete your entire biog- raphy section on your profile — this is your free ongoing op- portunity to share information about your practice with others 3Be genuine and honest about who’s doing the tweeting for your practice. If it’s the re- ceptionist, then say so 4Set off on Twitter with the intention of meeting people. If you attempt only to go out and “get” followers, you will miss the point of networking 5Don’t feel you have to fol- low everyone. Focus on meet- ing people in your area — those businesses who may refer to you or people who may become patients As a dentist that is part of a business community, it is im- portant to follow local people and businesses first. There is little benefit to a dental practice in having 5,000 followers if only 100 of them live in your region. Get to know others tweeting in your area. Ask them questions about their business — in turn, they will take an interest in you and your practice. Another cost effective so- cial media tool is YouTube. Although there are excellent options to invest quite a bit in well done video, a cost effective way to use YouTube is to open your own YouTube channel and create your own videos. You can also upload any vid- eos or footage you may have on file. Often practices will have a copy of a video clip, interview, or patient testimonial they could upload. Video can work 24 hours per day and seven days per week for you. In fact if you were considering dedicating a portion of your marketing budget to video, I’d say you were making a wise choice. YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the English speaking world. One of the biggest benefits video has to offer is the fact that it can be syndicated. Your video can be shared on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website and more. Once you handle the initial task of sharing, your vid- eos will be populated all across the web like multiple pieces of online real estate representing you. Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you plan to imple- ment video in your marketing: 1Make sure the video rep- resenting your practice has ad- equate audio. One thing people won’t put up with is shoddy sound 2Consider who will star in your videos. Will it be you, a team member, or a patient sharing a testimonial? 3What will your videos say? Think about providing content about frequently asked ques- tions, such as: • How long will my braces take? • Will my gum surgery hurt? • What can I expect at my child’s first pediatric dentistry visit? 4Will you make the video yourself or hire someone in? While you may invest more to hire a professional, it can be well worth it if you are looking for the best in quality 5Remember even if you de- cide to “do it yourself”, you can benefit from a bit of profession- al editing by allowing them to add your logo, music and a bit of polish Video and marketing with sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter can give practices a competitive edge. Do research before adopting one or all of these tools. They can all be relatively inexpensive and ex- tremely effective, however not without forethought. How do we track what’s working? Now that you are aware of sev- eral free or cost effective tools you can use, it’s important to address the question: “What marketing are you doing that is working and what is not?” Another great free tool from Google that you can use is Google Analytics. Google Ana- lytics is a free service that will help you with tracking. The service generates detailed sta- tistics about the visitors to your website. Ask your webmaster to set up Google Analytics for your website. You’ll have the option to log-in or get reports regularly emailed to you. Goog- le Analytics can track visitors from referring sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc), search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), as well as key words, dis- play advertising and pay-per- click networks. In addition, you’ll find it interesting to see which web pages are most of- ten visited and how much time is spent per visit. If you are actively mar- keting on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, another way to track what’s working is to in- terview patients about where they found you. One option is to add these choices to your pa- tient registration or intake forms. For example: “Who referred you to our office?” Because of the ever increasing budgets that are being dedicat- ed to online marketing, many offices are implementing a patient interview process to literally ask patients: “Have you seen our Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc?” This gives patients a convenient option to specify exactly where they found you, and it also serves as a reminder of your presence in these plat- forms. As valuable as a personal referral remains, online word of mouth will continue to grow in volume and power. It’s im- portant that you know what others are saying about you and your practice. Utilise the tools above to help monitor your online reputation. Continue to strive for testimonials, posi- tive word of mouth, and refer- rals. In turn, social media can help to amplify and put word of mouth to work for you. Re- member to track your efforts, check your Google Analytics reports, and never lose sight of the importance of interviewing patients about exactly where they found you. Once you have these systems in place, your practice will be well positioned to attract new patients while at the same time allowing you to manage successful marketing initiatives. DT page 19DTß About the author Rita Zamora is an international so- cial media market- ing consultant and speaker. She and her team actively co-manage dozens of dental practices’ social media pro- grams. Her clients are located across the United States and internationally. She has been published in many pro- fessional publications. Rita is also Honorary Vice President to the British Dental Practice Managers Association. Learn more at www.DentalRelation- shipMarketing.com or email rita@rita- zamora.com. ‘As valuable as a personal referral remains, online word of mouth will continue to grow in volume and power’ NEW Disposable Dental Products Disposable aprons NU204 Order online at www.alexandra.co.uk * All prices exclude VAT Latex disposable powder free glove GL4 Purple nitrile powder free glove NU203 Medical mask NU184 Roll of 200£2.99 Box of 100£3.95 Box of 100£4.59 Box of 50£4.95 Dentist advert-sept11 v2_Layout 1 26/08/2011 17:13 Page 1