Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

25Practice ManagementMarch 11-17, 2013United Kingdom Edition practice. But do avoid listing your qualifications or those of your staff. In a network mar- keting scenario, people want to know why a product will be good for them not how clever the people are who make it! Don’t forget to include your contact details on these refer- ral cards. Then hand them out to patients but not willy-nilly. Just as not everyone is suited to network marketing, not every patient will feel com- fortable recommending you. Choose patients whom you know or who have confirmed that they have a wide circle of family, friends and colleagues and who have said that they are happy to recommend you. In many ways, social me- dia is a variation on word of mouth recommendations – people are likely to check and respond to favourable reviews and comments posted on Fa- cebook, Twitter and so on. Indeed, when research sug- gests that most people judge a web page in just 10 seconds and only read about a quarter of the text on the pages they visit, there’s an argument that you’re more likely to gain en- quiries through social media than you are through your website. Be aware that merely hav- ing a Facebook page and/or a Twitter account and posting random images and tweets will be highly ineffective. For a start, by just having a Face- book page you are unlikely to be comprehensively penetrat- ing the social media opportu- nity. Research in the USA by Shop.org, comScore and The Partnering Group has shown that many consumers use You- Tube and Pinterest (an online visual pin board) to browse and research products. Think in terms of having a presence on a number of social media and generating visual content for sites such as YouTube and Pinterest as well, of course, as your own blog. Most of us have heard of the term viral marketing – self-replicating information that spreads from person-to- person mainly via social me- dia. While you’ll be very lucky to achieve worldwide viral marketing, you should always consider the potential ‘viral- ity’ of what you put on social media. A lengthy article by Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milk- man in the Journal of Market- ing Research in 2011 looked at this subject in consider- able detail and reported on the research they’d done. To quote from their summary: ‘The results indicate that posi- tive content is more viral than negative content, but the rela- tionship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal posi- tive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (eg, sadness) is less viral.’ In a nutshell, your social media content should be posi- tive, emotional or interesting (or combinations of these) if it is to be engaging and, there- fore, likely to be shared. Just as with having a face-to-face conversation, if you are fas- cinating, upbeat and personal then people will respond posi- tively. Unlike with a face-to- face conversation, if someone compliments you, your team or your practice on social me- dia lots of people get to read it. And that’s all good. My reading recommenda- tion this time is the output of Dental Tribune contribu- tor and social media expert, Rita Zamora (recently named a Top 10 Dental Pro in Social Media). Simply go to www.ri- tazamora.com to read her blog and to sign up for Rita’s free social media marketing up- dates. DT About the author Jacqui Goss is the managing partner of Yes!RESULTS dental practice management con- sultancy. Many practices utilise her knowledge and expertise to con- siderably improve their patients’ journeys. Email: jacqui@yesresults.co.uk Concentrated Effective Safe I Each super-concentrated 8ml cartridge of Virofex makes 500ml of working solution. I The lightweight cartridge refill pack is equivalent to a heavy, cumbersome 5L container of conventional disinfectant – and it can be wall-mounted. I Virofex is highly effective against bacteria, fungi, TB, viruses and spores; including MRSA, C-Diff, HIV, Hepatitis and RotaVirus. I Tests have shown that, even after 24 hours, surfaces sprayed with Virofex have a high resistance to contaminating organisms. I Even the dispenser pack itself is bactericidal! I Virofex is compatible with all surfaces and material types – eliminating the need for different solutions. I Alcohol-free and non-flammable, Virofex does not smell of harmful biocides. 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