Social Media

Some of our best social media tips for dentists by a dentist!

How to Set Up an Instagram™ Account for Your Dental Practice

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Sep 22, 2021 | Dental Soiree, How To's, instagram, Social Media

As you probably know, Instagram is kind of our thing around here. We have loved it since the very early days, and it has been such a huge cornerstone of our dental marketing education! However, we know that not all dental professionals have embraced Instagram yet. It can be overwhelming if you don’t even have an Instagram account for your dental practice yet.

I get it. I don’t want this to be just one more new thing to learn among all the other things you’re learning all the time! I want it to be FUN and I totally believe that it can be… even if you’re running a busy practice. To help you out, we wanted to put together a tutorial-style blog post to walk you through the process of setting up an Instagram account for your dental practice.

Of course, if you have any questions, we are here for you. You can always find us and ask questions in our Facebook group, Dental Soiree Society. This is a free group for dental professionals who want to connect and learn more about social media and dental marketing. Come join us!

Ok, back to Instagram. Here are the steps to set up your account:

First, you’re going to need to download the Instagram app from the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play Store (Android). Once the app is downloaded onto your smartphone, tap to open it.

Tap the “Sign Up With Email or Phone Number” (Android) or “Create New Account” (iPhone) button, then enter your information. Enter your practice’s email (you might want to use a general like info@yourpracticename if you want someone on your team to be able to access it from time to time). If you’re using a phone number to sign up, you’ll need to go through the steps to get a confirmation code sent to you. Once you’re done, tap the “Next” button.

Now it’s time to choose a username! I strongly suggest using your practice’s name. If it’s unavailable, try different combinations, but avoid using symbols that would make it difficult for people to remember or search for. For example, let’s pretend you own ABC Dental Care in Chicago. Here are some options for your Instagram username:

ABCdentalcare (my favorite option if it’s available)
ABCdentalcarechicago
ABCdental
ABCdentalchicago

Once you create your account and have a username, you’re going to want to turn your account into a business account so you can get better analytics and you can promote posts or run ads later on if you want to. To do this, tap on the “Edit Profile” button and then tap “Switch to Professional Account.” I’ll share some screenshots of what this looks like (note: I am doing this in September 2021 on an iPhone, so this might not be what it looks like for you but it should be similar).

Once you click on “Switch to Professional Account” you will want to tap through until you get the option to choose between a Creator and a Business account. You want to choose Business account. Once you make this selection, they’ll ask for your business email, phone, and address.

Next, they will ask you to select the Facebook page you want to connect your Instagram account to. Tap the correct business page and link it to your Instagram account.

NOTE: If you don’t have a Facebook page set up for your practice yet, you will want to do that first and make sure it’s a business page. There are lots of articles and videos online to walk you through that.

Yay! You did it; you set up an Instagram account for your dental practice from scratch! You now have access to more options like insights, additional contact buttons that people can use to reach your practice, and advertising options! If you need to make any changes, you can click on “Edit Profile” again to change your bio, contact information, and more.

Again, if you have any questions, you can reach us over in our Dental Soiree Society Facebook group. I am always happy to help dentists and dental professionals get into Instagram because I love it and believe in it soooo much!

Our Dentalgram™ Academy is also launching soon! In this self-paced course, you’ll learn how to optimize and utilize your new Instagram account to reach local patients who are eager to pay for your high-value services! Sign up for the waitlist and get notified as soon as we launch!

How to Avoid Social Media Fatigue

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Sep 20, 2021 | Dental Soiree, Marketing, Productivity, Social Media

I know it’s a tired old saying at this point, but in order to avoid burnout and more specifically, social media fatigue, you really do have to work smarter and not harder. Sure, you could try to post brand new content every day on all your single social media channels but is that even a good strategy?

I have yet to see any proof that shows that creating new content for each channel pays off. This is why one of my favorite strategies to avoid social media fatigue is repurposing content across my social media channels… and beyond! I’ll explain what I mean.

Repurposing Content 101

If you’re going to put in the work to create a piece of content, you want to make sure it gets SEEN and APPRECIATED. Organic engagement rates are lower than ever because social media sites want to push people to pay money to boost posts and get more engagement. So, if you want to get the views and you don’t want to pay for them, you have to be smart about maximizing your content!

At first, repurposing content might seem like a way to cheat the system, but I promise, it’s not. All you’re doing is reworking your own existing, high-quality content and presenting it in a different form on new channels.

So, I don’t take the exact same photo, copy, and hashtags that I use on Instagram and post it on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. But, if something performs well on Instagram, I might take the imagery and repost it on Facebook with a different message and maybe one or two hashtags rather than 10 or 12.

Similarly, if I make a TikTok video that is getting engagement, I might repurpose that video content as an Instagram Reel because I know I have a different audience that follows me on Instagram and they might not see the content if I only stream it to my TikTok followers.

Here are some ideas of ways you can start repurposing content today to save yourself from feeling the dreaded social media fatigue!

1 – Repurpose Your Blog Posts

This one is one of my favorites. Your blog posts have some REALLY good nuggets of information in them, and I guarantee that every blog post you have could easily be turned into a dozen different infographics or an awesome TikTok or Reel.

Pull out the best bits of content or a quote and make some branded graphics using Canva. Or, you can create a few slides in Canva that are sized appropriately for Instagram Stories and let people tap through to get your tips!

These are just some ways to repurpose blog content, but let your imagination run wild and come up with some new ways to share the same content.

2 – Screenshot It

This is one of the easiest ways to repurpose your own content. Did you just post a really great tweet? Take a screenshot, crop it, and post it to Instagram with a caption and a few targeted hashtags. Did you get an awesome review on Google? Take a screenshot and share it to Instagram Stories with a cute heart sticker (be sure to white out the person’s last name and any other identifying information).

Don’t let overwhelm prevent you from creating authentic content. Use the tools you already have at your disposal (like that handy screenshot function on your phone) to create great content on the fly!

3 – Revisit Something Again

When you post something on social media, it really is at the mercy of the algorithms. So, if your followers aren’t regularly engaging with your content already, or they don’t pop onto their apps every few hours, they will probably miss your post altogether. If you ever check your analytics, you know that just a small percentage of your followers will see your posts, which I’ll admit, is a bit of a bummer. But, that’s the name of the social media game!

If you spent a lot of time on a really great infographic or video, there’s no shame in sharing it again a few months later. Just pair a new caption with it and if applicable, throw some new hashtags in the mix. Just because you posted it once already doesn’t mean it has to be discarded forever.

Even if someone ends up seeing the same thing twice—or even three times—I promise, they’re not going to unfollow you. In fact, the reminder might be exactly what they need on that day!

4 – Reuse Images and Videos

Is there an image that you love and want to use again in a different way? Put a quote on top of it! This is a great (and super easy) way to get more life out of a photo you really like. Just drop the photo into Canva and play around with overlaying your brand color and then adding text on top of the overlay.

P.S. If you’re a beginner at graphic design, don’t panic. There are lots of templates already in there (just search for “quote” in the templates section) and literally all you have to do is swap out the photo, text, and colors.

You can do something similar with video content you love. Clip it and share a short snippet of the video on your Instagram Stories or on your LinkedIn page. Or, if you’re feeling creative, you can turn your video clip into a fun GIF (we have a mini course that goes over how to do this in the Content Club).

Don’t let those photos and videos you love sit there unused. Give them new life and share them again with your followers!

Now Get Out There & Repurpose Your Content!

I hope this post gave you a lot of ideas in regards to repurposing content for social media. It is one of the best ways I’ve found to avoid social media fatigue because your content can stretch further, which means you can spend less time creating brand new content.

If you want to save even more time, join us in the Content Club! As a member, you get a monthly content bundle that includes 30 images, 30 captions, and 30 hashtag sets that you can just copy, paste, and post. Click here to join this awesome and supportive community!

Also, we are about to launch a brand new course, Dentalgram™ Academy! It will outline the exact Success Path I used to build a 7 figure Fee-For-Service dental practice utilizing the power of Instagram™ and it’s PERFECT for beginners! Click here to get on our waitlist and find out as soon as we officially open our doors!

Do This Quick End-of-Year Dental Marketing Assessment!

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Dec 22, 2019 | Branding, Dental Soiree, Marketing, Social Media

The new year is right around the corner… can you believe it?? Before 2019 comes to an end, I would love for you to participate in this quick end-of-year dental marketing assessment with me! I put this together to help you reflect on your year. It brings back all kinds of Seventeen magazine nostalgia for me, and I hope it does for you, too!

After taking this assessment, I hope that you will think about your dental marketing goals for 2020. After examining what worked, what didn’t work, and what got pushed to the backburner, you will be able to see where you might need to invest more time and resources moving forward.

Ready to dive in?

End-of-Year Dental Marketing Assessment

This year, I posted consistently on social media for my practice.
1. Yes, I posted at least three times a week! (3 points)
2. I posted occasionally but I probably need to do more. (2 points)
3. I really didn’t post that much. (1 point)
This year, I focused on my SEO by upgrading my site and blogging regularly.
1. Yes, I am all about that SEO life! (3 points)
2. It was important to me, but it didn’t happen as regularly as I hoped. (2 points)
3. I meant to do it, but I didn’t 😬 (1 point)
I did a great job of showing up online by sharing photos of myself and doing video content, e.g. live streams, Instagram Stories, and/or YouTube content.
1. I’ve basically got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now! (3 points)
2. I did a little of that (and overcame my fear of showing my face online). (2 points)
3. I know I need to do this but this year, it just didn’t happen. (1 point)
I sent out emails to my patients that were more than just appointment reminders.
1. Yep, I did that 🤗 (3 points)
2. I sent out one or two emails. (2 points)
3. I did not do any kind of email marketing whatsoever. (1 point)
When it comes to prioritizing dental marketing for my practice, I rate myself a/an ____ on a scale of 1-10…
1. 8-10 (3 points)
2. 4-7 (2 points)
3. 1-4 (1 point)

Okay, let’s see how you did!

12-15 Points

You’re a dental marketing rockstar, and you know what you need to be doing to stand out online! Keep doing what you’re doing, but always be thinking of new ways to innovate. It’s easy to let things slip, especially when we get busy. Always think about how to incorporate new trends, technology, and hashtags into your content. Use new, competitive keywords when blogging and make sure your website is always up to date, fast, and gorgeous.

If you want to invest in your practice, we would suggest the Dental Branding Bootcamp! This isn’t a 101 course, it’s for people who want to level up their dental branding using tools like paid advertising, great storytelling, and in-practice productivity hacks!

9-12 Points

For the most part, you know what you need to do to market your practice, but obstacles are standing in your way. In the new year, let’s work on eliminating those obstacles! If you are low on time, consider investing in done-for-you social media bundles. You can have content to post every day without having to come up with the captions, hashtags and photos all by yourself.

You also might want to consider outsourcing your blog writing and website upgrades to a contractor or agency. We always think we have time for these things, but dentistry is no joke and often, we don’t even have enough time for the things we actually enjoy doing!

5-8 Points

It’s totally okay to be a little lost when it comes to dental marketing. Whether you just need to brush up on dental marketing basics or you just need to find the right tools to get you started, we’re here to help! You can pick our brains anytime over on our social media feeds.

We also have openings for branded photoshoots in the first quarter of 2020! This is a great way to get tons of amazing photography of you, your practice, your team, and more. You’ll always have something to post, and we’ll give you lots of pointers for using the content all over… not just on social media.

Do you have questions about dental marketing? We’re here to help! Contact us anytime or find us on social media @dentalsoiree!

Three Fun Dental Marketing Strategies to Try!

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Nov 14, 2019 | Marketing, Podcasts, Social Media, Technology

The year is coming to an end more quickly than I think any of us can wrap our minds around! The life of a dentist is busy, busy, busy which means time just flies. Did you accomplish everything you wanted to accomplish in terms of marketing your practice this year?

If not, I want to share some fun dental marketing strategies you might not have tried yet. You still have time to give these fun ideas a try in 2019. You never know, it might give you that boost you need to head into 2020 feeling on top of your game.

Here are three fun dental marketing strategies you can implement today to market your practice online:

Influencer Marketing

This is something we have been really testing the waters on a lot lately, especially with White Haute Teeth Whitening Bar. The idea of hiring an influencer might seem a little bit intimidating, but it’s pretty simple.

There are people in your community with popular social media channels that align with your ideal patient. Look for those people! Sometimes, they’re a mommy blogger or a YouTuber with a decent following. Ask your younger team members… there’s a good chance they know who’s worth following.

Once you find someone, simply reach out to them! Find out what it takes to get them to visit your practice, receive a service (like teeth whitening) and post about it online! Influencer marketing is only going to get more popular in 2020 (mark my words) so get out in front of the trend and try it out now!

Podcast Interviews

Being interviewed on a podcast is a really great way to reach new people. Your local community might have some podcasts. Try checking with your chamber of commerce, then pitch yourself to the podcast hosts and let them know what topics you’d like to discuss that would be interesting to their listeners.

If you can’t find anything locally that would make sense, reach out to other dental influencers and see if you can talk about your practice with them. It might not reach people in your area, but you can post a link to your interview (or better yet, audio snippets of your interview) online to further establish your authority.

This works really great if you have a specialized area of expertise that you want to underscore with your patients and potential future patients.

Get Ready for Voice Search Technology

Now that almost everyone has at least one smart device in their home, marketers in the know are starting to think about how to be ahead of the game when it comes to voice searching. 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020, according to comScore.

So how do you prepare for this new trend? Of course, big money brands like Nestlé and Tide are making entire sections of their website that you can interact with using your voice. The rest of us can still get ahead of the curve by writing website content (including blog posts) in a more conversational tone, since these are the words people are going to “search” using their voice.

Think about the words you would use to search for your services, then make sure those words and phrases show up in your content. Just remember not to go overboard. It’s still super important that your words sound natural.

Do you have questions about these (or any other) dental marketing strategies?

The soiree squad is here to help! You can reach out to us on Instagram or contact us directly with your questions anytime!

Instagram is Removing the Public “Like” Option

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Nov 9, 2019 | instagram, Marketing, Social Media

Recently, our much beloved app, Instagram, tested something crazy in several major countries like Canada, Japan and Brazil. They took away the public “like” option. Well, they took away the ability for users to see how many likes a post has, we should say. Now, it looks like this change is going to spread to a portion of the app’s users in the United States this week, and this has some marketing gurus freaking out a little.

If there’s no public “like” option for people to engage with, how will anyone know that you’re worth listening to? Those hearts are like currency! Of course, you’ll know how many people engaged with your photo using the “like” button but no one else will know. How will this impact your dental marketing strategy? Let’s dig into it a little bit…

The Reason for the Change

Facebook (the company who owns Instagram) stated that the reason for the change was to remove pressure and social competition. Many of the app’s users are younger individuals. In fact, the average user age is currently 25-34 years old as of August 2019 (in the United States, this age group makes up 36.1 percent of the app’s users).

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced the change on his twitter feed. When Bloomberg News asked for the reason behind the change, he said, “The idea is to try and reduce anxiety and social comparisons, specifically with an eye towards young people.”

This social comparison has created a real issue among users, especially younger users of the app. Mental health issues are probably the most serious side effect, but it has also caused many users to buy fake likes or followers to try to boost their metrics unnaturally. This is not just a bad social media practice, it can also be bad for business.

How Could This Impact Dental Marketing?

As you know, we’ve done a few courses on Instagram, and we’ve always discussed engagement… specifically, authentic engagement. We never advocate buying results in the form of likes, comments, or followers. While you will still be able to see how many “likes” your content got, no one else will be able to see the metrics.

The reason we spend so much time talking about social media marketing is because we know how important it is for your patients and potential future patients to see your content, to have a space online where they can easily interact with you, and to keep you front of mind as an expert in their local community. This change doesn’t impact any of this, and it shouldn’t change your dental marketing strategy whatsoever.

Your focus, as always, should be on posting content that’s visually appealing and creating engaging captions that highlight your expertise and your fun personality. You should be including 15-30 targeted hashtags on each post, and switching them up to make sure they relate to the photo and the content. If you do these things regularly (ideally at least three times a week) and post on your Instagram Stories daily… you’ll be good to go! You won’t even miss that public “like” option after a few weeks!

Stay in Your Lane

One thing we’ve noticed over the years is that anytime there’s a change in how social media platforms operate — for instance when there’s a redesign or algorithm change — people tend to freak out a little bit. It’s important to research the changes by reading articles written by trustworthy sources, and then continue to stay in your lane. Most of the time, whatever change is being made is going to have very little effect once the initial panic wears off.

You already know what to do and how to talk to your dream patients. Keep showing up, keep engaging, and keep putting great content out into the world. If you do this, you’re going to be just fine!

If you have questions about Instagram, social media marketing, or dental marketing strategies in general, please reach out. The soiree squad is always happy to help!

How to Make Instagram Story Templates in Planoly

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Oct 21, 2019 | How To's, instagram, Productivity, Social Media

Instagram Stories don’t look like they’re going anywhere soon, that’s for sure! They’ve already taken a huge bite out of Snapchat’s numbers by offering what they do… but better (in our opinion, at least). In fact, we’ve fully made the switch from Snapchat to Instagram Stories and we’ve seen some serious growth in the last few months when it comes to our story viewers.

Flipping the camera around and talking to your audience is still the best way to use Instagram Stories, but creating branded graphics to promote your practice, upcoming events, specials, and new services is also a great strategy. In a previous blog post, we taught you how to use Canva to create Instagram Story templates. In this blog post, we’re going to show you how you can also do it inside of our favorite scheduling platform: Planoly!

What is Planoly?

Planoly is a visual planner for Instagram. That means, you can see what your grid will look like once your content posts to your feed. You can rearrange your posts within Planoly to get the exact look and feel you want for your feed, and then you can add your captions and hashtags right inside of the app.

Planoly will also automatically post the content for you! This is perfect for busy dentists who sometimes don’t have a few extra minutes to log into Instagram and post content. We love to sit down once a month and plan out all of our content at once. Then, we don’t have to think about it at all. We’re posting consistent content without having to be tied to our phones. That’s a HUGE win!

Making Instagram Story Templates

Another cool feature that Planoly offers its users is StoriesEdit, which offers the ability to design and schedule Instagram Stories! This feature is integrated right in the Planoly app; you can use it on your mobile device or on the web-based app.

Here’s how it works:

First, choose an Instagram Story template from the StoriesEdit library. These can be customized, but all the design work has already been done for you!

Once you’ve selected your favorite design, you can customize it by tapping on the Add (+) icon to add images, text, shapes, and a custom background color.

When you tap on the Text (T) icon, you’ll find all your text editing tools. You can choose your font, font style, alignment, spacing, height, and color options. Make sure you set it up to match your existing brand as much as possible to keep everything cohesive!

The Shape tool allows you to add borders, footers, and other shapes to your stories. You can change the size and color of your shape, and choose whether you want the shapes to be filled in.

All colors, including the background color, can be customized. They have a bunch of pre-set colors that they’ve determined will look good with the specific template, but you can also use the dropper icon to get an exact color match to your brand (far left option on mobile only).

Follow these steps to create a standalone post, or make a series of coordinating stories that you can post in order to tell a longer story!

Posting Your Story

Once you’re happy with your Instagram Story templates, save them by tapping the download icon on the top right corner of your template. You can choose to save your template to your phone, send to Planoly, or share to Instagram.

If you want to post it right away, go ahead and share to Instagram. If you want to schedule it to post in the future, you can save it to your phone (if you want to post it manually yourself) or send to Planoly. If you do this, you can choose the date and time you want it to post and let the app handle everything for you.

If you’re using the desktop app, you’ll see the download and share options on the bottom left of the screen.

In our opinion, any tool that helps you create more beautiful content while spending less time managing it throughout the day is a HUGE win! We absolutely love Planoly, and while it does take a little bit of time to fully understand, it can be a game-changer for your practice. If you have any questions, let us know! We’re always happy to help!

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