Social Media

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

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!

You Will “Fall” for Our Stock Photo Bundles

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Sep 9, 2019 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media

You Will “Fall” for Our Stock Photo Bundles

We are so excited that our September stock photo bundle is out in the world. It is full of beautiful fall images, fun photos for Halloween, and all kinds of dental-themed photographs that are perfect to post on social media.

In case you’re not familiar with our stock photo bundles over at Soiree Stock, we wanted to take a few minutes to explain what they are, why they’re so wonderful, and how they can help busy dentists!

Monthly Stock Photo Bundles from Soiree Stock

In case you’re not familiar with Soiree Stock, it’s our sister site where we create dozens of new styled stock images each month for dentists and other dental professionals. Most people who sign up for Soiree Stock sign up for the bundles. They make social media marketing as easy as copy, paste, and post!

How Does the Monthly Photo Bundle Work?

Our monthly photo bundles include everything you need to post on social media each day. You’ll get 30 professionally shot and edited photos that are specifically designed to work with the holidays and overall vibe of the upcoming month. You’ll also get 30 caption templates that you can fill in (Mad Libs style) and 30 targeted hashtag sets that are designed to get your post seen by all the right people.

Full Access + Extras

Whether you decide to stick with just the monthly bundle or upgrade your membership to our Full Access option, you’ll get tons of helpful extras and goodies. Both options include helpful tutorials and training videos so you can edit your photos like a pro.

Our Full Access option allows you to access everything for just a small up-charge each month. In addition to the monthly bundle, you’ll get unlimited photo downloads from our 15+ libraries of content. Each month, we add over 80 new images that are all professionally shot and edited in our creative studio. This is perfect for dentists who want more images for their blog, a website re-brand, or other marketing projects!

In addition, you’ll get access to all of our past bundles so you can go back and use captions and hashtags from previous months if you wish. In your member dashboard, you’ll also get tons of freebies and resources, like instructional videos, downloadable content, and helpful tutorials.

How Monthly Bundles Help Busy Dentists

The truth is, we know how busy #dentistlife can get. We’re owned and operated by a dentist, remember? Dr. Emery is SO passionate about giving dentists easy access to everything they need to market their practice and reach their dream patients. She believes in the power of social media, but she also knows how little time is left at the end of the day.

The monthly bundles from Soiree Stock make it super easy. You can either download everything at once and post from your phone when you have a few extra seconds, or you can plug everything into a free social media scheduling tool (we like Planoly or Sprout Social). You can get everything set up for the entire month in under an hour and then just have your team respond to any comments or messages that come in. Super easy, and you’re staying front of mind all month long without having to log in every day!

Ready for Your Easy Button?

Running a practice is hard work, but cutting corners with your online marketing is not the way to go. It’s one of the main ways you can find new patients, and it doesn’t cost you anything to show up and promote your business! The future is headed this way, so you might as well get on board now. We make it super easy for you to do that and your feed will look SO much better than any of the other practices in your community.

At Dental Soiree, we specialize in show-stopping content that disrupts the norm on social media. Would you rather be “just another dental practice” or would you rather be the practice that gets people EXCITED about dental care? We can help with our online courses, styled stock photography, and our upcoming Get Social Workshop! Feel free to contact us for more details on these or any of our other services!

Promoting Your Dental Practice is as Easy as 1-2-3

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Jul 17, 2019 | Branding, instagram, Social Media

Promoting your dental practice on social media is not nearly as simple as it seems, is it? Sure, it’s easy for an artisan ice cream shop to get all the likes and comments in the world but a dentist? That’s a whole other story. It’s hard to get people excited about taking care of their teeth! In a world full of beautiful images and swoon-worthy content, is there any room for dentistry to shine? You bet there is!

If you have the right tools and tips, dental marketing is just as easy as marketing a delicious new ice cream flavor. Seriously! It’s something we know quite a bit about, so let’s dive into the three easy steps to promote your dental practice and find new patients!

#1 – Great Imagery

Hastily shot iPhone photos just don’t cut it on social media, especially on Instagram! Don’t panic, though. This doesn’t mean you have to hire a professional photographer to shoot your social media photos. Quality styled stock photography is an inexpensive way to get stunning images for a very reasonable price.

Styled stock photography allows you to access a large number of images in your preferred style and brand colors. Often, you will even find that the images are categorized by theme, tone, subject matter, and/or season. This makes it very easy to consistently post on your social media channels, attract people who love to look at beautiful images (basically, everyone) and make dentistry look appealing!

In case you didn’t know, we have a sister site that offers styled stock photography JUST for dentists! Head to SoireeStock.com to find out more!

#2 – Killer Captions

Whether you’re posting on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, your photo needs a compelling caption! But, you don’t want every single post to be the same “call us to set up an appointment” message. People will get bored pretty quickly! If you think about the brands you like to follow on social media, you’ll probably notice that they offer a lot more value in their posts beyond just their sales copy.

Mix things up by using fun song lyrics, quotes you like, ask questions, or share something more personal about yourself or your team. Remember, it’s social media. Keep things fun, and always remember: your followers would rather you post what’s on your mind instead of some boring thing a corporate marketing guru would suggest you post.

If caption writing REALLY isn’t your thing, don’t worry! We can help! The monthly bundles we offer over at SoireeStock.com include 30 caption templates that you can fill in (kind of like mad libs) to create custom captions that will get people talking!

#3 – Relevant Hashtags

Hashtag research can take quite a bit of time and effort. Because of this fact, it can be tempting to just add some common ones like #teeth and #smile to your post, but these are WAY too popular to be effective on their own. Because so many posts use these hashtags, your post will be buried immediately after you hit the publish button. Someone searching for those specific hashtags probably will never see your post.

The best strategy for hashtagging is to mix some more niche hashtags with some hashtags that are more broad. All hashtags need to be relevant to the work you do, or you’re not going to be successful at attracting the people who will ultimately become patients and brand ambassadors.

Our re-launched monthly bundles over at Soiree Stock include 30 targeted hashtag sets that you can copy and paste into your posts. Each set includes both niche and popular hashtags, and every hashtag relates to the caption and dental industry as a whole. This is a HUGE time-saver when it comes to promoting your dental practice!

Curious about using our social media bundles to make your dental marketing a breeze? We offer a free week over at SoireeStock.com. Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the homepage!

Make Your Dental Blog Look More Polished

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Jun 18, 2019 | Branding, Photography, Social Media

Blogging is a big part of dental marketing, but most dentists we talk to either haven’t blogged in a while, or they only post something when they think of it, usually quickly and without too much thought. However, a blog is a necessity when it comes to dental marketing, especially for SEO (you know, showing up high in the search results when someone searches “dentist near me” or something like that). Creating quality, consistent content that people will click on and share is super important.

Having a great dental blog not only attracts new potential patients to your website, but it can also shine a spotlight on your services. Blogs help build an immense amount of trust in you and the work you do. The more people find what they’re looking for on your blog, the more likely they’ll be to turn to you when they need help down the road or are ready to switch dentists.

Evergreen Content

One of the greatest things about a dental blog is how long-lasting they are. Once you hit post, those posts live in the world forever unless for some reason you decide to take them down. There’s no algorithm that will hide your blog posts or prevent people from finding them, and you can re-purpose them in so many ways: you can email them, post them on social media, turn them into an ebook… the possibilities are endless!

However, this also means you should be putting a lot of thought into not only the words you use, but also the imagery. According to social media marketing strategist Jeff Bullas, articles that contain images get 94% more total views. This is a staggering number, and it should be enough to convince even the biggest skeptic of the importance of including images in your blog posts!

Image Quality Matters

So, we all agree that blog imagery is important, but image quality is also crucial. Hastily shot iPhone photos just aren’t going to cut it. When you use grainy or low-res photos, it no longer matters how much research and thought went into writing your dental blog. That content isn’t going to be shared as much or even clicked on as often because of the poor imagery.

Don’t panic, though. This doesn’t mean you have to be a professional photographer or have super expensive equipment to have loyal followers or content that gets lots of shares and engagement. Many (and I mean many) business owners and bloggers turn to styled stock photography when they create their blog posts… and you can too!

Why Styled Stock Photography?

When we say styled stock photography, we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill, often overly cheesy stock photography. You want to stay away from this kind of unnatural imagery, because you run the risk of devaluing all the hard work you put into researching and writing your blog post. That’s no good!

When you choose to use styled stock photography for your dental blog, you have so much more consistency and control over not only the tone of the post, but of your entire blog and image. Just like the rest of your branding, you want your blog to be fairly uniform. You don’t want images full of bright, neon colors in one blog, and then dark, muted tones on the next. When you go to share your blog posts on your social media feeds, everything will end up looking really disjointed.

Soiree Stock for Your Dental Blog!

Our sister company, Soiree Stock, was made with dentists in mind. Our styled stock photography allows you to find a large number of images in your preferred style. Often, you will even find that the images are categorized by theme, color, tone, and/or season. This makes it very easy to match the photography style to your brand, creating a cohesive look across all your platforms.

We have libraries full of dental-themed images that will work no matter what topic you’re covering in your blog post. We’d love for you to try it out for a month and see how much it changes your blogging process. Don’t stop there, though! These images are perfect for social media. Download as many as you want (you get unlimited downloads with your membership) and save them to your camera roll so you always have the perfect photo to post on social. It’s a much smaller investment than hiring an agency or even a contractor to do your social media. We think you’ll love how much easier it makes things, and how much time it saves you!

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