Dental Education: 6 Tips to Creating Social Media Content

All across marketing resources, articles stress how important it is to have social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Google+, and now Pinterest. Many of those articles neglect to also mention what to do with these social media accounts once you’ve created them.

Having social media accounts is good, but it is important to be consistently updating your social media accounts on a regular basis. Now, I’m not talking about putting the same message on your social media accounts every day or every few hours. When I say consistently update your social media accounts, I am talking about new, unique content.

But what kind of content and updates should this be? What could you possibly write that much about? These are 6 things to share with your social media fans and followers, specifically on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and/or Linked In:

1. Dental Tips: take the time to sit down and write dental tips for your patients — set a goal of 50 or 100. You can put these in an excel spreadsheet to use over time. Use one or two dental tips a week on different days. You can also use these dental tips as topics for later blog posts.
2. Patient Testimonials or Pictures: share links to your patient testimonials or a before & after photo on your website. This will not only show off your dental work, but it will bring current and potential patients to your website.
3. Blog Posts: give the title and link to new and old blog posts. Just because a blog post is a few months old, doesn’t mean the content isn’t good anymore. Mix it up and share different blog posts each week. If you only have a few blog posts, try to avoid posting the same blog post every week.
4. Other articles: subscribe to google alerts for various dental terms that are relevant to your practice. For example, you could have a google alert for teeth whitening, dental x-rays, teeth cleaning, crowns, and whatever else strikes your fancy. These google alerts will go to your email and you can take the time once a week to review them. With these articles you can share one that you found helpful for your patients or you could point out how an article is incorrect. For example, if there is a teeth whitening article that actually causes harm to the teeth, like putting fresh lemon slices on your teeth, you can make a status like, “How to NOT whiten your teeth,” or “Are you damaging your teeth trying to whiten them at home?”
5. Quotes: use quotes from famous people to inspire, motivate or recognize a holiday. For example, use a patriotic quote for Memorial Day or 4^th of July.
6. Weekly Quiz: Ask a question once a week and give a prize. This question could be dentistry related, about the city your practice is in, or anything in any way relevant to your practice. The prize could be as simple as recognition on your website, a $5 gift card to a coffee shop, or even a card mailed to their house for participating.

The previous tips for creating social media content are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to content creation. Never hesitate to be more creative or try something new. Frequently marketing is an experiment. If something isn’t working (not receiving likes or comments) then try something else.

The goal is to give your followers and fans interesting information and try to bring them to your website.
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