Dentist Education: 5 Steps for Managing Your Social Media Accounts

Finding time each day to update your Practice’s Facebook and Twitter accounts can be very challenging. Your day already might be consumed with exams, treatment planning, and managing your team. So how are you supposed to find time and more importantly remember to update your social media accounts every day?

Your dental continuing education doesn’t just stop at scientific topics. The following are 5 steps to help you manage your social media accounts:

1.  Select who will be responsible for updating your social media accounts. This could be you, your assistant, the office manager, or whoever feels comfortable doing so. This person will be your social media manager.

2.  Have your social media manager schedule a time once a day or once a week to manage your social media accounts.

3.  Have your social media accounts notify your social media manager either through email or phone if someone responds, retweets, or messages you. This will help you keep up with your followers and fans.

4.  Decide ahead of time what you want to be sharing you can always add an extra tweet or post if an event, article, or link comes up that you would like to share. These are two ways I have used to plan what to say ahead of time:

1. 1. Make an excel spreadsheet of tips, facts, dental information and anything that would be beneficial and not time sensitive information.
   2. Use a social media scheduler. This tool allows you to type in your posts for the day, week, even month and schedule when they will be published. Some examples of these are TweetDeck and HootSuite, but there are a lot of different ones out there.

5.  If the previous steps don’t seem possible for your practice, you can hire a social media management company for some extra help and guidance. These services can be inexpensive and a great tool if you find the right company. An example of a great social media management company that is inexpensive and easy to implement is Get On Social.

Managing your social media does not have to be difficult or time consuming. With these steps, you should be able to implement a regular routine for updating your social media accounts, keeping your patients updated and potential patients engaged.