How To Use Social Media For Dentists

Let’s start with one basic fact: there are over 3.6 billion people worldwide using social media for business, for education, or for entertainment. If you aren’t using one of the major social media platforms for your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with your clients and potential clients.


What a lot of people don’t understand is how to “properly” use social media, so they hire a company to post technical or news articles a couple times a week and after three months drop it because it isn’t “working”. What is missing in the posts? Engagement. If you wouldn’t “LIKE” one of your own posts, or share or comment on it because it taught you something you didn’t know, or was entertaining, then most likely your audience won’t either.


Having 3,000 followers on your Facebook business page doesn’t mean anything if your last 20 posts got a combined 10 likes (mostly from a front desk staff person trying to help promote it.) Re-evaluate your posts and look at what is working and what isn’t working. Your posts should be a combination of educational, entertainment, relationship building, credibility building (sharing positive reviews), local area comments, introducing staff, new technologies, seasonal comments, and maybe 20% promotional.

How To Integrate Social Media Properly

It may be exciting or even scary to start a social media page on Facebook or Instagram. Now that you built it, will people actually come to see what you have to say? And, if so, will they return. Too often we see businesses start a social media page, post 2-3 times and then disappear, onto the next project because it “didn’t work”. Many of these celebrities who have tens of thousands or more followers have been posting regularly for YEARS to get where they are today. They look at what’s working and what’s not and put in the correction. They don’t post the same type of news article or promotion over and over hoping for different results. Consistency, patience, creativity, and self-promotion are critical. Is there a link to your social media pages on your website? Do you put it on your business card, your stationery, your promotional pieces, and have signs in your lobby saying “Check us out online!” with the proper link? It’s like you are creating a party online and inviting people to come. If there is no music, no food, only self-promotion, people will leave.

Read on to learn how to use social media to row your online business.


How often to Post?

If you post five days a week, it could be overkill and especially if you aren’t getting engagement from your followers. Typical small businesses should post more than once a week if possible, just so people don’t forget about you. You can look online for the National Day Calendar and find out special events for ideas, such as “Secretary Day”, or “National Healthy Heart Month”, etc. There are dozens of health-related topics or business-related topics to choose from, in addition to industry news, meeting the staff, local events and more. If you aren’t a social person, you might try having your most sociable staff member help contribute from time to time, or hire a service to make sure that you at least get some content going with regularity. Let your personality shine through on the posts.

Share Meaningful Content

When coming up with things to write, consider what your audience might WANT to read about. How to brush your teeth or how to floss, might only interest a few people. Try to come up with clever titles to pull people in. Usually a question or a poll, or a survey might get interaction. Don’t forget, you don’t have to write the articles yourself! You can even share other people’s articles if you aren’t a writer yourself. But, only do that about 20% of the time, as YOU want to be seen as the authority, the leader in your field, not just a newscaster. (They can go to Google for that!) Again, asking questions can make it fun. “Do you brush before you floss, or the other way around?” “What is your favorite healthy snack?” “Which color should we paint our reception room?” The more personal, the better.

Images Matter

The more you can post original photos of you and your staff, whether you are taking them to a seminar or going to lunch together, or working on a patient, the better. People are smart, they recognize “stock” photos and templated content. You will get much more interaction if each of your posts have a photo or even a short video. It doesn’t have to be professionally edited, just clean and simple it fine. Your patients aren’t expecting professionally made videos, in fact, the more errors the better – people enjoy bloopers. It makes you more human.


Look on Pinterest or other offices Instagram pages for photo ideas. Try to keep consistency in your posts and photos so you start creating your “brand”. Don’t try to be everything for everybody. The people who have fun and select one primary niche to excel in tend to do the best.

Engage Authentically 

If you don’t like posting, it is a skill that can be developed. If you hire it out and never look at it, you might as well not bother posting on Twitter or Instagram, because it won’t be you interacting but some company posting social media for hundreds of offices. You need to reply and have fun with your viewers. 80% of the people will probably follow you if you ask. BUT, if they don’t like your posts for the first few times, they will probably overlook your future posts. This is why, it is important to have a major part of your posting about you, your skills, your training, your team, your patients and new services or team members. Go and trade LIKES and COMMENTS on someone else’s posts and share info with related industry people.

Add Social Buttons

Make sure your social platform is set up properly and fully. Be sure to include a link back to your website, as well as a link from your website back to your social media. When you acquire a “@NAME” for your social media, try to keep it consistent, so it’s the same on all platforms. You don’t want one name on one platform and another different name on another. If you have duplicates, combine them to minimize confusion. If you have a common name, add your city or state. (@happysmileschicago) Encourage people to LIKE and SHARE your posts, and above all, have fun with it! Start with Facebook, then wander into Instagram, then YouTube. If you want to, once you have a following, then you can add on Twitter and or Pinterest. Don’t overload your own plate with too much all at once.


INTEGRITY DENTAL MARKETING can help you claim, set up and create posts, so you can focus on the more important aspects of running your business. Just Ask! Click here to contact us!


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