As a dental office owner, you might be wary of creating an Instagram page for your office. Here at the Department of Marketing, we have worked with dozens of dentist offices in North and South Carolina, and we always recommend creating one if you haven’t already.
The first step is creating the Instagram profile, adding in the details, and eventually posting. But how can you be sure you are optimizing the effort being put into the page and seeing returns on those efforts? We have the top five ways to market your dental office on Instagram successfully, so keep reading.
One of the critical drivers of success on social platforms, including Instagram, is the number of followers an account has. Having a million followers on your Instagram account would be nice, but that isn’t the main goal here. You want quality followers who are active on the platform and will interact with your posts. We don’t recommend following hundreds of random accounts in hopes of getting a few follow-backs. Instead, be strategic about who you follow. Be sure to follow community and state accounts, nearby school systems, and people who live in or contribute to your community.
Having an Instagram profile is one thing, but having a profile with consistent posts and interaction is another. Be sure to post at least three times a week, changing up the content as you go. It’s critical to have a person in charge of this, either within your organization or your marketing team. As a dentist, your main priority is your patients. We understand that you’re busy, so be sure to appoint someone to post if you don’t have the time.
Now that you’ve created the posts and posted them, there is still more to be done. Hashtags are an essential aspect of Instagram. The platform allows 30 hashtags per post, and those hashtags will put the content in front of various audiences. That means increasing your traffic and helping your page to gain more popularity and engagement. However, don’t waste your time using hashtags that are way overused or underused. Your content will either get lost in the crowd or won’t be seen by anyone.
If you didn’t guess, the kind of content you put out there matters. It all depends on how you, the dentist, want to be seen. Some dentists prefer to be strictly professional, and others prefer to be more silly, with the occasional dental meme and funny office picture. It is up to you and your style.
How you choose to express your office on social media matters; it’s crucial to have relevant content. Be sure your posts have up-to-date, accurate, and relevant information, and don’t try to sell too much. We recommend a mix of informative, silly, celebratory, and advertising content. Also, we strongly encourage some real stuff. Any dentist can share tips about teeth. Show your customers who you are, with photos of you on weekends, engaging in hobbies, sharing birthday cake with your team, and more.
This might sound obvious, but many people aren’t aware of this feature on Instagram. An initial reason to have a business account is that you are a business, and it looks much more professional than having a regular profile. Not only does it look better, but you have access to analytics on a business profile. That means you can see the stats on how well your posts are doing, which ones are doing better than others, and even how many calls you have received from the profile.
Now that you know the basics of marketing a dental office on Instagram, what are you waiting for? If you want to step in a positive direction and see growth in your office, contact us. We are here for all of your marketing needs, including social media.