This is a wonderful time for dentists who use Social Media.  Things they are a changing for the better.  Dentists who have social media and internet profiles should have noticed some changes in the major platforms lately.  Facebook, Google, and Twitter have enacted and announced some cool new features.  These new tools will allow you to share content more easily and to take advantage of new technology.

One of the most obvious changes is Facebook’s shift to “Like”.  Those of you who have a Facebook page for your dental practice probably remember that those who follow your page were called fans.  Now your pages are called official pages and you no longer have fans, you have a cavalcade of people who “Like” your page.  The like is not only a move to add some positivity to the wordage, it marks an effort by Facebook to extend its connections to the entire internet.  Facebook announced that the “Like” option can be connected to most web content.  This means you will be able to add a “Like” button to your blog post or web narrative, allowing a web visitor to easily share the information found there.    Along with the “Like” option Facebook introduced a cooperation with partner sites, the most obvious being Yelp.  When visiting a profile on Yelp, your Facebook profile can be accessed.  This collaboration allows a visitor to share content found on Yelp with Facebook connections.  The collaboration is a great opportunity for Dentists to have their Yelp profile shared across Facebook.

Twitter has also announced some interesting changes coming down the line.  Twitter users know that the platform itself is a very stripped down format.  In order to add functionality to your Twitter experience, you must visit outside websites such as twitpic, tinyurl, or yfrog.  These website applications are created by third party designers outside of Twitter.  Many of these applications have become an integral part of the Twitter experience.  Until now Twitter has stayed out of the development game, but they are now going to develop their own applications.  These “official” applications have started with the like of the new official Twitter application for the Blackberry.  Twitter has also announced some changes in its platform’s infrastructure.  Twitter will soon release the annotation feature, which will allow more information to be included in each tweet.  This will allow for long tail links, and embedding other material which will give the tweets more functionality like Facebook posts.  This move may upset twitter purists, but will allow for greater sharing capabilities.

Google has also announced some changes to its local business center.  All dentists should be familiar with Google’s local business center.  It is where local listings are added, and most potential patients will find you online.  Now all dentists will need to become familiar with Google Places, the local business listing’s new name.  Google places has some cool new features that the business center did not.  Places new geographic features will allow owners to choose a service radius, and pinpoint service areas.  This will be very helpful for practices that service many localities.    Places local listings also has a new feature that allows for status updates much like a social media platform.  What a great way to share a special or share links to your Facebook or Twitter page.  Google places appeals to the mobile market by offering QR codes for each listing.  QR codes are 2 dimensional bar codes that can be scanned by newer mobile devices and link to information like Google listings.  To learn more about QR codes at work visit our blog post from March   http://socialmediadentist.com/blog/?p=107.

Jason T. Lipscomb is a general dentist in Richmond, VA and a co-author of Social Media for Dentists.  Dr. Lipscomb has developed the methods used by Social Media for Dentists after several years of private practice.  He maintains a unique perspective on dental marketing by operating two busy practices and researching social media practices.  Social Media for Dentists is one of the only dental specific Social Media marketing books.  Social Media for Dentists L.L.C. offers hands on training to dentists all over the country.

Rita Zamora

There’s no denying how important marketing on the web has become.  However does that mean tangible forms of marketing should be ignored?  Consider the fact that email marketing giants claim between 35% and 65% of emails are opened.  The reach of email marketing is only as effective as the size of your list … What percentage of your patients do you have email addresses for?

While I’m a huge fan of email marketing, as well as social media marketing, there’s still a strong argument for tangible marketing.  Newsletters, note cards, and even postcards, continue to play an important role.  For example, hardcopy newsletters allow people to experience news in a much different way than e-communication.  Paper newsletters allow for longer articles, more photos, and richer content than digital formats.

Likewise the handwritten note remains a strong relationship and trust building tool.  Holding a notecard in your hands reaches a physical sense that e-mail cannot achieve.  While email or text follow up continues to grow more popular, there’s a portion of the population that can be captured via postcards or hardcopy newsletters.

If you want your messages to reach a larger portion of your patient population, ensure your marketing communications are well balanced … A combination of both digital and hardcopy marketing tools still makes good sense.

Rita Zamora is a relationship-focused dental marketer, specializing in referral marketing, patient relations, case acceptance and social media for general and specialty practices.  Rita developed her referral marketing expertise working hands-on in specialty and general dentistry practices. She is the author of the ebook The Referral System How-To Guidebook For Dentists. With over sixteen years experience in dentistry, Rita has trained, coached and motivated dentists and teams in marketing, patient relations, communication and social media.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media platforms.  They actually beat growth estimates in a recent study.  What they don’t tell you is a large percentage of these users become non-active within a couple of months.  What happens to these users?  Many fail to see what the “big deal” is.  While others make bad choices that affects their experience.

Twitter can be a very powerful marketing tool for dentists.  In fact, my office was featured on the local news today.  How did the news anchor choose me for a story?  She saw one of my Twitter posts about a new dental product.  She thought it would be a great news story.  The post only took seconds to write, and very little creativity, but it landed my practice on the 6 o’clock news.  If I had given up two months after earlier, this never would have happened.  You can avoid the Twitter pitfalls, and go on to have great Twitter success.

Some of the most common Twitter pitfalls:

Pitfall #1 - Focusing only on follower numbers- Twitter followers are like dental patients.  We want a million of them, but we want quality as well as quantity.  Many people try to get as many followers as possible.  They don’t pay attention to quality, and they wind up with a real time stream of fluff and spam.   After a while the copious amounts of spam will become tiresome, and the account will go unused.

The Cure - Follow and connect with users who fit in your goal.  If you are using Twitter to connect with potential patients, connect with people in your area.  You don’t need 1,000 fans in California if you live in Florida.   There are several tools you can use to find users in your area.  The new local trending tool can be a great asset.    Evaluate the tweets of people you connect with.  If they repeat posts or spam, don’t follow them.  They will cloud your feed.    In previous articles we have noted that some search engines will use tweets to populate search results.  We also learned that having connections to spammers and non-qualified accounts, may decrease the rank power of your tweets.

Pitfall #2 - I am not getting any patients, and no one is talking to me.  Your a dentist, so you just go on Twitter and talk about dentistry, end of story right?  Not necessarily.  Several dentists think the public wants to know more about dentistry, so all they tweet about is dentistry.  Newsflash, no one wants to talk about dentistry except dentists.

The cure - Social Media is about connecting with another person.  Talking about dentistry will make you seem like a dental robot, not a person.  When on Twitter or another platform, take a break from dentistry.  Talk about things in the community, your life, or on T.V.  Make your profile seem like a real person.  Then throw in a little dentistry every once and while to remind them that you are a dentist.  Once they need an appointment, they will remember Dr. Xyz, because he seemed like a nice helpful guy.  That is how I got the T.V. interview.  The news anchor saw my only “dental” tweet that week.

Pitfall #3 - I have made connections on Facebook and Twitter and now it is getting tiresome.  I can’t keep up. Many dentists see the social media thing taking off, and they jump into every social media platform at once.

The cure - Start out slow.  Don’t bite off more than you can chew.  Time management can be very important to the success of a social media campaign.

Pitfall#4 – I haven’t posted anything on Facebook or Twitter in a couple of weeks.  Just setting up social media profiles is a big step and can increase visibility.  An account that isn’t active is almost worse than not having one at all.  It makes it look like you don’t care or that you don’t offer up good information.

The Cure - Keep an account active, even if it is one or two posts a week.  Even if the posts are scarce, they will add up over time and will seem like a nice catalog of information.  Once again, time management plays a big part in being successful.  Set a schedule to post content.  It is much easier to post when you have already planned for it.

Don’t get discouraged with social media. When you set parameters for yourself, and use great time management, your social media experience can be very rewarding.  Take a deep breath.  Social media is the new hot topic and “must have” element of your marketing campaign.   Take your time, and educate yourself about social media. Facebook and Twitter will still be waiting for you tomorrow.

Jason T. Lipscomb is a general dentist in Richmond, VA and a co-author of Social Media for Dentists.  Dr. Lipscomb has developed the methods used by Social Media for Dentists after several years of private practice.  He maintains a unique perspective on dental marketing by operating two busy practices and researching social media practices.  Social Media for Dentists is one of the only dental specific Social Media marketing books.  Social Media for Dentists L.L.C. offers hands on training to dentists all over the country.

Periodic surveys are an important component of any services marketing plan—especially a relationship-focused practice.  Consider a third party service that will allow people to feel they can share openly and honestly.  In general, electronic surveys seem to produce more detailed comments.  Once you learn what patient’s value and enjoy most about your practice, you can leverage the information within your marketing plan.

Surveys allow you to learn what you are doing right, and what you may be doing wrong.  What was the most valuable thing you’ve learned from surveys?

Rita Zamora is a relationship-focused dental marketer, specializing in referral marketing, patient relations, case acceptance and social media for general and specialty practices. Rita developed her referral marketing expertise working hands-on in specialty and general dentistry practices. She is the author of the ebook The Referral System How-To Guidebook For Dentists.
With over sixteen years experience in dentistry, Rita has trained, coached and motivated dentists and teams in marketing, patient relations, communication and social media.

How important is it to monitor local reviews?  Very important. In a recent report by Nielsen, Google said that 82% of the population uses local search and reviews and Yahoo says that there are over 100 million local searches performed monthly.  Most prospective patients when searching for a new dentists in their area will perform a search with the name of the city and the word dentist.  A typical search in Google would look like this:

“Richmond dentist.”  Google instantly will return a list of dentists, with other information such as location, phone number and reviews.

Most dentists are not even aware that they have reviews on the internet.   Recently I visited my dermatologist.  He asked me how I had found his practice, and I told him I used Google to find his practice.  I told him that I had read his reviews and that they had all been good, so I scheduled an appointment with him.  He was shocked, he didn’t even realize that he had any reviews online.  Dentists need to be aware that there are online conversations going on every day about them and their practice, whether they want to be involved or not.

So, what do you do if you have a bad review?  Many dentists will ignore the review and hope that others will too.  Responding to bad reviews can be a slippery slope.  Psychologists advise that you do not go toe to toe against someone that has posted a bad review.  Visitors reading the reviews do not want to see a public disagreement, and it will only draw more attention to the negative post.  Instead approach the bad review in a positive nature.

• Do not get angry, do not get emotional, do not start a public argument.
• Acknowledge the issue and rather than becoming defensive offer an explanation.
• Validate the patient’s concerns and respond in a professional manner.
• Let everyone know that everything that you do is focused on a high-quality experience for each patient and that when problems do surface, you take them seriously and work hard to understand the root causes.
• Do not continually re-address the problem.  Address it and move on.   As more positive reviews come in, the bad review will be pushed further down the list.
• Continually focus on doing great work, and building up positive reviews.  Today people are very savvy, having a bad review or two adds validity to your reviews. Address them correctly and you will appear to be level headed, active and concerned.

Another school of thought is to drown a bad review with positive reviews.  Sheer numbers will always win, and if you have 30 great reviews and one bad review you should come out ahead.  Everyone knows that you can have a bad day once and a while, so one bad review won’t spoil the bunch. Bad reviews can also be a valuable tool to know what is happening in your practice.  When you do get that one bad review, think about what is actually behind it.  It might actually clue you in to something that needs to be fixed.

Every once in a while extreme measures may have to be taken.  It’s not very often that this occurs, however there are some very unscrupulous people out there.  There was a dentist near me that had allegations of sexual misconduct with a patient on their Google reviews.  The dentist was a “head in the sand” type, and did not even know it was out there.

Reviews alleging malpractice and illegal actions need to be dealt with quickly.  They are terrible rumor starters and can do serious damage even after they are gone.  Contact legal counsel and the host site and address them immediately.  Taking extreme measures can also be tricky.  I have seen several reviews of dentists which say “Dr. XYZ’s lawyer contacted me today and said to remove this content” or “now they are threatening legal action.”  Some reviewers just don’t know when to quit!  So use caution, you may end up with more than you bargained for.  Remember, controversy draws attention.

The important thing to remember is this, if you continually do good work and continue to get good reviews, people will quickly move past a bad review or two.  Your focus should continually be on improving the quality of your practice and providing exceptional service.  It’s the same with all facets of life, people reward quality, this goes for quality food, quality products and quality service.  I cannot count the number of times that I have seen individuals on Twitter and Facebook recommend a movie, a book or a restaurant.  Actually 25% of all conversations on social media networks evolve around a person’s recommendation of a product or a service.

The main thing to remember is now, more than ever, people have a voice and they are eager to be heard.  People are just as anxious to leave a good review as they are to leave a bad review.  Bad reviews are generally made when a patient feels that they have been mistreated or did not receive the service they believe they deserved.  One dentist that I worked with spent thousands of dollars each month for high search engine rankings.  However, his local reviews said things like “I felt like an automobile, the dentist’s assistants kept pushing service upgrades.  Remember that your patients now have a very powerful voice.

Speaking of powerful voices, it is important to remember that your patients now have many social networks where they talk about their daily lives.  Thousands of posts go out everyday on Twitter and Facebook from people’s mobile phones.  I’ve seen a number of posts on Twitter from people sitting in the dentists chair.  As professionals we have to remember that we live in a transparent world of mobile texting, instant photo upload and viral sharing.  Embrace this opportunity to open the lines of communication with your patients in order to improve their experience and expand your practice.

Jason T. Lipscomb is a general dentist in Richmond, VA and a co-author of Social Media for Dentists.  Dr. Lipscomb has developed the methods used by Social Media for Dentists after several years of private practice.  He maintains a unique perspective on dental marketing by operating two busy practices and researching social media practices.  Social Media for Dentists is one of the only dental specific Social Media marketing books.  Social Media for Dentists L.L.C. offers hands on training to dentists all over the country.

CHICAGO, Nov. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American Dental Association (ADA) has signed an agreement with Temple University to train new dental team members as part of a pilot program to improve the oral health in underserved communities.

The Community Dental Health Coordinator (CDHC) is a member of the dental health team who works in communities where residents have limited access to dental care to improve their oral health.

The CDHC provides a limited range of preventive dental care services — including screenings and fluoride treatments. However, of greater importance to these communities, the CDHC will help patients navigate the health system and access care by a dentist or an appropriate clinic and engage in educational activities to improve community members’ oral health habits.

Temple will recruit and train CDHCs from urban locations in Philadelphia over the next two years, returning them to their communities to work as dental team members under the supervision of dentists.

Although the CDHC is a new dental team member whose merits are not yet known, many studies of the community health worker (CHW) model indicate that they can make significant contributions to a community. Because the CDHC will function much like a CHW, the ADA believes that they, too, will have a positive impact on the oral health of their communities through education and outreach.

“We are delighted to welcome Temple’s participation,” said ADA President Dr. Ron Tankersley. “The pilot at Temple will help us understand the effectiveness of a dental health coordinator in underserved urban settings.”

Dr. Amid Ismail, dean of Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry and one of the architects of the CDHC program, explained why the program is seeking to place CDHC trainees in their own communities.

“Our aim is to ensure that the coordinator is able to bridge the gap between local cultures and health care systems. The CDHC can help improve people’s oral health habits and help patients navigate the social and bureaucratic barriers that prevent them from gaining access to available dental health services,” Dr. Ismail said.

Temple is the third of three pilot CDHC program sites. Two other pilot programs are directed by University of Oklahoma, which is training CDHCs from rural areas, and the University of California at Los Angeles, which, in conjunction with Salish Kootenai College in Montana, is training students from American Indian communities.

The ADA has funded the program, which will train six students per site each year.

Purchasing equipment can be both confusing and expensive. There are numerous choices and companies to choose from. Then, there are gadgets, upgrades and options that can easily raise a new office price to upwards of $80,000 per operatory. As I wrote in Buyer Beware, “one poor decision can drastically change your future.” Well then, the other side of that coin is– one GOOD decision can drastically change your future. Actually, it can save you over $1.5 million. More on this in a minute.

Let me tell you about a recent partnership of ours which I believe will successfully transition your equipment buying process into a money saving and stress-free experience while offering the best in choice and benefits. Whether you are expanding your office to improve services, building a new office or replacing equipment, our exclusive equipment partner will save you a substantial amount of money. I’ll explain further–
BuyDentalEquipment.com offers quality refurbished equipment as well as affordably priced new equipment with cost savings of up to 40% or more. You also save an additional 5% over all of their regularly advertised pricing as a Profitable Dentist subscriber. They sell direct through their team of equipment specialists thus saving you significantly. Their refurbishment process is extensive, ensuring the highest working standards today and in the years to come. Every piece of refurbished equipment they sell is backed by a full one-year warranty on parts.  They also provide delivery and installation to all 50 states, by their highly qualified team. Do you see the value here?

Building a new office or renovating/updating an existing office? BuyDentalEquipment.com will be with you every step of the way. They offer new office floor space/design services and full construction drawings by professional architects, well-versed in dental design.  This is a must if you want to maximize your space to work efficiently and comply with plumbing, wiring and radiographic guidelines. These services are at no charge when offset by your equipment purchase.  But that’s not all–
They have a sister company. BuyDentalCabinets.com offers custom cabinetry for all your operatory, sterilization, lab, or reception cabinets. The quality is second to none, and all are backed by a 5-year warranty. These savings can be in excess of over 50% compared to many major manufacturers. The 5% subscriber savings applies here too.

Can you see why this partnership is a no-brainer? It’s about profits – It’s about “not how much you make, but how much you keep” –  It’s about a future retirement.

Ok, earlier I mentioned a previous article, <em>Buyer Beware</em>, and how one good decision could save you over $1,500,000. Let me tell you how this is possible. Just this week, BuyDentalEquipment.com gave me an example of a comparison bid they did for a customer in the northeast. This customer was about to construct a new, 3-operatory office. They already had a bid of $235,000. BuyDentalEquipment.com was able to bid all new cabinetry and new and refurbished equipment to the Dr for a total, installed price of $116,000.  So lets just say you take a $100,000 of that savings and invest it at 30 years at 10% interest. The Results?  $1,744,940 for your nest egg. So, the decision is yours, new, high end, expensive equipment with all the gadgets and bells and whistles, or a nice view of the Caribbean ocean from your Villa in The Caymans? I’ll take the View.