GDA Action April May 2020

18 • April/May 2020 THEPRACTICE Tools and tips to help you manage your business. Five Timely Social Media Updates for Your Practice Social media is changing all the time. Although not every change is relevant for dental practices, there are some major updates that can have an impact on your practice—for better or worse. Ensure your practice is staying at the forefront of social media by making these updates. 1 FACEBOOK GROUPS Facebook groups now have the option to allow Facebook Business Pages to join their groups. This is an excellent opportunity for dental practices to network and build relationships with people and businesses in their neighborhoods. It’s not uncommon for someone in a neighborhood group to post a question asking neighbors to weigh in. For example, “Which local dentist do you recommend?” Depending on the city or neighborhood group size, questions can get dozens or hundreds of responses. Imagine if your practice were active in your neighborhood group on Facebook. You could comment on the post directly from your practice’s Facebook page and invite the prospective patient to visit your practice and meet you and your team members. Your practice page could also like and thank all of the patients who were complimenting and recommending you. You might even take your efforts offline and send those patients who mentioned you a small coffee shop gift card or thank-you note for the kind recommendation in the group. (Remember, make sure gifts are nominal in value and comply with federal guidelines.) If you aren’t in your neighborhood groups yet, log in to Facebook and start searching for opportunities. Enter your neighborhood’s ZIP code or name or ask some of your patients who are active on Facebook if they know of any neighborhood groups. 2 ENGAGEMENT BAIT If you are not aware of Facebook’s engagement bait rules, you’ll want to become familiar with them. Many businesses are not up-to-date with these guidelines and can get their account’s visibility reduced or even get locked out of their accounts. Unfortunately, “Facebook jail” is not a rumor. Even large organizations like Wired Magazine have been punished by having their visibility greatly reduced, as shared by a Wired Magazine social media community manager during a recent presentation at the Denver Digital Summit. Facebook defines engagement bait as using tactics that encourage people to interact with your content to unnaturally boost visibility. This is the reason you should not post statements like these: • Tag three friends! • Like our page to be entered to win! • Share this for additional entries! Be sure you or your social media manager is aware of the risks and how you can avoid a Facebook hand slap or worse. 3 IMAGE MAKEOVERS With all the filters and tools available, there is no reason to get stuck using unattractive images—including blurry, grainy, generic or outdated images or graphics—to represent your practice. If you are creating your own graphics, you can check out tools like Canva or Pic- Monkey to add polish to your photos. If you are using any stock photos (and I hope you are instead using real-life pics whenever possible), be sure to use high- quality, copyright-free images. A great option for copyright-free and free of cost images is Pixabay. Images and graphics represent your profession, expertise, and brand, so make sure they represent you well. In the future, trends are moving more toward authenticity—one more consideration to add to the mix. This means it’s more important than ever to keep your name and face consistently in social media feeds, beyond just profile and cover photos. 1 2 3 4 5