Academy of Comprehensive Esthetics Tampa 2011 Conference on Social Media & Marketing for Dentistry

Slated for April 1st and 2nd, 2011, there are just a few weeks left to sign up. Can you afford to miss it?

If You Build It, They Will Come

Today’s marketing environment has changed dramatically. It’s gone viral, to say the least. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs are the hubs of social media and you can use them to leverage your practice, solidify your brand, and grow your patient base. If you’re not in the social media game, you’re simply not reaching your full potential.

A Social Platform

The benefits of social media marketing:

• Access is easy and inexpensive –anyone with the Internet can be a part of social media
• Increase communication that fosters brand awareness and better customer service
• Your patients become your mouthpiece by sharing information with their social networks
• Create content that attracts attention and generates buzz
• Centralize information and share new developments

For more information, or to sign up, visit ACE 2011 Conference on Social Media & Marketing for Dentistry.

Enter Dr. Mayer Levitt, President and owner of Jodena Consulting, a firm that provides vital support and solutions to dental practices nationwide. Dr. Levitt spent nearly 30 years managing his now 12 chair dental practices before becoming a consultant, and during his last seven years in private practice, he balanced both consulting and practice management. Dr. Levitt knows the business of being a dentist and has worked with over 525 practices on everything from creating profitable hygiene departments, to practice transitions and helping doctors optimize their efficiency and effectiveness.

Dr. Levitt graciously allowed us to pick his brain about practice management today, and to let us in on a few secrets:

DB: As a dentist, what was the hardest thing about managing your own practice?
Dr. Levitt: Unquestionably, finding and keeping a talented, caring, customer service oriented staff. It’s still the biggest problem for dental practices now.

DB: What are some of the worst mistakes a dentist can make when managing his or her practice?
Dr. Levitt: Micromanaging the staff and not allowing them to grow and learn from their mistakes is a big misstep. Also, failure to think outside of the box and stifling creativity is an issue. Sometimes you simply have to leave your comfort zone and remain open to a different approach. If you continue to do what you have always done, you will continue to get what you’ve always gotten.

DB: What’s the latest piece of advice you’re giving to your clients?
Dr. Levitt: Get going with Internet marketing. It’s an absolute must if you want your practice to remain competitive. You have to have a great website as well as a social media presence. Google is king!

Dr. Levitt also let us in on another secret. Since he is no longer practicing dentistry, he doesn’t get the satisfaction of seeing patients relieved of pain and happy with their smiles. Now he gets his kicks seeing his clients become more successful as they grow their practices. For more great practice management advice, visit Dr. Levitt’s blog. Be sure to sign up for the Jodena blog RSS Feed to receive lots of consistent, practical advice delivered right to you email (you’ll receive a FeedBurner notice via email, so be sure to confirm after signing up). To learn more about Dr. Levitt and Jodena Consulting, visit his website at www.jodena.com.

For dentists, the first point of reference in advertising guidelines should always be the state board’s regulations. The Texas Dental Association, for instance, does not allow dentists to use testimonials in advertising. Other state dental boards regulate issues like statements of superiority, promising predictable results, and use of misleading statements.

Once your advertisement or website passes through the state board’s filter of regulations, consult the FTC guidelines. New policies prohibit promises of atypical results in testimonials, even with a disclaimer; revealing material connections with endorsers; and even on talk shows and in social media, celebrities have to tell people if they’re being paid for the endorsements they discuss.

These days, with online communities like Facebook and Yelp!, dentists who want to boost their advertising often look for testimonials from their patients. Demandforce and other marketing companies for dentists provide a service to acquire and post testimonials from current patients. Not a bad idea if you don’t know the rules and don’t have the time.

For video testimonials, the new guidelines could mean that you’ll need to script the patient testimonials prior to shooting or edit the videos for compliance before use.

A set of guides are available online to make the “16 C.F.R. Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” a little easier for you to digest. Get the scoop here: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm.

• What’s the big deal about Facebook?
• If Baby Boomers don’t Facebook much, and they’re my ideal clientele, what’s the point?
• Why would I waste time chatting online when I could be working?
• How am I supposed to make time to blog and network? I’m a doctor, for goodness’ sake!

…watch this video. The facts presented here are staggering – and sobering. After the video, read the rest of this blog posted below, and you’ll find practical social networking tips for your dental practice.

As Promised, Social Networking Tips for Your Dental Practice

• Get a website.
  If you don’t have a website, you’re way behind the times, and your practice will suffer. Part of running a successful business is keeping up with marketing trends. The Internet has replaced Yellow Pages.

• Get a blog.
  In short, a blog is like an interactive newsletter that will really help your search engine rankings. Your blog can be a page of your website.
  • Automatically post blogs to Facebook and Twitter with the “Add to Any” widget.
  • Be sure to tag your blogs with relevant keywords and use rich headings.

• Get free Facebook and Twitter accounts for your practice.
  
  • Simply go to www.facebook.com and www.twitter.com and sign up with your practice’s name.
  • Post a footprint advertising your Facebook and Twitter accounts on your website’s homepage.
  • Update your Facebook account daily with your website’s blog post.
  • Befriend/follow your patients, suppliers, employees, and specialists to whom you refer patients.
  • Require that your team members post to your blog, Facebook, or Twitter once a week. You don’t have to do all the work yourself.

This certainly isn’t ALL you can do, but it’s a good start.

TNT Dental, a leader in Internet marketing, offers clients free advice and blog training. Yes, I said it’s free for TNT clients. Also, TNT can write blogs for you – a service they call GhostPosts. So, if you’re ready to take your Internet marketing to the next level, call TNT Dental today at 877-868-4932!

5 Reasons to Subscribe to Online Dental News Media

1. It’s easy. You don’t have to search for news, it comes to you from across the globe, each morning, in one location.
2. It’s really easy. You don’t have to subscribe to or haul around magazines any longer. All the industry news you need is online.
3. It’s fast. Internet news is generated at amazing speed, so you get the latest information by the time you wake up in the morning. With print publications, you must wait until the articles are printed and mailed. By the time you read it, the story is no longer news!
4. It’s deep. In online news articles, further information is literally a click away. Hyperlinks imbedded within articles will direct you to the news source and related websites, so you get more bang for your buck.
5. It’s free. Not much in life is, so take it when you can get it.

How to Subscribe to DentalBlogs.com
If you want to subscribe to the DentalBlogs feed, simply click that (+ subscribe) button in the upper left of this page or at the end of this article. From there, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and put DentalBlogs news on your Internet dashboard, or you can have DentalBlogs sent directly to your email each day.

You may also want to become a Facebook friend of DentalBlogs at www.facebook.com/dentalblogs. While the actual blog features one or two original, daily articles, the Facebook page provides to-the-minute news with direct links to the source pages online.

Your Dental Blog, Twitter, and Facebook Page
What DentalBlogs does for you, you can do for your patients. TNT Dental, a leader in custom dental website design, marketing, and hosting, recommends a blog for just about every dentist who has a website. They say a blog is the new newsletter. In addition, to supplement your blog’s efforts toward attracting new patients, a Twitter and Facebook page will help. These two free services are simple to set up, and you can announce your blog posts on the social media forums, then link to your blog.

5 Reasons that You Need a Blog

1. It’s a better newsletter. Communicate oral health information, promote services and products, share and specials or events with your patients and potential patients. Your blog can incorporate photos of your team, as well as videos and links. A blog is an interactive newsletter, which is attractive to young, wealthy, intelligent patients who delight in the digital age.
2. It’s cheap. If you request a blog when you purchase a new website at TNT Dental, there is no extra fee for the initial set up. If you add a blog and would like it to look like a page of your site, expect to pay a reasonable art charge. Maintaining the blog is free. On another note, if you opt for a blog as your digital newsletter, you won’t have to manage an e-newsletter mailing list, and you won’t have to pay for printing and postage. Time spent on creating your old print newsletter can be redirected to blog writing.
3. You don’t have to do it. Anyone on your team can learn how to blog! If you have a TNT Dental website, one of their experts will schedule a time to train you or your chosen employee how to post blogs and add photos and videos. To learn on your own, purchase a “For Dummies” book or access how-to instructions online. If you like the idea of a blog, but you don’t think that you or anyone on your team has time to maintain it, consider GostPosts, a TNT Dental service in which trained dental copywriters post optimized blogs (with pictures) as you as often as you choose.
4. A blog generates an archive of patient education articles. Every blog post you create will be categorized and archived, so you’ll soon accumulate a patient education library on your website.
5. Blogs are GREAT for SEO! This is the top reason to blog if your website’s primary purpose is to attract new patients. Blogs are indexed fast by search engines, so a well-optimized blog could make the top of a search engine results page within a day or two of its posting.

Question is, does the vast medical and dental information on the Internet educate and inform patients well? Does it make your job as a dentist easier or harder?

That really depends on where patients are getting their information and whether it’s accurate and relevant. Wikipedia, for instance, is a great resource, but you don’t have to be an expert to post information. (Wiki means “what I know is.”) Blogs, too, give the average Joe access to opinions and not-necessarily-factual information.

Levine’s article is a great starting place for you to make a decision as to how you feel about “web-informed” dental patients. However, if you want to make sure your patients are getting the solid, accurate information they need so that they can make informed decisions about dentistry, consider expanding the education center on your dental website.

Share Your Expertise and Get More Web Traffic
TNT Dental, www.tntdental.com, a leader in custom dental website design, hosting, and search engine optimization, offers a library of stock articles that provide solid, easy-to-digest information about many dental procedures and health concerns. The company also offers blogging services and GhostPosts. For dentists who want to publish good educational information for patients AND get more hits on their websites, GhostPosts provide a simple solution. A trained dental writer will compose articles on topics of your choice, then optimize the text for search engines, add a high-quality image, and post the blogs for you. If you’d like to add your opinion and expertise, post your own blogs alongside the GhostPosts as often as you’d like. TNT clients who sign up for a blog receive free, one-on-one telephone training on how to use the blog.

Another great way to get good information to your patients and potential patients is by putting your own recommendations, links to websites you trust and agree with, on your site. A “patient resources” or “favorite links” page can list the sites of your choice, with links and descriptions.

If you’d like to take information sharing a step further, consider joining Facebook. Simple applications will allow you to quickly post any online article to your Facebook page.

Getting Started

• First, read the full article at DentalProductsReport.
• Next, contact TNT Dental to discuss how your website can become more informative and successful.
• Visit http://tips.tntdental.com to learn more about making your voice heard online.
• Sign up for a free Facebook account at www.Facebook.com.

What is a blog? Does the general dentist need one? What’s the benefit? What’s the investment?

What is a blog?

Blog is short for two words crammed together, maybe for the sake of saving time, but more likely because it makes for a fun word. Blog stands for web log. Basically, a blog is like an online journal. You can post entries as often as you like. Blogs are often used by businesses to share information, much like a newsletter. Posts can include links to other websites, photos, podcasts (audio files), videos, and other cool media. People can subscribe to a blog via email and receive emails when new posts are made or via RSS feed, so that they have a notification system in their browser.

Do I need a blog?

That depends upon you goals and the image you want to project. Ask yourself…

 • Do your patients use the Internet?
• Is one of your goals to educate patients?
• Do you have specials, news, or other timely information to share with patients?
• Could you maintain a blog or afford to have someone maintain it for you?
• Do you want to attract patients with online marketing?

If you answered yes to at least some of these questions, you might want to think about a blog. However, for the small dental practice that’s happy with the status quo, a blog would be a waste of time.

What’s the benefit of a blog to my practice?

1. Share the Knowledge: A blog, by its very nature, provides a way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. Narrowing that down to dentistry, you are an expert in your field. You have insight and valuable information to share with patients. A blog allows you to share your knowledge, providing patient education in an archived format online.

2. Boost Your Website Rankings: Search engines know that blogs contain new, useful information that’s regularly updated. For this reason, search engines index blogs more often than full websites. In layman’s terms, your blog post could show up in Google searches within a day or two, but your website pages could take six to twelve months to move up the rankings. Furthermore, links and keywords that complement your website’s SEO strategy in your blog will enhance your overall website results. Change in your stats will take time, so be patient. Reports will show real, measurable results over time.

3. It’s Pretty Cool to Have an Online Newsletter: You’re in the business of making people look sensational, so you know the importance of image. “Blog” is the new “newsletter” in business. If you have a blog, and you tell your patients about it, they’ll think you’re really on top of your game.

What’s the prerequisite for blogging?

Honestly, you don’t even have to own a website to have a blog. However, a blog works best as a complement to a good custom dental practice website. Other than that, if you can type, you can blog. Before you jump in with both feet, consider reading some online advice about blogging. Learn what works and what doesn’t by reading other blogs and researching “blogging” online. You’ll also need to be familiar with your state dental board’s advertising guidelines so that you don’t compromise your license by writing something that’s against the rules.

What investment is required?

There are various ways to start and maintain a blog. Here are three avenues:

1. For the dentist who has no time
Call your website company or TNT Dental and ask that a blog be set up on your website. This will involve a reasonable one-time fee. Ask for a professional dental copywriter to compose your blogs and optimize them for search engines. At TNT, this service is called GhostPosts. A small fee is assessed per post, and you choose how often you want GhostPosts to step in on your behalf. Some dentists want to write a few posts and use GhostPosts as a supplement. Others prefer to let GhostPosts do all of the work. GhostPosts posts are written exclusively for you, on topics you choose, and they include links, photos, etc. In addition, the posts are optimized to complement your SEO strategy.

2. For dentists who want to be more hands-on
Again, ask your web design company to set up a blog on your website, then request training. With simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) applications, most blogs are easy to use. You can learn to post blogs yourself, or your hygienist, office manager, or spouse can post for you. If you find that weeks or months pass and you have not blogged, consider GhostPosts to supplement your efforts.

3. For dentists who have no marketing budget but want to try a blog
To get your feet wet, you can create your own blog online. Services such as WordPress, Blogger, and Bravenet offer free blog systems. Simply sign up and get started! Once you’re ready to move your blog to the next level with a designer look that matches your website and customized search engine optimization, call your website design company for assistance.

What should I blog about?

That’s completely up to you. Keeping SEO in mind, write on topics for which you want to be found. If you want veneers patients, write on veneers. If you want emergency patients, write about emergency dentistry.

Sampe blog styles:

Newsletter style – News that affects patients; practice news; community news; events

QnA style – Patients can email their questions, and you blog about the answers.

Journal style – Write about what’s on your mind. Explain issues that come up during your daily routine. This might include topics like why dental insurance isn’t awesome, why digital x-rays are awesome, or how to choose a good toothbrush. Also, you can blog while you’re at CE courses, sharing new info with patients as a journalist.

Case presentation style – Some dentists like to present cases of actual patients and write about them. You can include testimonials, case descriptions, and patient education alongside case photos.

Hygienist’s blog – Your hygienist can blog on any of the above topics, with a primary focus on patient education and oral health.

Why doesn’t every dentist have a blog?

Not all dentists have websites or want to market online. However, for those dentists who want to communicate with patients and make the most of online marketing, other hurdles exist. If you think:

I don’t have time to blog
I don’t like to work on the computer
I don’t want to learn how to blog
I don’t know how to market a blog

But you also think:

I want to communicate with my patients online
I want to appear technologically advanced
I want to make the most of search engine optimization
I need to get my name out there more

…there is a solution for you.

Call TNT Dental at 877-868-4932 to discuss your options. The folks there understand dentists; they know what’s important to you, as well as your time constraints. They know you want return on your investments. And they’ll be happy to talk with you about whether a blog is right for your practice.