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Face The Music - Part II

You’re the owner of a dental practice and you are trying to figure out the best steps to get on to Facebook to drive new patients. It can be a daunting task and with little extra time in the day, how can you be expected to spend time promoting your business on Facebook? I completely understand the challenges of running a busy practice and after speaking with dentists as well as other small businesses, I’ve compiled the following list of strategies that should help ease the process. This is part II of a two-part series.

5. Limit Your Advertising Budget
As I mentioned in the previous article, more dollars on advertising does not always mean more revenue. Start off with a few dollars a day to test out Facebook’s advertising system. You can create an ad to test out all of Facebook’s targeting capabilities. Make sure that if you are spending money you’re investing in some long-term goal, otherwise you’ll end up spending a lot of money aimlessly. Trust me, I know from experience! As your performance improves and you figure out which ads work most effectively you can begin to steadily increase your ad spend.

You would most likely spend a few hundred dollars on a Yellow Pages advertisement, so be willing to test out a similar budget on Facebook. If all goes well and your business starts to increase, you can always invest in more advertising as necessary. As I mentioned before, this is an educational process and with so many resources on the internet, learning has never been cheaper. Don’t spend all your money when you don’t have to! To most effectively manage your budget, start off with one Facebook advertising campaign which has a limited budget. For all of the initial ads, use that same campaign rather than creating separate campaigns for each advertisement.

6. Create A Facebook Page, Not New Profiles
A quick way to get banned from Facebook is to set up multiple accounts and multiple profiles. I have multiple friend requests in my inbox currently from people who’ve set up separate accounts to promote their business. Don’t do this! You can set up your own Facebook Page while keeping your existing profile. Under no circumstance should you be creating separate accounts. Not only is it against Facebook’s terms, but it provides no additional value. I could spend more time explaining why this is flat out a bad idea but I won’t. It’s much better to spend the time focusing on the activities you should be doing.

7. Emphasize Mobile Subscriptions
One of the best components of a Facebook Page is the ability to receive updates via your mobile device. Once updates come to your phone you can also reply to the updates, making it possible for instant two-way communication. It’s a model that’s similar to Twitter except that on Pages you get more features for engaging users. The mobile component adds an additional layer of interaction which can be used to build relationships with your new and existing customers. Facebook is a relationship marketing platform, not a direct sales channel. That’s why it’s important to build your relationship with others through Facebook. Configure your Facebook Page to function with your current mobile device and communicate with users while on the go. This can make for some great, instantaneous dialogue. Ultimately most internet based promotions are going the way of mobile, and it is in every business’s best interest to take advantage of that trend including on Facebook.

8. Post Occasional Entertaining Statuses
When was the last time your patients saw an update from their dentist in their news feed? They probably never have and they may consider it strange, unless of course it was a funny joke. For example if a dentist posted occasional updates about eating candy and junk  food in general, you may get a quick smile and possibly even post a status comment. Whatever the response, at least you are getting one, which is one additional level of interaction that you never previously had with your patients.

Keeping your fans engaged is an important component of any good Facebook strategy. How much time does it really take to come up with a clever status update? If you’re like me then catchy ideas occasionally pop into your head (or at least ones that you think are clever) when you are on the go. If you’ve properly configured your Facebook Page to work with your mobile device, you can instantly update your Page’s status while on the go. It takes very little extra effort to bring a smile to your fans and it’s something that they’ll remember.

Conclusion
Every small business can take advantage of the promotional opportunities that Facebook presents. By using some of the tips listed in these articles, dentists can get a great start on promoting their practice on the site. While there are many other strategies to increasing the number of fans you have on the site as well as driving new business, much of that can be learned through experimentation. The best thing to do is to get started and figure it out from there!

Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provides dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.

Interested in having Dr. Lavine speak to your dental society or study club? Click here. Dr. Lavine can be reached at drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net.

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