1. DH&T36 February 2014 Check out our website: dentalhygienetherapy.co.uk
Offers can be tweeted to followers
Retweet important tweets by others that
can help your practice
Create links to your practice website
Include tweets that are industry related
Keep your posts up-to-date and
interesting.
Using Twitter
A
t first glance, Twitter may seem so vast
and fast paced you find it overwhelming.
In reality, Twitter really isn’t a scary cyber
world. Managing a budget is tough and when you
come to put your name in the public eye, it doesn’t
come cheap. However, Twitter – in fact, any social
network that helps keep you in the spotlight – is free!
Forget about spending thousands of pounds on press
bookings and creative artwork, get straight to the
point in less than 140 characters.
Digital marketing and social media is growing
rapidly and, soon enough, paper will be a thing of the
past.
Whether it’s Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, or even
Instagram, your business profile can directly and
indirectly interact with current patients and even
open doors to new potential patients. Twitter and
Facebook both become online forums, encouraging
discussions between patients that have received the
practice’s treatments. Feedback and general opinion of
the practice’s customer experience also get discussed.
Such discussions spread and can be passed over
hundreds, if not thousands of individual networks.
IN the frontline
‘
The more tags and
retweets you get
the more networks
you’ll be visible on
‘
Ellie Beeby is the marketing assistant
at DBG and is responsible for social
media management. She coordinates
a broad social media strategy that
includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and
Linkedin.
Behind closed doors
Do you know how to reach existing and prospective patients with social media?
Ellie Beeby explains how using Twitter can be a perfect link to missing patients
to make sure everything is updated, fresh and is
something you would want to follow. If you wouldn’t
want to see the posts, don’t post them.
Followers will want to see regular updates from
your practice and know what’s going on and, more
importantly, what your practice is doing. DH&T
industry updates can be posted.
Sometimes, 140 characters isn’t always enough, but
there is no need to panic – you can use links in your
post directing followers to more information. This
can be a link to a landing page directly on the practice
website. Online traffic is then driven to your site, an
aid to introduce new patients to your practice and it
could even introduce existing patients to new services
available.
Managing Twitter
Don’t let Twitter faze you with ‘@s’ and ‘#s’. Like
Facebook, Twitter can be easily managed using
sites that are also available for smart phones in app
formats. Hootsuite gives you the chance to schedule a
week’s worth of tweets and posts on numerous social
networks in a day. It’s great if you’re away from the
office, you can set dates and times and away you go.
This is a great set up to have when following up a
campaign with reminders of offers, services available
and even news articles.
The key thing about Twitter, or any social media
network that you use to promote a practice, is
Speaking to the masses
The power of the hashtag and tagging other
accounts in statuses, posts and tweets, allows the
communications to be shared across networks.
Twitter is great for interacting with others. If users see
a tweet they agree with it can be retweeted and shared
with other followers. Before you know it, your one
tweet can be retweeted and made visible to thousands
of people. This may then invite new people to follow
you who can then keep up-to-date with the latest
news from your practice, gaining you new patients.
Top tip – interact as much as possible. The more
tags and retweets you get the more networks you’ll be
visible on. Stay active.
Why wait for mail when an update on twitter can be
posted in seconds. At the touch of a button, important