New professionalism appears forcefully in dental offices: it is that of Social Media Marketing. The fundamental step is to become aware that it is a function with specific responsibilities and objectives, which leaves little room for improvisation. Social Media Marketing conveys the image of the Studio to the public and is its ambassador. The dentist’s success largely depends on him and the risk of sanctions for a “promotional” or “suggestive” use of the means of communication.
To understand the importance of Social Media Marketing (SMM) in a Dental Practice, we need to look at the context in which we operate.
It rests on communication channels, such as social networks, which level the ontological difference between brand and user, allowing them to enter the virtual community similarly.
Never, in the history of marketing, had there been the possibility of an open dialogue between the two parties, much less that one could establish one capable of putting them on the same level: a conversation between two digital identities, identical in the eyes of the ecosystem. Of belonging (with all the distinctions of the case, which, however, lack relevance with this discourse).
Why is the Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
It is therefore inevitable, at this point, to introduce the figure of the Social Media Marketing of the Dental Practice, the one who will personally take care of the management of social networks: publication of contents (whether informative, humorous, formal or otherwise), interactions (comments, likes, reposts), stories, etc.
He will be the brand ambassador in the ecosystem, the body, and the mind associated with digital identity, just like any personal profile on various social networks.
The web showcase thus becomes no longer a place for one-way interaction by the user, but a space for mutual sharing, for dialectical possibilities.
How evident is the responsibility of whoever takes care of it in this scenario? Guilt is not only for establishing courteous and pleasant relationships with users, not only for setting up the web activity, but also and above all for planning one’s work, a very important aspect that we will deepen below.
The editorial plan
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is indeed the human terminal responsible for the online responsiveness of the brand, but also, as already stated, the one who deals with the production of content at all levels.
This activity is important and delicate: the publication must create a connection between the parties, bring the user (patients) closer to the reality of the Firm, will have the opportunity to provide information, awareness, and content marketing.
Respecting the regime imposed by it will endow publications with temporal regularity and thematic coherence, with an acute and far-sighted plan of promotions (for a fee) of content on the web; it will guarantee a possibility of courtship on several occasions of the potential client, subtle and long-term.
The tools available to the Social Media Marketing
The website, the Studio page on Facebook, and the one on Instagram are fundamental tools to start introducing yourself to the web community: precisely for this reason delegating this task to inexperienced or unsuitable people represents a waste of resources, if not even a waste of resources.
As already mentioned, acting differently can lead to a particularly insidious economic loss, given the absence of counter-proofs. In addition to this, the worst damage: it is all too easy to realize how the diffusion of non-adherent contents to those with which one would like to make one’s digital identity coincide can distort, in the eyes of users, the image of the Studio: the asset of greater value, for which more can be fought through social activity.
Moreover, not even the firm owner should fulfill this task: it is not his position, and he does not necessarily have the skills, but above all the time, to carry out these actions on the web effectively.
This does not exclude its participation: on the contrary, the owner will have an essential role in Social Media Marketing Agency, especially in the latter’s understanding of the human and organizational identity of the Firm before it is transmitted as such through social media.
Social Media Marketing: Internal or Agency?
We have repeatedly stressed how Social Media Marketing must be deeply involved in the character that the brand wants to expose to the web to perform its job appropriately and with the greatest sensitivity. After all, the goal is to communicate it in the best and most effective way possible.
But, at this point, a difficulty may have arisen: how can we hope to find a Social Media Marketing who is competent and reliable but also in close contact (human, first of all) with the Firm?
The answer is very simple: do notify Social Media Marketing as a mere content producer. Advertising agencies or freelancers can create effective content, but they will never have an attachment to the Firm, nor will they be able to get in touch with its “intimacy”; in other words, they will not be able to understand, much less communicate it fully.
All values that we do not feel like defining other than “fundamental.”
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SMM: a figure to be shaped within the Studio
The choice of the al Media Marketing can therefore fall on a particularly talented employee, an external collaborator who physically attends the Firm or even a family member who has absorbed the mission, the most authentic and specific feeling.
An important feature of Social Media Marketing, in addition to technical competence, is the personal data: a young age often determines the ability to move easily between the various social networks and to understand what is effective communication.
The office owner’s task will be to shape this figure, educate him on the clinical environment, and invest in him in training and updating; after all, the web is full of useful content, and thanks to these, he can easily guess the dynamics that will be essential for his work.
Send your passion to Social Media Marketing
The Social Media Marketing must be a close collaborator, and he must also physically participate in the clinical activity of the study.
The owner, in the full sense of this term, must transmit his passion for the Social Media Marketing and the spirit and enthusiasm of his business project: only in this way can he truly have an attachment to the Firm and feel an integral part of it, and then be able to communicate it better.
Absorbing values is the first step to being able to transmit them authentically and genuinely.
This is a fundamental step: in the next articles, we will try to explain why, in our opinion, the most effective communication on social networks is precisely the one that conveys the spirit of the Firm.
Why differentiate the figure of Social Media Marketing from Marketing?
To avoid confusion – the two positions can coincide in one person.
But when is it essential to differentiate them? And why, in general, is it a good idea to do so?
The first common mistake is to think that social media activity is marketing directly aimed at acquiring customers. Indeed, it is only indirectly, not in its main purposes.
Let’s clarify: the activity of Social Media Marketing must be summarized in shaping the digital identity of the Firm, characterizing it, for example, as lively, professional, pleasant, and supporting what the owner wants to convey about his reality.
The objective of the contents, therefore, will be to make the user participate in the life and values of the Firm and not to convince him to go there directly;
On the other hand, Marketing is responsible for creating the marketing plan.
The Marketing plan is a larger set of activities, among which there is also that of Social Media Marketing, even if performed by a third figure.
SMM is involved between courtship and direct marketing
Good communication from Social Media Marketing is the courtship of the reader, making sure that he knows the real life of the Clinic and letting him enter the Clinic’s heart without ever alluding to promotions or suggestions that may appear as a plea for a call.
It is useless and does not work: if the reader sniffs an advertising hustler in your posts, it could severely cut the interaction.
After all, anyone who needs a dentist will not decide to go there only by seeing a post on Facebook (and if this is the mechanism by which the patient has moved, it is likely a bad investment).
In this sense, our presence on social networks must be pure of courtship through content marketing: real information and interesting or curious content.
It will be he who will decide to contact you.
A new humanism in marketing
We have outlined the figure of Social Media Marketing in the way that most suggests what we believe in his fine work, even in subtle details.
The new technological scenarios have created the previously unexpressed possibility of having a brand ambassador constantly – and directly – reachable by the digital community to which the patient also belongs;
The world of communication can finally place the human intellect at the crossroads of its communication processes.
This allows a wide range of expression, a multiform ability to adapt to different contexts, and a (content) marketing that knows how to evolve rapidly, effectively, and entirely human sensitivity.
Conclusions
We have expressed all the essential dynamics behind Social Media Marketing in the Dental Practice; previously, we introduced the importance, described in 11 reasons, of having your own digital identity.
In short, we have laid the foundations that we consider essential for a correct “philosophical” approach to web marketing.
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