Many doctors are guilty of not staying on their patients’ radars outside of the dental practice. With the average dental patient only seeing their dentist twice a year, it hardly takes any effort to fall out of sight and out of mind.

If you are struggling to find ways to stay in touch with all your patients throughout the year, creating and implementing an effective content marketing campaign could be the answer!

What’s content marketing, you ask? It’s merely creating, sharing, and delivering digital material that’s beneficial to your audience while promoting your brand. In your case, your audience members are your patients and your brand is your dental practice.

Delivering and sharing content that’s beneficial to your patients, fun, and engaging will keep you relevant year-round and better promote your practice! Here are a few tips from YAPI to help get you started!

 

1. Send Out Digital Newsletters and eBlasts

 

 

Emailing your patients a monthly newsletter or an eBlast is an excellent way to stay in continuous contact. Both Newsletters and eBlasts provide engaging ways to bring up relevant health topics, subtly promote your new services and treatments, and encourage your patients to make their oral health a priority.

An excellent dental newsletter or eBlast should be an easy read and not too wordy. An eBlast should focus on one general topic in dentistry, whereas a newsletter can highlight various topics about your practice and new services you may be offering.

Be sure that the tone of each newsletter and eBlast comes off as friendly and try to incorporate light humor into the writing style.

Pay attention to catchy headlines! It’s crucial to grab your patients’ attention as they browse through their inbox. Otherwise, they may not even open your email.

Software such as YAPI allows practices to send out eBlasts to patients quickly. Customers can access a library containing hundreds of pre-made templates. If you currently use YAPI and have not taken advantage of this excellent resource, please navigate to our HelpCenter*.

 

Go to Template Gallery 

 

* Please note: You must be logged in to access and download from our template gallery. These templates are located under “Resources” in the “Newsletter” section.

If you would like to learn how you can import interest lists from your PMS to use in YAPI for email marketing, please refer to this past article:

 

Campaign Filtering with YAPI

 

2. Stay Current with Social Media and Delegate a Social Media Role in Your Practice 

 

 

It’s practically a given that a Facebook and an Instagram account is a must for your dental practice. If you haven’t already, consider creating a business profile ASAP on both accounts.

Did you know: Every second, 11 people use social media for the first time! 

Many dentists and teams are apprehensive about posting content on social media. Many worry about quality, what to write, and how to be engaging. The best advice we can give is just to start posting!

Posting things as simple as pictures of your team, birthdays, and pictures of patients, are great ways to show the non-clinical side of your practice. Take this as an opportunity to show off your company culture, your gratitude for your patients, and what it is that makes your practice unique.

You may also want to appoint a designated member in your practice as the Social Media Queen or King! Each week, make sure that they have time in the practice to take and post photos, create posts, and engage with patients who comment and react.

Extra Tips:

• Focus on posting pictures with people. Stay away from clinical photos, pictures of patients chairside, drills, etc.
• Be sure to ask for your patient's consent to post their photos. Use an Informed Consent to Release Patient Testimonials, Photos, Video, Audio, and Name.
• Post written patient testimonials. You can dress them up and style them as quotes with images. If you do not have anyone in the practice that's savvy with design - that’s ok! Online programs such as Collage Maker and Canva, make design easy and professional! You can create beautiful posts sized for your social media accounts in just a matter of minutes.
• Be cautious of implementing third party software that automates posting on Facebook and other social media platforms!  Many people are unaware of the fact that Facebook prefers posts to come directly from their channel and not through automation. In fact, posts that are automated from third party software generally have lower reach and less engagement.

Need a jumpstart with posting engaging content for Facebook and Instagram? You can subscribe to an exclusive newsletter and receive one free social post per week to get you started. Just click on the article below!

 

Download Free Social Media Posts 

 

 

3. Create and Use Video Content 

 

 

Video is proven to be one of the most engaging forms of content. As hard as it is to admit, more people these days are far more prone to click on a video than to read an article.

Incorporate fun videos into your practice to post on your social channels, practice website, and even attach in your Newsletters and eBlasts.

You can do this in a fun variety of ways from animated explainer videos, to office tours and patient testimonials.

Don’t stress about outsourcing or hiring a videographer! While you may want to spend the big bucks on a polished video for your practice website, the smaller things like patient testimonials and even an office tour can all be done with your smartphone!

A good tip for getting a great video with your smartphone is to invest in a tripod. A tripod will prevent any shaking and make your video quality richer and more professional. Amazon is great for Smartphone Tripods. You can do a search based on your phone model to find the right fit for you.

 

Did you know? If you use YAPI, you have access to our fun new Video Library on our HelpCenter. We offer a great selection of animated patient- facing videos, covering a wide range of dental topics. Start downloading and posting these videos today!

 

It’s our hope that you’ll find these content marketing ideas useful and that they’ll be enjoyable to begin implementing with your team. So start today! Send an eBlast to your patients with YAPI, download some great social posts, and start creating and sharing videos!

Happy posting!