Full Transcript
James:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Denysium Invest podcast. Interesting one today, related to finance, but not strictly, purely finance, of course, but it is aligned with making your practice and you personally more profitable, and that is the topic of social media. And who better to join me on that subject than social media guru s? Is that a word, guru s?
Hazel:
It is now.
James:
Hazel Woodward. How are you, Hazel?
Hazel:
Good thanks, James. How are you?
James:
I’m wonderful, I’m always wonderful. Thanks for asking so. For those who don’t know, Hazel runs the social media. The social media. Well, the company that, sorry assists dentists with their social media, which is called Lyft, and Hazel knows anything and everything marketing online and using social media to be our friends and hence leveraging our business. Isn’t that right, hazel?
Hazel:
That is right, so something like that. Something like that. So, yes, my business is called Lyft and, strangely enough, people always spell it with a Y, but it’s actually with an. I Wait what?
James:
Just for two seconds. It’s got a Y in the logo, doesn’t?
Hazel:
it. No, it’s an I, it’s L-I-F-T.
James:
I thought that was a Y as well, so I am in the guilty camp for the thing that you just described. So I know of anything. I can understand why that may have happened. Right, maybe I thought it was a Y in the logo, but anyway, no, so it’s an acronym, so my husband actually came up with it.
Hazel:
So when we went through the rebrand, I was like I need to come up with the name. It just easily rolls off the tongue. And then my husband was like, what about Lyft? I was like, well, where have you got that from? And it was like so it’s LinkedIn, instagram, facebook and TikTok and all the platforms that we managed. Oh, that’s genius, that’s cool. That’s cool.
James:
Okay, I like that. I like that. Now. I had a similar thing the other day, right, so I help dentists manage their Facebook groups, or an odd of dentists who invest in the things that I learned along the way, which meant that I was able to enhance the power of my group and enhance the rate at which it grows. There’s things that you never really notice in patterns that happen throughout that process and basically there’s this chap, a group, and it was called Energized Dental Teens right, and what he does is he takes dentists up mountains okay, to you know well, on treks, mountaineering, to enhance how cohesive they are as a team, right.
Hazel:
Yeah.
James:
I was like listen, I know that I can see the name. It just came to me in a moment of inspiration peak performance, dental teams, right, and I just brought both those things together. Anyway, that was just me sharing my moment of happiness, sharing that moment. I think you had to be there, but it was cool. But anyway, sorry, not the steal, the land ride, hazel.
Hazel:
You were saying I can’t remember what I was saying now.
James:
LinkedIn, instagram, facebook, tiktok right.
Hazel:
Yeah, so that’s obviously our brand name. My business has been running for just over two years and we work almost exclusively. We do have a few clients, not in dental with dentists in dental practices, helping them raise their brand profile and brand awareness online.
James:
Very cool.
Hazel:
That’s where we are, that’s what we do.
James:
Very, very, very cool. And you know what me myself? I used to be anti Facebook, anti social media. I did not post for five years until one day I rocked up and I started this Facebook group called Dentistry Invest right, true story, right. And then basically now I’m a huge proponent of social media, right, and I actually think social media gets a bad rep on the news. It’s not representative of the love that you can get on there as well and the sense of community. And I actually think that 95%, 90% positivity vastly outweighs what we hear about on the TV, which is a huge misconception or which is why we don’t always have a perception which is a line of actual reality. And I didn’t realize that until I went through the process of putting out what I knew, sharing my knowledge and sharing what I loved online, until I was able to receive that back, because it does get. It’s like a mirror. It’s like whatever you put out, you get back. And if you put out love, you get back love, because why wouldn’t there be anything but loving if you’re constantly giving them love? Yeah, okay, on occasion, miscommunications happen, whatever, I get that right but those instances are vastly outweighed by the huge amount of positivity. That’s my two cents.
Hazel:
I completely agree with you on that. So I think it is like a mirror, and I think when people say all social media is really toxic, it’s not a reflection of the content that’s being put out on social media, because if someone has that toxic mindset or a negative mindset, it doesn’t matter how positive the posts are going to be, they’re always going to see the negative in it and I think that is why it does get a bad rep. But also, as well, we have to think about cybersecurity and protecting the mental health and wellbeing of the younger generation. That’s why there’s minimum age limits and things like that in place. But generally, on the whole, social media isn’t going anywhere. So you either need to use it or get left behind.
James:
I agree. I really do think that everyone should have some form of social media aligned with them, professionally and as well, maybe personally for me maybe that’s more optional Professionally I really think that you’re missing out on a huge trick to enhance your brand effectively to your marketing and therefore grow your business. What are your thoughts on that one? Why do you view it as essential for dentists?
Hazel:
I actually have the same. I deleted my own personal Instagram account but because I found it very difficult to separate work from personal, so I’ve deleted that, but I’ve still used my work business Instagram account as mine, if that makes sense. So I’m still active on the platform and things like that. I think dentists in particular have to understand that you can have a not great website that has a really bad patient experience, it’s not optimized for mobile, but still actually captured patients online using social media, because that is essentially your shop front and especially more important, if your website is you’ve made it yourself, or it’s old, or you don’t update it or anything like that, social media is an opportunity for you to so easy to update it’s in the moment, it’s authentic, but then it also allows you to craft the type of message so you hit the emotional heartstrings of the patient that you’re trying to attract as well.
James:
Yeah, 100%. Anything more to add on that? Those are the main points. Yeah, I get you know, I totally feel you. Yeah, because here’s the thing with any business, right? I heard someone break down businesses very Eloquently the other day and they said basically every business has three parts, right, you have your marketing, you have your sales and you have your product Right, and that’s that is every business. They only have. It only has three parts, right, and I love, I love when someone simplifies things like that, right, and you have these little frameworks which are so neat, through which you can view these hugely complex things. Okay, because it helps you make decisions, right, so let’s elaborate on that side, right, but so every business has marketing, it has sales and it has the product right. So what’s the product? The product is a dentistry, right, so that’s our job, the dentist, to get as good as we can at dentistry right, that’s our remit. Yeah, we can be the best dentists in the whole wide world, but in order for us to have a business, someone has to buy our services, right? That’s where sales and marketing come in. So sales is what you said to the patient when they’re in the chair, right, so you give them an accurate description of the value that you will give them on the back end. And then at that point, when the patient is able to see that value, then they enter into a transaction with you. Ie, we sold to them, right, that sales, okay, and again I’m just skirting over a huge subject. There’s way more to it, right, because you can be really, really, really good at dentistry, right. But here’s the thing you can give someone a huge amount of value. How capitalism works is we try to reclaim Some of that value, and the more that value that we’re able to reclaim, the more profitable our businesses. Obviously, there’s going to be an upper limit on that, and finding the upper limit is part of business, right? So that’s sales. Still with me. Yeah, yeah, follow me. Yeah, so now we’re on to your forte Marketing. Yeah, exactly, because that’s basically what and here’s the thing you know, I feel that we have a somewhat archaic version of marketing Most of the time, and the reason is we expect that when we want to get the word out about our practice. I still think that, people, what we’re really looking at is cost, cost per Paravise, right, you know that that makes marketing as efficient as possible, right? So you’re paying 20 p per per Perse for every person to see your advert in a newspaper or TV or whatever. However, that looks right the thing. Well, here’s the thing about social media. When it’s done, well, it’s pretty much free, okay, and there’s a ton of people on there. But then what happens as you get into your content game? How strong is your content game? Okay, because it’s like what I V says is the three C’s of success on the internet content, content and content. Right, how does your content compared everybody else? How entertaining is it, how interesting is it? And I know that that’s what you do. Here’s all right. There’s a content side of things.
Hazel:
Yeah.
James:
Cool. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. This is here’s the thing. I bet you see tons of content, maybe some good, some not so good. How do you feel that dentists could be doing that better out there? What is your words of wisdom on that subject? The three C’s of success content, content, content.
Hazel:
So before I kind of going deep dive into the content, content, content I want to just kind of elaborate on, like the marketing section as well that you’re saying. So obviously We’ve got the product, which is the dentist, and we’ve got the sales, which is the conversation with the patient. But those, if those patients don’t know that you exist and you’re never going to be able to have those Conversations and then sell them that treatment and get them out of pain or whatever it is that they’re, that emotional state that they’re in. But I think what a lot of people have a huge misconception about Is that social media is easy. They think I’ll just walk a few posts on social media and and that’s it, my diary will be full. And unfortunately, in reality that is just not the case, because there’s so much demand and so much competition out there in terms of Everybody else doing the same thing, because the barrier is so low, it just makes it more difficult for everybody else. And also, I think a Very savvy social, very savvy dental practice will Recognize that social media is just one channel, so it might be different platforms, so Facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter, linkedin, google, my business and it’s essentially it’s just one channel. And you need to be looking at the other channels within your marketing mix as well so that your capturing patients, you know Recurring patients that come back and you can upsell them more and more and more treatments, or you can get them to bring in referrals and things like that. So social media is a fundamental part of a marketing mix, but it’s not just the, the main component, if that makes sense. And but then in terms of content, content, content. And don’t not sure about you, james, but when I scroll on social media, all I see a teeth.
James:
Oh, particularly on Instagram, yeah.
Hazel:
Yeah, it’s just teeth, teeth, teeth, and that just goes to show how the algorithm Learns about your interests and what the type of content you prefer to consume as a user. So it serves you. I’m like a restaurant more content that you’re going to consume. I’m to keep you on the platform for longer so it can serve you. More ads, so then it can make more revenue. That’s how the social media platforms all work, I’m. So what you’ve got to try and do is you’ve got to try and cut through that noise. So if you’ve got a patient who is maybe googling in visible line or dental implants or something Like composite bonding, all of a sudden they’re going to start seeing lots of content around that particular topic in their news feed. So you’ve got to make sure, as a practice owner, that your content stands out from the crowd, because you’ve got to make it scroll stopping. And that is where a lot of people fall down at the first hurdle. They just put poor quality images on, they don’t write captions, they don’t use a hashtag and they think they can just sling anything out online and it’s just gonna hit and it just doesn’t 100%, yeah, and if you had like a, I know that you’ve just given us a little bit of an overview, then, of the things that we could do better.
James:
Let’s build on that. What are the common things that you see that you feel should be done much better or could be done much better with ease?
Hazel:
So consistency. So that’s another C. So we’re now on four Cs. There we go.
James:
Ha ha ha ha, content, content, content and consistency. I hope you’re listening to Gary V, do you like Gary?
Hazel:
V.
James:
Do you like to listen to him?
Hazel:
I don’t, but I’ve heard of him so I know who he is. I don’t can see many of his content. I’ll be honest, his voice annoys me, so I just.
James:
You know what right he is a little divisive. He’s good as lovers and his people. They don’t love him so much.
Hazel:
Yeah, he’s a bit more might.
James:
Anyway, any who, sorry, you were saying consistency- yeah, so consistency.
Hazel:
So you have to make a commitment to put in content out there, to feed the algorithm the information that it needs so it knows who to serve your content to. And the only way that you can do that is by posting consistently, whether that’s once a week, once a month, once a fortnight, how? The more often you’re creating and posting content, the the more the algorithm will learn about who it is that you’re trying to target and serve that content to that person. But there are minimums that we would, we would recommend so, and it’s a balance between are you able to create Good quality content at the level that you want to post online? So for most people we would say twice a week is plenty when you post into the grid or the feed, and Two to three times a day if you post into stories, because obviously we know that stories aren’t around very long these last 24 hours. But for my clients, with my customers, we always post a minimum of three times a week, so it just gives them that competitive edge. It is a balance between gathering the content and getting it online. You don’t want to commit to posting every day. If after four days, you’re like I’ve got nothing else to post. I don’t know what I’m doing. You’ve got no strategy.
James:
I’ve got another C Component Because it compounds right. It grows exponentially the returns that you get whenever you begin to post with me.
Hazel:
Yeah, so we call that critical mass.
James:
Oh, I like that.
Hazel:
Another C.
James:
That’s good Critical mass. So maybe just to elaborate a little bit on that. That’s where things you’re posting, you’re posting, you’re posting, you’re not seeing much results. All of a sudden it’s a trickle through the floodgates, then the flipping dam busts and all this goodwill comes away right.
Hazel:
Yeah, exactly, and that’s probably the easiest way to describe it in terms of can you revive a dead account? So a lot of people will have an Instagram account or a Facebook page somewhere and they’ve not posted on it for years and years and years, and what you’ve got to do is just you just have to start kind of get over yourself and get over that barrier and just start posting. And then, over time, the more that you factor in to create the content in your day to day life and you get that content posted on there, then it will gain this critical mass, or critical momentum.
James:
You know what? Honestly, hand on my heart, I fully believe that social media to this day, even though it’s been out, for you know, it’s been a thing for however many years, like 15 years when did, when did Zuck start Facebook? Like 2007, 2008? Ish, anyway 2006,.
Hazel:
I think it was.
James:
Oh, there we go, there we go. So basically, even though it’s been out for however long, right, I tend to think that it’s saturated. It’s not. I see things all the time and I’m like listen, I fully think that that is an opportunity waiting for somebody to capitalize on right. And here’s the thing it all comes back. I feel that it all comes back to, well, one of the scenes that we talked about earlier, which is content right, because you getting yourself out there producing content that is of a decent standard, it only comes through iterating your, your, your, your original content. You know it only comes from those first few iterations of getting better and better and better. See content posting as you having the opportunity to improve and you consistently getting better, rather than it being the be all and end all. And the thing about it is you never become a pro at something until you do it in the first instance. It’s just that part I promise you right For your business. It is a land of golden opportunities if, if, you can go there, if and it’s a big if, because how many people would willingly take their phone out of their pocket and make a video and record right? Well, my point is that when you can go there, you gain the skills of a content maker, get better at talking, the words just flow out of your mouth and it feels incredible. Okay, and as well as that, the goodwill that you throw out online will literally make its way back into your pocket as opportunities and also as remuneration. Financially right, but you have to open that door. That’s maybe like door five, but you have to open door one, two and three to get door five, and that’s how it looks and everyone feels like that. Everyone feels like that. That’s the point. You don’t. You’re not the person who uniquely feels that you’re reticent to shooting videos and put them online. Right, and it’s precisely because everybody lets that feeling hold them back that people don’t capitalize on these opportunities. So when you recognize that, and you recognize that that’s precisely the reason why you must do it, then that’s a huge mindset flip Boom.
Hazel:
Yeah, and I think you are right as well. So you know there’s nothing wrong with repurposing content. So if you put a post out and you’re struggling for content six months later and you think you need a bit more inspiration, every single post that you put out is like a back catalog of content so you can go back through and see which content performed well, which content resonated with your audience, which one got a lot of likes and comments, and kind of dig that out of the archives and either do a throwback post or, if it was a carousel post, change it into a reel, you know, and then you kind of you’re breaking down those barriers of entry of getting more content out through your back catalog of posts that you’ve already got there. That you know that works.
James:
Boom. Let’s talk about the other benefits of social media, aside from the one that everybody, I suppose, expects, which is financial, because there’s huge other benefits too, wouldn’t you say?
Hazel:
Yeah. So I think in terms of branding, it’s really important to have a cohesive brand message. So the color, from really basic things like the color scheme on your website, needs to be really visible and clear through your Instagram and your Instagram feed and your grid and everything, and obviously, your tone of voice. So it’s all got to match. But also you’ve got to think about where you’re driving this traffic to. So you want to get these patients off the social media platform. Are you sending them to your website? If you are sending them to your website, then you’ve got to think, okay, is my website? Is it mobile optimized? Is it set up? Is the book now button right at the top? Is it smacking them around the face? We want you to book in as a patient. That’s something to remember, but also that then needs to feed into the copy. So the copy is basically the words and the captions, and if you’ve got a really strong SEO and keyword strategy, you can feed that into your social media copy and then that will then elevate your SEO as well, which happens on your website.
James:
Very, very, very cool. Yeah, and you know, one that I observed was the love and positivity that you get back in your DEMs as in your private messages. Yeah, huge one. And you never see that until you’re on the other side of the screen You’re not consuming the content, but creating the content.
Hazel:
So that’s another C, that’s community.
James:
Community consuming and creating. There we go. You know what? That’s part of it.
Hazel:
It should be like the seven C’s of social media.
James:
I think it’s going to be the 70 or the 700 at this rate. Anyway, I think we should. I think we should just park the C’s for the moment because it’s probably getting started. So much fun as you and I are having here is probably getting tired of them to listen to, so let’s move on. But wouldn’t you agree? The DEMs, right? The things that people send you on the back end that you’ll never see, right? You’ll never see until you actually make the content yourself, because people viewing you from the outside and don’t see those opportunities. Only you can see those and you only get to see them whenever you put stuff out there, right?
Hazel:
Yeah, and then think about it practically from a practice perspective. You’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the right person on the back end to answer those messages and they can answer them in a timely way. So if you’ve got a patient that’s booking in to say I’m in pain, I need emergency appointment, can I see you today, but that message then isn’t picked up till the next day, that patient is potentially going to go somewhere else because they have this desire to get out of pain. So, thinking it from a practical practice perspective, you’ve got to think am I useful? I’m able to service that platform, you know the messages and it’s the right person on the other end. But from a clinicians perspective, if a clinician is putting content out and is creating community and a brand awareness for themselves, then yeah, it’s a really good way to kind of break down those barriers with patients and begin to develop that relationship on a one-to-one basis before they even step into the practice.
James:
Do you feel that every single dental practice should have social media?
Hazel:
Without a doubt, I don’t see why you wouldn’t have one. Well, I do know why they wouldn’t have one, and we get the same reasons all the time I haven’t got time, haven’t got anyone in the practice who knows what they’re doing. And then you maybe do have someone in the practice, but the content isn’t that great, or they haven’t got a camera so they can’t get the pictures, or they can’t get consent from patients. Those are the main reasons that we come across time and time and time again. It’s so simple to overcome.
James:
This is it. Well, I feel that the reason those things, those people place those barriers in front of themselves it’s all about priorities for me, because it’s not like those are things. It’s not like someone saying go out and flip in, move this huge mountain, are you with me? You know it can be physically done. It’s more of a psychological hurdle than a physical hurdle. But here’s the thing. I get it. You know, like when you run a business, right, you got 168 hours in a week, right, and you have to choose where you spend those hours to get the most return. And I feel like part of what where that comes from, that sentiment, is that those business owners feel that if they spend hours on that, there’s not going to be an ROI or it’s not worth it.
Hazel:
Yeah, yeah, and I had this entire conversation actually with the team at EnquirerBot on the webinar that we did last week. Because organic social which is what we do, so that’s not paid social it can be very tricky or very difficult to track the return on investment because it’s not actual physical money that you’re using. It’s time, it’s the time it takes to create the content, it’s the time it takes to create the community to respond to messages. So the ROI is very difficult to track unless you have a paid tool or a feature that allows you to track those conversations and those conversions. And there are things out there which you can use, like chatbots and stuff like that. So, yeah, return on investment with organic social media is difficult to track, but doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be on the platform.
James:
Well for me, right? I mean, I look back on my journey and my content now versus my content then is completely different, right? Here’s the thing I only really learned what hit and what didn’t hit, so much just via posting, but you with me so I almost had to start from somewhere and then just iterate to that point with fully understand and like I look back and think there was a lot of time that I plowed into that without even realizing I was doing it. At least it was fun for me. You know what I mean? Yeah, at least it was fun. But seriously, when you get past that point where you’ve got some followers and you’re not just throwing this stuff out into a vacuum, right, I’m not here, although it does fail like that most of the time. It does honestly, it does right. And that’s precisely the point that everyone else begins their attention, begins to wonder and that’s fine, right, that’s fine, I get it. The reason honestly, the reason hand on heart, why I wanted to get here’s the long to the podcast today. Number one because you’re good friends, and also number two as well as that. Also, number two, as well as that, is because I fully believe that this can enhance every single dentist career. Right, it’s a huge trick that we’re missing. We don’t talk about it in universities. It’s not even on the curriculum in most universities. It’s made in the 80s. Right, let’s be real. You know there’s all these really amazing things out there that can enhance your career big time when you’re happy to go there and I swear, even to this day there’s still a million, billion trillion opportunities the competition is actually not that intense, actually not that fierce. Providing you have a decent level of content game, you can win and that is the marketing side if your business sorted right. There’s only three components to any business marketing, sales and product. Your job is a product, okay, as a dentist, right, your job is also the sales, right. But here’s the thing when, how are we actually going to get people into that funnel unless you have a marketing right. No, you can have word of mark. I get it in all of these things right. When there’s a really easy way to shout about the service that you give people right, which is what social media is, why should we not be shouting about it, which is exactly what we’re hearing in this podcast.
Hazel:
Yeah, and you know what as well? That’s a really good point, because I think social media is often, like I mentioned at the start of the podcast, is kind of seen as this like magic wand, that I’ll just post a few posts on social media and my diary will be full and it’d be great and I’ll be an influencer and I’ll have all these amazing patients, and in reality that just doesn’t happen. I’m going to pull a statistic out at you because I know that you like statistics.
James:
Oh yeah.
Hazel:
So on Facebook, one of the okay before I do the statistic part. So one of the things.
James:
Oh, your teeth. Sorry, I know, I’m sorry.
Hazel:
I’m getting to it. So one of the things that practice has come to us and where there’s a barrier, to say I don’t want to bore my audience, I don’t want to just bombard them with lots and lots and lots of messages or the same thing, because they’ll get bored of me and then they’ll unfollow us or they’ll get angry and they’ll unfollow us. And this is where I bring this statistic out, because on Facebook the latest statistics this is just before Christmas, so that’s how new it is. On average, 0.3% of your audience gets served your content at any one time. 0.3%, geez, really, yeah, yeah, that’s how low it is. And then I think on Instagram it is something like 3% or 2.5%, so that’s just them being served your content. Think about how less them it is for engagement rate. So engagement rate is there either someone watching a story or watching a video, leaving a comment, leaving a like or saving your content on Instagram? It just blows my mind how people can think it’s just not worth doing social media because there’s so much competition. But I think what kind of touches back on what you said before about mindset? You’re just going to flip your mindset. There’s not so much competition, there’s so much opportunity, and that’s the difference.
James:
There’s always room for more people with decent content game as well.
Hazel:
Yeah.
James:
How do we get better at content you just got?
Hazel:
to make more content.
James:
Got to make content right. It’s a skill, it is actually a skill. I promise you the rewards. The results are flipping worth it. Yeah, huge, absolutely huge. There was one more thing. There was something that I was going to add in there as well, and it was on dental practices posting content, and it was. This is it. It’s just come back to me. Everybody feels that the reason why patients might get annoyed, right, is because, potentially, we might spam them with salesy stuff. Right, there’s a really easy way to fix that. Don’t post that much salesy stuff, right, yeah, but post value, right. Exactly. In fact, your ratio should be at least four to one. Value to sales. Okay, and that’s one of the biggest things that people don’t always realize they think that they have to go full sales whenever they’re on there. Actually, we want people to engage with the content, right, I promise you, if you have some sort of ratio I think mine is I mean, I genuinely enjoy posting content. I love it, right, it’s fun for me, right, yeah, the higher you can make that ratio, right, when you do come with some sort of proposal to your audience, actually, you’ll make more returns by observing that ratio than you would even if you just constantly posted sales stuff all the time. Right, that’s the thing. Right? It’s actually more profitable to do it that way if that is the intention or the goal of your business. Right? Five posts. Five value posts, six value posts, seven value posts. What’s a value post? A value post is giving some knowledge or information that will be beneficial to your audience. What’s the reason why they followed you? To learn about how to brush their teeth? To learn about how to look after their crowns, whatever?
Hazel:
Yeah, and I think this also feeds into. So we had this conversation. What’s it been about 18 months ago, when it was Jab Jab Right Hook and it was more like Jab Jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab Jab.
James:
Jab, jab Jab. Jab Now Right Hook yeah, and I think it’s Just to clarify Jab Jab, jab Right, hook right, that’s the. That’s value, value, value, sales right. Yeah, Because it’s like you kind of warm people up right. And that’s another Gary Vism, right.
Hazel:
Yeah. So and I think where a lot of practices kind of fall down, and this is not because they do it intentionally, it’s just because there’s no one in the practice with the expertise of also, so they know exactly how to leverage social media properly. So they just think in the moment okay, I need to get a post on today, what can I do? Okay, we’ve got a T-Fwighting offer, I’ll just put that on. And then a couple of days later, right, I need to put a post on social media. I don’t know what to do. Oh, we’ve still got that T-Fwighting promotion, I’ll just put that on, whereas there’s no value and there’s no strategy behind it and it doesn’t feed into the wider marketing objectives of the practice or the business, and you can’t just download a content calendar from somewhere because that’s generic. So social media game for one of the better words has to be linked to your marketing strategy. So if you know you’ve got an open day, an Invisalign open day coming up in April, a lot of your value posts will be all around Invisalign, not selling the open day. But what is Invisalign? How long does it take? Does it hurt? Get a test to learn from a patient, maybe do some before and afters. How can you keep your retainers clean to keep them invisible? There’s seven different value posts that you can do, and then, on the eighth one go. We’ve given you all this information about Invisalign. Why don’t you come and see if it works for you, not like here’s your open day, which can we find out a bit more? And that’s the key. So that feeds into your marketing goals and aims for the practices a whole over the year. Rather than what do I need to post today, I’ll do T-Fwighting, and then you get frustrated because they’re like social media doesn’t work. Well, no, it doesn’t work when you’re doing it like that.
James:
It’s true. I feel as well that people are way too corporate on it a lot of the time. They post as if they’ve got this huge brand like Coca-Cola right, Whereas in actual reality, your greatest strength is your individuality and your personality. So show it.
Hazel:
Pictures of the Aldi Like.
James:
Aldi huh Like.
Hazel:
Aldi. We love Aldi in our office, so.
James:
Aldi. Do they do stuff like that on Aldi’s social media?
Hazel:
Oh, my God, I’m so curious. If you don’t follow Aldi on Twitter or Instagram, you need to go and do it, because these, like these, share screenshots, so someone will leave a comment and they’re just so like quippy but I can so sarcastic and it’s just. It really just. They’ve got their target audience in mind and they’ve just nailed the tone of voice. It is exceptional to watch.
James:
And look what just happened right there. Right, you just said to me follow Aldi, because it’s funny right. Yeah, and there’s an exact example, right, exactly so they they obviously I have never seen, I didn’t even know Aldi had social media. I presumed they did, but I’ve never checked it out. Right, You’re telling me that it’s funny. So what am I probably going to do after this podcast? I’m probably going to follow Aldi, right, are you?
Hazel:
with me? And what about, Even if you don’t shop there, but it’s? Do you know what I mean? And it’s just, there’s different reasons why people follow different accounts and they may never, ever, you know, become a patient at the practice. But you never know, they might recommend your account to someone who is going to become a patient at the practice and that patient might have dual full arch treatment. You just don’t know.
James:
Take no dental practices. Aldi is keeping it on social media. Go and observe.
Hazel:
But I just want to caveat that with don’t just start me sarcastic a route of potential pain. Oh, yes, don’t do that, You’ll have your hold on people at the CQC. That would be my fault.
James:
Not that part, Not that part about Aldi, but yes anyway, Gizal, if you could go out there and wave your wand and encourage any dentist who’s on the fence about social media who might be listening to this podcast, what words of wisdom would you offer to her or him?
Hazel:
I think it would be. So those practices that really really leverage social media phenomenally well, they prioritize it so it’s ingrained into every person’s role within the practice. It’s not an afterthought. So, for example, you know when you ask it, when you’re doing treatment consultations, at the start of treatment, they’re taking the before photos and they’re already thinking, okay, this is what this photo is going to look like on a before and after. So then when they’ve done the treatment and they come back, they get them in exactly the same spot so you can see the before and after side by side really nicely. Also, asking for referrals, consenting patients more than once for the images to be used on social media that’s really important. So I think those practices that really nail that internal process will always do well on social media. If you’re a practice that’s never done anything before, then I would say just start. But start as yourself, as a clinician. So just start putting your own cases out there and if you’re really worried about people are going to think, just put your account as private and then just start to perfect it and just overcome that hurdle of posting and then over time you change your account from private to public and just learn and have fun with it. Just have fun If you don’t like it. Actually, this is my biggest tip. So people say to me like, oh my gosh, I posted something and I’ve got loads of really negative marks. What am I going to do? And I just go that’s how you delete it. Press that button. I think I’m going to go watch me and I’m like just delete it. Nothing’s going to happen, the world’s not going to end, your phone’s not going to explode. Just press delete and start again and do another one.
James:
Agreed, agreed and, by the way, that’s in the flipping minute minority of times that there is an issue along those lines. But we as humans, sometimes we’re so focused on the disadvantages that we forget to look at the advantages, because as human beings, we’re conditioned to seek certainty and seek safety. But that also means that the opportunity cost can be huge, which is basically what we’re talking about. One more thing on the content thing, and then we’ll wrap up. So here’s an analogy that I absolutely love. You know, whenever you’re thinking about going to the gym, you don’t surround oh yeah, we’ve all been there. You don’t sit around thinking yourself wow, I’m going to wait until I get huge biceps and huge pecs and lose a load of weight before I go. Right, yeah, then go to the gym. That’s basically. That would be crazy. So you have to go to the gym to get the reps in, to get those things, and social media is exactly the same. It’s like oh, I’m going to wait around until my content game is really good, are you with me? But actually the best place to go and improve that would be to get the reps in.
Hazel:
Basically, yeah, to post the content.
James:
Which is an analogy. I really, really, really love Hazel. You’ve been really generous with your time today and with your knowledge. Where can people find out more about what you do?
Hazel:
So they can follow us on Instagram. We are at Lyft Social, or you can visit my website, lyftsocialcouk, or just hook me up on LinkedIn, because that’s where I spend most of my time these days. I love LinkedIn at the moment, so I will see you on the linky dink.
James:
See you on the interwebs, lovely. Also, hazel is on the group. To Hazel Woodward, feel free to reach out to the Dentistoon and Vest Facebook group, of course, hazel. Thanks so much once again. We shall catch each other very soon.