Full Transcript
Dr James:
Welcome everybody in another live on the Facebook, the Dennis soonfest Facebook group. We’re looking forward to this one as we look at post every single one of them. This is with good friends, his old word, and we’re here to talk about social media and how it can transform your down practice in 2024 as it could have done in 2023 and 2022. I know the years prior to that as well. It’s just that we’re all just gradually getting more clued up to this stuff, even though social media has been around for like 20 years now. What?
Hazel:
Crazy.
Dr James:
What’s your take then? Actually, you know what? Let’s not go too wild Just straight off the bat. Hazel, might be nice for you to do a little bit of an intro as to who you are people who have yet to meet you.
Hazel:
Oh, okay, so I’m Hazel. I am the founder and owner of Lift Dental. We are a specialist, organic social media marketing agency who works with dentists and dental practices.
Dr James:
Awesome. Okay, guys. So looking forward to learning about Hazel and more about our expertise as the evening transpires. But just before we do that, as ever, everybody would be really cool if we could understand how many people are live and in the house watching this Facebook live with myself and Hazel. Go ahead and throw live in the comments section If you are watching the Facebook live, if you’re watching this Facebook live right here, right now with us this evening, if you’re watching catch up, that’s also totally cool Feel free to throw replay in the comment section. So again, we’ve got a really good idea of just a lot of people here. Hazel, do you have an ebook?
Hazel:
Do I have an ebook Do?
Dr James:
you have an ebook.
Hazel:
No, I don’t have an ebook. I do have a free download.
Dr James:
Oh, a free download. Let’s leave it there. Let’s keep the surprise for the end, because you know what? I’ve given away my ebook so many times on these live that people are bored of it. Let’s be real. Everybody, everybody’s listening. It’s probably kidding me on that one. So what we’re going to do instead? We’re going to keep Hazel’s download mysterious download, a mystery, and precisely that until the end of the webinar, and we’re going to drop what that is. That’s going to be a free gift for everybody who follows us right to the end of this webinar this evening and looking forward to that one. We’re going to go ahead and drop that at the end of the night, but just before we do, hazel, you were just about to tell us a little bit more about why you think social media is really important for dental practice, particularly in 2024.
Hazel:
So I think social media is is one channel. So I think when dental practices are any business, when looking at their marketing they have to set their marketing strategy and their goals so they know where they’re going for 2024 and beyond. Then they kind of work back from that and then do launches and offers and things and then your social media is just one distribution channel to get your audience to know about what launches and campaigns and offers and things that are going on within the practice. And it also helps to Under paying your other marketing activities. So, like any SEO that you’re doing, any blogs that you write on the website, any other digital marketing activities, the all kind of work together Towards a common goal.
Dr James:
You know what I think? It’s so important to say that? Because I think that sometimes people think social media is a magic wand and they can just Go ahead and pick it up one day and all of a sudden they’re gonna make mega bucks. And the truth is that you can do very well from social media. It’s a skill in and of itself and and in addition, that is something that you need to grow grow your following and grow that skill. So it doesn’t happen overnight, but the cool thing about it is that it does compound and grow exponentially with time, which can be linked to compounding results for your business. Would you agree with that?
Hazel:
Yeah, massively. And I think the days, the days are gone where you can simply, you know, post and then you get all of your followers can see that content and it will like and engage it. Those days are long gone and I think the practices that leverage lots of different types of content, lots of and Enjoy social media and be social and social media the ones that are going to see the results in the long term.
Dr James:
Amazing Hazel through working with dental practices. Do you have any amazing success stories in terms of dental practices that have picked up social media? Their turnover was this, so their their following was this, and then, within a few months, it went like this not that it’s going to look like that for everybody, but just to give an idea of what can happen to the audience.
Hazel:
Yeah. So I mean we’ve worked with practices and from social media accounts that are from all sizes and we’ve started some accounts purely from scratch, so we’ve gone from zero. I mean what we’ve done to practices whose accounts are in the tens and multiple tens of thousands of followers. I’m so we work with repractices that have a vast variety of Followers and fans across a whole variety of platforms as well. It’s not just Facebook and Instagram. We do LinkedIn, google my business, we dabble with TikTok. So we’ve you know, yeah, it’s good.
Dr James:
You’ve seen the full turkey started from the bottom. Now we hear in the words of Drake you help people, you help dental practice at every stage of their journey. Is fair to say? Here’s all okay, cool. So listen, let’s talk about social media, let’s talk about how that looks for dental practice. What do you think? Actually? Here’s a brilliant question. What is the first place? What is that? What is the place that a dental practice can get the most traction in your opinion? Which platform is what I mean?
Hazel:
Okay, so the ease. In my opinion, the easiest place for a dental practice to gain traction would be Instagram the gram and I think, because it’s the engagement element, so you can easily engage your audience through manual engagement, which then really helps to distribute your content. I think with Facebook yes, it’s the OG of you know social media platform. Hell, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t Facebook like my dad has like three Facebook profiles and he just doesn’t even go on it. Everyone has the Facebook on multiple Facebook profiles, but it is definitely very much a pay-to-play platform. I think a rare statistic, something like 0.1% of your followers will see your organic content on Facebook. So I would definitely say you can easily see faster results on Instagram and but don’t Rule out LinkedIn, because the life cycle of a post on LinkedIn is a lot longer than it is on the other platforms.
Dr James:
Man, I need to get on to LinkedIn because I just don’t know enough about it. But the link LinkedIn hype train is in like full steam these days. I hear a lot of people. What do you think that is?
Hazel:
Well, there’s not very many, so there’s not very many people, but there’s a lot less people on LinkedIn than there is on Instagram. People don’t check it as often, so the content stays, hangs around for longer and the algorithm works in a slightly different way. So Facebook, it’s all that shares, so dissemination of content. Instagram, it’s all about saves, so encourage you to go back and we look at content over and over again. And LinkedIn, it’s all about comments. So if I was to leave a comment on your content, all of my network, or most of my network would would see my comment on your content, which would then put your content in their feed. So that’s how it works and, like you say, the hack train for LinkedIn is going crazy at the moment. I think the newest one is where you get yourself verified and you can contribute to articles, and that’s a good way of, like asserting your authority in your niche.
Dr James:
Oh, I said hype train.
Hazel:
Oh, hype train. I said hype train.
Dr James:
You know what? I might have mispronounced it, but that was hype train, Just to clarify. But on that, Hacks are always useful whenever it comes to and we don’t mean like hacking accounts and stuff like that. What we mean is little easy things that we can leverage to get ahead and get more exposure. So you were saying just then verify on your account.
Hazel:
Yeah, so it is, and it’s not the same as a blue tick on Facebook or Instagram, so you don’t have to pay for it. It’s completely free. Anyone can do it. It’s just a case of uploading your ID and it’s basically a way of you to verify that you are who you say you are. You are a real, legitimate human being with an account on LinkedIn with something to say.
Dr James:
Interesting stuff. Let’s rewind a little bit, because you said that you’ve managed accounts that were just getting started and accounts that are really growing and gaining some traction. What do you feel the bigger accounts with traction are doing that smaller accounts are yet to do? Or maybe accounts that haven’t grown so much should implement?
Hazel:
So at a practice level well, in fact, at a social media level, the accounts that have tens of thousands of followers. Social media is part and parcel of their patient journey, so their team in the practice are geared up for leveraging social media to its best of its ability. It’s not an afterthought, so they are constantly consenting patients for before and after photos. Capturing content for social media is one of the fundamental daily activities that they do whenever they’re meeting a patient, so it’s weaved into every activity. It’s not a case of, ok, this patient, we’ve got an after photo, or haven’t got the before photos, but it’s OK, it’s not an afterthought. And that’s the. For me is the. What we see is the fundamental difference. See, this is cool.
Dr James:
So we’re on to something here. So these practices they have a dedicated person who manages their social media. Presumably you liaise with these people as well.
Hazel:
Not necessarily a dedicated person, it just means the whole culture within the practice. Everyone knows that the social media or any kind of digital content is going to allow them to reach their revenue goals more quickly and give a better patient experience. So from the moment the patient walks into the practice, you know they have a really great experience with the receptionist and the TCO. The TCO consents them in for before and after photos before the treatments even started. Then every every appointment they have images taken and they may be consented in more than once just along the patient journey. So they really the practice really understands the value of social media. That makes sense.
Dr James:
They time. Yeah, I like that you use the word weaved as well, because a weaved to me it means that it’s entwined. It’s not just like there’s this one point where it intersects, it’s not just like they’ve stuck it on like an afterthought, it’s like everywhere it’s on.
Hazel:
Yeah, and it even goes so much as to the decor of the practice. So they’ve got, you know, they might have a QR code for them for patients to like and follow the Instagram page Something as basic as that, or it could be that the the decor of the practice. It’s really high end and it’s grammable. You know they’ve got somewhere with a really cool background where they can get patients to stand in front of. The lighting is set up. This shows the patient off in the best light, so they don’t have to worry about getting ring lights out or getting this in position and patient there. It’s all done ready.
Dr James:
Nice, okay, cool. So you definitely think on the content side of things, consistency of content and weaving it into the DNA of practice is a good start. Any other hacks we should know when it comes to growing a photo on Instagram.
Hazel:
Making sure that you are responding to it’s a basics. Making sure you’re being social and social media, so making sure you’re responding to comments, responding to messages in a really timely manner. So don’t leave them like two or three days to respond, like respond straight away. If you can use a software where it kind of pulls everything in to the receptionist, so you’ve got someone on reception who’s able to respond to messages really quickly without having to use handsets and things like that, that helps. I think. For Instagram specifically, it’s keeping ahead of the trends. So making sure you’re using all different types of formats, so don’t just rely on wheels. So carousel posts and single images, make sure you’re using trending audio. Just keep up to date.
Dr James:
Amazing. Do you think it is fair to say there’s a lot to this stuff?
Hazel:
Oh yeah, massively. It’s not just a case of I’m going to stick something out and just post it and then my business is going to grow. It’s not like that anymore.
Dr James:
Gotcha OK cool. Well, you know what? Listen, that’s super useful for people who are trying to grow a phone on Instagram, and I guess what you said that applies also to associates too, right?
Hazel:
100 percent yeah.
Dr James:
Same logic, or anything that associates, should do differently.
Hazel:
So associates are what we find. They grow their volume much more quickly because patients want to connect with their dentist. They don’t want to connect with what could be seen as a bricks and mortar building or a business. They want to connect with people. So associates generally tend to grow their phone in much quickly, much more quicker than a dental practice. So and they need to be making sure that they’re using the right terminology and language that attracts patients. You don’t want to go heavy on the clinical terminology if you’re trying to attract a patient. You want to go heavy on the clinical terminology if you’re trying to, you know, showcase your expertise to other clinicians. So there’s a very subtle kind of difference in the type of copy that you write.
Dr James:
Make it, make it fun right.
Hazel:
I don’t think it’s not making fun, it’s making it emotional. You’ve got to tap into the emotion of people, because people buy on emotion nine times out of ten.
Dr James:
Yeah, you’re spot on there. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. Ok, cool, well, listen. Thanks so much for sharing a lot of your wisdom on social media. In your journey and voyage into social media and helping dental practice achieve results on social media, what do you find the or the biggest stumbling blocks or the biggest things that practice do wrong? Obviously, we’ve got the content like to share bulk whenever it comes to content, anything else. Is there any big no, no’s like real clangers that you see, that you can obviously look at it and be like, oh man, seriously, but maybe people don’t necessarily pick up on until you point it out to them.
Hazel:
And so I think, having links in the captions, especially for Instagram, having links in the caption, people can’t click them, you can’t even copy and paste them. So I think that for us is the big red flag that whoever’s running that account isn’t necessarily an Instagram user themselves, so it doesn’t really doesn’t understand that you can’t click that link. So that’s the first thing potentially not using stories to their ability, so not showcasing the behind the scenes content, that authentic, like building content. It’s not using stories and not posting regularly enough, so they’ll post for, say, two or three weeks, and then months will take by and six months and then, oh, ok, so we’ll start doing it, and then so it’s the irregularity.
Dr James:
It’s. The consistency is the biggest thing for two reasons because it gives people a constant reason to come and check out your profile and your constant reminding them that you’re there, but also, as well as that, so that you can enhance your skills whenever it comes to posting on social media, because you get more immediate feedback and it’s continuous and it’s fresher in your mind. That’s huge. It is a little bit of a chore, I’ll be real, but when you get there, when you actually start to get some traction, oh my goodness, there’s so much good stuff on the other side of it.
Hazel:
Yeah, and it’s like a dopamine hit, isn’t it Every time you get a like? Well, that’s why it becomes addictive. So every time you get a like or a comment, you’re like, yeah, that kind of dopamine hit. But you should know, and you want to keep going back and you want to keep getting more and more, and that is why it is so addictive. But I think one piece of advice I would say to people is, if you’re posting and you’re not getting that reaction back, is to not to be disheartened, because there’s so much noise on social media and it’s so much harder these days to get people to hit that like button or to leave that comment. People just don’t do it. So when you do get it, it’s like you should be like, yes, I’ve got it, but if you don’t get it, people will still see your content and people are still watching. So don’t get disheartened if you’re not getting that kind of love back.
Dr James:
Gotcha, try not to place so much of your self-worth on the response that you get from post, particularly at the start, because chances are we’re still learning how to do this stuff. It won’t be as engaging as it will be a little further down the lines part of the process.
Hazel:
Yeah, of course, and you’ll find your flow and you’ll find your style and then, like you say, you’ll refine it and you’ll refine it and you’ll get better and you’ll get better, and then you’ll invest in a ring light, and then you’ll invest in a better ring light, and then you’ll get some filters, and then you’ll play around with it and you might switch over to an editing app and try different things. So, yeah, it’s definitely a process.
Dr James:
Love it, hazel. Thanks so much for your time this Tuesday evening. We love to keep these webinars to about the 20 minute mark. You talked about this a little bit at the start and I know that you help dental practice whenever it comes to their social media. How are people best off finding you, should they want some help whenever it comes to their social media, as either an associate or a principal?
Hazel:
So they can either send me a DM on Facebook or send me a DM on Instagram. We are at liftdental on Instagram or you can visit my website, liftsocialcouk, and I will send you the link for my download and people can download it as well.
Dr James:
The cat can come out of the bag now.
Hazel:
What is?
Dr James:
the download. Is it an ebook or is it a webinar?
Hazel:
It started off. So we always get asked questions from our clients like I don’t know what to make on reels. Can you give me some help? So we started off with 10 reels prompts or videos that people could record just to kind of give them a flavor and get them started, and then, as you know me, as with anything, I’m a bit of an over deliverer, so it started off in 10 and it ended up to 370 reels prompts for dentists.
Dr James:
Oh, my God.
Hazel:
Broken down into treatments. So you’ve got like cosmetic dentistry implants, pediatric dentistry, general dentistry, nervous patients. So they’re like just a little quick sentence starter to say like we’ve got a video on what are the benefits of a dental implant, super quick, just there, and you can just tick them off. So there’s supposed to be 365, but I actually think there’s about 380 because I’ve got started. I just couldn’t stop.
Dr James:
Holy moly, holy moly, wow, okay, cool. Well, listen, if anybody listening wants hisles prompt stack, I guess, is what we call it. But it’s not quite that, because it’s not an AI thing. It’s more for reels and little ways to start your reels and what have you? If anybody wants hisles, download, go ahead and put prompts in the comment section and we can go ahead and reach out to you in due course and send that. You’re away, guys, it’s been really fun to present this webinar, as it always is, this Tuesday evening. I’m looking forward to hearing everybody’s feedback in the comments section. Feel free to reach out to Hazel Should anything that we talked about be of interest and be of value to yourself. Hazel is a go-to lady whenever it comes to social media in 2024, so to speak, just like the title of this webinar. Hazel has been wonderful. We’ll have you this evening. I’m looking forward to catching up again very soon.
Hazel:
Thank you, James.