The Ultimate Social Media Content Calendar for Dentists

Date: March 10, 2016
Category:

• Marketing
• Social Media for Dentists

Author: Heather

It’s morning. You breeze into the office, tea in hand, ready to take on the day.

Your intentions are noble. Today’s the day you’re going to hammer out that tooth fairy blog post, record a video of your hygienist teaching patients proper flossing techniques, and create an infographic about dental emergencies. And then…life happens.

If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you feel your social media marketing efforts have gone askew.

Or. You’re my mom.

Hi Mom!

Social media content comes in a variety of forms—e.g., status updates, live and recorded video, infographics, Pins, Tweets, blog posts, etc. We use this content to establish and cultivate relationships with your target audience. It must be engaging, conversational, and easily digestible.

So how do I keep track of my social media?

Yes, you’re publishing, but without strategy or consistency, are you really meeting your goals? Do you even know what those goals are?

If you’re not using a social media content calendar already, then your efforts probably aren’t working as well as you’d like. Using a social media content calendar allows you to:

1. Never again miss a post or a social media trend

To be effective, your social media marketing efforts require ongoing management and consistent, fresh activity. An editorial calendar is a planning document that gives you and your team a plan of attack.

National waffle day anyone? ALS ice bucket challenge? Power outage at the Super Bowl?

When your content is planned in advance, you can easily pivot when trends arise. Your brain—and your team—are free to be creative.

2. Meet your goals—or, in some cases, define your goals.

Do your fans tend to be online late at night or early morning? Are your followers predominantly over 45? Are they married? Do they like hiking, or running, or watching a lot of Law & Order SVU?

Nearly all social media platforms offer insights. Consistency in posting creates a larger sample size, thus making these analytics useful. Analytics are key to tracking your progress and making informed decisions regarding the ROI of specific ads, tactics, and content types.

Wouldn’t you feel more motivated to write a blog post, if you knew for a fact it would lead to a new patient? Of course you would.

3. Create high-quality content.

When you prioritize your efforts to match clearly defined objectives, your content quality is higher.

High quality content adds value for your patients. When you’re not adding value, there’s little chance your patients will return to your Facebook page or social blog.

4. Define your brand’s personality.

The first time I posted a social media update on behalf of a brand, I felt super uncomfortable. Was I supposed to be pithy? Witty? Sarcastic? Stoic?

Before you post one word online, it’s critical to define your brand’s voice and tone.

Wondering what the difference between voice and tone is?

You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. You use one tone when you’re out to dinner with your mother-in-law, and a different tone when you’re in a business meeting—hopefully.

With clear expectations of your brand’s voice and tone, you empower other team members to create content with consistency.

Social media gives you the opportunity to build awareness, while also highlighting the quality of your services and trustworthiness. Planning your social content allows you to optimize your social networks in order to reach more potential patients.

Trying to get started?

Download our social media content calendar template here.

Goals? Objectives? Brand guidelines? We don’t have any of those!

Dave often entertains the team with anecdotes from dental school. While highly amusing, these tidbits are also chock-full of helpful insights into the psyche of a dentist.

For example, it turns out, most dental students take a course that covers the basics of managing a dental practice—including marketing.

To compliment this extensive training (really, there still isn’t a sarcasm font?), we’ve created a sample Practice Marketing Plan that asks the important business questions—like where your team is going for lunch, or other, more strategic questions.

Your marketing plan:

• —Aligns your marketing objectives with your business goals;
• —Identifies the needs of your target audience and defines how your practice will meet these needs;
• —Defines your competition and allows you to best position your brand’s products and services in comparison;
• —Establishes a foundation for decision-making and focuses your marketing efforts;
• —Provides a clear and actionable path to position your practice for growth;
• —Ensures you’re using resources effectively; and
• —Creates appropriate metrics for tracking your progress.

Failing to plan is a plan to fail.”

When it comes to marketing this is 100 percent on point. ?

A little discipline on the front-end and you’ll see greater gains in the end.