You finally took the time to set up a Facebook page for your dental practice and you’re probably wondering how this is going to drive more patients for treatments for dental implants, veneers or general cosmetic dentistry? The truth is that when done incorrectly, social media can be a great time waster. That’s because a lot of dentists think that social media is just something you set and forget.

Unfortunately, social media is exactly the opposite: you really need to be social, yet you should also not forget about how social media marketing for dentists influences new patients to your dental practice.

At the end of the day, you don’t just need to publish shareable and fluffy content just so you get noticed. You need to build a brand and come up with a profitable social media marketing strategy that generates a high ROI. While it’s true that the average brand post only reaches about sixteen percent of fans, there are quite a few tricks you can consider to cheat the system.

Using EdgeRank To Improve Your Online Reach

If you’re not familiar with it yet, EdgeRank is a special algorithm used by Facebook in order to determine where your posts show up in the newsfeed and how long they stay there. EdgeRank incorporates three components, including:

Decay: Finding the most relevant info as it happens is what social media is all about, including Facebook. This means that as soon as you post something, it’s going to receive comments, likes and shares in just a few minutes. However, as time passes, the post becomes less relevant thanks to Facebook’s algorithm that helps avoid irrelevant posts showing up on your wall.

Weight: Posts with videos or photos are always more valuable to Facebook than links or simple text. Because of that, this type of content is certainly going to rank better in the news feed. The more people interact with your post, the easier it is for you to increase your overall reach.

Affinity: By calculating your degree of connectivity with the brand or user, Facebook will deliver appropriate content based on your relationship with a certain page, including the relationships your friends have with it.

Now that you understand what EdgeRank is, you’ll be able to easily spark a lot of interest on your Facebook business page. So for example, if you want to post an article, don’t just post the link. Post an image along with it as well, since it’s going to garner more attention.

Custom Facebook Tabs

Did you know you can get more exposure for your brand pages if you use tools such as North Social and Shortstack for creating custom Facebook tabs? This is a vital step you should take when promoting yourself as a dentist online, so why not let Facebook help you out? All you have to do is create an E-mail opt-in tab which allows your fans to easily subscribe without having to leave Facebook. To generate even more traffic, you can also run a Facebook contest and reward your fans with free content or maybe give away various prizes.

The Rule of Thirds Is Your Friend

Probably one of the best ways of greatly increasing traffic to your Facebook page is to work hard on building a loyal community that always expects amazing things from you. Of course, you can’t do that by just promoting all the time. By following the Rule of Thirds, one third of your content will be promotional content, one third will be focused on engaging your audience and building relationships with it and the final third will be amplification of external info and resources.

You Mustn’t Forget About Your CTA

It’s true that EdgeRank is very helpful at telling you how and what to post, but you shouldn’t assume that each post you publish is going to get lots of clicks just because it’s there. To get as many clicks as possible, it’s recommended that you always add a call to action. Quality posts are indeed important and you should always come up with excellent content, but never forget that to effectively promote your content you should always try and improve your marketing skills. And if you think about it, it doesn’t take much to be convincing.

For instance, don’t just paste the title of your recently published article on Facebook, but instead add a message that tells your readers about the value it offers and why they should read it right away.

Only Promote Content That Matters

For a lot of dentists, Facebook ads are like shooting in the dark, so you shouldn’t get too much value out of them. So if you want to generate a bit more traffic, a much better idea would be to use Facebook’s promoted posts feature.

With them, you can spend just five dollars in order to make sure your posts reach to a much wider audience. This is a very simple and definitely well worth investment that can get you a lot of visibility, especially when you want to promote certain posts on your page

It’s Your Turn To Promote Your Dental Practice

Facebook is one of the best traffic drivers you should consider if you want to increase brand awareness and drive more visitors to your dental practice website. By using these tips, you’ll easily be able to promote yourself and your business and experience a massive increase in ROI in as little as a few weeks!