Friday Five Roundup: From Dental Advocates and Anxiety, to Video Marketing

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DentistryIQ

What Are Dental Practice Advocates, and Why Do You Need Them?

Providing good customer service at your practice leads to satisfied patients – but if you go the extra mile, satisfied patients become practice advocates: loyal patients who are likely to refer your practice to others and leave positive reviews. Sandy Baird walks through the steps necessary to create practice advocates who will vouch for your clinic.

Read the article on dentistryiq.com>

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MarketingProfs

Five Ways to Make The Most of Video For Marketing

With today's climate of social media-driven sharing, any video has potential to reach millions of eyes overnight. Viral videos are tantalizing for marketers: what if you could attach your brand to a viral success, achieving mass exposure thanks to retweets, shares, and likes? Jim Rudden breaks down five techniques that could help make your viral brand video a reality.

Read the article on marketingprofs.com>

Online Reputation Management for Practices

By: Mahnoor Awan

 

Reputation management helps shape the perception of your practice online, by helping curate the information you put out about the practice and the industry. Managing online reviews and how you respond to them is core to reputation management, but everything from social media management to SEO links back to the process of managing your reputation online.

It's often said that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. Because of the Internet, 'word of mouth' has another platform - review modules on social media and other platforms. As people have both the opportunity and often incentive to relate their personal experiences, whether negative or positive, businesses need to take some time to curate or help respond to some of the information posted on the Internet.

When it comes to dental and health care practices, patients may have specific expectations, anxieties, and conceptions about staff, procedures, and other services. Many potential patients read reviews before selecting the practice to use for themselves and their families. They see reviews as a potential source of information in making that determination. If patients are fair and comprehensive while leaving reviews, that should come across. Unfortunately that may usually not be the case, and as a result, many practitioners are compelled to monitor their reputations.

Quite often, practices choose not to build an online presence because of the hassle of not only managing it inconsistently, but also the fear of getting a bad review or interaction that may be difficult to tackle. Keep in mind though, whether your practice chooses to build an online presence or not, customers have access to third party platforms like Yelp and Google reviews to leave reviews however they like it. Wouldn't it be better to build and manage an online presence to help tackle all reviews and not let them negatively impact your practice? Additionally, not having online reviews mean you could be missing out on potential new patients, or losing potentials to another practice with well curated reviews.

If you do have an online presence, or plan to build one, here are a few tips to manage your reputation online.

Monitor the Review Sites

Sometimes, when a patient has an amazing or a dreadful experience, they are inclined to leave an online review. Today, there are multiple online review sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, RateMDs, Vitals, and HealthGrades. Make sure you monitor these sites to ensure that customers are not falsely accusing your practice or leaving ingenuine reviews. It also allows you to see what your customers are appreciating about your practice and what is lacking, so you can improve upon it. UpOnline offers reputation management tools that help you track reviews from multiple review sites. Contact us for more details on how we can help you monitor these sites.

Friday Five Roundup: From Social Media Influencers for Medicine to Clear Coffee and Coloured Floss

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WIRED

Social Media Influencers Finally Come to … Medicine

Just as Snapchat and Instagram and YouTube have influencers, so too does medicine. Chronic diseases occupy an online world of memes, hashtags (#hospitalglam), and people who provide information and insights to communities that too often feel they have no voice. A growing number of companies are hiring these patient influencers to reach, and understand, these folks. And, of course, sell them stuff.
Read the article on wired.com

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CBC

If you're paid to post an ad, make it clear!

FTC remind influencers and brands about guidelines on making advertising endorsements via social media
Read the article on cbc.ca

How To Build A Brand Narrative For Your Practice

By: Ayesha Tak

The most powerful way to gain interest and attention is through storytelling. A brand narrative is a story about your business and what you do. People can't identify with a logo, but they can identify with the story behind your business name, or the meaning behind your logo. A brand by itself is a symbol, but a brand narrative creates a community.

Here are 5 steps you can take to build your brand narrative:

Consider the Bigger Picture

A brand narrative paints the bigger picture. Instead of outlining your purpose, goals, and other biographical details outright, a brand narrative presents these details in a story worth remembering. To begin your story, consider talking about where your passion for dentistry begun and what you did to materialize that passion. When you have a story with a beginning, middle, and end, weave your purpose and goals into the story.



Connect With Your Patients

Write a story with an emotional cause or message at its core. It is important to empathize with your patient, and using emotional storytelling in your brand can help you achieve that. In addition, when patients identify with your brand and its message, they are more likely to share it with their peers.

Good brand narratives not only raise awareness of the brand, but also create human connection. Make sure to bring out the human element in your story and make it about the people involved. This could be the dentist, the dental team, and even other organizations.Your patients want to matter - they want to see themselves in the story. Ask yourself: What story would my patients like to hear? What details would be relevant to engage their emotions?

Friday Five Roundup: From the Controversial Pepsi Commercial to Digital Dentistry

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Forbes

Pepsi Just Showed Us Why Authenticity Isn't Just A Buzzword

The Pepsi ad, starring Kendall Jenner as a model/protestor, showed that there's a difference between brand positioning and brands taking an authentic position. These days, brands cannot slip using generic marketing buzzwords, they need to mean what they say and know the diversity in their audience.
Read the article on forbes.com

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Content Marketing Institute

Why Your Practice Should Send Out Newsletters

Newsletters are one way to increase loyalty and strengthen relationships with your patients. In his article, Mark Walker highlights some tips for producing newsletters with valuable content. UpOnline can help your practice distribute newsletters to your patients, just ask us how!

Read the article on contentmarketinginstitute.com >

What Makes a Good Dental Website?

By: Mahnoor Awan

Today, a dental practice needs more than just a basic website. At a bare minimum, you need to make sure that the website is user friendly, mobile compatible, SEO optimized, and has a has basic functionality to help interact with potential and existing clients. Here at UpOnline, we make it a priority to keep our clients' websites fresh, modern, and up to date with current website best practices.

Related: Click here to read the case study about one of our favorite website revamps. 
 
Based on our experience, we have rounded up a few things your dental practice's website should have, which would make it a good experience for users.

Relatable Homepage Content

To start with, the most important piece of information - which, for a dental practice is the location address and contact information, should be in the top fold of the homepage (taken from newspaper parlance, Top-of-the-fold, means the top portion of the website first shown to most users when they visit). It is recommended for this information to be at the top right corner because visitors usually view the website in a reversed F shape, so contact information will be one of the first things their eyes will look at.
Contact and location information are considered some of the most important pieces of information for a practice website because patients often check the website solely to make an appointment or find the address for a visit.

Your most important piece of information - which, for a dental practice is their location address and contact information, should be in the top fold of your website.
The content on your homepage should be a good balance of information for your visitors to read and also be good for SEO. You should have a strong introductory paragraph that is easy to read but also has relevant keywords like location served and key services.
It's also a good idea to have a strong "hero image" (taken from marketing jargon, meaning large banner image, prominently placed on a web page) at the top. This is often a visual representation of the office and conveys the key messaging about your brand and offerings.
(Pro tip: Make sure the pictures don't have pointy dentistry tools because that could lead to an increase in a patient's dental anxiety and send those potential patients away).
Images you could use:
• Smiling group of people
• Kids - if your practice is focused on children's dentistry
• A group picture of the team
• Location photography
Here's an example of an UpOnline client, Hillcrest Dental Centre. Their homepage has the location and contact information at the top right corner, a 'hero' image that conveys the message of a family practice, and a strong introductory paragraph that is equally inviting and SEO optimized.





Hillcrest Dental Centre - Index page




Strong CTA's

Having a strong Call to Action (CTA) is an important aspect of a good dental website. What is it that you want your web visitors to do once they are on your website? CTA's help with converting your web views into potential business - in the case of your practice, like getting new patients or requests for appointments. Strong Call To Actions could include:
• Contact Us
• Request an Appointment
• Connect with us online (link either leading to your social media pages or to subscribe to your newsletter)