Are you Tweeting with the Rest of the Health Care Professionals?

Twitter is not just for celebrities and teenagers wishing to tell the world of their every move. Twitter has over 500 million users, making them more than a passing trend. Twitter marketing is a tool for people and businesses to quickly communicate with a large audience. Twitter marketing is an essential part of a social media campaign and establishing your practice online.

For those looking to employ Dental Twitter Marketing here are some social media tips to help you get started:

• Create a Twitter account: You can customize the look of your Twitter profile by adding a picture, choosing the background, entering BIO and contact information.
• Follow people: Search for people to follow that are in your industry or a surrounding field. Also look for local business owners that you know.
• Connect with customers: You can follow your patients and they can follow you. This lets you both see what each other is tweeting and creates a connectivity that you normally wouldn’t have with patients.
• Stay personal: There is a temptation among professionals to be too technical. Keep your messages personal and interesting. Remember this is “social” media so act like you would if you were seeing a patient in the grocery store.
• Involve the staff: Have your receptionist and hygienist send out tweets for you. This will help your tweets stay fresh and change the “tone” of your messages as everyone adds a personal touch.
• Social signals: Have the person managing your online presence add the Twitter button to each page on your website and blog so that patients, and readers, can click the button and start following you.
• Promote specials: Drive traffic to your practice by tweeting specials like, “half off teeth whitening when you book an appointment today”. This can encourage your patients to make appointments during your slow times.

Starting a Dental Twitter Marketing campaign can help you attract more patients and grow your practice. The key with social media is consistency. Creating a Twitter account and sending out a couple tweets a month will not drive traffic. You need to regularly send tweets and engage patients.