Instagram is growing expeditiously today. There are over 800M monthly active users on Instagram. When nearly one-fourth of the world population is setting their eyes on Instagram, it gives you a great opportunity to leverage the platform to channelise your dental marketing campaign and expand your dental business.
However, increasing your followers on Instagram requires much more than simply creating a page and leaving it alone to grow. You must use the right practices and strategies advised by a dental marketing expert to catapult you to achieve the desired results. This blog will explore some of the best methods and strategies you can use to set up your Instagram business account for success. Let us begin!
Why is Instagram the Most Suitable Platform to Promote Your Dental Business?
Instagram is a platform that not only works as a chatterbox of social media but is used by thousands of businesses to promote their brand and products. Instagram users are always excited and ready to engage with brands of all shapes and sizes. Hence, the high user-brand engagement rates of Instagram makes it an ideal platform to promote your business and acquire new customers.
Instagram uses stories and in-feed posts to promote the content of different users. The actual visuals of products and services help users to connect more effortlessly with the offered services. Besides, it enables them to reach the brand directly through CTA (call to action) buttons.
That is why having a strong presence on Instagram is imperative to expand your brand’s market and connect with new and returning patients in meaningful ways.
Start Your Dental Journey on Instagram
The fundamental step to begin your Instagram dental marketing initiative is by first learning the basics of the platform. Understanding the platform will help you promote your services through dental advertisement and other ways effortlessly.
Instagram promotes community culture, and there is a community for almost everything on Instagram. Your job is to search for it and engage with its members by posting valuable content that resonates with them. Remember, Instagram is a fun place to connect with your patients and ease their fear of going to a dentist by revealing a more personal side of you.
To start the process:
Set Up Your Business Account for Instagram
The foremost step is to build a business account for your brand. Business accounts enable you to access essential features like paid post promotions and view analytics about the performance of your content. Besides a business account lets, you add some basic information that usually a standard account doesn’t allow, such as:
- The address of your dental clinic
- Contact information
- Business hours of the clinic
To set up the account, first, create a profile on Instagram. Then in the settings, go to the account section and select the option “Switch to Professional Account”.
Optimise Your Profile
The profile of your business account is what your audience sees. Therefore, it is essential to build a creative profile that can attract more people to follow your account. The given pointers will help you create the best dental web design for your profile:
Pick a Catchy Name: Create a niche-specific name for your practice that is short and appealing.
Choose a Real Image in HD: Make sure to add a picture to your profile representing your work or your brand’s logo.
Give a Subtle Description of Your Work: Describe the services you offer in your clinic. Add relevant keywords such as the type of dentistry you practice and your location. Also, mention what makes you stand apart from other dentists.
Provide a Link to Your Website: The number of dental websites on the internet is uncountable. Make sure to provide information about your brand’s website along with the contact links.
Add a Call to Action Button: A small addition of a CTA button in your profile can be extremely beneficial in driving more visitors to your website.
Build a Solid Feed for Your Profile
Once you have established your profile, the next step is to build your feed with relevant content for your audience. You can even follow some well-known dentistry brands that can help you stay significant to the current trends.
Apart from that, post about the latest advancements, techniques, and innovations in your field. Show results of your performed teeth surgeries. Also, whenever you post a feed, add relevant hashtags that will help find more people for interaction.
Work on Building Your Content Strategy
How you frame your content and make it reach the people is one of the key essentials of Instagram dental design marketing. A successful content strategy includes a regular flow of content on your profile.
That means you must post some information at least once or twice on your Instagram profile. Also, ensure that your content is optimised for dental SEO to generate the best results on search engines. Make sure the information is engaging, informative and is a mixture of a variety of content such as:
- Informational Posts
- Product and Service Related Posts
- Case Studies of your Patients
- Personal Posts
Improve Your Instagram Engagement Skills
You will only witness impactful results for your business when you regularly engage in conversations with your prospective patients. Fortunately, building user engagement with your Instagram audience is quite simple. Use the following ways:
- Give quick responses to direct messages, especially if they are questions.
- Revert to all the comments on your Instagram feed. Also, make a practice of commenting on other people’s posts which encourages better user engagement.
- Ask about the dental experiences of your followers.
- Become a part of the interaction whenever you can.
Evaluate and Readjust Your Dental Marketing Strategy
The best part about the Instagram business account is that it allows you to check valuable insights from your posts. Instagram offer the following three parameters to analyse the performance of your posts:
- Activity: This option lets you track your interactions and the total number of impressions every week
- Content: This tab lets you analyse the performance of your posts and stories.
- Audience: This section will help you learn more about your brand’s followers and their growth with time.
The insights derived from these parameters are highly informative. They can help you tremendously in readjusting your content strategy to create actionable results and improve your Instagram dental marketing.
Dental Posts to Drive Gainable Results on Instagram
Your Instagram profile should aim to make your dental website amongst the list of best dental websites available online. To do so, leverage dental posts that can motivate patients to come and experience your services when required. Dental posts you should consider are:
User-Generated Content Posts
UGC is an excellent way of filling your social media profile without you posting the content. The credibility of your work doubles when a patient posts on their Instagram page about your work. You can use polls and quizzes in your stories to generate UGC for your profile.
Before & After Pictures of Your Work
Before and after shots of the operations performed by you shows the quality of your work. The images demonstrate what your services can do. Such types of posts will encourage them to make an appointment for themselves.
Educational Posts
You as a dentist are one of the most reliable sources of information for patients and your followers. So do not just keep your knowledge to yourself and share it with the world through Instagram. It will undoubtedly help your profile drive more attention.
Patient Feedback Posts
The feedback of the patient, especially for a dentist, carries enormous value. So ask your patients to provide feedback on your work on your Instagram page. You can also collect the offline patient feedback and post it on your account with patient authorisation.
How to Create Captivating Instagram Stories and Leverage Best Hashtag Practices?
Instagram stories are the best way to spread awareness about your brand and interact with your audience. Stories on Instagram have a timeline of 24 hours that makes it suitable to run your dentist advert and make people informed about your products and services. Use the given tips to post stories and gather more followers:
Define your Visual Style
Visuals typically have a more substantial impact than words. Strong and appealing visuals have the power to invoke people to take action. When it comes to dentistry, there is no shortage of content. You can capture the various moments of your practice and keep posting content on your profile to make people aware of different dental procedures.
Create a Consistent Posting Schedule
A consistent posting schedule is one of the key parameters to enhance your following on Instagram. No matter if one likes or dislikes your content, when you post regularly, the audience always waits for your posts which invariably promotes your brand.
Use Hashtags Strategically
To your surprise, using numerous relevant hashtags can land you bucket full of followers. The best results are achieved when you intermix distinct hashtags. And as they are free to use, be liberal with their usage. Hashtags can be categorised based on:
1. Location
Make sure to add hashtags for things and people who fall in your geographical area. They will help you engage with locals that can further become your patients.
2. Niche
Industry based hashtags lets you become visible with relevant feeds of users that might be interested in watching your content.
3. Fun and Trending
Your Instagram profile should never look like a plain brochure to your services. Being on Instagram means you must have a profile that is fun to watch and informative at the same time. Make use of fun and trending items on the internet to promote your services through them.
Paid Campaigns to Increase Followers
Another result-oriented way that can level up your Instagram followers is opting for paid dental marketing campaigns. You can pay to show your dental advertisement on sponsored posts of famous brands, people, and influencers. It is a quick way of targeting and reaching a larger audience base and derives magnificent results.
Wrapping Up
Having a powerful Instagram presence can be immensely rewarding for your dental clinic. However, it may take some time for you to get those extraordinary results. The key takeaway is to build a long-term content strategy once you are done setting up your account. More energy you invest in your dental design marketing campaign, the better it will pay-off for you.