Is your social media working for your dental practice?

Knowing how well your dental social media marketing efforts are performing is important. Even though the platforms you use are free, social media marketing for your dental practice can drain both time and money if it is not being done effectively.

There are dozens (and dozens) of measurable metrics available through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other channels. Tracking all of them can be overkill, but at the most basic level, you should at least be tracking two inter-related factors — reach and engagement.

Social media reach

Your dental social media reach is simply how many people your content is being seen by. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are paying attention to it, but at least you know it is available to them.

Your reach can be broken down into three important types.

Organic reach is the number of people who saw your post in their feed as a result of following or liking your social account. This is your most connected audience segment since they have indicated that they are interested in your content.

Building your organic following is important since they are the people most likely to become your patients and/or recommend your office to someone they know.

Viral reach tracks how many people have seen your content indirectly as a result of social sharing. They may not be following you, but their friends and/or families are. That means they may just one step away from becoming followers if they like what they see.

Your viral reach is significant because it lets you know that the content you are sharing is good enough for your primary audience to pass it along to others.

Paid reach, the number of people who saw your content through promoted dental social media posts or ads, is the most expensive, and least engaged, segment of your overall audience. Most of these people are strangers to your dental practice, but the more of them you can convert to followers, the more you knock down your social media marketing costs. You want to keep an eye on your paid reach so you can evaluate how cost-effective your paid social ads are and whether or not you need to make adjustments to your targeting or strategy.

Social media engagement

Your engagement statistics let you know if the content you are creating is hitting the mark. Low levels of engagement will mean you will begin to lose your audience, if you haven’t done so already. Keep a close watch on the amount of likes and shares you have for various types of posts. Use that information to help you decide what content to create more of, and what can be trimmed from your social media calendar.

If your engagement is low for paid content distribution, that’s a clear signal that you need to re-evaluate your content to get more value for your dental marketing strategies budget.

Want to learn more about social media marketing for your dental practice?

Social media marketing for dentists can be, and most often is, managed in-house by dental teams. It just takes efficient planning and an organized process to be successful.

If you want to learn what it takes to launch a successful social media marketing strategy for your dental practice, check out The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing for Dental Practices. You’ll be glad you did!