Having sung the praises of Facebook as your primary social platform, I want to make mention of the term “re-purposing”, which simply means making sure that those valuable human interest posts appear across other relevant social media platforms.

There’s no account for taste in this matter and I’ve found that even though the overwhelming majority connect through Facebook, there are dentists who engage with me on Twitter and Linkedin, reflecting their white collar status and social media preferences.

Your patients are much more eclectic group and may inhabit a variety of other platforms.

In the main, I’m finding that the following tips will suffice:

• If you are going to post photos and videos, make sure that you use an Instagram account and then re-post on to Facebook. The latter owns the former and so the integration is seamless. I started using Instagram about 4 months ago and have attracted over 1,000 followers without any effort;
• Every blog post I create is re-posted on to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and also shared with two private dental Facebook groups;
• Google+ seems to have died a death;
• We mentioned last time that Twitter is experiencing zero membership growth but my own Twitter feed is crammed with B2B tweets, incorporating links to more extensive articles – it may be that the general public have left Twitter behind and that it has become a mini-Linkedin;
• Linkedin seems to be very busy and the premier B2B platform which is important if any of your patients are white collar workers – it is also important for the Principal, other clinicians and the management team to keep their own Linkedin profiles as up to date as possible – white collar patients will look at you there;
• The other social platforms like WhatsApp, Snapchat et al don’t really concern me;
• Create a You Tube channel for your practice and make sure that your patient testimonial videos and practice tours are up there, all in one place and accessed via your web site;
• Allow visitors to subscribe to both your weekly blog and your monthly newsletter so that they can receive both in their email inbox – this avoids the necessity for them to remember and visit (which they won’t).

There are some very clever applications out there that will automate the process of re-purposing, perhaps the most notable of which are HootSuite and Zoho.

If you are going to take this seriously and have appointed a marketing champion in your team, then the investment of time in getting a HootSuite or Zoho pilot’s licence will be very worthwhile – there are plenty of tutorials on their web sites and on the web.

Let’s remind ourselves that 45-65% of your online traffic is now going to be incoming from a smartphone – and so your web site and the engagement that you create via social media should be designed to appeal to viewers in that format.