Following on from information picked up in Shaz Memon’s webinar titled “Building Influence with Instagram”, I thought I would highlight the 7 tips he shared on making Instagram work for you.
Shaz Memon is founder of Digimax Dental, a dental marketing agency in London. He has recently published a book called “Instagram for Dentists”, which has had some great reviews. If you get a chance do look into this.
Shaz stated that he felt that Instagram is different to other social networks – mostly because of its simplicity and ease of use. He goes on to mention how 500 million Instagram accounts are active every day. This is an incredible statistic!
Many people perceive Instagram as “broadcast” media as opposed to “Social” media. As a result, they tend to elect to outsource putting content onto this platform. However, this only results in generic marketing. It won’t have any of the personality or feel of posts that are made from real live people that are intimately associated with the business.
Building your Instagram profile using generic content as opposed to giving it a personality can reduce engagement with your target market. Dry content may not necessarily reflect the type of practice that you are.
In the long run, this can do more harm than good (not to mention the increase in overhead incurred by outsourcing to a third party). This is not cost-effective marketing.
One idea I would suggest making it easier for practices to personalise their content would be to establish a Social Media Coordinator who is responsible for collating possible posts to upload for social media. Then the entire team can be responsible together for collecting content which they pass onto the Social Media Coordinator. It is far easier to take a picture in the moment but then not worry about when you will be uploading it. It also makes it easier for the coordinator to focus on making the Instagram account more engaging.
Shaz’s 9 Ways to Make Instagram Work for You:
- Power of 9
The first 9 squares should represent 70% of your story
Review these continuously to make sure the content is varied.
- Brand Perception
Who are you? Why do you exist?
You need to first define this beforehand so that you can understand what your marketing messages should consist of.
Think about how you are being perceived.
- Tell people what they don’t know?
What makes you so special?
E.g. Charity work, or diversity of team with a multi-lingual team or that you train other dentists.
What do you have that other practices don’t have?
- Balance
Make sure you have a nice spectrum of different content. Don’t overload with for example too many clinical pictures. Create a variety and balance of content that can appeal to people in different ways. Don’t make it too boring and single faceted.
- Be Genuine
Humanise your content. For example, use topics like how you mentor your team or things you do outside of dentistry or any Charity activities you are involved in. Or it could simply be how you and your team have fun!
- What to post?
Patients do not understand dentistry.
These posts allow you to connect with your patients in aspects they are able to understand:
- Team
- Birthdays
- Training days
- Days out
- Patients
- Gifts
- Practice
- Check out our new
- Transformations
- Laughs and smiles
- Saying Thank You
- Wins
- Calendar events
- Family
- Get Real Followers
Get real followers that are interested in you.
Engage with your patients in a way that increases the number of real followers you get. Don’t use artificial ineffective strategies by just following any non-strategically selected followers. More than likely than not they are not going to be interested in what you have to offer.
- Tagging
Make it easy for your patients to spread the word about you. For example, you can take several pictures with your patient and then get them involved by asking them which picture they like best. Explain that you will be tagging them in it and encourage your patient to re-post it. If your patient is involved in the process you are more likely to get them to re-post.
This uses the power of word of mouth marketing in a digital organised manner.
- Stories
This is another aspect of Instagram/Facebook that allows you to engage with your followers in a slightly different way. Stories provide real-time engagement. The types of topics may be anything you feel your patients could benefit from or enjoy watching. It is great at humanising your business and making it very relatable.
I wanted to personally thank Shaz for the great content he shared in his webinar which I know will be very useful to many dentists in such difficult times. I would highly recommend getting his book to more comprehensively understand how to make the most of Instagram.
Meanwhile, stay safe, Bhavna
PART 1: SOCIAL MEDIA IN LOCKDOWN
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