Social Media the Marketing Frontier for Dental Practice Management
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Posted On :
Jul-02-2010
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Article Word Count :
1110
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Do you know who Susan Boyle is? Even if you don’t recognize the name you probably know her story. You know of her because of the incredible power of social media.
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Do you know who Susan Boyle is? Even if you don’t recognize the name you probably know her story. You know of her because of the incredible power of social media.
Viral fame
Susan Boyle is the not very glamorous, even dumpy, Scottish housewife whose appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” swept the Internet. Her plain appearance and awkward nervousness at first put off the judges and the audience. However, once she started singing, her remarkable performance was transcendent. It is a compelling, remarkable video for many reasons.
What is even more remarkable is how her video spread, literally like a virus, from YouTube, to blogs to Facebook. Within weeks of appearing on the show her videos had been viewed close to 200 million times. What a few years ago would have been a mild curiosity to a limited number of television viewers in Britain was now an international phenomenon seemingly overnight. Social media made this possible.
Old and new media
A useful way to understand social media is to compare it to traditional or industrial media such as newspapers, magazines, television and film.
Industrial media is expensive to produce and it takes skilled people to create it. For this reason, most traditional media is owned by a business or the government. With industrial media, there is a lag from creation to publication or broadcast, and once it is produced it cannot be altered.
The tools of social media can be used by anyone and are available at little or no cost. For this reason, content does not come from an owner; social media content is produced by users who connect to each other through social media Web sites.
There is zero lag from creation to publication, and social media content often can be altered instantly either with comments from its audience or editing by its creators.
A final distinction, which has already impacted the dental industry and dental marketing, is accountability. While slander and libel laws apply to information published on the Internet, the sites hosting this information often remain immune from liability. So if someone publishes negative comments about you on a user review site like Yelp, the Web site is rarely held liable for any negative impact caused by the publication of that review.
What makes them social
Social networking Web sites use a variety of tools, including blogs and user-produced video, to connect a network of people, often around a specific topic or a common interest. There are hundreds of social networking sites with topics as broad as dating, photo sharing or genealogy, to specific sites like one about knitting for Norwegians.
Why dentists should care
To appreciate what this has to do with dentistry and dental practice management, think water cooler and back fence. The traditional approach to building a strong dental practice has been word of mouth and personal referrals. When someone refers a friend, relative or co-worker with a heartfelt personal recommendation, that person comes to the office highly motivated to join the practice and accept the new dentist’s advice.
In the past, these strong personal recommendations took place in limited face-to-face meetings. Social networks and social media allow people to connect much faster and to a much larger group of people.
Now back to Susan Boyle. Ten years ago a few people would have seen her on TV. The next day at the water cooler, the conversation would have been something like this: “Did you see that Scottish gal on TV? Not much to look at, but what a voice.” “Nah, I was watching the game.” End of conversation.
Today because of social media and the Internet, anyone who hears about her performance can watch a recording from any computer and many phones. Thus, she is seen and heard 200 million times in a few weeks.
Ten years ago if you had a satisfied patient tell a friend, you had one potential new patient. Today if a patient gives you a heartfelt video testimonial, you can load it on YouTube, MySpace or Facebook and you have hundreds of potential new patients.
Staying up to date
Dr. Gilbert Snow, an orthodontist in Southern California, was a pioneer in using social media with a Facebook page, a MySpace page and a link to YouTube.
“Everything is changing rapidly, especially in the world of technology,” he said. “We are constantly evaluating how we communicate with patients; trying to ride the wave and stay ahead.”
He is also very busy with his practice, professional societies and life. “I don’t have the time to do all this myself. However, we have good people who monitor our Web presence,” he said.
Using social media and online networking is not something the dentist needs to do personally. Sesame Communications (sesamesearch.com) recently launched a program to help dentists set up social network pages, post to blogs, upload video and respond to comments.
Monitoring traffic
unfortunately social media allows for bad news to travel just as far and fast as good news. It is now common for e-commerce Web sites to include user-written reviews for everything from books on Amazon to hotels at Travelocity and power tools from Home Depot.
One of the most popular review sites is Yelp, which includes a health and medical section along with reviews of restaurants, mechanics and just about everything else. There are also review sites specific to dentistry such as Dr. Oogle.
The April 2009, ADA News featured an article on Dr. Yvonne Wong, a pediatric dentist in Foster City, Calif., who is caught in a legal battle with Yelp over what she saw as misinformation about her posted on the site.
From Dr. Wong’s case the underlying message of the ADA article is dentists and other professionals are vulnerable to negative reviews. There is no direct or effective defense against such detrimental reviews that do not rise to meet the legal definition of slander or libel. However, it is a good idea to be aware of what is being said about you on the Internet; Google yourself every now and then.
Social media and online networking are changes most people did not anticipate. Many people, especially non users, don’t understand the fuss. On the other hand when real revolutionary change comes, it often seems trivial at the time. If you choose to ignore social media, you do so at your own peril. Just ask the hundreds of millions of people who have seen Susan Boyle on YouTube. The future is coming and it will be amazing!
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Social Media the Marketing Frontier for Dental Practice Management_24202.aspx
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Author Resource :
Article Source: DentalProductsReport.com
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Keywords :
Dr. Oogle, dental practice management, ,
Category :
Internet Business
:
Internet Marketing
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