Topic: The best content to build a trustworthy and engaging Facebook Page for your dental office

Four years after Facebook debuted in 2004, Business Pages were rolled out in addition to existing personal profiles. In 2010, when I first started writing and speaking on the topic, the big question was whether or not a dental office needed a Facebook Page. Currently, virtually every dental practice has a Facebook Page, and many have pages on other social networks as well. The questions now are how to best encourage engagement and grow the number of users, with the ultimate goals of attracting new patients, getting existing patients to use basic dental services more frequently, and obtaining more comprehensive treatments.

To reach these goals, it is paramount that the content on social media paints the image of the dental office as trustworthy, valuable, and believable. Many dentists don’t see the value of having an in-house, dedicated marketing professional for their practice. They either delegate the task of content creation to a third-party agency or to one or more staff members who often don’t follow through with regularity or post content that meets the goals mentioned above.

Third-party agency content is typically canned and might appear simultaneously in other dental offices’ promotions throughout the country, without creating a connection to your own office among your fans. This type of content is rarely personalized and does little more than get some News Feed penetration to your fans, keeping your name in front of them periodically.

For the purpose of this article, I will refer to two main types of content: brand-generated content (BGC) and user-generated content (UGC). A third type, which is a hybrid of the two, will also be discussed.

BGC refers to just about any content posted by the dental office on its office page. It can be an image, video, link to an article, link to the office’s website, or text produced by a staff member. BGC can also be created by a third-party agency and posted in the name of the practice to appear that it was created in-house.

UGC refers to content typically created by an existing patient of the practice and can be shared either to the practice’s page or on the user’s personal profile. These will usually be in the form of a check-in, a review, or a recommendation of the practice.

Topic Discussed: The best content to build a trustworthy and engaging Facebook Page for your dental office

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