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Social media is all about promoting your practice, telling stories, engaging with your audience and being available when patients want to talk. The main thing we I like to remind dental professionals is that social media is not there to sell 24/7 and if that's all you want from social media you probably won't be as successful as your competitors. Yes, ultimately the goal will be to grow your practice and patient base but your approach and strategy on social media will determine that success.

Social networks offer a number of benefits that can have a huge impact on your practice. It is a place that people go to for information, pictures, videos and conversations. Managing patient relationships should involve more than a chat when your patients come in for a check-up, it should be ongoing to maximise retention and referrals. Social media is definitely a game changer for dental practices and offers you the chance to make a real difference; it is evident to us that practices that maintain an active social media presence experience a higher level of patient loyalty, repeat business and public perception.

• Create and develop relationships - Developing a content strategy for social media opens the door to many opportunities. The main advantage of social media is that you can build strong, lasting relationships with existing patients and engage with potentially profitable patients.
• Attract new patients - Use Facebook advertising and develop a content strategy that attracts new people to your page and ultimately your practice.
• Gain awareness - Get noticed in your local area, ensure that your social media pages provide local information that people want to know - join primary schools or nursery's in their quest for children's oral health or take part in fun runs with other local businesses - it's all about getting your name 'out there' for the right reasons.  
• Boost SEO - Developing a social media content strategy helps build credibility on Google.
• Use it to your advantage - like other pages, promote each other, work together, share content and keep up to date with industry news and events.

A healthy balance between content that sells, engages, promotes and educates. It's all about developing good content that works for your target market. Answer the following questions:
- What do your patients want to read?
- Why would they join you on social media?
- What might make them 'unlike' or 'unfollow' you?
- What questions do people ask in your practice and are you applying the answers in your social media content?

Why not give every team member a chance to come up with a post idea to help start your social media content plan, grow your practice online and start increasing patient acquisition.