Naren Arulrajah

The amount of adults on Twitter is consistently growing, making it a platform you cannot afford to miss out on. 

The share of online adults in the US using Twitter has 

 in the last few years, up from 18% in 2013 to 24% in 2018. Making it a phenomenal idea to use this medium to enhance your business exposure.

So if you intend to get maximum benefit from Twitter, but not sure how to go about it, here are some fine tips and tricks to construct a Twitter strategy that will have a lasting impact.

Launch a distinct brand voice to trademark your complete Twitter strategy. One of the priceless assets is a talented writer who aligns his or her style with your brand, especially when it means launching your voice.

Here are some of the characteristics to keep in mind when crafting your brand voice.

		It must resound with your audience with a personal touch

Do you want to have a limitless supply of content? Then, you will surely need a well-designed editorial calendar. The keys to a great advertising strategy are planning and organizing, as per the marketing experts.

You need to create a shared document which is used to add, edit and adjust content constantly by anyone posting to your social media. A calendar will prepare you to keep track of upcoming events, what worked well and also ensures that you have enough planned content for the future.

Your audience is online even at times when you are not. Hence scheduling tweets can be an awesome idea to make sure you reach your audience at any point in time. It is quite easy to schedule tweets from the dashboard of the ads campaign. This facility is free of charge which can be used even if you are not a marketer. 

Never miss to check back regularly on your scheduled tweets as it is a massive missed opportunity. Reach out to your audience and keep them engaged by checking and re-checking your activity on Twitter often. You should also ensure to reply to tweets, tap into conversations that are trending and retweet content that is relevant.

Increase the number and quality of your followers by being active in Twitter chats. You will find chats on any topic and you will be glad to see participants who use Twitter to make long-term connections with compatible individuals and brands. These followers will help to intensify your message and raise conversation about your brand.

Be an active participant in Twitter by also replying to tweets, maintaining relationships even after the chat and following new people. If you noticed there are no chats that are relevant to your brand, go ahead and start your own chat. You will have to make sure to promote your chat to expose it to the maximum amount of users.

The best tweets sometimes are made on the move. It may not be a part of the plan, but when you find an opportunity don’t hesitate to wander away from the calendar. It is a good idea to make the most of the trending topics, current world events or it could also be a wise mention from another person.

However, you need to be careful that you don’t use a tragedy as an opportunity for branding. Tweet with precaution when you see sensitive situations and you may also consider stopping any scheduled tweets if they only appear to detract from the situation.

One-sided marketing rarely succeeds today, and that is the same with tweets as well. You need to have a healthy mix of Twitter Ads, Organic Tweets, and above all, @replies in your Twitter marketing strategy in order to create two-way engagement.

It is a great idea to experiment with various types of content and find a balance that fits your audience well. This is key to an intelligent Twitter strategy. The focus should, however, remain on a good balance of paid and organic content. There may be an influence on the organic tweets if there are more robust paid campaigns.

It is easy to craft a Twitter strategy with the help of proper planning, constant tweaking and a gist of imagination. This kind of strategy will ensure to elevate your brand and foster your community of followers.

Top Social Media Marketing Trends For Your Marketing Strategy

What to Keep in Mind for a Successful Instagram Marketing Strategy

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of 180+ full time marketers,

helps dentists who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.

Articles

Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world and the amount of potential clients using the platform continues to grow. Thus, Twitter is now a must use for any practice, but make sure you have an effective strategy before sending off your first tweet. 

How to Build a Lasting Twitter Strategy for Your Dental Practice

Effective live streaming, videos, augmented reality, these are just some of the trends you need to stay on top of when crafting a strategy for social media marketing.

Social media plays a key factor in your digital marketing strategy for your medical practice. It helps you connect with patients, improve patient retentions, and even get better SEO results. You are making things significantly harder for your practice if you are not already on social media.

That said, it is important to understand that social media is ever-changing. It is constantly evolving and adapting to new trends which can become difficult to keep up with. These are the top social media marketing trends that are completely changing how patients perceive and interact with a medical practice.

 is known to get better responses than pre-recorded videos. These take the level of commitment and patient-dentist relationship to a completely new level.

Social media gives you the option to live stream what you are doing without having to pre-record a video, develop it, edit it, and worry that you should start over because it was not exactly what you were looking for.

You can give your patients an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how a clinic functions. This is helpful in easing a patient’s mind and getting rid of pre-appointment anxieties. Personalized patient experiences matter in today’s digital healthcare world.

You can offer your patients a natural call-to-action with this tool, as well. For instance, you can offer a promotion online for particular procedures during the holiday season while live streaming and interacting directly with patients who may have questions and comments that you can answer in real time.

One of the dominant tools of social media marketing continues to be videos. If you are not already on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube, then you are missing a huge opportunity of digital marketing. You can get in touch with numerous potential patients and referrals by being active through Instagram Stories and YouTube videos.

Your best efforts should be focused on all niche video social media platforms where you can offer personalized patient experiences, which is something patients of all generations expect from their medical professionals. Video goes beyond what regular content and text cannot do. People are visual learners 

 and are much more easily impressed by what they see, rather than what they read.

You can also connect with a far larger share of patient audience by recognizing the versatility and popularity of video channels. For instance, you can upload videos on YouTube regarding common medical questions that patients have. This will help you on two fronts — marketing, as well as, establishing you as an authority in your field.

There are already many small ways by which augmented reality and virtual reality are making themselves known. The impact is small, but significant, and demonstrates that these markets are here to last well into the future. The more obvious markets such as Snapchat’s facial filters, among others, are likely to grow rapidly in the foreseeable future.

You should take advantage of these filters to help attract more patients. Social media, like everything else on the internet, gives you a small window period to retain a patient’s attention.

Augmented reality features can be a powerful tool if used in the right manner. You can personalize interaction more effectively and better adjust your social media marketing strategies when the feature becomes more prevalent across all platforms.

Communications with Patients on Chatbots and Messenger Apps

Messenger apps are an effective tool to help patients reach out to doctors and other healthcare professionals. This can be better recognized by the ease of interaction and connection made possible by Facebook Messenger. It is important to understand that users on Facebook are not always customers looking for goods and services.

However, if a potential patient lands on your clinic or practice’s page and finds something interesting they are curious about, then you can reach out to them via chatbots to answer their query or otherwise initiate a conversation. This could ultimately lead to a user becoming a recurring patient. Currently, WhatsApp, Messenger and Kik are some of the more popular messenger apps as well.

Generation Z is fast entering the workforce and have the maturity to make their own medical decisions. It is best to include this audience in your target patient profile. Many medical practices have already begun offering discounts and ready information on social media websites, which are more frequented by this age group.

You should create videos and develop social media content targeted especially at this age group. This is more important if your practice is in the area of preventative healthcare and cosmetic enhancements.

Social media is all about connections and networking. This does not just refer to your patients, but, also peers and other influencers in the medical industry.

YouTube is one of the major areas where you connect with influencers. You can identify an influencer if the video is a sponsored video with thousands of subscribers. You can promote your medical services by reaching out to these influencers because they have huge fan followings.

However, this boils down to offering personalized patient experience. YouTubers become popular by developing content that relates to tons of people. These people are hesitant to trust medical care facilities which are not authentic.

Hence, you need to take advantage of social engineering and encourage an influencer to promote your medical services as honest, trustworthy and something that can relate to a patient’s experience.

As mentioned earlier, social media is about networking. It is also a two way communication street. You need to engage your patients and involve them any way you can to become more active on your account. This will increase your user-generated content by way of photos, videos and reviews. This is an excellent way of improving the overall patient experience.

User-generated content can give a big boost to your SEO strategy as well because search engines 

 content created by unpaid followers of a healthcare business. In this technology driven market, word of mouth referrals are still considered significant. Patients do not fall for marketing tactics by sub-standard healthcare professionals anymore.

This kind of content humanizes your practice and you. People do not just see your side of the story, but, recognize that what you are saying is actually true when they read other people’s review. This could be anything from your commitment to patient care, empathy or a great patient experience.

Social media marketing for doctors is about improving engagement with patients, navigating them towards your medical practice, and then leaving them with the freedom to choose. You can use social media to promote your online reputation and win new patients without directly or aggressively marketing your medical services or products.

Managing Your Practice’s Online Reputation

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists.  With a team of 180+ full time marketers,

 helps dentists who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year.  If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.

Social Media is a dynamic ever changing platform that you must utilize to bolster your marketing efforts. Here are some of the top trends to keep your eye on as you craft your strategy. 

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms out there, but it takes more than having an account to be succesful.

Okay, you know you need to be on Instagram, and you want to use it successfully for your dental practice. But how should you do it? If this is your dilemma at present, you’re not alone. Many businesses are present on social media simply because they feel pressured to be present on every social platform. They create a profile without thinking through their marketing strategy.

Instagram is a powerful visual social platform and with a well thought-out strategy, it can help you grow your online presence. Here are some of the marketing touch points that you need to keep in mind while creating your brand’s Instagram promotion strategy:

This is the most crucial aspect of any marketing strategy. Who do you want to showcase your dental services and products to? Determine who your audience could be, their age, gender, location, profession, etc. This research will form the backbone of your Instagram marketing efforts.

Try to assess the demographic profile of the people at your practice or your competitor’s. What are the kinds of posts your patients like and share on Instagram? What do they comment on? You can also start by monitoring popular events and interest hashtags relevant to your dental practice. Check out people using and engaging with these hashtags. This will give you an insight into their needs, and over time you will gain deeper marketing insights towards your audience.

Now that you know who your target customers are on Instagram, next important thing you would want to consider is who your competitors are and how you can outperform them. Remember, a thorough competitor analysis is paramount if you want to dominate your local market.

If you already know your top competitors, start by searching for their Instagram profiles. Or simply, search for terms related to your business or niche to find similar accounts. Conduct a quick audit of related accounts to seek the following answers:

		What kinds of posts are getting maximum engagement?

Do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of your key competitors to identify any opportunities they might have missed, which you can then capitalize on. These insights are essential for your dental brand’s success.

Once you have determined what you want to post and how frequently you want to post on Instagram, the next thing is to plan a schedule for the content to go out. Brands on an average post 

, a schedule you should mimic then make you own. This can all end up being time consuming, and it can be difficult to keep a track of all content you want to post.

So, the best way to do this would be to create a social calendar so you know what to post and when on your Instagram account. There are a number of automated tools available which help you schedule your posts. This saves both time and effort for you to manage your presence effectively.

Lastly, you should be consistent in your postings on Instagram. Whatever you post, the broad message and vision should remain the same. Random or disjointed content will only confuse your audience and will be detrimental to your dental practice.

Introduce variety into your Instagram content, but keep it relevant to your professional practice. The idea is that the audience should be able to visualize your dental brand through your posts and feel connected with it. This will invite them to not only try out your services, but keep coming back because they feel a connection to your practice.

How to Convert Your Instagram Followers into Clients

Just like tackling any other social media platform or avenue to market, you need to have plan before signing up for instagram. Here are some steps to keep in mind. 

Marketing your content online is essential, but none of it matters if you can't reach your clients in a meaningful way. 

Advertisers and marketers face numerous challenges in an online environment, regardless of the industry they are working for. Competition is definitely shooting from different directions. This has made digital advertising a useful tool to reach out to your target audience for your medical practice. These adsmust be aimed at attracting the attention of yourpotential clients with the message they are eager to hear.

The challenge is if you are not sending a well-crafted message to a specific demographic, then it is more like trial and error. This can work only if you have a massive advertising and marketing budget. But if you are an independent medical practitioner looking to reach out to your clients in the local area, your ad message should be customized to suit the needs of your specific market. Your prospective clients need to be segregated carefully.

Here are five effective steps for successful audience targeting in your digital advertising campaign. These steps will enable you to approach your audience with the right message and converse with them in more personalized and evocative ways.

Before you target your ads, you need to place a pixel on your digital properties like website and blogs, in order to gather information regarding the audience. 

 These are small blocks of code displayed on a web page which allows websites to read and place cookies. This code passes details about the person’s online activity to you. This would also include the specific web pages they have viewed.

Digital marketers who have extensively used Google analytics will find this method quitesimple. Google analytics employs the path of pixels to target and convert the audience.

Many digital marketers use their own pixels to accumulate different types of information about site visitors. If you are working witha digital marketing professional, make sure they are utilizing pixels to get enough information about the prospective clients.

The process of pixeling will help you identify the audience of ‘clickers’ and ‘connecters’, which is the group of the audience that has shown more interest in your services online and can possibly become your clients in the future.

After a few weeks of collection of data about the target audience, try to learn more about these prospective clients by delving into the analytics or demographic profile of that audience.

Most good online marketers are knowledgeable about their target audience, but sometimes their digital profile, location, activity, and online status can tell a different story. You might have been targeting the wrong group till now, and this kind of analysis will help you course-correct and target your digital ads to the right audience for you.

Clients have unique needs and preferences. Therefore, one message may not be effective for all the clients. The expertise of a marketer lies in making the message appealing to the largest possible number of clients. The message you send should increase the sales and leads.

The feedback you get from the audience will help you refine your digital advertising campaign as you go along.

Once you have defined and targeted your potential clients through digital advertising, you can extend your effort outside your own website or blog. You can buy third party data to identify other potential clients who have a similar profile or are ‘lookalikes’, but who have not visited your site ordo not even know about your medical practice.

Lookalike audiences are the same as your target audience, but they are unaware of your site and brand. However, they should be treated as prospective clients because they couldeventually be interested in your products or services.

Lookalike models are best for marketers who are searching for a wider client base. They may use third party data to augment their market size. It is always best to invest your digital ad dollars on people who are likely to be interested in your products and services.

Retargeting the people who have already visited your medical website can be advantageous to you. Retargeting is getting back to the audience and encouraging them to visit the site once again, increasing their engagement.

Amazon is one of the best companies at retargeting. They use this technique when a customer leaves the site without ordering a product they have viewed.

The product will become visible as a reminder in the form of an advert in another website the customer visits. These retargeted digital ads can be very compelling sometimes.

Retargeting can be based on an individual’s former searches in your website or occasional online visits to your blog. Retargeting is possible through mobile and desktop when you need to send periodic, but continuous, messages to the target clients. This cross-device retargeting is effective and more advanced than the traditional retargeting.

These are five effective waysto put the online data to use for successful and result-oriented digital advertising for your medical practice. It can enhance the engagement of the audience with your products and deliver better results for your digital ad campaign.

How to Repurpose Your Dental Blogs for a More Targeted Response

How to Successfully Market Your Dental Content Online

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of d

. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, 

 who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.

You need to be on just about all platforms the internet provides in order to reach your patients. However, staying there and finding new clients is the challenge. Here are 5 key ways to improve your client reach.

How to Reach More Clients Through Digital Advertising

Your content does not need to be one and done. Here are three ways to keep your blogs consistently relevant and fresh.

For many dental practices, their blogs may receive a significant number of clicks each month. Upon deeper investigation, it may become apparent that the traffic is not translating into more business.

People may not be engaging with the Call to Action (CTA) of the dental practice or not clicking through to other links. The bounce and exit rates may be high while the conversion rate may be low.

Certain blog posts may receive high traffic but may offer low value in terms of generating business. In such cases, the blog post can be re-purposed to produce more value to your business. Here are just a few techniques to get more value from posts that receive high traffic but are wrongly targeted.

Add one or two new sections to make the topic more contemporary

Google search engine bots gravitate towards content that is 

 with fresh inputs, current data and figures, and other relevant details. With a relatively small effort, the old content can get a new look on your dental website.

For instance, dental technology and procedures continue to be updated with each passing year. If you have an old topic on your website, it can continue to become more relevant by adding one or two sections with the latest information.

The effort is particularly worthwhile on web pages that receive good traffic, but are not appealing to the visitors because of old or outdated information. The SEO value of these existing web pages can be utilized to attract more traffic and achieve better conversion rates by providing more relevant and newly added content.

Include video to improve time on page and raise brand awareness

By embedding a new video offering a broad overview of your latest dental products or services, you could promote your brand name to a larger audience while increasing the average amount of time a site visitor spends on that page.

The videos embedded in the blog post do not need to be identical to the posts themselves, but they do need to be relevant.

Many blog posts feature tutorials and provide how-to tips. This type of content is actionable offering value to users. However, at times, written text and image based tutorials are not as effective as another person literally taking users through the motions, which is possible via video content.

You can create video tutorials to be added to relevant blog posts. Embedding the videos in the blog posts offers your target audience a more comprehensive understanding of what your post is all about.

Link the post to high-authority content with parenthetical CTAs

For content marketers, parenthetical CTAs (calls-to-action) are an excellent instrument to direct readers to the content that they will likely find most relevant.

As a section ends, provide readers with a jump-off point to go to content that may be more useful to them. This new piece of content should be value-based and related to the content that they are already interested in and searched for.

Utilize parenthetical CTAs to offer guidance to readers to reach a logical extension for their current session on your practice’s website.

Using these CTAs in posts that are creating unqualified traffic may be a worthwhile experiment. However, it is vital to ensure that the value proposition is broad so that it appeals to most of your target audience.

Vlogging: An Innovative Video Promotion Strategy for Your Dental Practice

 helps dentists who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.

Even if your content creates a lot of traffic for your website, it might not be the kind of traffic that results in business for your practice. That's why repurposing your existing blogs is a step you might have to take, here's how to do it. 

Advertising online is crucial, and it doesn't have to be expensive. Push your content as far as it can go without breaking the bank.

The success of a private dental practice is largely dependent on its number of patients and the positive outcome of treatments.

Ideally, every dental practitioner wants to advertise services in the best possible way so as to reach the masses, however, many are not able to as the most common forms of marketing such as TV or print ads are not affordable for everyone. This is where online marketing comes into the picture—a way to promote your practice in a cost-effective way.

Creating a Search Engine Optimized Website

The first step is to create a website and ensure sure it reaches the targeted group of patients. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help you reach out to your target audience most effectively. In today’s fast age of internet, everybody relies on search engines like Google or Bing. If a practice does not show on the first page in search results for localized keywords, then chances of receiving patients could reduce.

To effectively market a website, it is important to ensure that your website is optimized for search engines. There are good SEO specialists who can aid in targeting a particular patient group and the location where you operate. An example would be that of a dentist wanting his website to appear on the first page of Google search for those actively looking to get a root canal treatment or implants in his location. Effective SEO can aid in ensuring that a particular group of people are targeted.

Listing the Practice on Google ‘My Business’

Google has now advanced in making its search results more personalized and searchable in real time. They have made it easy to add a service provider, location and contact details along with web page search results. It is a good idea for a dental practice to be listed on Google My Business for enhanced online visibility and improved engagement with potential patients searching on Google for a suitable dentist.

 to gain popularity and more patients. Profiles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn help in garnering more patients for a practice. By monitoring the online activities of industry influencers anyone can make their online presence substantial. However, in essence, regular postings, professional updates and other news regarding a practice can help gain more followers.

Answering Question-Answer Sessions Online

You can influence and gain popularity with many patients by answering online questions on forums such as Yahoo, Quora or LinkedIn. The goal should be not to provide answers just for the sake of gaining new patients but to actually help online readers with useful information. Many people who are posting questions online are looking for authoritative answers for dental issues and concerns. By replying to such questions dental practitioners also increase their chances of being indexed by Google. Google indexes these answers, which then show up on the search results pages.

An effective email marketing campaign will cost next to nothing. It is among the most successful return on investment pursuits for professionals and small business owners. Database of potential receivers can easily be compiled with the help of appointments made, patient register and even social media followers. A simple online newsletter can help in keeping patients abreast of the latest happenings and stay engaged with your practice and website.

A dentist’s day can be very long and tiring. Taking out time to create a blog and maintaining it can be difficult but investing time in maintaining a blog has multiple advantages. It easily allows for churning new keywords on website content and optimizing results for search engines.

It also becomes a great way to connect with patients where existing patients can trust more as per the writings and new patients can begin to place their faith. It is also excellent to gain popularity by sharing information, updates or by simply offering advice to patients who might require it.

Apart from maintaining a self-blog, a dentist should invest time in publishing content on other people’s websites. There are numerous advantages to guest posting, which include:

		It is easy to drive traffic to a website by linking a guest post to it.

		It involves building relationships with other dentists. This aids in networking and proves to be symbiotic to both dental professionals.

		It is possible to reach out to more people and potential patients by simply letting an outreach grow.

Podcasting by way of content promotion is a very effective way of reaching a large number of people at the same time. To disseminate useful information and gain trust, dentists do not essentially need to upload videos.

Podcasts can be uploaded either their own sessions or somebody else’s session, preferably from the same field. Podcasting is simple, not time-consuming and very productive in marketing a practice online or building an online reputation.

Word of mouth has been a trust influencing force for a long time. With the advent of the internet, it has become easy to reach out to several patients at the same time and build trust. Yelp is among the best review portals online with real-life episodes.

These are some of the most affordable ways dentists can ensure that their website grows in its reach and influence and leads to an increase in patients for the practice.

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, 

Your content online can only go so far, making digital advertising a crucial part of your business plan. However, you don't have to break your budget in order to effectively advertise.    

Cost-Effective Marketing Ideas for a Dental Practice

In today's world you have to have a presence on social media, but just having a presence on a platfrom isn't enough. 

Instagram has emerged as one of the most popular social media channels for individuals and businesses alike. If your dental practice has a presence on Instagram, it may be time to start converting your followers into clients. Here are some simple ways to do it:

You can drive first time sales with your Instagram audience by enticing them with promotional offerings such as discounts, freebies, deals, BOGOs (Buy One Get One), and other similar promotional offers. You can create a sense of urgency by mentioning the date or time of offer expiry. You need to make sure that in your Instagram post you explain the steps a person needs to take in order to avail the promotional offer.

A good way to turn your Instagram followers into clients is by encouraging them to try out your dental services and products. To do this, you can create online contests and ask users to participate by posting content with a specific hashtag or by following your account. You may offer a rebate or a free dental cleaning service as a prize to the winners.

You can promote your favorite charities on Instagram and encourage your followers to support them. By getting involved in charitable work you can turn your Instagram followers into clients as they build an affinity for your brand. People expect and approve of businesses that give back to the community and society.

Instagram is the perfect place to keep your audience excited by giving sneak peeks into any new dental procedures or products you may be about to introduce. However, you need to ensure not to spam your follower’s feeds.

You can create quite the hype among your target audience by launching a new dental service or product live on Instagram. You can drive sales conversions by adding a quick purchase link as well.

But how do you get more followers on Instagram?

Growing a follower base on Instagram is a time-consuming process that requires dedication and patience. It needs tremendous effort and energy regardless of whether you are an established dental practitioner or a new entrant. You might wonder about quick ways to increase your follower count after you have used all the right hashtags and created good content.

However, it is important that you do not give in to temptation and indulge in dubious Instagram practices such as ‘buying’ follower lists from unscrupulous online sources. They might increase your numbers but will do nothing when it comes to future engagement.

You need a genuinely interested audience to promote your feeds. Fortunately, there are straightforward and less expensive ways to get followers on Instagram.

As a first step, make sure that your Instagram username is recognizable and searchable. This will make it easier for people to find you. Next, focus your attention towards your bio as it is one of the driving factors that will 

Once you have optimized your Instagram profile as a dentist, you can start posting. But before you start engaging with people, it is a good idea to have at least a few informative and useful posts online so that users who show up can receive some value right away. Additionally, remember that photo and video quality is more important on Instagram as compared to Twitter and Facebook, because your Instagram posts have to include a photo or video in order to post.

After a few postings, you might want to start following other accounts that relate to your dental practice. This works out in your favor as Instagram more or less works like a community. You can even gain influencers by interacting with content on other users’ accounts.

This is the most organic way to put your Instagram account in the spotlight, as the account holder will receive a notification when you interact or follow an account. This can lead to them following your account as well. Additionally, always remember to respond to comments and engage with user content. Using this goodwill, the next step is to encourage other users to share your own content.

Lastly, never forget to promote your account on other social media platforms and channels. You can add an Instagram button on your practice website or ask followers on other social media platforms to join you on Instagram. Asking and engaging with your target audience are the best ways to get more followers for your Instagram account.

How To Successfully Market Your Dental Content Online

Marketing to Millennials is Not as Hard as It Sounds

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, 

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for clients and businesses alike. However, it takes a little more work to turn followers you acquire into clients.  

Educate your readers about any new medical services or products that you may have introduced at your practice.

It happens occasionally with most of us that we send an email to someone but receive no response. That leaves us wondering if they even opened it; and if they did open it, did they simply delete it? The same uncertainty also happens when it comes to email marketing campaigns.

The recipients of your marketing emails may sometimes mark them as spam, delete them, or just ignore them. When this happens to emails you send out, it is time to evaluate why.

It could be because you are not able to hold your audience’s attention. Maybe your subject lines are not catchy enough, or your calls to action are fail to prompt your readers into performing a task.

Email marketing is an effective means of transmitting messages straight to your prospective patients. It reinforces relationships and prompts your prospects to contact you. Let us take a look at how you can strengthen your email marketing strategy.

12 Tips for Successful Email Marketing for Dentists

Do not stop adding to your list of clients and prospects even if you have a substantial line-up already. It is not difficult to do this. You can ensure that your list keeps on growing quietly through a sign-up option on your medical practice’s website.

Be sure to incorporate subscription forms wherever you can, including the blog page and home page without overshadowing any important content.

Traditional methods are of equal importance in building your list of patients. For instance, when you are at an event that involves prospective patients, be sure to provide people the option to subscribe to your newsletter. When someone signs up for your newsletter, there is always the possibility of greater engagement with them in future.

What distinguishes email marketing from direct mail is that it opens avenues for worthwhile conversations with people who have an interest in your practice.

Simply providing promotional information to patients will not achieve anything.

Ensure that you keep the following elements in mind:

Address your readers directly and assure them of something that is unique from other emails they receive. An ideal means of doing this is through automated solutions that customize your emails.

Once users open your email you need to make sure that recipients will read it. Ensure that your message appears to be from an actual person instead of an automated marketing tool.

: Splitting your email list based on reader demographics makes it convenient to come up with messages that are relevant to their interests and requirements. This increases the possibility of readers using an offer, interacting with you, and passing on the information to other prospects.

The intention here is to prompt recipients to respond in some way. At times, they might just click on a link in your email. However, your aim should be to have them actually reply to your emails.

As far as possible, append a personal detail to your emails. A majority of email tools permit you to input short codes that can be substituted with the recipient’s name when the email is dispatched. Try to make it fun and creative.

Increase Patient Relationships Through Newsletters

In addition, you can divide your mailings to target specific segments of your audience. If your business works with various industries, you could think about emailing separate versions of your email with each one containing information related to that particular industry.

4. Make sure your emails do not end up as spam 

All your efforts will have been wasted if your painstakingly crafted emails are marked as spam. So, start with ensuring that your recipients have chosen to receive your emails and you are not in violation of any regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act. Also, steer clear of using all capitals, hyperbolic expressions, and excessive exclamation marks.

If your email contains HTML that is poorly formatted, it can also have an adverse impact. Spam filters vary, so an email that passes one filter might get singled out by another.

It might seem to be the obvious thing to do, but a large number of marketing emails look quite amateur and unprofessional. When someone opens your mail due to its catchy headline, it is essential that you retain their interest. You can do this by:

		Use photographs with phrases and keywords of relevance to your audience highlighted.

		Include bullet points to enable people to glance at the content and absorb the important points.

		Just a few selected graphics that illustrate your message instead of being a substitute for your content. Certain email providers block such graphics and images or take them to be spam.

6. Incorporate riveting calls to action and links 

The purpose of email marketing is usually to draw more traffic to a website or a particular landing page. If there are no clicks, then it means you have zero customers.

Try to put in buttons that are visually appealing with text that offers your audience more than one chance to interact. For instance, ‘Download Now!’, and ‘Read More Here’.

The key is writing calls to action in an exciting and compelling manner. The better your description the greater the chance of captivating your audience.

7. Keep the unsubscribe option simple and easy

	This might seem that you are disengaging from your client by providing them the option to cut off the connection. However, if you do not provide your readers an easy option to unsubscribe from your list, they are likely to flag your emails as spam which does not bode well for you.

Email marketing is an effective means of transmitting messages straight to your prospective patients. How can you strengthen your email marketing campaign for your dental practice today?