The impact of social media on aesthetic dentistry

This month, Manrina Rhode discusses how she utilises social media to benefit her aesthetic dentistry business.

Today, I want to talk to you about the impact of social media.

I have pretty much built my business on social media. When people say ‘If Instagram shut down tomorrow, how would it impact your life?’ and people worry that they wouldn’t be able to share where they’re going out and what they’re doing. For me, it could literally shut down my business.

Instagram has been such a great platform for me in that it has allowed me to find the kind of patients that I want to see or allow them to find me. It has also allowed me to do the sort of treatments I want to do to be able to build my dream clinic, which I’ve now built.

Once I built and opened the squat clinic, I wasn’t worrying about what’s going to happen or how I’m going to pay the bills because I knew that my patients were coming in – regardless of where I work in the world – to see me because they find me on social media. And that’s been proven – that’s how it works.

I don’t move forward with fear, I move forward with confidence in whatever it is that I want to do. So let’s talk a little bit about doing that.

How can social media help you?

I’ve talked to you about how it’s impacted my life and and how important it’s been for me, so let’s talk a little bit about how social media can do that for you.

People will often say to me, ‘You’re so natural, you just go in front of a camera and you chat away’ – just like I’m doing right now. As a child, my mum would have a camcorder on holiday and I’d be up in front of the camcorder telling the nine o’clock news and pretending to be a news presenter.

So, naturally, given the opportunity to now do that on my on my own phone all day, I love it! But I appreciate that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And there are things that you can do about that.

If you would like to be someone who can talk in front of a camera, there are media training courses and social media training courses that you can go on that will help you look into the camera, and talk like you are talking to a person. Learning tips like that can really make you much more likeable on screen.

What you don’t want to do is go on and then appear like you’re hiding or you’re shy or cagey because then it could look like you’re lying or like you’re not genuine. And that is the last thing that we want to appear as dental surgeons.

Creating content

If you don’t feel like going on camera is your thing, that’s also okay. There’s plenty of things that you can do with social media without having to go and talk face to camera.

You can create content with a team so it’s being created in an environment that’s comfortable for you. That can then be edited and posted out rather than doing it organically on your phone.

Equally, you can use before and after pictures. You can use images or video of your clinic or of your team. It doesn’t need to be you talking – it can be videos of you working where you have photo consent from the patient.

There are a lot of dentists that have built very successful pages and followings without really talking about dentistry at all. They talk about food, they talk about cars, they talk about cycling, whatever their hobbies are. And then from that, because they’re talking about something they’re passionate about, they build a tribe. Once your tribe find out you’re a dentist, they want to come to you for their dentistry.

It’s amazing how little of your page on Instagram is about the actual dentistry. Some patients will contact me and there’ll be like, ‘I want to get this composite bonding done but I’m not coming to you because I don’t think I can afford you’. They don’t even find out the price, they just assume they can’t.

Patients know that they like you, and people buy people. So if they like you, then they will come to you, and so you can build your following like that.

Be regular

It’s very easy to open your own business. There’s not just Instagram, there’s lots of different platform – LinkedIn, Twitter ( X), Facebook, Youtube. Youtube’s a great platform that we’re only just starting to to use now. We’ve started posting daily Youtube shorts, and that’s been incredible after just a month of doing it.

It’s a matter of looking at all the different social media platforms, seeing which one works for you, and then routinely posting content. It doesn’t matter what that content is.

Don’t get in your own head and don’t let your imposter syndrome stop you. Just go ahead, start doing it and be regular with it. Watch your following grow and see how that impacts your business.

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Visit Manrina’s website here: www.drmrlondon.co.uk.