While looking for dental and orthodontic marketing ideas you are likely hearing a ton of buzz about Google’s new +1 along with their new Google Plus social media site.

If you have not been hearing about it congratulations for being so busy that you are not distracted by all the media noise.

As a team member or doctor who managed to find this website and post as you were searching around for dental or orthodontic marketing ideas here is what you need to know about Google +1. It is a way for Google to put social media and social proof together with their search results. It’s also a way to push more and more people into their social media site, Google Plus, giving them even more leverage over what people see online and its working.

Now, when you are logged into your Gmail account, YouTube account, Google Docs account, or Google Plus account and you do a Google search, you will see results that show what you and anyone you are connected with have “+1’d”. That means if you and I are connected through any of these Google social media sites and I “+1” a site, which is basically saying “hey this site is pretty good”, then you will know it automatically. These +1’s are even starting to show up on Google adds! Here is a screen shot of what the +1’s look like.

Now we can clearly see where this is headed. Google is going to work very hard to get more people logged into their accounts so they can track what they like when the “+1” it. It also gives them a better search result to end users who are now going to see, and click, on the sites that people they know have already “+1’d”.

So if you are starting to get the picture this means the more people who are essentially telling the world they like your site, or ad, or post, or even your videos, the more likely your site, ad, post, or video is to show up early in search results and get clicked on!

Here is the amazing part for your dental & orthodontic marketing ideas because this gets even better when you have a WordPress site or blog.

Ok, so we’ve been studying Google’s new social network like crazy in order to figure out just how it can benefit our dental and orthodontic marketing clients. The early research suggests that it is going to be an SEO (search engine optimization) powerhouse so do not ignore it.

Google Plus is now open to all users and you should sign up and start playing with it. The user interface is clear and clean but the real power is getting “plus 1′d”, having everyone in your social circle seeing your “plus 1′s”…essentially combining social media with search results. This can prove to be very powerful stuff if Google continues to work out the details.

Now you may be thinking “another social media site, do we really need that?” I’ve been asking myself the same question and we are still putting together the details on how are dental and orthodontic marketing clients can and should be utilizing this new tool. This question lead me to this very entertaining video. Click play, enjoy, and let me know your thoughts on yet another new social media tool by leaving your comments below.

Bye for now,

Brian

I recently read an interesting article (you can read it here) recommending that dental practices start using more social media in their marketing efforts.  I couldn’t agree more that social media has become an important part of dental and orthodontic marketing plans.  What was interesting about the article was that it suggested you start with Twitter but with no reason why, other than it’s easy to set up an account.

There is certainly value in being able to quickly and easily set up an account with a social media outlet like Twitter, but what can you expect from those efforts?  The article suggests that you go find followers and with Twitter, that couldn’t be easier.  In fact, there are programs that will do much of that work for you although I don’t recommend them for reasons we won’t discuss today.  The next step is to engage in conversations that are not pushy.  The suggestion is to think of it as a party where you wouldn’t just walk up to someone and start telling them they should come to your office every few minutes.

The challenge that orthodontists and dentists are seeing when using Twitter as a marketing tool is that it has become so overused, mostly by internet marketers pushing products of their own, that it becomes almost impossible to push your message through the clutter.  There is still the advantage of having Google and Bing pulling your “tweets” into their real time search data, but I’m not seeing it do much more than that these days.

So how do you use Twitter so that it’s effective for your SEO but doesn’t take hours out of your week leaving you wondering if you should be spending more time with Facebook or Google Buzz?  Use Ping.fm to tie them all together so you can do the work once and have it pushed out to all of your social media outlets at once.  That means you use the same strategies of having conversations, not just pushing your agenda all of the time and offering solutions and answers to questions you see come up, but having it listed everywhere you want to be seen after just writing it once.

Go ahead and set up your free account to see how it works.  The cool thing is that once you have your Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, or any of the other major social networking accounts set up you just add them to your Ping.fm account and they will be updated all at once from one place.  Once you get into a flow with adding content to your social media accounts and you have someone on your team heading it up, you get to take advantage of ALL the major places to put your content without any extra work.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, and challenges when it comes to social media marketing as well as any questions you have about dental/orthodontict marketing ideas in general by leaving a comment below.

Bye for now,

Brian

Google recently launched a new search service that allows users to look at the most up to date information on a topic. They do this by pulling posts from twitter! Take a look at this video to see just how powerful this can be for orthodontists and dentists who see take advantage of this tool.

Let me know your thoughts and questions.

Bye for now,

Brian

You have probably heard of social media by now and have wondered if it is something you should or could take advantage of. There is a lot to know about social media marketing, how it can help you build your practice, and what to avoid.

Watch this 1st video to get the ball rolling and let me know your thoughts and questions.

Bye for now,

Brian