Website or social media? If your practice is trying to decide which one to choose, you may want to consider the third option, both.

When it comes to your business, it’s important to create a strong online presence. Your practice can do this by setting up an easy-to-use website to provide patients with important information regarding your practice and the services you offer. Additionally, you’ll want to solidify a consistent social media presence to keep your patients engaged and provide a steady stream of updates.

But don’t just take our word for it, follow along below to see why having both a website and social media presence is crucial for your practice.

The Importance of a Website for Your Practice

The internet is a vast place with all the information you could ever need at the touch of a button. How many times have you found yourself looking up something on the internet only to be directed to a webpage that has all the answers? This is exactly the reason why having a website is essential.

Having a website is a great way to provide detailed information that is unique and specific to your practice. Your website will typically include sections like About Us, Services and Contact Us. This breakdown of information makes it easy for anyone to learn more about your practice. Not to mention websites are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which means if someone has a question after hours, they can easily visit your website to gain access to this information.

SEO on Your Website

Additionally, if you’re on top of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), anyone should be able to enter your practice name into a search engine and see your website appear as the top result. In the instance where someone is looking for something specific at your practice, like a service you offer, they can enter “[Practice Name] [Service]” into a search engine. Anything that matches these keywords will populate in the search results. This allows your patients to easily find the information they need, when they need it, which strengthens your online presence and accessibility for patients.

The Importance of Social Media for Your Practice

Similar to your website, having a strong social media presence is important. Social media has steadily integrated itself into most people’s daily routine. In fact, it’s estimated that there are over 4.8 billion total social media users worldwide as of 2023. For this reason, it’s crucial for your practice to be on social media to connect with current patients and reach potential future patients.

Post Consistency

Social media provides an easy, streamlined way to relay information and engage with patients online. To build a social media presence, it’s important that you maintain a consistent posting schedule. Not only will this provide a steady stream of updates to your followers, but it will also allow you to build your brand.

Consistency is key when it comes to social media. By having regularly scheduled content that relates to your practice, people will be more likely to see your content. Plus, you can build a stronger connection with your audience by responding to comments and questions. Interacting with your followers is a great way to humanize your brand and appear authentic, so make sure you stay true to your practice and have fun with it.

Use Content to Promote Your Practice

Not only is having an active social media presence a good look for prospective patients, but it can be informative for current patients. Posting to social media is a great way to highlight services you offer in a way that’s fun and engaging. You can do this by creating a reel, posting to your feed and sharing content on your story. This helps keep your social media informative and unique to your practice.

Grow Your Following

Another key thing to remember about social media is that not only is it inexpensive, but it can potentially help you reach hundreds if not thousands of people daily. For this reason, it’s important that you include any and all hashtags that are relevant to your content when posting. By doing so, you may be able to reach a wider audience as your post could be seen by more people, not just your followers.

Final Thoughts

So, why is it beneficial to have both a website and social media presence? It cultivates a strong online presence for your practice. Not only does this allow current or prospective patients to access important information about your practice at any time, but it can also help you widen your reach and grow your audience. While your website is great for general information about your practices, you can utilize social media in a fun way that highlights services, provides timely updates and allows you to share current promotions.

Your website in combination with social media can be a powerhouse of content and information that makes it easier for anyone looking to learn more. By having a strong online presence, your practice can appear more credible and authentic, which could potentially lead to a bigger following. If your practice doesn’t currently have a website, social media presence or both, we highly recommend setting these up as soon as possible.

Need help getting started? Sesame Communications offers premium website services and social media services. Let us help you reach your full potential. Contact us today to learn more about our services and get started.

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Website and Social Media: Why They Both Matter for Your Practice appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram have become a fundamental part of any marketing plan. They help businesses stay connected and engaged with their current customers while offering a massive potential audience to expand customer reach online. Below you’ll find 3 ways in which you can use social media to drive traffic to your website and increase your online presence!

Use Social Media Advertising

Creating social ads on Facebook or Instagram and sending traffic directly to a landing page on your website is one of the most effective ways to increase your online presence. Furthermore, with social ads you can leverage Meta’s audience targeting and different ad placement options to ensure your content reaches the right people at the right time! By creating compelling ad content and including a clear call to action , you can drive more traffic to your website and increase conversions.

Share Your Content Regularly

Whether it’s a blog post, a product page or a landing page, social media is a great way to share your website content! By regularly sharing your content on social media, you can attract potential visitors to your website.

Because of the relatively short attention span users have on social media, you need to make sure that the content you’re sharing is compelling and informative so as to capture your target audience immediately. Visual posts also tend to grab more attention than those with text only so make sure to use graphics whenever possible to receive more engagement.

Engage With Your Audience

Engaging with your audience on social media can help you build trust and loyalty with your followers. By responding to comments, messages and reviews, you can show your audience that you value their opinions and are committed to providing excellent customer service.

Engagement can also help you drive more traffic to your website. By answering questions or offering helpful advice, you can position yourself as an expert in your niche and encourage your followers to visit your website for more information.

You can also use engagement as an opportunity to promote your website. For example, you can share links to relevant blog posts or product pages in response to a follower’s question or comment.

Final Thoughts

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are vital for any marketing plan. By using social media advertising, regularly sharing compelling content and engaging with your followers, you can drive traffic to your website and increase your online presence. It’s crucial to stay up to date with the latest social media trends and strategies to achieve your business goals.

—Jonathan Giraldo, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 3 Ways To Increase Website Traffic Using Your Social Media appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

As a dental practice owner, you know that having a website is essential for reaching new patients and growing your business. But simply having a website isn’t enough — you need to promote it so that people know it exists. One of the best ways to do this is through social media.

In today’s blog, we go over a few different ways that your practice can begin promoting your website on different social media platforms. And don’t worry, we’ll also be going over how your website can promote your social media accounts in a later blog post.

Let’s get started!

Share Your Blog Posts

With the Sesame Social Service, you get access to weekly blog posts. These should absolutely be shared to your social media platforms to bring your social traffic over to your website. Thankfully, we already share your blog posts to your Facebook page, but it is just as important to share them to all of your other social media accounts.

To enhance the visibility of your post, be sure to add a hyperlink to the article and incorporate captivating visuals. If the platform you’re posting on doesn’t allow for hyperlinks, consider sharing it on your stories and adding the link to your bio. Additionally, social media can be used to generate interest in upcoming content, such as by announcing the release of a new blog post in the following week.

Post Photos and Videos of Your Practice

Sharing behind-the-scenes content of your dental practice on social media can help humanize your brand and make it more relatable to potential patients. Consider sharing photos and videos of your staff and practice, including a video walkthrough of your office. Before and after photos of treatments can also be particularly impactful.

To connect this content back to your website, include a call to action in your post that encourages people to book an appointment or visit your website for more information. Whenever possible, link to specific pages on your website to drive traffic to relevant information.

Run Social Ads

While organic social media posts are great for reaching your existing followers and driving traffic to your website, running social media ads can help you reach a wider audience.

Social advertisements are great because you can create ads that target specific demographics or interests, such as people in your area who are interested in dental health. This can not only help widen your audience and help you discover new patients, but with social ads, you have the opportunity to drive traffic directly to your website.

Including a call to action on your advertisement is a great way to do this. Another way is linking the ad to your website so when a prospective patient clicks on it, they will be directed back to your appointment form.

Although before you get ahead of yourself, it’s important to understand how social ads work instead of just wasting money trying to drive traffic to your website. Sesame offers a Social Ads Service that allows your practice to run monthly advertisements promoting specials, services and the practice. If you are interested, reach out to us at 866.263.1639.

Final Thoughts

Promoting your dental practice’s website on social media is an excellent way to connect with potential patients and expand your business. By leveraging social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, you can engage with your audience on a more personal level; share valuable content such as blog posts, articles and videos; and build trust and credibility with your brand.

In addition, running social media ads can help you target specific demographics and reach a wider audience, ultimately leading to increased traffic to your website and more new patients for your practice.

By taking advantage of these powerful marketing tools, you can strengthen your online presence and boost your chances of success in the competitive dental industry.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 3 Ways to Promote Your Website on Social Media appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

As the weather gets warmer and we start to do our spring cleaning, it’s important to not forget about our digital lives too. While cleaning up your social media pages may not be the first thing that comes to your mind, when it comes to staying relevant and updating all your information, it’s important to take steps to give your social media a spring cleaning too.

In today’s blog, we will be discussing tips and tricks for decluttering your social media pages and creating a more polished and professional online presence. And don’t forget, the Sesame Social Team is also here to help with any additional social media spring cleaning as well!

Tip #1. Delete any old or irrelevant posts, photos, or comments that no longer represent your practice.

This is by far one of the most important tips to consider. Clogging your feed with a ton of irrelevant content will hurt your social media presence more than it will help.

Review your posts and determine if they still align with your practice. If you have any photos of employees who are no longer with the practice, delete them. If you are no longer running certain promotions but still have them up on your feed, delete them. Everything that can no longer benefit how you show your practice on social media should be removed.

The same goes with comments. If you see any comments on posts that may be spam or unnecessary, you can feel free to remove them.

Tip #2. Check for broken links and outdated information — and update as necessary.

This is more important for your “About” sections and bios on each of your accounts. It’s important for potential patients to be able to reach you and book an appointment with your practice. If links are outdated or no longer work, it will be very hard for them to reach out to you.

Take some time to review that all the links on your social media pages are working and don’t lead to any dead ends. If they are no longer in service, delete them from your feed to avoid any confusion.

Also update your contact information. While this should be done as soon as anything changes, sometimes it slips our minds, and we forget. Making sure you take some time every few months to review your contact information on your socials will be extremely helpful for both you and your patients.

Another important part to update is your profile and header photos. Both are the visual elements to your branding on social media. Your profile photo should be your logo so that your profile is easily recognizable. Your header photo should be a photo from your website so you can carry over the branding from your website to create a more cohesive online presence.

Tip #3. Unfollow or unfriend any accounts that no longer align with your interests or values.

This may not be the biggest issue, but social media can get very overwhelming if you are following a ton of accounts, especially some that you may not even care to see content from.

With Meta updating the algorithm so frequently, you may never see the content you actually want to see without unfollowing or unfriending pages that post irrelevant content. We’ve seen the addition of “Close Friends Stories” and a “Following Feed” as a way to combat all the unnecessary content and ads. However, these are not geared toward businesses and thus not the best option for your practice’s social accounts.

Taking a bit of time to remove all these accounts will help free space on your feed, and it will also help make things less overwhelming.

Tip #4. Use high-quality images and videos to showcase your practice and services.

This may go without saying, however, using high-quality images and videos is necessary to improve the overall aesthetic of your page. It will also provide your audience with a better idea as to who you are and what your practice can provide them with.

And quality content demonstrates your commitment to your work and practice. All the images and video content that you put on your website, social media pages, ads and so on are a representation of your brand. Good design and imagery will show you’re professional and care about how your practice is perceived.

Purchasing a professional camera may help a lot with creating this type of content, but it is not necessary. A smart phone with a good camera will work just fine. And if you need help learning to take photos on your smartphone, check out our blog post for a few tips.

Tip #5. Consider creating separate personal and professional social media accounts.

We see many people like to essentially merge their doctor and practice’s online presence into one. And while it’s good to have photos of the doctor and the practice on your social media, it is important to remember that these are two different brands.

If you are a doctor and you’re looking to build your brand, you should do this separately from your practice. And the biggest reason for this is, if you decide to leave your practice, you don’t want to have to give up your online presence or take the practice’s.

With that being said, you can still post very similar if not the exact same content on both of the accounts. We just recommend having two separate accounts if you are trying to grow two separate brands.

Tip #6. Engaging in social media challenges and tagging friends

Engaging in social media challenges and tagging friends can be a great boost of engagement for your account. Yes, it’s not technically spring cleaning by any means but it’s a great way to start the season off right.

You can either put on your own contests and giveaways or participate in local businesses. If you are wanting to get a bigger community involved, try reaching out to some of your favorite local businesses to see if they are interested in cocreating a challenge for both of your social media accounts.

Tip #7. Share positive content that resonates with your patients.

Positive content such as reviews, success stories, testimonials and before-and-after photos are a great way to help clean up your content strategy.

If you are finding yourself wanting to post more but unsure where to start and what content to create, add more positivity to your socials. This helps a lot if you already have an established platform where patients can share reviews, success stories and testimonials. And for before-and-after photos, you can assign this task to one person in the office and make it a habit to get these photos.

From there, you’ll have a ton of positive content to choose from and incorporate into your strategy.

Tip #8. Use social media analytics to track engagement and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Analytics can really help clean things up for future strategies. Instead of wasting your time on content that has shown time and time again to underperform, you can readjust your strategy to allocate more time on content that performs much better.

This can also help you determine what posts to keep on your feed and what posts to remove. If something didn’t perform as well as another post, you should consider removing it, unless it is still relevant to your practice.

Final Thoughts

That wraps up this week’s blog post! We hope that these tips gave you some inspiration to help get the digital spring cleaning started.

If you dedicate yourself to going through each of these steps, you’ll be sure to get it done in no time. And of course, if you are struggling with any of these steps, reach out to the Sesame Social Team so we can help troubleshoot any issues.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 8 Tips to Clean Up Your Social Media Pages This Spring appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Summer is right around the corner! With longer days and warmer weather, people are more active on their phones. Making sure your followers are engaged with your content is just as important as ever because people are looking for new and exciting content to enjoy.

In fact, more than half of all American’s spend more money in the summer than they do during cooler seasons. What better time to pump out as much social content then summer? Making sure your services are in front of your audience at all times will be a significant difference in how your content is being engaged with and how many new patients you’re bringing in.

With that being said, there are many ways to create engaging summer content that will keep your followers coming back for more. In this blog post, we’ll share some tips and ideas for keeping your social media presence fresh and exciting all summer long while making sure that your audience doesn’t miss out on anything you have to offer!

Tip #1. Post Relevant Content

You’ve heard this before, but posting relevant content on your socials makes a huge impact. And now with all the fun summer activities, you’ll have more opportunities to post content that is geared towards dental health during the warmer weather.

Another big part of posting relevant content is making sure that your audience knows about all your promotions happening. Of course it’s crucial to your strategy to post fun and engaging content that can humanize your practice however the other part to a strong social strategy is ensuring that you post promotional content as well. Get your audience hyped for the warmer weather by sharing all the deals you have going on!

And it goes without saying that your content is timely. This means being consistent and posting when your audience is the most active.

Tip #2. Make Your Visuals Stand Out

Summer is all about being bright and vibrant, so make sure your content is fun and vivid too! We suggest using eye-catching visuals and including bright colors and fun graphics. This is super easy to do with the help of the Sesame Social Tool.

Did you know that with your Sesame Social Service you have access to Canva, an awesome design platform that is included in the Social Tool? Well, you do! With the help of Canva, you can add graphics, text, backgrounds, and colors throughout your content. This will ensure that your content pops and grabs your followers’ attention.

We suggest trying to add in visuals only when needed. If you are posting a photo that has a lot going on in the background or may already include your branding, there isn’t a need to add in extra visuals to make it standout. If you are unsure, reach out to the social team and we can help with the decision.

Tip #3. Use User-Generated Content

One of the easiest ways to increase the amount of content is by utilizing user-generated content (UGC), or content created by your followers. There are so many opportunities through social media when it comes to UGC.

If you aren’t sure where to begin with UGC, we suggest going through your tagged photos on your social media and pulling content from there. You can also search your location on Instagram and see content pops up that way. The final way to look for UGC content on social media is to search the hashtags. We suggest typing in “#your practice name” and “#doctor’s name” to see if there are any photos with those tags.

However if you are still unable to find any relevant content, simply ask your patients to post on their socials with a hashtag you create for your practice or make sure they tag your social media pages so you are notified when someone posts. Even incentivizing the photos would be a great way to bring in more content.

Since we’re talking about summer, asking patients to submit photos of them enjoying their favorite summer activities could be a great way to incorporate more summer content while keeping your followers engaged.

Tip #4. Host Giveaways and Contests

A great way to host a giveaway or contest is to also incorporate UGC! Not only will you incentivize engagement by hosting one of these, but you’ll also be able to gather a ton of content you can use all summer long.

We suggest finding a prize that may be intriguing to your patients to setup the contest. There are many ways you could go about creating a contest or giveaway however to gather more user-generated content, ask your audience to enter the contest by submitting a photo of them and their favorite summer activity either with a hashtag or tagging the profiles. This is one of the easiest ways to host a UGC-geared contest. Just be very specific in the rules to enter to ensure that your engagement doesn’t fall behind the contest. With any contest, you’ll want to ask your audience to like, comment, and share your post.

If you need more help running a contest on your social media, make sure to check out our blog all about running contests on social media!

Tip #5. Use Stories to Bring in More Engagement

One of the easiest ways you can increase engagement on your social media is by using your Stories! Both Facebook and Instagram have Stories that you can update at any point, and it’s essentially a live look at what’s going on. Normally, these get a ton of engagement because of how easy it is to consume stories, but paired with some awesome summer content, you’ll be sure to get even more attention and engagement.

Doing things such as Q&As and polls will encourage your followers to interact with your content. Keep the topics relatable to you and your practice, but we also encourage you to have some fun with it and see what kinds of engaging Stories you can come up with!

Final Thoughts

Summer is a great opportunity for you and your practice to work towards better engagement on your posts. By incorporating seasonal themes, sharing user-generated content, and utilizing various multimedia formats, you can keep your followers interested and excited about your brand. Remember to be authentic, have fun, and experiment with new ideas to keep your followers engaged and coming back for more. Happy summer posting!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Keeping Your Followers Engaged With New Summer Content appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Short-form video is growing faster than ever and if you want to keep up with competitors, it is the best way to make you stand out on social media. 

Check out our top 7 types of short-form video ideas that you can start creating today! 

Tools Needed to Create Short-Form Video Content 

There are a few things that you need to do before you begin creating content for your socials. Number one, we suggest making sure you have a Facebook/Instagram, Tik Tok, and/or a YouTube account. Each of these platforms will allow you to post short-form video content. And if you’re on all three platforms you’ll have a bigger reach. 

The next thing we suggest doing is getting something to record your videos. A smartphone is all that is necessary, however if you have access to a quality camera, that is also a great option. 

And finally, you’ll need somewhere to edit the photos. There are plenty of free tools that you can utilize when editing your video content. We like to use Canva or edit the content directly on the platform. 

Service Demonstrations 

Service demonstrations are a great way to keep your followers engaged in your content. Many people don’t know what to expect when it comes to certain services or procedures that are offered at their dental office. 

By providing your audience with this type of content you can educate them on when they will need these services and procedures done as well as help take some of the anxieties away. 

Ideas: 

Product Tutorials 

Product tutorials are similar to service demonstrations, however, with this type of content you’ll be talking about different products that you trust. Trust is a keyword here because you don’t want to advertise products you wouldn’t use yourself. 

If you are working with a brand, this is also a great opportunity for you to suggest making content for them in exchange for visibility on their platform. Not only can this help bring in new patients but it will solidify your expertise in your field as well. 

Ideas: 

• See how your Dentist Recommends Brushing your Teeth 
• The Proper Way to Use Different Flossing Tools 

Behind the Scenes 

People love behind-the-scenes content, why do you think everyone waits until the end of a movie in the theater to watch the bloopers? 

Your office can be doing the same! All you need to do is film the things you are already doing. If you have an appointment, talk to the patient and see if they are comfortable being on camera. If they are, film a video of you doing a dental checkup. 

You can also choose to take the less serious route to this type of content. For example, if you guys do a staff lunch every Monday, you can document that and get your audience to see what they are missing out on. It’ll get them to come back for more content every week. 

Ideas: 

Educational Videos 

People love educational videos, especially if they know they have been missing this information. If you want to trend in this category, we just sharing tips and tricks that may not already be on the internet, or if they are make sure not everyone is talking about them. 

Educational content is another way to show your audience that you know what you’re talking about. This can help you bring in new patients as well. 

Ideas: 

Brand Challenge 

Short-form video content has evolved since it first gained popularity. Today brands can create their trendy audios, filters, and challenges. 

You can use brand challenges to your advantage by creating something for your audience to engage with. This can be a contest, a sound, a concept, and many other options. This will help bring us to the next topic of User-Generated Content. 

Ideas: 

• #ShowOffyourSmileSaturday 
• Contests that get your patients to acknowledge your brand 

User-Generated Content 

The idea of User-Generated Content (UGC) is getting content that is already created by someone else but relates to your practice. In this case, this could be your patients coming in and creating content about your practice, the services you offer, and your team members. 

If you are having trouble finding any UGC for your practice, there are a few ways that you can encourage your patients to participate. You can start by putting up a QR code in your lobby that takes your patients directly to your Google My Business and Facebook pages where they can leave reviews about your practice. 

If you are looking for more visual content, try incentivizing UGC. This could be putting on a contest, where everyone needs to submit a video review about you (or anything else relating to your practice). Or setting up a hashtag for your patients to tag their posts with. 

Ideas: 

Company Culture 

People love company culture. Really in any industry, this content is the content that tends to perform the best because you are humanizing your brand. 

Company culture videos can be a great way to create fun and goofy content. You’ll see that many creators on social media tend to use trending sounds and skits and incorporate different team members to create this type of content. 

Ideas: 

3 Creators Who have Mastered Short Form Video Content 

If you’re still unsure about how to start your short-form video content journey, we suggest looking at these dental professionals who have an established audience and have worked hard to come up with relatable and engaging content. 

• @dentologie 
• @dr.humie 
• @bristlehealth 

We like that they have a mix of different types of content, and this is something you should aim for. Yes, creating educational videos is important for your brand but you also want to show your fun and humorous side too! 

If you try out any of our ideas, make sure to tag @sesamecommunications on Instagram and Facebook so we can share your posts! 

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 7 Types of Short Form Video Content You Can Begin Leveraging Now  appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

If you have been on a website or social media lately, it’s a good bet that you have seen video content everywhere. Video has become the preferred medium over the last few years, and it is everywhere. But does it help with SEO? To answer that, we need to look at how search engines rank sites.

Videos Provide Informative Information

Google, the world’s most used search engine, values two things when generating results – the quality of your content and its relevance to a potential customers original search terms.

Google doesn’t just look at the text on a particular page. It also scans for other types of media to see precisely what a website may have to offer. If the websites have a mixture text and quality visuals like videos, that means your pages are considered informative – giving a boost to your SEO rankings.

Videos bring Traffic to your Website

Another one of the qualities that Google looks at when determining search rankings is the amount of incoming traffic your website has. If the domain has a massive amount of regular visitors, they’re most likely coming for a reason.

People are more likely to visit your website by watching a video on YouTube or other social media channels than they are any other type of content. The more video content you create, the more quality traffic you can draw to your pages, which will, in turn, help your overall SEO in the long run.

Videos help your Traffic Stay Longer

Another important aspect to remember is that search engines like Google look at how long people are staying on your site once they finally arrive. If you have a large amount of incoming organic traffic, but those people all leave after just a few seconds, it may cause Google to view that your content isn’t very good and the customers may be going elsewhere for to find better search results.

Final Thoughts

A video will more consistently keep people on your website landing page for longer periods of time. People are more likely to watch a video than they are to read something like a blog post, even if those two things are trying to get across the same core pieces of information. Relying heavily on video to increase the amount of time someone spends on your page, you significantly improve your bounce rate, which helps search engines like Google and Bing boost your article to the top of their rankings!

—Aliah Rasmussen, SEO Specialist II, Sesame Communications

The post How does Video Content Impact your Rankings? appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Over the last few years, video content has become increasingly more popular on social media due to its ability to convey a message or idea quickly and effectively. Video content is often more engaging and entertaining than text or image content, which can help capture a user’s attention.  

Creating video content can seem like a daunting task, but with the help of many of the internet’s free tools, this process is much more straightforward than one might expect. Utilizing these tools will help you elevate your social media and can even result in increased engagement on your content.  

Below are a few free video editors that we recommend for getting started with creating videos with some pros and cons of each! 

iMovie 

Download Here

If you are working on an Apple Mac computer, this is a great free tool to utilize. It offers an intuitive interface with drag-and-drop editing capabilities, as well as a range of effects and filters.  

With iMovie, you can easily trim, cut, split, merge, rotate and duplicate clips, as well as add music, voice-overs, and text animations. This app has multi-device functionality, meaning you can work on your project on both your iPhone and Mac computer. 

Clipchamp

Download Here

Similar to iMovie, Clipchamp is another popular video editor that is popularly used on most Microsoft operating systems. It is easy to use and has a lot of features you would expect and want from a video editor.  

This video maker is beginner-friendly that has a drag-and-drop interface but you can also utilize more advanced video editing features such as cutting, cropping and resizing video footage, as well as recording your screen and through your webcam.

Vimeo Create 

Download Here

Another great, free video editor is Vimeo Create. This tool is simple to use and makes creating videos a breeze. Vimeo’s library of over 10 million videos provides a great resource for video editors to find clips, music, and sound effects. It also has thousands of premade templates for easy implementation.   

Vimeo Create has a simple timeline-based interface that makes it easy to arrange and preview your video. It also offers a range of professional editing tools, such as color correction, video stabilization, and audio mixing. 

Canva Video Editor 

Download Here

The Canva Video Editor is a great tool for creating professional-looking videos quickly and easily. It has a wide range of features that allow you to customize and create stunning visuals for your videos.  

Canva has a vast library of free music and sound effects you can utilize as well. Canva also connects directly to our Sesame Social Posting Suite, making it easy to add your video content to your scheduler! 

Adobe Premiere Rush 

Download Here

Adobe has a tool that tis more specifically geared towards social media content creators. The export settings make it easy to export clips directly to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  

The program provides tools for cutting and joining video fragments, color correction, and other settings. It has enough features for most basic video edits, from transitions to color adjustments and basic text overlays. 

In-app Video Editors 

Most social media networks (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube) have their own built in video editors that we also recommend taking advantage of. These editors are more basic compared to others, but they get the job done effectively and efficiently. One of the biggest pros of editing videos on social networks directly is the ability to share the edited videos quickly and easily with friends and family. 

Final Thoughts

Video editing is an invaluable tool for creating stunning, professional videos. It allows you to take raw footage and turn it into something special. Utilizing these video editing tools will help you create polished, high-quality videos that are sure to impress viewers.

And if you are new to editing video footage we suggest you start off with the free versions of these tools to learn. When you are ready to make the commitment and really start to improve your video content, upgrade to the paid version to unlock even more features.

As always, do not be afraid to have fun with your videos. Show your office’s personality and be creative — this will make your video more memorable and engaging! 

—Tyler Harris, Lead Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Free Tools to get You Started on Making Video Content appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

With the ever-evolving world of social media, it can be hard to know what content is performing the best at any given moment. In the past few years, video content has begun to take ranking priority as it has become a popular form of media. By including videos in your social strategy, you may find that not only will your content rank higher, but it may perform better. 

If your practice isn’t already utilizing video content, now is the best time to start. But what kind of video content should you create? In this blog we have outlined 5 guaranteed video trends that will help take your social media game to the next level. 

So, let’s get started. 

Brand Building 

If your practice hasn’t created a video before, brand building videos are a great place to start. When it comes to brand building, it’s best to keep things real and stick with what you know. 

Think of brand building videos as a way for your audience to get familiar with your practice. These videos can outline a specific service, provide a behind the scenes look, or include stories about how your practice came to be. Keep it simple and upbeat by focusing on one topic during each video. This will keep your audience’s attention, help build authenticity, and make your practice appear more approachable. 

Short Form Videos 

Video content doesn’t have to be a whole production, it can be something quick and easy. As social media continues to grow, the human attention span is becoming shorter. The purpose of short form video is to keep your audience completely engaged with your content for a shorter period of time. This is why you’ll see TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts becoming increasingly popular. 

Your short form videos can be whatever you want. Consider using one of those trending audio clips you keep hearing when you scroll through your feed, which will help boost your ranking. You could even talk your practice into learning the newest viral TikTok dance. Since these videos are shorter, try to create content that’s engaging, educating and/or inspiring for your followers. Whatever you decide, keep it quick and fun. 

Silent Videos & Captions 

We know how it sounds. Silent videos? Isn’t the point of a video to have audio? But stay with us. Silent videos are on the rise due to their accessibility. How many times have you taken public transportation or been in a quiet environment, scrolling through your phone, and then click on a video only to discover your volume was at full blast? You’re not alone. 

Because of accessibility, more and more people are watching videos silently. In a study done by Verizon Media and Publicis Media, 69% of consumers are viewing videos with the sound off in public places and 80% are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available. For this reason, it’s important to include captions in your videos. Not only will your content cater to those who prefer silent videos, but you’ll be able to expand your audience to reach those that are Deaf or hard-of-hearing. 

Educational and Informational Videos 

Since the internet is an easy resource to access all sorts of topics, educational and informational videos are on the rise. How many times have you scrolled through your feed and found a video for cleaning hacks, food recipes, or a how-to video? These videos are a fun and easy way to interact with your audience. 

Your practice can utilize this same type of video format to create an educational video. A few examples include an information video on a service you offer, at home best practices, or anything that aligns best with your practice. When preparing for these videos, create a script and do your best to stick to one topic at a time – this will keep your audience’s attention. 

User Generated Content 

These days more people are relying on user generated content (UGC) to assist with their social media strategy.  According to Marketing Insider Group, 60% of consumers believe that UGC is more authentic and trustworthy than other brand content. For this reason, we suggest that your practice begin incorporating UGC if you haven’t already. 

When integrating UGC into your social strategy, consider using a testimonial or a demonstration of a service your practice offers. For example, you can ask a patient to track their journey with Invisalign or share a review from a patient about their experience getting dental implants. Either way, this content will appear more authentic since it’s coming directly from your patients and speaks to your audience. 

Final Thoughts

Is your practice ready to take your social media to the next level? There’s no time like the present. Simply choose your video topic and hit that record button. If you need help editing your clips, we recommend using platforms such as Canva or Adobe’s After Effects/Premiere Pro. Once you create your first video, be sure to share it with us! We can’t wait to see what you come up with. 

Interested in learning more about how Sesame Social can boost your social media presence? Contact us today! 

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 5 Video Trends Your Practice Should Utilize in 2023  appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Online reviews are a local ranking factor that can help boost your website traffic and offer free content. They’re also an easy opportunity to showcase customer engagement. Reviews benefit your practice’s SEO strategy and have become more important over the years as customers frequently use reviews to weigh their decisions.

While the reviews from more industry-specific websites like TripAdvisor and Yelp prove beneficial to some businesses, Google reviews make up the majority of all online reviews and they are relevant to practices across the board.

Trust with Customers

Perhaps the most obvious benefit to receiving reviews on Google is that positive reviews indicate to customers that your business is legitimate and trustworthy, earning you more clicks, calls, and interactions naturally. More and more over time, people have relied on reviews to help them make decisions.

Local Ranking Factor 

Along with the benefit of earning the trust of users, Google rewards practices that receive reviews. The more reviews, especially with a positive average, the better chance your practice will have at showing up in the Google local pack. The local pack is the top 3 results that show up on the map. Reviews that are keyword-rich or mention specific services and products act as free content to help boost rankings. 

Receiving reviews is only the first step, however. In order to maximize your SEO benefit for your reviews. It is always recommended that businesses respond to reviews. Not only do customers appreciate seeing responses, but Google will also take responsiveness into consideration. Check out this guide provided from Google on how to respond to reviews. 

What About Negative Reviews? 

Even negative reviews, so long as they aren’t too abundant, can benefit your business. Negative reviews offer:

• Authenticity: Customers are more likely to trust a slightly below 5-star average than a perfect 5-star average on Google Business Profiles
• Insight into Customers’ Reactions: Negative reviews can give you a chance to see something from a customer’s point of view and can offer new ways to improve your business
• Be a Part of the Conversation: Showing sympathy and a genuine desire to make a situation right will show your potential customers that you will be there for them whether their experience is good or not. 

Final Thoughts

Online reviews matter more to SEO than one might think. Both in the way they can make an impression on users, and in the way that Google judges authority and rankings.

Next time you are looking at your Google reviews, make sure to consider each of these points!

—Team Member, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Why your Online Reviews will matter for your SEO Strategy appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Instagram recently announced that they are putting more of a priority on photo content and carousels at the start of this year. Because of that, video content, such as Reels will no longer be pushed through the algorithm. 

With this change, a lot of creators will need to learn how to optimize their Reels to ensure their content is still being seen. In today’s blog, we’re going to go over the best things you can do to optimize your video content. 

Video Format  

There are a few important things to do when formatting your video content. First of all, you’ll want to make sure that the videos you are posting are optimized for mobile viewing. There are very few people who use Instagram and Facebook on their desktop computers. Because of this, you want to make sure that the video is easy to watch on a mobile device. 

But what does this mean? Since both Instagram and Facebook have a vertical feed, your videos will need to match that. This is called the aspect ratio. We suggest recording in a vertical format to ensure that your videos fit the aesthetic of Instagram and Facebook mobile. This will also make sure that your video is viewable. Instagram and Facebook have an aspect ratio of 1:1 in their feeds and Reels can be enlarged to fit a 9:16 aspect ratio. 

The thumbnail is another important component of the format. Instagram will allow you to either select part of the Reel to use as the thumbnail or you can import one from your camera role. While the thumbnail isn’t as important for the Reel itself, the thumbnail is what will show up on your feed. If you are posting content that may be educational, we suggest adding a title on the thumbnail so your followers can easily find what they are looking for. 

Content in the Video  

Now that you know vertical content tends to perform better than horizontal content, it’s time to start filming the content. 

One thing that many creators overlook when filming and editing their content is the use of captions. Did you know that many people scroll through their phones without any sound? In fact, 85% of video views happen without the viewer even listening to the Reel. This is important because if your viewer doesn’t know what you are saying because their sound is off, you’ll miss out on that engagement. 

Thankfully captions are pretty easy to add within the Instagram editing tool or in 3rd party editing apps. 

With that being said, Facebook and Instagram autoplay their video content with the sound muted. If you are putting most of the important information in the first few seconds of your Reel, the viewer may miss this information. 

Even though you may not want to share the most important information in the first few seconds, it’s important to take that time to capture the audience’s attention. With all the online content, making yours stand out will make a tremendous difference in your content’s performance.  

You can grab their attention by presenting problems, using powerful visuals, or providing them with key takeaways. But remember whatever you decide to do, USE CAPTIONS!  

Understanding your Analytics  

The last part of optimizing your video content on your socials is learning to understand how your content is performing. Why would you waste your time and energy on something that your followers don’t want to see? This is why going through your insights within Facebook and Instagram is crucial.  

Final Thoughts  

As soon as we all got used to creating Reels, Instagram is switching things up and chose to make photo content a priority. Will it be hard to navigate this new type of content while trying to make your video content still relevant, yes? But is it impossible? Absolutely not! 

If you take the time to cater to Instagram’s algorithm and what we already know about it, while still making your content something your viewers want to watch, you shouldn’t see a drastic change in your engagement. 

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Why Should you be Optimizing your Video Content on Social Media?  appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

In the past, we’ve talked about engagement and how important it is to your social media presence. What we haven’t touched on is how to encourage people to engage with your posts on social media.

You’re putting a considerable amount of time and effort into creating content that you are proud of for your platforms, so it is only fair that your effort doesn’t go unnoticed. Today, we’re breaking down our top 6 tips to help optimize your content and get you better engagement on your posts.

Incorporate Visuals to Your Content

Many platforms require you to have visuals such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat but there are others where visual content is optional such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Don’t make visual content optional. In fact, try to incorporate it whenever possible.

If you were scrolling through your Facebook feed and were seeing post after post only containing text, until you came across an engaging photo of your dentist’s office offering free whitening for this week, whose post would you stop to for? If you answered the post with the photo, you are absolutely correct!

Adding any sort of visual such as images, infographics, and videos can help boost your engagement and make your content more appealing. As social media continues grow, visualizing information for efficient consumption has become more common place. People are now shifting from telling a story to showing the story.

They don’t say a picture is worth a thousand words for nothing.

Ask Your Followers Questions 

When you’re asked a question, how often are you responding? We would hope that it’s every time, if not most of the time. It’s the same on your social media platforms, you ask your followers a question with the hopes of receiving an answer.

However before you go asking away on your Instagram stories, put yourself in your follower’s shoes and ask yourself two things: 1) Does this question pertain to their situation and 2) Will they know how to answer this question? If either of those answers are no, consider some different options

There are many ways you can ask questions. If you are looking for immediate feedback on an issue, ask on your Facebook and Instagram stories. If you are looking for a way to start a conversation relating to a certain topic, ask it in a post as a visual or in the captions. This is a great way to build up your engagement because as your followers start commenting and answering your questions, you’re also adding to the conversation by responding to your comments.

Keep Your Content Short and Sweet

Save the long-form content for your website’s blog. That is where the SEO keywords are really going to matter. Social media was built on the idea of consuming as much information and content as fast as possible. This is typically why many platforms have character limits.

Make sure your content is concise and to the point to help maintain the reader’s engagement. No one is going to log onto Instagram to see a whole documentary about your practice’s team members. They can go to YouTube or read about it on your blog.

Give the audience their answers quickly. Use the short-form content to be mysterious, and offer only a piece of the puzzle. This will get your audience to interact more with your content.

Encourage the Sharing of Your Content

The only way to boost the shareability of your content is by creating something that people want to link back to. Whether they are sharing it with all of their followers or sending a link via private message, you are the one benefiting from the movement of your content.

Storytelling is a great way to make your content more likely to be shared. Make sure your content is relatable to your followers. Typically when someone is following their dental office on social media they are hoping to learn more about the doctors, facility, or staff. Make sure that you are able to offer some sort of knowledge that they didn’t have before.

Another way to grow your engagement through the power of sharing is through contests. You could start a custom sound through Instagram Reels and tell your patients that they can be entered in a contest by using your sound and sharing your content. Interactive content will outperform non-interactive content.

Learn Your Follower’s Behavior

This one may be a bit trickier than others because it requires you to understand your insights. Thankfully many social platforms have made it easy to find this data.

One of the quickest things you can do to encourage engagement is by posting at the time that your followers are the most active. It only makes sense that if you want someone to see your post, like, comment, and share it, you’ll need to do so when they are online. So why not post when most of your audience is online?

Final Thoughts

One thing to consider when implementing the steps we just highlighted is platform where you are posting. Instagram engagement will look very different from engagement on Facebook and other platforms.

You will need to understand how each of the different social platforms operate before committing to implanting our tips. 

Engagement can be tricky because it’s not something that you can always control, but there are steps that you can take to ensure that you are encouraging a response to your content. By focusing on our tips and tricks you’ll be sure to increase your engagement in no time!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Tips to Optimize Engagement on Your Posts in 2023 appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

With all the changes that happened within the SEO industry last year, we wanted to highlight a few of the most important trends that you should keep in mind for 2023.

Let’s go through some of the top trends that we have seen and help you optimize your website for better rankings and traffic!

Update your Content

Having current website content is important not only to enhance user experience but can also help improve search engine rankings. Since Google places importance on your content’s relevancy, as it is a primary ranking factor, it’s important to also have up-to-date and accurate content on your website.

You can easily go into older blog posts and see how they are performing. The blogs that are underperforming, should be prioritized, and updated to ensure the content is relevant. Making changes to the copy is important to Google’s algorithm.

Prioritize Search Intent and User Behavior

Your customer’s search intent, aka the purpose of an online search, and their user behavior, or the way they interact with your website, is always changing. Understanding what your patient’s intent is will allow you to create more competitive content that ranks better.

When you know what your patients are searching for on your website and you are prepared by providing them with helpful content to answer their questions, you are setting your practice up to rank better on search engines. This will be especially important this year as Google continues to better understand what is considered expert advice and will choose to rank this content higher.

Don’t Forget Mobile SEO

In 2023, it’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have a mobile device. And this year, user experience on mobile devices will be a big focus for SEO experts.

Mobile SEO makes it easier for visitors to navigate your website on a smartphone or tablet. If users are having to zoom in and out to read or click buttons it can turn potential patients away. By putting an emphasis on the mobile user experience of your website, you can begin to fix a lot of the issues that may be preventing you from getting new patients.

To start improving the user experience on your mobile site, you will want to start with easy fixes. Personalize your content according to your user’s needs. By doing this, Google will eventually start focusing on your mobile site to determine your rankings.

Local SEO

Google continues to push towards highly localized search results, meaning it’s probably time that you start focusing on your Google My Business reviews as well as other platforms and their reviews.

Google makes sure that results will change depending on a person’s location. If you want your website to rank higher, then you need to include information that can target audiences closest to you. When targeting local audiences, you’ll want to ensure that the content on your website is specific to your geographic area in order to rank higher on online searches. This should include your neighborhoods, cities, states, and any other information that can localize your content.

Strategize Everything

Your SEO strategy is everything in 2023. Thankfully the Sesame SEO team has you covered.

A strategic plan will help you stay on top of your competitors. You’ll want to understand how the social environment can change in real-time and how your patient’s user behaviors are always shifting. By understanding the consumer’s behavior at a deeper level and integrating it into your SEO strategy this year, you will be able to maximize your opportunities for gaining more traffic from search engines.

While these are not the only trends we saw in 2022, they are some of the most important. To continue to grow your rankings and results, it is important that you stay knowledgeable and aware of current trends. If you have any questions about anything covered in this post, please reach out to the SEO team and they will be happy to answer all your questions.

The post 2022 SEO Trends to Improve your 2023 Search Results appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

With our SEO and Social Services, you get monthly reports that go over how your website and social platforms are performing. You can see how your results have improved month-over-month, see what website pages are the most visited, as well as determine the ROI for your different paid campaigns.

You can always reach out to our teams to review your report. Use this blog post as a resource to understand the details of your search report.

What is covered in your Report?

Depending on the services that you have with Sesame, the following data is provided in your monthly report:

• Sesame First Call Data
• Website Data
• Sesame SEO Data
• Sesame Social Data
• Pay-Per-Click Data
• Social Media Advertising Data

Let’s take a closer look at exactly what data you will be seeing in your reports.

Sesame First Call

Sesame First Call is a tracking system that identifies the online marketing strategy that is most successful in generating the first call from a potential patient.

With this report, you are shown data on calls from organic sources versus calls from paid traffic. This can help you understand whether you are bringing in more patients from our marketing efforts or if patients are finding you organically.

We will provide you with the month’s data compared to the previous month so you can see how your data over time. You will also be provided with graphs to see the change over the past year. This graph is broken down by the total number of calls that you have received and how many of those were new patient calls and how many were returning patients.

We suggest that you get at least 4 months of First Call data to really see how it impacts the number of new patients that you will receive through the service.

Website Data

Our website section provides you with data on the number of patients visiting your website and what actions they are taking during the visit.

With this data, you can see the traffic by location and a breakdown of where your patients are searching for your practice. This can be incredibly useful if you are looking into paid advertising. You’re also able to see the number of visits to your website over the last year, and the top pages that are being viewed.

Your traffic and top pages data will only be shown month-by-month. To see this data over time you will need to open each report.

Sesame SEO

Sesame SEO focuses on how patients arrive at your website through organic, referral, and direct searches. Organic traffic is visitors that come to your website unpaid from a search engine. Direct traffic means your patient types your URL directly into their search bar or visits through a bookmark. Referral traffic comes from a site that directs visitors to your page like through Facebook or a local website that you are listed on.

The SEO section shows a few different key data points. The first one is overall traffic. This breaks down the types of visits you receive. You can find the total visits per month as well as the average daily visits and how much time each visitor spent per month. Then it shows data from the total visits you received from each of the traffic sources as well as how many of those visits were new.

The graph to the side provides a visual overview of the total visits by traffic source so you can easily see where your traffic is coming from.

The second half of the SEO section shows the top referring sites. As we mentioned above, referral traffic clicks through to your website from another online source. In this report, you can see a breakdown of which sites are your top referrals.

Finally, you can see where your overall traffic is coming from.

Sesame Social – Facebook Data

Your Sesame Social section will be over a span of two pages. Let’s start by breaking down what is on the first page.

Through the Sesame Social service, you weekly get posts to your Facebook and Instagram. At this time, the reporting is only able to provide data on Facebook which is detailed in the first page of the Sesame Social data.

There are 4 parts to the first page, starting with an overview of Facebook Fans. This goes through how many fans you have and gain over this month as well as your Impressions, Reach, and Engagement from this month and last month. These are the most important numbers because it shows how your fans are reacting to the content that you post.

You can see a visual overview of your reach, engagement, and impressions in the graph below over the span of a year. This can help your practice understand what kind of content your fans want to see on your page.

The next section is a visual overview of your total fans over time. We want to see a steady increase here however it is normal to lose fans as well, so don’t be too worried about that.

Finally, there is a list of your page views by location. Just like in the website traffic section, you can use this data if you are looking to run paid advertising on your Facebook and Instagram accounts. We will talk more about this data towards the end of this post.

Please note that to gain access to your Facebook insights (data from Facebook) you must give us administrative access to your Facebook page as well as have a minimum of 30 likes. This means that if you are just starting your Facebook page, you may not have data right away on your reports because there are a few requirements that need to be completed first. 

And of course, your Facebook data will trend higher if your practice is participating in creating and posting content on a regular basis.

Sesame Social – Blog Data

The second part of your social section will cover data on your website blog as well as Twitter if you have it connected to our social tool.

Your blog data will show the number of pageviews you have had in the current month compared to the last month. It will also show you a year preview of how your views have changed over the past year.

Sesame Pay-Per-Click

Sesame Pay-Per-Click helps target new patients through search engine ads with a monthly set budget and a call tracking number to allow you to track patient calls. This section breaks down all the numbers that you need to know for your monthly campaign.

The Campaign Spend shows you an overview of your budget this month and last month versus how much was spent. It also provides you with your Average Cost-Per-Click (CPC). This number is important because it measures the price that you pay for each click of your PPC ads. This is important because you want your cost-per-click to be as low as possible as it is a good indicator that your ads are performing how they should with your audience. There is also a visual of your CPC over the span of one year. Remember, a decrease in CPC is what you want to see!

You’ll also see your campaign performance. This will include the number of total impressions, total clicks, and the click-through rate for this month and last month. The click-through-rate shows you how many clicks your ad receives. This number you want to be higher because that means that more people are clicking through to your website. Generally, you will want between a 2-5% click-through rate. Check out your graph on this page to see how your ads are performing over time. If you are noticing a decrease, reach out to your SEO team and they can help adjust your campaign to perform better. 

Sesame Social Media Ads

Finally, the last page of your report will be about your social media campaigns. Just like your Pay-Per-Click page, you will see data on how the campaign performed for the current month versus the previous month. You will also see the cost-per-click over time.

You will want to keep your eyes on Cost-Per-Click and Click-Through-Rate in this section again. This will help you determine how your ads are performing. However, knowing the total impressions, total clicks, and total reach can be beneficial to know as well so keep those numbers in mind too.

Remember, if you do not have all these services, you will not have data on some of these pages. However, if you do have a service and are not seeing any data, please reach out to your SEO or Social teams, depending on the service, and they can investigate the issue.

We hope that this post gave you a good idea of what to expect from your monthly search report. If you are ever looking to review the results in more detail, please schedule a call with the respective teams. However, please note that we do require at least 3 months of data before reviewing the results month-over-month and making any adjustments to the strategy.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Understanding Your Search Report appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

2022, is officially over and we are now in 2023! This means the birth of new social media trends, another opportunity to start fresh with your strategy, and a new year to create exciting and engaging content.

But what if you’re stuck and don’t know what content to create? Don’t worry, you have Sesame’s social media Team here to help! Continue reading to see our top content ideas that you should be creating this year.

Short Videos

These are known as Reels on Instagram, TikToks on TikTok, and YouTube Shorts on YouTube. We’ve talked a lot about short-form video content in the past and we are seeing that the trend of creating this type of content isn’t going away anytime soon.

Branded Images

Branded content tends to be more eye-catching to your followers, especially when scrolling through their feed. They will be able to recognize your practice a lot easier.

With our social service, you have access to custom-made logo frames that you can add to any of your photos or graphics. These can be found within the social tool and uploaded to your Facebook and Instagram.

Share Employee Spotlights

Your team is the backbone of your business and it’s important for them to feel appreciated. What better way to appreciate your team than to dedicate a post to them!

Employee spotlights are a great way to humanize your practice and enhance your branding. Your social media accounts should be a reflection of your practice.

As a bonus, if you have employee profiles on your website you can easily redirect traffic to those pages.

Follow Social Media Trends

If you scroll on different platforms, you can start to see a pattern in popular content. Whether there are videos with popular sounds, challenges that are happening, or even trending hashtags, there is an endless number of posts that you will see.

Trending content is popular for a reason. It’s because your audience likes to watch or interact with it. What better way to increase your engagement than to participate in some of these trends?

If you are choosing to go the route of trending content, you should do your research first and understand what is trending in your industry. You can find this by looking at what your competitors or similar businesses are posting. This will help you execute the finished product perfectly.

Repurpose Content

If you’re on multiple platforms, creating content is going to seem like a full-time job. You will be planning different content for each platform and figuring out the best strategy.

However, there is an easier way to do this. It’s called repurposing content!

How do you do this?  You will create a few pieces of content and post them across each of your platforms. If it fits their guidelines, you will have content for all your platforms. Keep in mind that repurposing does not mean copying and pasting. You may keep the same video and photo but tailoring the content to each platform is crucial to ensure the post is successful.

Develop Niche Content

We know that you have a target audience in mind. If you’re a pediatric dentist, most likely you will not be targeting adults in their mid-60s.

Niche content will allow you to create content that speaks to a specific audience. This content focuses on a very specific topic that is relevant to your industry. By creating this type of content, you will appeal directly to leads that are looking for your services. You’ll be able to drive them directly to your page where they will find content that answers their questions.

Add in Different Types of Content

Posting photos for the past year may have worked in 2022, but now we’re in 2023 and your audience expects more from you. While photos are still important consider adding videos, infographics, and other custom graphics.

Using resources such as Canva, which is included in your Sesame Social Tool, will be extremely useful when you are diversifying your content type.

Double-Up on your Content

And finally, you’ll want to make your life 10 times easier and double-up on your content. This doesn’t mean creating twice the amount of work, but instead, spending some time creating different types of content on a certain subject.

For example, let’s say you are recording a reel with a patient who just finished their cleaning appointment and you’re asking them to talk about their oral health routine. When they mention the type of toothbrush they use, you can create a separate post highlighting the benefits of that toothbrush.

By using this approach, you can build content off other pieces of content. It’s a great way to create content without thinking too hard about what to create.

The hardest part of creating content is thinking about what you should post next. We hope that by reading through this article you were able to get a better idea of what kind of content you can be creating in 2023!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 8 Content Ideas for 2023 appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

It’s the start of a new year and with a new beginning comes plenty of opportunities to grow your social media presence.

In today’s blog, we will go over our top 3 goals that we think your practice should be focusing on in 2023.

Increase your Engagement

Engagement is how your audience interacts with your content. This could be a like on your post, or a share of your reel. It is any sort of action done on your post.

Now increasing engagement numbers may seem daunting especially when social media algorithms are responsible to increase your organic engagement. However, there are a few things that you can do to ensure that you aren’t getting lost in your follower’s feeds.

One of the first things that you can do is share engaging content. This means creating content that is both unique and relevant. There’s a good rule to creating content, you want to have 80% of your posts have an educational purpose that helps your followers solve a problem. The other 20% of your content will need to promote your business.

Another way to increase your engagement is by strategically using hashtags. Hashtags make it easier for your audience to find your social media channels and content. Hashtags allow you to become more visible to users that go beyond your audience. We suggest using a mix of popular hashtags with more branded hashtags to extend your reach, gain more followers, and boost your engagement.

Holding Contests

Contests can help in different ways, from increasing engagement to boosting promotions and motivating your clients to schedule appointments with you.

Running contests on your social media will push people to interact with your brand because they are trying to win a prize. Not only will your followers, likes, and overall engagement have a significant boost but as your followers are entering your contest, you are collecting important lead information to help broaden your customer base.

If you are looking for help setting up a contest, check out our blog post on creating a social media contest.

Bring Traffic to your Website

The number one thing that you can do to redirect traffic to your website is to increase your engagement and reach. There are many ways that you can achieve this but aiming for quality content and growing your brand familiarity are the best ways to do this. As we mentioned above, you can post regularly, interact with followers, and create eye-catching content.

You’ll also want to focus on the platforms that can drive the most web traffic. Since your goal is to increase traffic from social media, it only makes sense to start by choosing the best platforms that can do this.

Not surprisingly, Facebook is the top-performing platform when it comes to social media referrals. With the help of a business page, you can easily drive your audience from your Facebook page directly to your website for appointment booking.

And finally, we recommend ensuring that a link to your website is on each of your social media profiles. Whether it’s in the information section or the bio of your page, you will want to include it somewhere so your patients can easily access your website when needed.

There are many different goals that you can work towards this year, but we suggest starting small, making progress, and then setting up more goals. Each of these goals should target a different part of your social media strategy. They should each play a part in making sure that your social media is bringing in new patients to your practice.

If you’re still having trouble figuring out how to work towards these goals or targeting another part of your strategy, reach out to the social team and they can better help you to achieve the right goals for your practice’s social media presence.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post What Top 3 Goals I Should Be Setting for My Social Media This Year? appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Facebook and Instagram are two popular social media platforms that have different features and audiences. Understanding the differences between the two can help businesses and individuals determine what to post on each platform for maximum engagement and reach.

Facebook vs Instagram

Facebook is a more general social networking platform that allows users to connect with friends, family, and customers to share news, and updates, and to join interest-based groups. Instagram, on the other hand, is primarily focused on visual content and is often used by individuals and businesses to showcase their products or services.

When deciding what to post on each, it’s important to consider the unique features and audiences of the two platforms. For example, on Facebook, you might want to share longer-form content such as an article about oral health and overall health or updates about your practice. On Instagram, you’ll want to focus on high-quality photos and videos that are visually appealing and attention-grabbing, such as before and after photos or a smile restoration. Here are five examples for each platform to help get you started.

5 Examples of What You Might Post on Facebook:

1. A blog post or article that you’ve written
2. A personal update about your practice, such as a new staff member or a philanthropic endeavor
3. A video that you’ve created, such as a tutorial or a vlog
4. A link to an interesting article or website that you want to share with your followers and patients
5. A photo album showcasing a recent trip or event

5 Examples of What You Might Post on Instagram:

1. A high-quality photo that showcases your dental practice
2. A behind-the-scenes video of a dental procedure
3. A quote or motivational message that resonates with your audience
4. A short, attention-grabbing video that showcases your practice’s personality
5. A Boomerang or stop-motion video that adds some fun to your feed.

It is important to have a variety of content and to post on both Facebook and Instagram to keep your audience engaged. Make sure to keep the specific features and audience of each platform in mind when creating your content. Regardless of which platform you’re using, remember that quality is key. Your posts should be well-written, engaging, and relevant to your audience. Make sure to include a call to action in your posts to encourage your followers to act, whether it’s visiting your website, making an appointment, or following your business on social media.

Overall, Facebook and Instagram are both powerful tools for connecting with your audience and promoting your business. By understanding the unique features of each platform, you can create engaging and effective posts that will help you build relationships and grow your business.

—Jason Martin, Practice Solutions Marketing Manager, Sesame Communications

The post That’s so Meta: Facebook vs Instagram and What to Post on Each appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Consistently posting on your social media has many benefits for your practice, but did you know that consistently posting to your website’s blog is just as important? 

With our Sesame Social service, we have you covered with weekly posts. In order to maximize your organic traffic, we recommend 3-5 blog posts a week. We cover this in-depth in our post on Blog Frequency. However, it is important to remember that the quality of your blogs is more important than the number of blogs you are posting.

Here are some topics that you can write about on your blog that can help increase traffic. 

1. Talk about your services – You may have a list of your services on your website but having a blog post dedicated to each of your services could help your clients better understand what each service entails.
2. Industry News – If there are any new updates in the dental world, it’s a great way to create content for your website and inform your patients of all the latest news. Just make sure that you are using reputable sources for your information.
3. Comparison Posts – Compare and contrast the different services you offer and how they are similar and different from one another.
4. FAQs – There may be a section on your website for your FAQs however take the chance to update that section in a blog post and answer any questions that your patients may have.
5. Patient Case Studies – Case studies are a great way to show your credibility. Post before and after photos and include a brief overview of the work you completed.
6. Introduce your Team Members –If you do not have a meet-the-team section for your staff this can be an easy way to collect a few different pieces of content and allow your patients to get to know your team better.
7. Product Reviews – There are many dental products on the market and by writing reviews for a few products you could easily create additional content for your website.
8. Highlight any important milestones – Has your practice received an award? Is one of your team members being recognized for something exciting? Talking about these milestones in your blog is a great way to build some buzz around the excitement and highlight your teams’ accomplishments.
9. Contests – If you are running any contests or giveaways, make sure to highlight them both on your social media and your blog. Your blog can be used to describe all the rules and instructions as well as give a more in-depth overview of why you are running the contest.
10. Share Office Updates – Do you have new staff members or updated hours? A blog post is a great way for your patients to read all about new updates within your office.
11. Monthly Updates – You can take this opportunity to talk about any changes that were made within the past month. This is also great if you are being consistent about your monthly posts because it gives your readers something to look forward to.
12. Holiday Posts – There are holidays year-round and you can easily talk about what sort of things you and your team did to celebrate those holidays.
13. Charity & Awareness Posts – Are there any charities or organizations that you would like to share with your patients? Highlighting them in your blog can be a great way to bring exposure to both your practice and the cause you are supporting.
14. List Posts – Lists are a great way to share a lot of content at once. Share your top 5 tips to keep up with your dental routine in 2023 or you can share the best dental-related gifts to give this year.
15. Recycle Your Most Successful Posts – Take a look at what posts performed the best and update them to be more recent. Then repost them to your website to bring in some new traffic to your website.

Hopefully, this list will help you utilize your creative skills to write about topics that you know your patients will want to read. If you are still looking for new topics to write about, feel free to reach out to our social team and we can help you come up with new ideas. 

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 15 Blog Topics that Your Practice can be Posting All Year   appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

What Are Keywords & Why Are They Important? 

Keywords are the words or phrases that online users type into a search engine, like Google, to find results. By aligning the content of your website with relevant keywords of your target audience, it’s possible to appear, or rank, in search engine results, earning your website more traffic and more business.

How Can I Determine Which Keywords to Focus On? 

There are a few factors to keep in mind while choosing keywords to target on your website, whether your set of keywords is fairly simple or complex. 

1) Relevance and Searcher Intent 

An important component to keep in mind when choosing keywords is relevance/searcher intent. The owner of a dental practice may use the phrase “dental supplies” when referring to their practice needs, but when a patient types the same phrase into a search engine, we primarily see things like toothpaste and toothbrushes. For this reason, it’s important to stay up to date by checking search engine result pages (SERPs), forums, competitors, and other tools to understand the language that your audience uses.

As another example, when someone does a search for “orthodontist”, the examples that are likely to show are going to be more related to what an orthodontist is. However, when someone searches for “orthodontist” along with a descriptor like location, the search results are going to show them local orthodontists.

It is best to focus your time and energy on keywords that will result in direct interest in the content on your website. 

2) Traffic Potential and Rankability 

A balance exists between finding keywords that cast a large enough net but are also achievable. By using online tools like Google Keyword Planner, it’s possible to find the search volume (average online searches per month) of keywords and phrases to better make decisions. 

If you operate a business that sells and installs solar panels for homes, you might think that “solar panels” is an appropriate keyword to target for your website, but a keyword that is too broad can be near impossible to rank for. There are around 201 thousand searches monthly in the US for “solar panels,” and the results include cost-savings information, guides, government resources, businesses, and more. As we learned in the previous section, not only is it difficult to understand the searcher’s intent when they type “solar panels” into a search bar, but it’s also such a competitive phrase that it might not be worth the enormous amount of time and energy to attempt to rank for that keyword. This is where long-tail keywords come in. 

A long-tail keyword is a more descriptive keyword with less search volume (fewer searches performed monthly). A long-tail keyword that could work in this example is “solar panel installation service.” This keyword and surrounding topics sees around 380 searches per month in the US, so it’s less competitive and easier to rank for. There’s also less confusion about what the searcher is looking for through this phrase. 

Casting a smaller net in a more relevant area can earn you more traffic for your website with less effort. 

3) Ability to Create Content Surrounding the Topic

Google’s crawler bots search through websites daily, indexing them based on the content present on their pages. This is how search engines deliver relevant results to searchers. 

In order to rank for a keyword, content must be in place on your website involving that keyword. For this reason, it must be possible and sensical to write about or create content on your website surrounding the keywords that you choose. 

Targeting the keyword phrase, “teeth whitening by dentist” could bring a generic teeth whitening website more traffic but those people will only be converted if the teeth whitening is, in fact, offered by a dental practitioner. If they find the website has inaccurate information based on what they were searching for, they will not stay on the website and will continue to look elsewhere.

By ensuring that your keywords are attainable, relevant to your audience, and that content can be written surrounding your topics, you can choose keywords for your SEO strategy that make sense for your business goals.

—Erin Feret, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post How to Know Which Keywords to Target in Your SEO Strategy appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Building a strong social media strategy is important to create a healthy online community.  A successful social media strategy can also have a positive impact on your office’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Keep reading to learn how! 

Brand Awareness 

Sharing content on various social media platforms helps increase brand awareness, which in turn helps boost online visibility and increase website traffic. By posting content that your patients are likely to engage with, Google and other search engine algorithms can determine that the content you’re sharing is genuine and useful. In turn, that will help compel them to boost your practice’s positioning in relevant search results.   

Regular Blog Posting 

Weekly blog posts are a great way to increase your rankings. Search engines love to see small updates to your website every week. It shows indicates that your website is constantly being worked on and is actively being monitored, not just sitting dormant. When their crawlers index your website, they take blog views into account. By sharing your blog posts on social media networks, such as Facebook, you’re likely to draw more traffic to your website. Your patients will click on the blog post link on Facebook to go read the actual post on the website, increasing traffic and time on site. These are important factors Google and other search engines take into consideration when ranking your website within search results.  

Activity Matters 

Having a successful post on a social media platform, one that encourages interaction and engagement, shows search engines that you are an active business online. The next time a patient searches for you via their preferred search engine, Google will display your social media profiles in the results, which in turn can increase your visibility as well as your credibility in the eyes of Google.  Sharing knowledgeable, original content on your website can establish you as a trusted resource. For example, if you have a general blog post that gets many views if Google notices they may even display this to someone performing a general search about that topic, which can really impact visibility in a positive way.  

Diversify Content Including Video 

Various types of content can also play a role in determining your search rankings. Search engines love to see many forms of content on your website. As previously mentioned, having an active blog plays a huge role in your search results, but that’s not the only thing Google is looking for. Having YouTube videos embedded on your website, for example, can also see increases in your rankings. Simple videos like an “office tour” or “meet the doctor” can greatly improve the patient’s time on site, which search engines also love to see.  

Building trust and customer loyalty is a common goal of effective social media campaign. By doing so, you can reap more than just increased engagement on your social profiles – your search visibility can increase as well.  

Driving brand awareness and exposure are great indicators you’re a trusted, active source online, which search engines like Google will likely take into consideration when ranking your site. That’s why building both an effective social media and SEO strategy is such a necessity.  

If you’re looking to get more information on how our social service and the social suite can help you improve SEO, reach out to our team at 866-592-7572. 

—Tyler Harris, Lead Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Social Media’s Impact on SEO appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.