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.

We’re back with another blog to help you crush your social media strategy this fall. 

While some may take fall for granted, it has a lot to offer in terms of content.  This fall season, let us help you revamp your social media strategy! 

Below we have outlined a few different types of content that your practice can utilize this season as well as a couple suggestions on how to post this content. 

Practice Related Updates 

The change of the season may also bring changes to your practice. One great way to utilize your social media content is to include any practice related updates that your followers need to know. For these types of post, we suggest making sure it’s something your patients can easily see. Because of these, we recommend posting it to your feed in addition to sharing the post to your story. 

Types of Content to Post: 

• Updated Office Hours 
• Inclement Weather Conditions (including how it impacts appointments) 
• Staff Updates 
• Current Promotions 
• Service Highlights (old or new) 

Important Dates 

Throughout the fall season, there are certain holidays and important dates that may deserve mentioning. If your office likes to decorate and celebrate these special days in the office, why not on your social media as well?  While you can’t “decorate” your social media in the same way as your office, you can still incorporate some personality into your content. If you are looking to highlight these but don’t want to necessarily add it to your feed permanently, you may consider just posting it as a story. However, if your practice is up to it, you could always get creative with it and make a fun reel or graphic to highlight the occasion. 

Types of Content to Post: 

• Birthdays 
• Work Anniversaries 
• Oral Cancer Awareness Month (November) 
• Veterans Day (November 11^th) 
• Thanksgiving Day (November 25^th) 
• Winter Solstice (December 21^st) 

User Generated Content (UGC) 

Each day welcomes more opportunities for user generated content. We encourage your practice to utilize content from patients because it’s specific and unique to your office. By utilizing this content, it shows real patients getting results and having a positive experience which may encourage new followers to reach out. Depending on the type of user generated content you receive, you can either create a graphic or a reel in addition to sharing it on your story for optimal viewing. Also, patients may decide to tag your practice in their own personal post. If that’s the case, we definitely encourage sharing their post on your story. 

Types of Content to Post: 

• Before and After Photos 
• Testimonials 
• Service Reviews 
• Photos that Highlight a Specific Service 
• Tagged Posts (or posts using your office specific hashtag) 

With all these content ideas, we want to stress the importance of using a content calendar. While consistent posting may seem overwhelming, content calendars allow you to plan ahead and schedule content weeks in advance. Instead of posting every day, we suggest taking one day to plan out a bunch of content so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. To learn more about content calendars, visit our previous blog titled Get Organized with a Social Media Content Calendar. 

Need a little extra help when it comes to your content? Our Social Team is here for you. If you aren’t already a member of our Sesame Social service, please reach out to learn more. Already a member? Give us a call and let us know how we can help you best utilize your service. 

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

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

Loyalty is earned. It often takes considerable effort to prove to your patients why they should be loyal to your practice. However, once you have their loyalty, it can last a lifetime and they are highly inclined to refer your practice to their family and friends.

In this post, I will cover several ways that you can improve your brand loyalty to ensure that you are not losing patients to competitors.

Humanize Your Content

Sharing the human side of your practice is a great way to build brand loyalty. But what does this mean?

Well, it could mean showing some behind-the-scenes content about your team members and what they do day-to-day.  You could also highlight charities or local businesses that are important to members of your staff.

Sharing the human side of your practice allows you to create a deeper relationship with your patients that generates value for both of you.

Be Authentic

Patients want to be able to count on your practice to deliver outstanding services. By providing an authentic appearance on your social profiles, you can build trust with your audience.

However, authenticity is not only about being honest. It’s also about being reliable and dependable. When people follow their dentist on Instagram they do so because they have built a trusting relationship and they also want to be informed about updates. 

Some opportunities for authenticity include explaining your services on Instagram Live, answering questions from patients, or responding to reviews posted to your Google My Business page.

Quality Over Quantity

If you think about it, no one will remember how many times you posted last week. What they will remember is the video that was not only educational and engaging but was fun and honest. People want high-quality content over quantity.

Be relevant, current, and specific. Producing top-notch content will push your patients to stop and interact with it. As a bonus, creating high-quality content will allow your practice to attract the right audience. When you have a goal in mind, you’ll find that it’s easier to appeal to your target audience.

On a related note, are you looking for more consistency in your strategy? Our social service can help. We offer two Facebook and one Instagram posts a week and a monthly content newsletter to provide you with six additional graphic posts. This means you could get 18-21 extra posts a month!

Be Responsive

We see many of our clients forgetting to respond on their social media channels. This means answering messages and comments, sharing user-generated content to their social profiles, and being transparent.

Responsiveness helps build a relationship between the practice and the patient. Above all, it helps increase brand loyalty. By taking the time to respond, you are showing your audience that they are valued. This gives them a reason to remain loyal to your brand.

We suggest setting up a process to ensure that your team is responding promptly. This can work however you would like so long as you have someone checking your social comments at least once a day. 

Do you need help with response management? With Sesame Social, you can see all your unanswered messages and comments on Facebook and Instagram. You can also respond to them directly from the platform to avoid missing out on responding to anyone. 

Encourage Sharing Reviews

Reviews and testimonials make great content for your website and social media. They offer transparency and boost trust among your audience.

They also allow your patients to speak on your behalf and say that you are a trusted professional and that your quality of work is excellent. This is important because many consumers tend to read through reviews before making a purchase. Make sure to prioritize this type of content!

On the other hand, negative reviews can also be good for your practice. For example, let’s say someone wasn’t happy with the length of their wait at their last appointment and decided to post a negative review. That is your opportunity to make it right with the patient and show everyone that while there may be an issue, your practice takes pride in making things right because you value your customers.

In either situation, your practice will have the opportunity to build loyalty.

Building brand loyalty takes time and is often challenging but, once you secure it, you’ll reap the benefits over time.

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

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 5 Ways to Improve Brand Loyalty on Social Media appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Are you struggling to understand why some of your content pieces perform better than others? The solutions is to use your Insights!

Insights can be found on Facebook or Instagram, and can easily paint a picture of your content’s performance. With the provided data,  you can determine what your audience is wanting to see from you.

If your practice is looking to up their content strategy while producing strong performing posts, check out this blog post covering how to understand your Insights to optimize your posting.

Insights 101

We won’t go too in-depth about Insights however we do think its important to highlight what it is and where you can find your practice’s insights.

The most important tip to utilizing your insights is make sure your Instagram and Facebook pages are turned on as Professional accounts. This means that you either have it labeled as a Business Account or a Creator Account. To figure out if you have a professional account, here are the guidelines:

On Instagram

Go to your Instagram mobile application and click your profile photo in the bottom right corner. From there, go to the menu bar and find settings. Once you have your settings menu open, click on account and scroll to the bottom. If it says “Switch to a professional account” then you currently have a personal account. If it says “Switch to a personal account” then you have a professional account.

On Facebook

In order to have a business account on Facebook you will need a page for your practice. A page is different than a profile. Think of a page as a listing for your practice, it will have all the information and followers can interact with your business there. A profile is an overview of you. As a profile you can like or follow your page.

The Professional Dashboard, aka your Insights page, will give your practice the tools that they need to track account performance, access, discover professional tools, and explore educational information. With the promise of streamlining your administrative tasks, the Professional Dashboard gives you an easy-to-access location to house all the necessary content performance tools. 

If you are looking to learn more about the Professional Dashboard on Instagram, check out our blog post where we do a deep dive into how to track your Instagram’s performance. 

Using your Content Reach to see your Top Performers

One of the top options for using your Insights is to gain an understanding of the types of content your followers want to see from you.

It may not be apparent just by looking at your posts what is reaching the most amount of people. In fact unless you dive into insights, you may not even see how many people you are reaching.

By looking under the Accounts Reached section, you can review what content reached the most amount of people. Within this category you’ll see information for each of your content types including top posts, top stories, top IGTV videos, and top reels. From this information you can gain an understanding of what is generating the biggest impact on your account.

Once you have determined the top content types, take a look at each of the posts. What made them different? Did you use a more engaging caption? Was it paid or organic content? Maybe your image quality was better than in other ones? Thinking about all of these things can help you narrow down exactly what your followers want.

Track Your Followers

Insights offers details about how your followers interact not only with your content but also within the app.

One of our favorite features in Insights is being able to view how many of your followers are on the app at any given time. You can filter by days of the week and by hours on each of those days.

By understanding this information, you will be able to schedule your posts at the exact times most followers are active on the platform.

Under this section you can also look at your follower demographics. This can be useful to understand as well because you want to know if it matches your brand’s target audience. For example, if all of your followers are from New York City, NY but you are in Seattle, WA you may want to readjust your organic and paid social strategy to ensure you are reaching a local audience. If you are having trouble with this, reach out to our social media team and we can give you some pointers on how to adjust your social media strategy.

Review Your Profile Activity

Your Profile Activity shares data on how many times people have taken an action on your profile. Whether this is a profile visit or clicking a call-to-action button on your profile. By doing this you can easily understand what sorts of actions your content is making people take.

From understanding these actions, you can better set up your paid social media advertising. For example, if you are trying to get your audience to schedule a free consultation by giving your office a call, but you continue to only receive messages about consultations, you will want to guide your traffic to your call-to-action button, so they know it’s there.

Your profile activity will tell you the activity your audience is taking. If you are not happy with some of the actions that they are taking, think of some creative ways that you can move your audience’s attention.

There are plenty of other ways that you can use your insights to optimize your posting. However, starting with these three tips can really help to make a positive difference in your posting. 

As always, if you have any questions regarding your social media profiles, reach out to our team and they can help answer any of your questions.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Leveraging Insights to Optimize Social Media Posts appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

With 89% of prospective patients online, an engaging website is a must! 

However, there are several steps that web designers and developers must go through to create a functional yet appealing website. 

In this blog post, I will cover some of our top considerations when Sesame creates a new website. 

Stay Consistent with Your Branding

A well-branded site allows for better name and brand recognition for your practice. It starts with your logo, which sets the tone for the rest of your online presence. After getting a professionally created logo, you’ll want to focus on placement. A well-placed logo will contribute to the viewers opinion of your practice. We suggest placing your logo in a very visible spot such as in the upper corners.

Another part of website branding is consistency across the pages. Similar colors and fonts are important to give a sense of unity throughout your website. Maintaining a constant theme also helps make everything look more cohesive and professional.

Ensure your website is Functional & Useable  

What is a website if it is not function and useable?

One of the most important things to consider when putting the final touches on your website is the functionality. Namely, does everything work properly and does your website have adequate security? Lack of functionality is one of the easiest ways for prospective patients to turn away from your practice in favor of a competing option. 

Similar to the functions of the website, it needs to be easy to use. This means making sure that your website has all the features that your patients want in a layout that allows for them to be highly accessible. 

Maintain Compatibility Across Multiple Devices

Your patients search for your website across many device types. They use tablets, phones, desktops, laptops, etc. to schedule appointments with you. But if they see that your website isn’t compatible on different devices, it may discourage them from scheduling.

Ensuring that your website is both desktop and mobile friendly will not only affect how the customer interacts with your website but can also affect what the customer thinks of your practice.

Establish a Blog

A great blog can be a mecca of information for your patients. Not only will it keep them informed on any new services you may offer, company events, but also general dental health that they may not know otherwise.

But the most important part of having a blog is keeping your blog updated regularly. By launching regular posts, your brand will become a trusted resource that your patients can count on. Not only will it help build trust amongst your patients, but it will also help optimize your website for maximum visibility within search results. In fact, regularly updated websites is viewed as one of the best indicators of a website’s relevancy.

Don’t Forget Social Profile Integration

Today, being present on social media is a must for businesses of all sizes, including your practice. By integrating your social profiles onto your website, you can increase awareness of your content and brand while allowing your readers to easily access your content.  

One of the best ways to integrate your social media profiles onto your website is by adding in buttons throughout your site. We suggest adding these in the header, footer, or on the side of the website for your readers to easily access them and navigate to your pages.

Another option is integrating your content directly to your site. This is essentially a live feed of your social media posts. It’s a great way to show your readers how active you are online, which helps build trust from your patients.

Building a website has many different components to it and while there are plenty of other tips we can suggest, we strongly believe that by implanting each of these into your website, your practice will be able to maintain steady traffic and attract new clients.

Don’t forget, we can help! If you are looking to revamp your website, contact our team of Solution Advisors at 866-263-1639 to get started!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 5 Important Considerations when Building a Website appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

So, you want to run a social media contest? You’ve come to the right place!

This blog post is intended to provide your practice with a step-by-step process for creating a social media contest. Let’s start with the basics.

Before you build your contest, you must determine what kind of contest you plan to run. This will help you determine what your practice can get out of the contest and how someone can enter to win. If you need a refresh on the various types of contests, feel free to reference this blog post which goes over this in a bit more detail.

What should your contest post include?

Once you have determined the type of contest you want to run, it’s time to create your contest post. In the caption of your contest post, it’s important that you incorporate a detailed description that includes the contest guidelines, how to enter, when the contest ends, and how the winner will be chosen and contacted.

From what we know about social media algorithms, posts that have visuals tend to perform better and gain more visibility. For this reason, we encourage sharing a picture with your contest post. Ideally, you’ll want to share an image that will grab the attention of your followers. You may consider creating a graphic that says “Contest!” or sharing a photo of the service that your practice is giving away.

To widen the reach of the contest beyond your direct followers, include hashtags like #giveaway and #contest in your caption. These are common hashtags that are used frequently, which could increase the exposure of your post.

Below you will find a few sample templates we suggest using for your next contest. Feel free to utilize these templates and make any changes your practice finds appropriate for your contest.

Template 1: Increase Engagement

We’re giving away a free teeth whitening session! The contest ends on December 1, 2022, at 11:59 PM Pacific! Follow the rules below to enter!

• Make sure you are following our practice
• Like this post
• Tag a friend in the comments (each tag = one entry!)

*Restrictions: You must be 18 years or older to win.

Template 2: User Generated Content

Calling all current and previous patients! We’re giving away two $100 gift cards to patients who share pictures of their beautiful smiles with us. The winners will be selected randomly. To enter, follow the directions below.

• Make sure you are following us
• Share a picture of your beautiful smile and tag us in the post
• Make sure to use the hashtag #SesameSmileContest

The last day to make your post and enter the contest is November 1, 2022. Winners will be selected and announced on November 2, 2022. The winner will be contacted by DM from our account. Be sure to verify our account is contacting you to avoid scams.

*Guidelines: You must be a current or previous patient of ours.

How often should you post about your contest?

Since content is continuously being shared on social media, it’s important to keep your contest relevant and remind your followers the contest is running so that it doesn’t get lost in their timeline. For this reason, we encourage sharing your contest a few times prior to the deadline to ensure you get optimal views and entries.

Other than your initial contest post, we suggest either sharing your contest post to your story and/or creating new posts. Regardless, if you create a story or a new post, it is important to reference your original contest post so that followers know that they need to interact with it to be entered.

What happens once the contest is over?

Once the contest is over, it is time to pick your winner. Depending on the type of contest you chose and how many entries you received, there are a few different ways you can select a winner. This can be done either manually or automatically.

Manually Selecting a Winner

If you have a manageable number of entries, you may want to manually confirm that they have completed all of steps needed to enter. From there you can jot down their name on a piece of paper and put it into a container to pull from. If they have multiple entries, don’t forget to add their name multiple times to account for that. Once the contest is over, shuffle around the papers and draw a winner. You can also generate additional engagement to your contest by posting a video of you drawing the winning name!

Another way to manually pick a winner is to confirm the contest entries and add the names of the participants to a document, assigning each one a number. If someone has duplicate entries make sure you assign them to multiple numbers. At the end of the contest, you can use a random number generator to draw a number for your winner. These can be found online with a quick search.

Similar to the random number picker tool, there are also random name picker tools that can be found online. In this case, you would add various names to the tool, and it would randomly select one of the names you have listed.

Automatically Selecting a Winner

If you received a lot of entries, you may want to consider selecting a winner automatically. You can do this by creating an online contest using websites such as RafflePress, Osortoo, and Woobox to name a few.

When using one of these websites, you will be asked to provide a few details regarding your contest and how you want the winner to be selected. After you have filled everything out, you can run your contest. Once the contest is over, select the “Pick a Winner” option and these websites will automatically generate a winner for you.

Announcing the Contest Winner

Once a winner has been selected, it’s time to let them know. Since scams are known to happen on social media, it’s important that you reach out to the winner directly from your practice page to avoid any confusion regarding the legitimacy of the winner. For suggestions on the best ways to notify a winner, follow along below.

The first way to notify the contest winner is to update the caption on the original post. At the beginning of the caption, we suggest highlighting that the contest has ended and tagging the winner in the post. By doing so, the winner will receive a notification that they were tagged in your post and can easily access it to see the updated caption stating they won.

Another way to notify the winner is to reshare the original contest post to your story and tag the winner. Not only does this send a notification to the winner of the contest, but it also informs your followers that the contest is over and a winner has been selected.

Lastly, you can reach out to the winner via direct message on the platform where the contest was held. This is the most direct way to notify the winner. If the winner is skeptical at first and worried that it may be a scam, you can encourage them to contact your practice directly to confirm they are the winner.

We also recommend asking the winner if they are comfortable sharing a picture of themselves on social media. Not only does it highlight the winner, but it also can generate more of a following for your practice and get patients excited about future contests or events you may host!

Now that you have all the tools, it’s time to get started! If this blog was helpful for you, be sure to tag us in your next social media contest post. We can’t wait to see what you do!

Looking for some personalized support with setting up your contest post? Need some help boosting your social media presence? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, reach out to us today to learn more about our Sesame Social service.

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Creating a Social Media Contest appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Is your practice looking to gain more followers? Maybe you’re trying to increase your social media engagement? Maybe your practice wants content from your patients? 

If one or all of these apply to you, your practice may benefit from hosting a contest on social media. What do you need to know before posting a contest? What type of contest should your practice use? Don’t worry, we are here to help. 

This post will cover the various types of contests you can create and how they can help increase your following, engagement, and give you access to user-generated content.

I will reference specific contest types for Facebook and Instagram. However, you are more than welcome to utilize these on other platforms. Before we jump in, let’s take a moment to review the rules for posting contests on these platforms. 

Rules for Facebook 

If you plan to post a contest on Facebook, there are a few things that you must include for everything to run smoothly and be approved such as:

1. You must provide the full details of the promotion. This includes: Contest rules; Offer terms and eligibility requirements; and Compliance with rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered.
    
2. You must acknowledge that this promotion is not sponsored or affiliated with Facebook by any means.
3. Contests can be published on Pages, Groups, Events, or within apps on Facebook. However, you are not permitted to use personal timelines or friend connections to administer promotions.

To review the full guidelines for promotions and contests, please visit Facebook’s Terms and Policies page. 

Rules for Instagram 

Although Instagram is owned by Facebook, its rules vary. Before posting your contest to Instagram, be sure to review the following guidelines.

1. You must provide the full details of the promotion. Like with Facebook, this includes: Contest rules; Offer terms and eligibility requirements; and Compliance with rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered.
2. You must accurately tag content. Do not inaccurately tag content or encourage users to do the same.
3. You must acknowledge that this contest is not sponsored or affiliated with Instagram by any means.

To review the full guidelines for promotions and contests, please visit Instagram’s Promotion Guidelines page. 

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about how contests can help you grow your business. Depending on the type of contest, you can gain more followers and increase engagement on your social media profiles, or you can gain access to user-generated content. 

Before you can get your contest up and running, you’ll need to decide what type of contest you want to run and what you want to get out of it. Follow along as I break down the different types of contests and the ways they can benefit your practice. 

Types of Contests 

Increase Your Following 

Below are the types of contests can help your practice increase its following.

• Follow-to-Win: This type of contest requests that participants follow your practice to be entered into the contest. Follow-to-Win is something that can be used in combination with other contest types, which can help increase engagement in addition to your following.
• Share-to-Enter: When using this type of contest, participants must share your contest post to their story or timeline. By making participants share your post, it increases your exposure as their followers will see their story or timeline and may be inclined to participate. This can result in increased visibility. You can also use this type of contest in combination with the follow-to-win contest type. By doing so, you can not only increase your exposure but increase your following as well. 

Increase Your Engagement 

The following types of contests will encourage more engagement with your content, such as likes and comments.

• Like the Contest Photo: In this type of contest post, you can ask participants to like your chosen contest photo to be entered into your contest. This helps increase your engagement via likes and can be used in combination with other contest types to help increase your following.
• Tag a Friend: With this type of contest, participants are asked to tag a friend, or more, in the comments to increase their number of entries into the contest. By using this contest type, it can create a ripple effect where one person can tag a friend, and then they tag a friend, and so on. This could even lead to an increased following if their friends decide to follow your page.
• Photo Caption Contest: When it comes to Photo Caption Contests, your practice shares a photo and asks its followers to create a caption for the photo and post it in the comments. The winner typically has their caption used for the photo. This increases engagement by encouraging followers to comment on the post and engage with your practice. 

Access to User Generated Content 

This type of contest will provide your practice with content that was created by your patients and  or followers.

• Post a Photo and Use the Hashtag: This type of contest requires asking your followers to post a photo and use your designated hashtag that aligns with the contest rules. Not only does this create user-generated content for the practice, but it can increase exposure.

Now that we’ve had the chance to cover the different types of contests, it’s time for your practice to decide which option works best for you and create your post. Don’t forget that you can incorporate different types of contests into one post.

For example, if you were creating a contest and wanted to increase your number of followers and engagement, you could tell participants to follow your page, like your contest post, and share the contest post to their story. Not only does this increase your following and engagement, but it also increases your exposure since anyone that follows the participant will see your post on their story.

What Happens After Your Contest Is Over? 

Once you have a contest that works best for your practice, let’s talk about what happens after it ends. During your contest, you may have experienced a bump in followers, and engagement, and have new user-generated content. After it’s over, it’s important to take steps to maintain the progress you have made. Depending on what works best for your practice, there are a few options you can consider. 

Ongoing Giveaways or Contests 

One way to maintain your growth and continue on an upwards trajectory is to consider the consistency of your contests. If your practice is open to maintaining ongoing contests, people may be more inclined to follow your page long-term to stay involved with contests so that they can participate.

This doesn’t mean you need to post contests all the time, instead consider what works best for your practice. You could opt for weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even bi-annual contests. It’s not necessary to post extravagant giveaways each time. For example, you could offer a contest asking your followers to share a picture of their smile using your hashtag. If they win, their photo could be featured in the office for that month and they could win a gift card. The possibilities are endless! 

Milestone Contests 

Another way to continue growing your followers and increase your engagement would be to hold milestone contests. This means that each time you hit a follower goal, you would host a giveaway or contest to celebrate reaching your goal.

For example, let’s say you were close to hitting 500 followers on Instagram and you wanted to celebrate by giving away a free session of teeth whitening to one of your followers. People may be more inclined to follow your practice so that they can try to win this giveaway once you reach your goal. Then, by maintaining this strategy and holding another giveaway at your next follower goal, people may be more inclined to follow and see what the giveaway is and enter to win.  

Create Your First Contest! 

Now that you have the tools, it’s time to get started. Take a moment to review the promotion rules for Instagram and/or Facebook before making your post, choose which type of contest you want to run, and get posting. Depending on what contest you decide on, the possibilities of growth are limitless because, after all, who doesn’t love a good contest? We look forward to seeing what your practice comes up with. 

Does your practice have our Sesame Social service? If yes, did you know our Social Tool has a feature that will let you run a contest on a post? If your practice has our services and is interested in running a contest, contact us today to learn how to utilize this part of our Social Tool. 

Need help drafting up these contest posts? Keep an eye out for our next blog post where we’ll provide you with templates for these different types of contests.

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Social Media Contests 101 appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

By now, you know the differences between Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and which platform is best for your practice. Your next question is probably, how much money should I be spending advertising on my social platforms?

In this post, we will cover three best practices to help you determine your social media advertising budget.

Evaluate All Past Campaigns

Any past data that you have available can be an extremely helpful starting point for allocating money toward your social advertising budget. Understanding how your organic posts are performing can be a useful information as well.

You should be paying close attention to your target audience, the type of content that was used, and your total budget.

Other Factors to Consider

When determining your budget, don’t focus solely on the total amount you will be spending on each platform. You will want to factor in other things such as the design costs, time spent managing the campaign, as well as time spent analyzing the campaign’s success.

If you are hiring someone to manage each of these then your budget may be reduced. Consider having one person handle the process from the start to the finish, as that can save you time and money.

Set Your Advertising Goals

When it comes to success on social media, it’s important to set goals whenever possible. If you aren’t sure where to begin check out our blog post on how to set goals for your social media.

Some goals you should consider include building brand awareness, acquiring new clients, introducing new services, and retaining current customers. Once you have identified your goals, you can start allocating your paid social budgets accordingly.

For example, if you are looking to build brand awareness or introduce new services a good portion of your budget will be best spent by hiring someone to create content.

If you are looking to expand your target audience or retain clients, you will want to allocate more of the budget to the actual campaign.

Social Advertising may seem very daunting. However, once you have the right set of tools and a well-established structure in place, your social ads will take care of the rest.

And if you are still having trouble seeing successful results from your campaigns, check out our Social Media Advertising Service!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 3 Tips for Allocating a Budget to Your Social Ads appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

In our previous blog we briefly touched on the topic of what social media platforms are best for advertising your Practice. While advertising on as many platforms as possible will maximize visibility, it isn’t something that is in every practice’s budget.

In this post, I’ll be covering the differences and benefits of Facebook and Instagram’s advertising platforms in order to help you figure out which is best for your practice and why.

Define Your Goals

When it comes to marketing your practice, the first step is defining your goals. Defining your goals will allow you to choose the platform best fit your needs. It will also help you understand your target market and the best ad method for reaching that audience.

Facebook Advertising

As you may know from our other blog posts, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. With almost 2 billion active daily users, it has become one of the best platforms for advertising. What makes Facebook so appealing to so many users?

Facebook’s advertising suite has the most powerful tools for optimizing and targeting. Precise targeting allows marketers to establish a good foundation for campaigns while getting the most bang for their buck.

One of the most important things to consider when advertising on Facebook is your target audience. Facebook’s Ad Manager has many options when it comes to building your target audience. However, if you are unsure of your target audience or don’t really understand how to build one, Facebook may not be the best option for your practice.

Instagram Advertising

Instagram is also very popular. With 500 million daily active users, Instagram has become one of the largest platforms where young users make their purchasing decisions.

Instagram has successfully pushed the boundaries of the e-commerce world. By adding new shopping features that other platforms don’t offer, they continue to innovate and improve the buying experience.

Instagram has also become a major factor in the world of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing was ranked as the most popular and effective trend with the biggest ROI in 2021. If your patients already have some sort of a presence on social media, influencer marketing may be a great option for your practice to consider.

Still, if you are considering Instagram as a platform for advertising, I will caution you. Users expect high-quality content on the platform. This means if you are not ready to put in the time and effort to ensure quality visuals, your practice may be better off using a different platform.

While there are some pros and cons to each platform, it ultimately comes down to you and your practice. What makes more sense to you?

Maybe your practice is focused on a younger audience, in which case Instagram may be a better fit. Conversely, if have multiple locations and you want to advertise each one, Facebook can be a better fit.

Finally, if you’re still unsure about which route to take we encourage you to reach out to our Social Team for guidance on social media advertising.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Facebook vs. Instagram Ads – A Selection Guide appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Let’s talk about social ads. As many of you know, many social media platforms offer advertising as an option for their clients. And it’s no secret how advertising on these platforms can be profitable for your practice. But you probably have questions about where to begin, how to set up your ads, and which platform to use.

In this blog post, we’ll be talking about two of the biggest social media platforms to advertise on, Facebook and Instagram. We’ll break down what each platform can offer for your practice.

This is part one of a three-part series where we will be reviewing which platform is better for your practice and we will be sharing some data you should consider when setting up your social ads budget.  Make sure to stay tuned over the next two weeks for parts two and three.

Why should your practice be advertising on social media?

It’s simple, you can reach a bigger audience! A consistent social media presence paired with social media advertising will ensure that your practice is seen by all the right people.

With advertising, you can hyper-target specific users, meaning you will be able to target only those that match your target market. Say you are a pediatric dentist in Seattle, WA. You can target your location by setting it to match cities, states, and countries for where your patients live. If you prefer, select the local option that selects a radius around your practice’s location. You can then target specific interests such as parenting, kids, dentist, and anything else that may pertain to your practice. Lastly, you can target age groups and genders.

If you haven’t read our blog post on the benefits of Social Media Marketing, we highly encourage you to take a look to better understand how advertising on your social platforms can make a positive impact on your practice.

What Facebook Ads can offer your Practice

Facebook advertising was introduced in late 2007. Today, there are three million businesses that actively advertise on Facebook. Not only does Facebook have the biggest cliental for paid advertising but it should come as no surprise that they are also the most widely used social media platform with over 2.7 billion users. This plays a big part when deciding your audience. With more users on the platform, advertisers can reach a bigger audience.

Facebook gives you a lot of opportunities to increase brand awareness. Whether it be through your newsfeed by sharing an update, on Facebook stories, or through the Facebook Marketplace, there is something for every practice. 

Video advertising is very much underrated. Even with the fact that video ads have a 30% higher audience reach than image ads. Advertisers are still preferring image over video advertising. With Facebook, video advertising has never been easier. You can create video ads that last up to 120 minutes through Facebook.

Finally, advertising on Facebook means more ad placements! Ad placements are places where your ads can be seen. Since there are more opportunities on Facebook, this helps increase the chances of your advertisements being seen by the right people.

What Instagram Ads can offer your Practice

Instagram is the leader in engagement. In fact, because of its ability to be so alluring, it reaches a much younger audience, which makes it one of the best platforms to do online advertising.

One very important factor to consider when creating an Instagram campaign is the fact that Instagram is 100% visual. This means that the most important element in your ad will be your image or video. Ensuring that your visual is of the highest quality will help improve your brand positioning.

Organic reach is thriving on Instagram. This means that the content you are putting on your practice’s Instagram page is performing well on its own without adding in the paid element. However, paid will always out-preform organic.

And because of its visually appealing content, users tend to pick Instagram over other platforms to get a sense of who the company is. This comes into play with brand awareness and how your online presence can directly affect your new clients.

Which Platform Should I Be Advertising On?

The answer is both! While Facebook may be a better option to advertise in certain situations, Instagram covers other parts. Both platforms complement each other and the weakness of one is covered by the other so using both platforms for your social media advertising is the best option.

Our number one recommendation when choosing a platform to advertise on is to look at the audience. If you only have the budget to use towards one campaign, do your research, and figure out what platform hosts the most amount of your target audience. You can easily do this by looking at your posts through the insights dashboard on both platforms. This will give you an idea of who is seeing your posts and interacting with them. If you’re an orthodontist that specializes in helping young adults, you would be better off allocating your budget to Instagram.

Remember, start by setting goals for your advertising. What are you hoping to accomplish through paid advertising? From there build out a strategy that works for you and your practice. And of course, monitor the performance and adjust as needed.

Did you know we offer Social Ads, to all our practices (separate from our Social Media service)? If you are interested in learning more about how we can help your practice with online advertising, reach out to us at 866-263-1639.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Facebook Ad vs Instagram Ads appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Creating content can be a bit daunting – especially if you don’t have professional equipment or don’t know how to use your equipment. Luckily, you don’t need a fancy camera to create engaging content for your social media profiles. It’s true, all you need is a smartphone!  

In this blog post, I’ll cover 5 tips to help you to take better photos and videos on your smartphone!  

1. Don’t Zoom 

You may be tempted to use the zoom feature out of convenience or maybe something is too far away to see. But did you know that as you zoom in closer to an object, specifically on a smartphone camera, it becomes more pixelated? This is because the zoom diminishes the quality of the picture.  

One alternative to zooming is moving closer to the subject. If you can, get within 6 feet of the subject to ensure that you capture the perfect shot. 

2. Use a Tripod  

You’ll see all sorts of creators capturing with their phones and cameras using a tripod, and the reason for this is it makes a difference.

A shaky hand will lead to a potentially terrible, blurry disaster. With the help of a tripod, the possibility of blurry results can be avoided. Not only will this tool help steady the camera, but it will also improve the quality of your photos.

And for the days that you don’t have a tripod available, grab your phone with both hands, rest your arms on your chest, point, and shoot. This should help steady the shot and give you a clean and clear picture.

3. Try Different Angles  

This tip has a few different parts that I’ll break down. 

Let’s start with composition. Don’t feel like you need to put the subject in the middle of the photo. Try to move the camera around so your subject is on either side as well as the middle. Remember the “Rule of Thirds” when taking shots.

Next, try shooting in both landscape and vertical modes. The orientation does matter especially when there are different subjects in place. Also, consider the distance of the subject. If you are taking a photo of your entire team, you probably don’t want to shoot from far away and vertically. For a team picture, get up closer and shoot horizontally.

Finally, move around. Get low to the ground and angle the camera up. Get some fun point-of-view video clips. Challenge yourself to try new things out as you never know what could come out looking good.  

4. Capture the Audio  

When recording a video, you should always consider the video itself but if your video has sound don’t forget to double-check that you are recording the audio as well. We suggest investing in a small microphone that you can attach to yourself if you’re talking in the video. 

Alternatively, you can place your video in an editing tool and record your voice-over afterward. 

Either way, we suggest investing in a microphone, so your voice is clear and crisp.

5. Find Good Lighting

Lighting is everything and can make or break your shot. If you have terrible lighting your content will not be appealing and will cause the Facebook and Instagram algorithms to not push your content.

Some tips we have when it comes to lighting are;

• Find natural light from the sun if possible (golden hour is great to take shots outside)
• Avoid using flash to provide better lighting (constant lighting is best)
• Purchase portable lights (they can be great additions to your equipment)

Now that you have read through our tips, it’s your turn to go out there and make some content! 

If you have any other questions about shooting either photos or videos feel free to reach out to our social team for help!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 5 Tips to Take Better Photos and Videos on Your Phone appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Have you scrolled through social media and noticed that posts from a particular user don’t appear as often as they once did or maybe they don’t appear at all?

It is a possibility that the account may have been shadow banned. Shadow banned accounts are put into a “shadow” mode meaning only the user posting can see their content and no one else.

While the practice of shadow banning is meant to improve the quality of interactions on social by moderating bots, spammers, and trolls occasionally your favorite user may be inadvertently shadow banned.

What is Shadow Banning?

A user is shadow banned when their visibility on a social media platform is reduced, without warning. Users may not know right away that they have been shadow banned. Many report still getting confirmation of their posts even though it was never seen by the public. 

Platforms including Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are believed to have tested or actively engaged in shadow banning select users. However, no platform admits to this. For example, in February of 2020, Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, said in a Q&A, “Shadow banning is not a thing.“

Other signs that you may have been shadow banned include being unable to post comments, content removed from hashtags and an inability  to accept friend requests.

In short, when you are shadow banned, your account and your posts receive less prominent placement leading to poorer performance than previous. 

What Causes a Shadow Ban?

There is no authoritative source on how or why a user’s account and content are banned. 

Because popular platforms frequently deny the existence of shadow bans, it can be challenging to prove that you have been the victim of one. 

However, there is some third-party evidence that platforms do indeed closely control the content that is and is not displayed to its users. 

How to Avoid a Shadow Ban

Despite its ambiguity, Shadow banning does serve a purpose. Its main purpose to help control spam. Spammers can keep spamming while not being visible to everyone else on the platform. 

So how do you avoid a shadow ban? Tips shared by influencers and those who have experienced a shadow ban include:

• Don’t repeatedly post the same content
• Don’t like too many posts in a short period of time
• Don’t comment on too many posts in a short period of time
• Avoid using banned hashtags

As a best practice, read each platform’s Terms of Service and avoid any activity that can be deemed as spam.

What do I do if I think I am Shadow Banned?

If you think you have been shadow banned your course of action will vary from platform to platform. For some, it will be removed after the passing of an undisclosed amount of time. For others, you will have to contact support. In a worst-case scenario, your account can be banned permanently.

The practice of shadow banning is frequently denied by social media platforms there is also 3rd-party evidence helping to prove its existence. Remember to always read and adhere to the Terms of Service wherever you post your social media content. Have fun posting on social media but do so in a polite and respectful manner to help avoid being shadow banned.

—Jason Martin, Practice Solutions Marketing Manager, Sesame Communications

The post What is Shadow Banning and How to Avoid It appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Are you struggling to come up with fresh and new content for your social media accounts?

If so, we’re going to give you five content ideas that your practice can use to level up your presence this summer!

Share Important News!

Have you moved locations? Have you added a new doctor to the practice? Have you introduced a new service?

Whenever your practice goes through an important change, make sure to share it on your social media profiles. Not only will it keep your patients updated but it’s a great way to put new content in front of your target audiences.

Use Instagram Reels

We’ve talked a lot about Instagram Reels and short-form videos here on our blog. And as we have said numerous times before, short-form video is a great way to create engaging content for your practice.  

If you are looking to start utilizing Reels in your content strategy but don’t know where to start, check out our post on Reels to get some new content ideas.

Highlight Your Employees

Give your employees a chance to shine on your social media profiles!

It has been shown that consumers love seeing the people behind their favorite businesses. This includes your practice as well! Not only will give your patients get to meet the team but your employees will also feel more noticed and appreciated.

Celebrate Your Favorite Holidays

While there are only a few major holidays during the summer, there is always a national holiday, awareness day, week, or month that can be fun to highlight on your social media profiles.

For example, National Ice Cream Month falls in July. Another example is National Dog Day on August 26th. 

Leverage Your User-Generated Content

As you may already know, user-generated content, or UGC, is a great way to fill your feed with content created by your patients. Not only will it help promote growth on your account, but it can also help convert your existing audience into patients.

If you are looking to get started with user-generated content, make sure to check out our blog post where we go more in-depth on how your practice can utilize it.

Did you know that Sesame Social Members get access to our extensive content library via the Social Tool? There you will find content to utilize throughout your social media strategy.

If you are not currently a Sesame Social Member, please feel free to reach out to our team to get an in-depth overview of our social tool!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 5 Content Ideas to Level Up Your Social Media this Summer appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.