In recent years, Instagram has transformed into a useful platform for many business owners and professionals. 

Beginning early 2021, Instagram added a Professional Dashboard, allowing all professional accounts (business and creator) to access account performance data. With this new feature added to the platform, business owners are able to achieve their social media goals in relation to their business growth.

If you are struggling with understanding what everything means in your Instagram Professional Dashboard keep reading for a quick tutorial!  

What is the Professional Dashboard?

The Professional Dashboard gives businesses 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, Instagram’s Professional Dashboard gives you an easy-to-access dashboard to house all of the necessary Instagram tools. 

The Dashboard will allow you to review insights and trends based on your account’s performance. It will also allow you to efficiently access tools to run your account, discover new tools to help grow your business and check monetization status and eligibility. 

With the dashboard, you can also learn how to make the most of Instagram through curated educational resources that include tips, tricks, guidance, and content inspiration.

This tool allows business owners and creators to use Instagram as a backbone to their business strategy. Instead of chasing down data and metrics, everything is easily accessible for you to review in one spot.

Understanding your Account Performance and Data

The biggest selling point to having your business be on Instagram is the built-in metrics and data. Typically, businesses must manually track their information or rely on a third party to provide this information. With Instagram, you have everything from your account performance to the breakdown of your audience right at the tip of your fingers.

When you open your Professional Dashboard, you will immediately see your performance over the last 30 days. This will give you a general overview of how many accounts you reached. Above your chart, there will be a section for Account Insights. Let’s go ahead and take a deeper dive into what kind of data you will have available through the dashboard.

The first thing on your Insights page is your data range. You can view the data from the last 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 90 days, or the previous month. You can also view a custom date range. 

On your Insights Overview page, there is a breakdown of your data by Accounts Reached, Accounts Engaged, and Total Followers. In the following sections, you will see the different types of content you have shared during the selected date range.

Accounts Reached

Accounts Reached displays the information on the accounts that you have reached through organic content and paid promotions. The data is created through analysis of the specific demographics of your audience. 

It is broken down by top cities, top countries, top age ranges, and gender. You can also see how your content reach is performing by followers versus non-followers.

Moving down the page you will see your top pieces of content, including posts, stories, reels, IGTV videos, and live videos. It will display the number of people reached per that piece of content, whether the content was boosted, and when it was posted.

At the very bottom, you will see the total number of impressions for your entire profile for the specified date range as well as how many profile visits and email button taps you received.

Accounts Engaged

Engagement is very different from reach. This metric shows how your audience engaged with your content, such as liking it, commenting, sharing, and such. As in the Accounts Reached section, you can select the date range. You are also able to review whether your engagement performance primarily comes from your followers or non-followers.

The major difference between the Reached and Engaged dashboards is within Engaged – there is a section called Content Interactions. Within this portion of the dashboard, you can see how many interactions you received for your selected date range. It is broken down into four categories (Likes, Comments, Saves, and Shares). You can also see a general overview of how each individual piece of content performed based on specific interactions.

Total Followers

This section is a complete overview of your Followers. I would like to note that this section has nothing to do with engagement or reach and just simply highlights your follower data.

Just like all the other sections, you can filter this one by date range. From here you will see how many followers you gained and lost during that time. You can even see what your overall growth was on any given day by simply selecting a day on the graph provided by Instagram.

Below the graph, you will find additional followers demographic info including top location by cities and countries, age range overall as well as age range by gender, and the gender breakdown of your followers.

The last info in this section is called Most Active Times. This is one of the coolest features within the Professional Dashboard as you get insight into when your followers are the most active by day and within what frame. You can utilize this feature to post at the most appropriate times.

Using Data to Inform Decisions

The existing data provided by Instagram offers your practice a resource for shaping the types of posts and frequency of posting you undertake. We strongly recommend using the available data to inform your posting decisions! 

For information on using the tools Instagram offers, we invite you to return to the Sesame blog next Tuesday (1/25) for pt.2 of this series.

As always, if you have any questions pertaining to Instagram or social media in general please feel free to reach out to us!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Tracking Instagram Performance – A Brief Overview appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

To pay, or not to pay? That is the fundamental question most businesses must answer when developing their social media strategy. 

Organic posts and paid advertising each have their strengths and weaknesses. Keep reading to learn when you should use one vs. the other and how you can develop a winning social media plan!

Organic Content

Brand Development and Cost-Effectiveness

Organic posts are the building blocks for any social media marketing strategy. They provide a cost-effective way to expand your brand´s reach exactly where your customers are spending their time online.

Organic content consists of posts that your business can share for free such as photos, videos, stories, and the like. These posts stay on your profile page indefinitely with the only exception being “stories” when not added to your “highlights.” 

The audience for this type of content is limited to the people following your page along with their network (provided your followers engage with your content).  As such, your audience in this case is likely expecting your content already. That is to say, organic posts serve as one of the most cost-effective and least invasive methods available to develop a deeper relationship with your existing patients.

Despite the low financial entry barrier, an organic content strategy takes a lot of time, effort, and trial and error to be successful. What’s more, algorithm updates have shrunk organic reach over the years and this trend is only set to continue in the near future. 

With this in mind, it is becoming more unrealistic to rely on organic content alone to reach new audiences. However, Social Media Advertising can bridge the gap. 

Social Media Advertising

Reach New Horizons

With Social Media Advertising, businesses are able to pay money to social media platforms in order to tap into entirely new audiences that are more likely to be interested in their product or service.

 Unlike the organic posts that stay on your page, paid social posts will show up on your targeted audience’s feeds and stories for as long as your campaign is running. This means paid posts are by nature temporary but in turn, they provide a faster and more direct way to reach new patients when compared to organic posts.

Targeting and Data

While organic posts have a predetermined audience that´s well-defined (followers and their network), paid social targeting allows businesses to use ad parameters such as location, demographics, and behaviors to pinpoint who they want their content to show up to.

This ability combined with budget flexibility makes social ads a powerful and scalable way to promote offers and events, generate customer leads, and consequently boost revenue growth.

Equally important, paid social provides more detailed data on the type of traffic your content is reaching. This allows your business to learn who your audience is and adjust your targeting and content for better campaign performance.

The Verdict

While very different in nature, organic posts (cost-effective but time-consuming) and paid social advertising (quick but requires a financial investment upfront) work best together. In tandem, they are the ideal option for achieving social media success. 

If you have any questions about organic or paid social media efforts or your practice is in need of social media profile management support please reach out to the Sesame team!

—Jonathan Giraldo, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Understanding Organic vs. Paid Social Media appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Taking the time to plan out your content and get it scheduled can be a time-consuming process. Still, consistency is key. Planning and scheduling are necessary elements of growing engagement on your social media profiles.

So, what is the solution for planning and organizing your content strategy? It’s simple. Have a content calendar!

What is a Content Calendar?

You may be asking yourself, is it necessary to plan everything out ahead of time? The answer is “yes.” Growing your social media presence does take some time and effort. As we stated in a previous blog post, ideally you should be posting around 2 times per week across all social media platforms that you are using. If you stick to a single platform, you may only be posting 8 times a month. However, if you are using multiple platforms that number will be higher. 

A content calendar will help you organize all upcoming content including what piece of content you will be posting to what platform and when. With all of this in place, you will be able to dedicate a lot more time to your business and not have to rely on remembering to post to your social media platforms.

How do You Build a Content Calendar?

While the overall structure of your calendar is up to you, there are key elements that should be included.

You can either create your own content calendar and have the responsibility to remember posting when necessary, or you can subscribe to a third-party tool that can handle the posting for you. With a separate tool, all you will need to do is schedule posts within their calendar. This is the method the Sesame Social Team uses for posting content.

If you would like to create your own, the best place to start is by analyzing your social media content. Figure out what you need to improve on and what is working well. Review your social media goals and keep them in mind when you are creating new content. Another important part of this step is analyzing your target audience and what platforms they tend to use. If your audience is mostly on Tik Tok, make sure to make that social channel part of your strategy.

To create the actual calendar, determine what kind of information you need to track within the calendar itself. You will want to include the date, time, platform, copy (captions), visuals (actual content), and links to any assets such as a website or published posts. These items are just a starting point. If you prefer to add additional details that’s even better!

Once you have determined what things you need to add in the calendar it’s time to start creating! Begin by establishing a place to house all of your content. We suggest something like OneDrive or Google Drive so if you have multiple eyes on the post, content can be easily accessed. When you have a place to upload all of your raw content you can begin creating it. Don’t worry about perfection – especially if you have an additional team to review the content for you. And of course, you can always head over to the social channels you will be posting on to gain inspiration for what is trending.

The final step entails launching your content. Before doing so it’s important to ask yourself a few questions to determine a posting schedule and frequency. What posting frequency should you follow, what is the best time of day to post, who is involved in posting, and what days should you be posting? Answers to these questions can help make your content calendar process a lot smoother. Once everything is ready to go make sure you follow the posting schedule you have created and watch your social media results soar.

Posting Services

If you are looking to have a pre-made calendar, you can always subscribe to a posting service where all you would need to do is upload your content to a website and schedule it out. Here at Sesame Communications, our social team utilizes a platform called SOCi to post all our content. As part of our social service, our clients can also utilize the platform as well and can schedule out their own posts directly to their Facebook and Instagram profiles. Other helpful tools include Asana, Loomly, Excel, HubSpot, Google Drive, Trello, SproutSocial, Evernote, and Hootsuite.

A content calendar, if created correctly, can be a crucial aid for organizing and streamlining social media content across all channels. The key to social media is consistency in all steps. If you are consistent in taking the time to prepare your content calendar each month, you will see how much of a breeze it is to post on all of your profiles.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Get Organized with a Social Media Content Calendar appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Title tags are all around us! Have you ever noticed the descriptive information for a web page at the top of your internet browser? That information is the “title tag” for that page. 

Here’s a look at how the title tag displays in a search window for Sesame’s website category page, for example: 

Title tags are the clickable heading shown within Google’s or the specific search engine results and browser tabs. Although not particularly visible to searchers not looking for them, they are VERY important for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. 

Keep reading to learn why!

Title Tags Play a Crucial SEO Role

The page title is an important part of SEO. In the Search Results, it is shown above your meta description and under your URL. Here’s a sample from a “Sesame websites” search result: 

In order to appear more visible in search results relative to competitors, optimizing title tags is a necessity. Why? Because the title tag tells search engine crawlers what the overall them of a web page is, aiding the indexation process.

Title Tag SEO Best Practices 

Keep each title tag short, direct, and descriptive so the person who performed the search is able to tell if your business offers a solution for their needs. Consider highlighting the city your practice is in and give direct information plus a brief content description of what the visitor will see when they go to the page.

For example, for a dental practice named “Awesome Dental” in San Francisco an appropriate title tag could be: 

“Dentist in San Francisco – Awesome Dental”

Potentially Harmful

If a page does not have a good page title, it can negatively affect visibility in search results for important terms. Without an optimized page title, the search engine that is crawling the page will not understand that it’s relevant for a given term.

 When a page title is optimized with the correct information the crawler is more likely to notice that page and place it prominently in search results. That will translate to more traffic from prospective patients. 

Be Unique

Because each page’s title tag content depends on actual target keywords, it’s important to create unique titles for each page. Use primary keywords in the title tag that will show the user and the search engine crawlers the exact content they are looking for is connected to the search result they are about to click. 

It’s also ideal to use your brand or business name when possible (as in the example above) and to keep each title tag between 20-70 characters as longer title tags will not get completely displayed or indexed by search engines.

Having optimized title tags can greatly impact your practice’s search results visibility. The greater the visibility, the more frequently your specific page is listed prominently in search engine results. That translates to more website traffic from current and prospective patients. In short, don’t let your website’s title tags go without optimization!

—Aliah Rasmussen, SEO Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post How do Title Tags Help SEO Efforts? appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

As a business, you may know that Instagram has a special account type for businesses called a Business Account. But did you know that there is also another type of business account, the Creator Account?

Now you may be wondering, what are the differences between both account types and how can each one of them benefit what you are trying to achieve on your Instagram account? 

Keep reading to find out what account type is best for you and your practice!

Business Account

Business accounts are meant for brands, businesses, retailers, and organizations. With this type of account, you can unlock a ton of advanced features that are not otherwise available. 

The Instagram Insights feature a huge benefit of having a Business account. It provides a breakdown of your performance including your follower volume, page views, impressions, reach, demographic data about followers, website clicks, and email clicks. All of this information is incredibly valuable for aiding the growth of your account.

In addition, Instagram Ads are a great advertising tool that is available for all Business accounts. You can set up, run, and track campaigns the same way you run Facebook Ads. This can be a great tool to broaden your audience and gain more potential clients.

On the same page, you can also promote or boost your Instagram posts. Boosting a post allows for a very low-cost way of running ad campaigns on Instagram.

Instagram Business accounts also allow for new and returning patients to contact you more easily. With options such as the Call-to-Action Button, Direct Messages, and Quick Replies option, contact information listed at the top of a profile, and profile labels, your patients will have no trouble scheduling their next appointment. A Call-to-Action allows businesses to redirect the client to their website. Quick Replies are a great way to save time by allowing you to create saved replies for your most asked questions. And by having your contact information and your profile label listed at the top, you can ensure your patients know the best way to contact you.

Finally, with Business accounts, you can pre-schedule all of your content using a third-party scheduling app. With this feature, you will be able to create a plan for your feed, save time, and publish posts when your audience is the most active. With the Sesame Social Service, we require that all our clients have a Business account for this reason. Instagram’s API does not currently support automatically publishing scheduled content using third-party apps for Creator accounts.

Creator Account

While the Creator account shares many similar features to the Business account, there are a few differences between the two. Unlike Business accounts, Creator accounts are meant to fulfill creator and influencer needs and they don’t necessarily have businesses.

With a Creator account, you have access to the Creator Studio Dashboard. In addition to the analytics found in your profile, you can learn about more insights to help track follower growth, when your followers are online, other growth metrics, and discovery data. You can also view a lot of information relating to your stories, reels, and IGTV videos.

With a Creator profile, you gain access to extra labels. There are hundreds of options available for creators to categorize their profiles. Business profiles on the other hand are unable to get as many labels.

The only downside to having a Creator account is you are unable to utilize third-party scheduling tools, which means if you have the Sesame Social Service and would like to switch over to a Creator account, we will be unable to post on your Instagram account.

There are pros and cons to each type of account. At the end of the day, it is best to evaluate your practice’s social media goals to determine what the best account type is for you. If you have any related questions or need help maintaining and growing your social media presence please feel free to reach out to us!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Instagram Creator vs. Instagram Business Accounts appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Content creators often struggle with balancing posting too frequently vs. not posting often enough. Will people unfollow you because you post every single day? Or will they unfollow you because you don’t post every single week? Finding the sweet spot of posting frequency can be challenging. Overwhelming and spamming your followers is a big “NO,” but you also don’t want to be forgotten or miss any opportunities.

So, what is the right posting volume by platform?

Instagram Posting

Instagram, by nature, exposes visitors to an abundance of creators and content. It may make you feel like you need to compete with others to achieve your social media goals and compel you into posting more than needed.

Generally, it’s recommended that you post to your feed 2-3 times per week with no more than 1 post per day. For Sesame Social Members, this would mean you would need to produce an additional 1-2 pieces of content which could stem from our monthly newsletter or be your own personalized content.

Stories can be posted at a much higher frequency than general content. Actually, we highly recommend that practices use their stories to increase engagement with their followers.

Think about how often your audience wants to hear from you and focus on building a regular cadence by posting consistently on a weekly basis.

Facebook Posting

On Facebook, it can sometimes feel more challenging to reach your audience than via Instagram because there’s no real way to promote your content without paying for advertising space. Because of that, you may be inclined to post less often.

With Facebook, it’s best to post at least once per day. With our Sesame Social solution, you get 2 posts per week, as well as a weekly and monthly blog post. This equates to about 3.25 posts a week.  By sharing content, patient before and after photos, and shoutouts on your Facebook profile, you could easily cover the remaining 2 posts suggested per week!

Finding the best frequency to post on your social media platforms will require some trial and error. You could start by incorporating an additional post on Facebook and Instagram per month, and you see how your audience responds to it. Another option is to go live on stories once a week to see if your engagement goes up. 

Are you worried about forgetting to post? Try setting yourself alerts like in the following example: 

If you’re becoming overwhelmed with the number of posts you’re having to produce to meet general posting guidelines, check out some of Sesame’s other blog posts on content ideas and inspiration. And with the help of our social tool, scheduling content will be a lot easier and less overwhelming.

Remember to aim for quality over quantity! Good posts are much more effective and important than posting volume. Never feel like you have to put out content. Strive for the feeling of wanting to put out content. The more relevant and useful your content is to your audience the better your social profiles will perform.

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post What’s the Right Social Media Posting Frequency? appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Ad copy changes are coming to Google and Bing! That’s right, effective June 30th, 2022 BOTH Google and Microsoft Advertising (Bing) are switching ALL new search ads creation to the Responsive Format.

Wait, what? I know, this sounds very painful. Luckily, expanded text ads created before that date will continue to run and they can be enabled and paused as you please. However, they will not be editable. 

Now that your panic levels have been reduced, keep reading to learn how this update will affect your practice and what you should do now to optimize your ads presence. 

What’s the difference between the ad types?

Expanded text ads, the current most common search ad type on Google and Bing, have existed in various forms since 2016 within Google Ads. They allow for up to 3 headlines of up to 30 characters of text and 2 description lines of up to 90 characters of text. Advertisers control the entire ad appearance. 

In 2018 Google introduced responsive search ads. Although they appear identical to expanded text ads in search results, the backend setup for responsive ads is a bit different. With responsive search ads, advertisers create up to 15 headlines of 30 characters each and up to 4 description lines up to 90 characters each. The Google and Bing algorithms decide which combinations of headlines and description lines are most applicable to display based on the search query a person performed. 

Here is a great graphic from Smarter Ecommerce that provides a great visual representation of the differences. 

So, what should we do now? 

Testing

Start testing! June 30th of 2022 is still months away so now is a great time to ensure that you have one responsive ad per ad group to test against current ads. Getting responsive ads live will give you around 6 to 7 months of data so that by the time the switch becomes official you’re able to make responsive ad optimization decisions based on data rather than intuition. 

Headlines and Descriptions

Take advantage of the additional headline and description options. That means filling up at least 10 – 15 headlines and all four available description lines with copy that is relevant to the ad group’s theme. By creating many options the Google and Bing algorithms will be able to match more applicable ad copy to a given search query. 

Leverage Expanded Text Ad Copy Data 

When you are creating new responsive ads, take a look at which ads are performing well. In turn, use elements like headlines and descriptions from top-performing ads as options within the new responsive ads you’re creating. By considering metrics like conversion volume, cost per acquisition, and click-through rate you can incorporate tried and true ad elements into the new copy. The result? Your new ads will be nicely structured to perform well even without the benefit of historical performance data. 

Use the Google Ads Strength Metric

One helpful tool Google provides is the “Ad strength” indicator. This tool gives ad creators an idea of how strong a given ad’s features are and if they’re not great, recommendations for how to improve them. As a result, you can adjust ad elements based on Google’s suggestions, which will ultimately help to build top-performing ads. 

While the move to responsive search ads may seem like a daunting update, with a bit of foresight it will be very manageable. Remember to create new responsive ads soon so you can perform plenty of testing and get a fair amount of performance data before the switch. 

When creating new ads, maximize available headlines and description lines and leverage elements of current ads that are performing well. The Google Ad strength meter will also help you gauge the quality of new ads. 

If you have any questions about this upcoming update or your practice is in need of PPC support please feel free to reach out to the Sesame team! 

—Mike Fitterer, Sr. Marketing Manager II, Sesame Communications

The post Google and Bing are Going Responsive appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Within the past decade, YouTube has gained massive popularity. Sharing a video on YouTube has become more than just a hobby, it has become a lifestyle. More recently, they have moved towards the creation of short clips to attract more users to the platform. 

As a result, if your practice is looking to expand your social media content output and dive into the world of video, YouTube Shorts may be a great place to start.

What are YouTube Shorts?

 In early 2021, YouTube rolled out Shorts in the United States for creators to be able to make short, catchy, videos using nothing but their mobile phones. This provides a great option for a lot of people looking to expand their social media presence without putting tons of money into video equipment.

With the addition of Shorts, creators are now able to connect with a new audience using just their smartphone and the Shorts camera in the YouTube app. As a result, making your own YouTube Short is a simple process.

How do you create a Short?

Creating a Short is incredibly easy. All you will need is a YouTube account accompanied by the YouTube app on your smartphone. You’ll go into the “Create a Short” portion of YouTube by clicking on the plus (+) button at the bottom of your screen.

From there you can make a Short that is up to 60 seconds long by holding down on the capture button. However, if you are interested in adding music to the back of your creation, you are limited to 15 seconds of content.

When you are ready to publish the Short, you can add a title and choose settings for your video. Once you have completed the final details your Short is ready to be published!

Content Ideas

Shorts offer a fun and easy way to grow your engagement with followers and reach new audiences. Below are some ideas for building your presence on YouTube and the Short community.

1. Meet the Doctor(s)
2. Do’s and Don’ts of Brushing and Flossing
3. Dental Routines
4. Best Toothbrushes on the Market – Drugstore vs High-end
5. Debunking Industry Myths
6. Daily Reminders for Oral Health
7. Behind the Scenes of the Office Staff

Whether you are looking to expand your social media presence to different platforms or simply want to have fun with video creation, YouTube Shorts is a great place to start. With the endless possibilities available, you are sure to reach new users and build a bigger following. Don’t fall short, start using Shorts today!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post The Benefits of YouTube Shorts appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Search engine algorithms are designed to determine which websites are most applicable for a given search result. The websites are then listed in results based on an abundance of factors. Interestingly, both onsite and offsite considerations influence rankings. 

So, what are onsite and offsite factors? I created this blog post to help you understand the difference between the two and why they both matter. I will also cover tips for making sure your online presence is putting its best foot forward.  

Onsite SEO 

Onsite SEO is optimization that is performed on your website. There are multiple ways to complete onsite projects. This section covers a few examples.  

Meta data – Meta data is code that is placed on the backend of your website that helps search engines, as well as users, understand what your site—and specifically certain pages—of your site are about.

Here’s an example of a result for Sesame: 

This is a meta description that tells a user exactly what information they are going to find when they click on the link. There are other variations of meta data that should be placed throughout your site as well. 

Content – Many websites are built with libraries of stock content. While this is not inherently bad, updating the actual content on your website is going to separate you from your competitors.

Backlinking – Backlinking helps prove your expertise in a given field to the search engines and entails having quality links to and from your website. Has your office received awards for exemplary service, for example? A link should be placed on both the awardee and awarder websites. This shows search engines that a reputable site has linked to yours, which builds trust in the eyes of the search engines. Backlinking can also apply to local businesses in the area you partner with, organizations you are part of or a variety of other partnerships. Be sure to add them to your website! 

Offsite SEO 

You have probably already gathered what offsite SEO is by this point. That’s right, it’s SEO that is performed away from your website. Search engines look at your entire online presence when determining your results position. Here are a few of the key offsite SEO projects that an SEO specialist should work on. 

Google My Business – Google My Business offers free business information listings that show up in results on Google. They are usually displayed on the right-hand side of search results pages. These listings allow a user to quickly see the information but also go to the website, call, or even get directions to the practice.  

These listings hold a lot of weight when it comes to ranking well. It’s important to ensure that your listing is verified and has accurate business information. If, for example, your website has a different phone number listed than what is on your Google My Business listing, search engines won’t know which one is correct and will likely penalize you for it. Their goal is to provide a seamless experience for users so make sure that your listing is up-to-date. 

Directory Listings – Piggybacking off of the previous point, your business information is listed all over the internet—whether you know it or not. Directories, many of which you have likely never heard of, will pick up your business information from various sources and attempt to make listings for your practice. When they all have different information, that is confusing to search engines. Be sure to focus on the main directories like Google, Yelp, and your social media networks. While it is a losing battle to try and manually update every single listing, there are many services that will automatically do it for you. 

Backlinking – Wait, didn’t we already discuss backlinking? Well, backlinking applies to both onsite and offsite SEO. By reaching out to local businesses, organizations, affiliations, etc, and asking them to place a link to your website on their site you can continue to provide quality channels back to your website. Don’t be afraid to proactively reach out and see if they are willing to put your website link on theirs! 

To summarize, onsite and offsite SEO both play different but very crucial roles in helping your website be visible online. A successful SEO strategy contains heavy doses of both elements as a result. 

Do you have questions about onsite or offsite SEO or does your practice need SEO help? Please feel free to reach out to Sesame’s SEO team!

—Phil Horton, Sr. Search Manager, Sesame Communications

The post Understanding Onsite vs. Offsite SEO appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest social media trends over the past year. There have been a few updates worth noting that can help your practice gain social visibility. 

Within this post, I will cover 3 cool social media content trends your practice can utilize to increase overall engagement!

Connect With Your Followers Through Live Streams

Live Streams are a great way to put a face to your practice. With ongoing social distancing requirements, many normal activities were put on hold and migrated to a video platform.

Live streams are an available feature on most social media platforms, and they are accessible to anyone, anywhere. With the increase in users on social media platforms during the last few years coupled with the increase in video content, live streams are a great option to get your practice out in front of your current and prospective patients. 

Use Stories to Provide More Content

Stories have become a dominant content format for many platforms. The idea that you can share in-person content at any time has become increasingly appealing to users all over the world. Want to share something cool you are working on? Upload it to your story. Want to promote a contest without it overwhelming your feed? Share it on your story.

People love to watch videos because they’re convenient for easily digesting information and a story is a great way to promote your practice while keeping your audience engaged.

Authenticity and Transparency Allow You to Shine 

Consumers want real. They want to know that there is someone behind your page and that you are relatable. This means that maintaining authenticity and transparency around you and your practice is crucial if you want to build a trusted relationship with your consumers.

What does this mean in social media terms? Own up to your mistakes, be reachable through your DMs to answer any questions, and show how much you care about fixing problems. Be more engaged with your audience but do so in a proper way.

Be Active 

The best thing you can do for your social media presence is to be active on your profiles. Post as often as you can even if your reach and engagement aren’t always high. Consistency is key.

Diversify your content, include some pictures, some videos, add in a fun fact, etc. when posting. You can look at the Explore page on Instagram, for example, to see what types of content are trending.

By combining great tools like live Streams and User Stories with authentic content posted regularly your practice can position itself well for a nice bounce in visibility on your social profiles. Remember to keep at it, as any one of your posts could eventually trend or even go viral! 

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post 3 Social Media Trends that Will Improve Visibility appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Having an Instagram account is a great way to grow your customer base. But posting content on Instagram is just a stop on the way to success. In this blog post, I will cover how captions impact your social media performance and offer advice for crafting your own creative captions.

Understanding How Captions Affect the Algorithm

When you are in the process of creating a caption or social copy, you want it to be compelling. Without compelling text, your posts will likely receive less engagement. As you may know, engagement rates are an important metric in Instagram’s algorithm. The higher the engagement on your posts, the more likely they are to be seen.

Strong captions shape your brand’s personality and tell a story. Without a caption, a picture is just a picture. But when you add in copy, you give your content a whole new meaning. Followers are able to understand what you are saying. With this added context, your followers are more likely to engage with the post and give it a like or a comment. More engagement equals higher success.

Instagram’s algorithm has many moving parts. One crucial component is how it determines the order in which posts are shown. When you engage with a post or an account, Instagram follows that data. Once it starts understanding a pattern and notices more engagement with a certain account those posts will display first. This is why getting your audience to engage with your post is crucial for your practice’s social media success.

Tips for Writing Good Captions

The first thing you should always do when working on your social media presence is to outline primary goals. You want to make sure that whatever you are trying to achieve through your goals, the end result is driving followers and potential patients to book appointments. 

The most important part of the caption is the first sentence. It grabs the attention and, after a certain number of characters, Instagram captions are shortened and hidden. This means that it’s likely your first sentence will be the only one that is seen. Lead with a hook!

Each post should have a purpose and intention. Leading with a call to action can help define your goals. With a call to action, you can create dialogue and conversation among your audience. When you encourage them to “click the link in your bio,” “leave a comment,” “answer the question,” or “tag a friend below,” you are engaging them with your post and increasing your chances of being seen.

Adding value, personalizing, and humanizing captions are great ways to increase engagement. When your followers see that you are not a robot trying to get likes, they are more likely to want to learn about what you are trying to convey to them. Authenticity matters most. 

At the end of the day understand what you want in a post and in a caption and implement that into your own content. And don’t forget that engagement = success!

—Marie Dubray, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Using Instagram Captions to Grow Your Engagement appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

Getting your content in front of your target audience on Facebook can be a challenging process. However, by understanding how Facebook chooses to display content, you can greatly improve the likelihood of your posts being seen. 

In this post, I will offer a curated list with tips to help your practice produce higher-ranking content within Facebook’s algorithm. Keep reading to learn more! 

Respond to Your Patients

Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes posts from pages that an individual has interacted with. If you have patients leaving comments on your posts or reaching out through Messenger, respond to them. Not only does this help your rankings, but it also allows you to connect with more (potential) patients.

Create Opportunities for Conversation

Facebook prioritizes posts that spark conversation and meaningful interaction. When posting content to your page, consider asking your audience a question like “what do you think about this new service?” This presents your audience with an opportunity to share their thoughts, which could lead to others engaging with them in the comments.

Avoid “Engagement-Baiting” Posts

Don’t launch posts that beg people to engage with you. This is different from the previous tip since engagement-baiting typically lacks personal or thought-provoking content. Examples could be anything from asking people to respond to the post with likes/comments/shares to posting spammy links. In order to perform better within the algorithm, avoid posting this kind of content.

Use Images and Videos in Posts

Over the years, Facebook has seen increased engagement when it comes to visual content, specifically videos. The longer a user watches your video content, the more likely they are to see future videos rank higher in their news feed. If your practice is able to utilize video content, make sure the content is engaging enough to keep the user invested throughout the video.

Post Content During Peak Hours 

Post at a time when your audience is most likely to see it. This is also known as peak time. By posting your content during peak time, your audience is more likely to see the post because of its relevance. (Please note, if you are signed up for our Sesame Social Service, you should have access to this information within the Social Tool. If you have our service and do not know how to access this information, please reach out and our team will be happy to assist you.)

Consider Audience Reaction When Posting Content

Over the years, the Facebook algorithm has ranked posts with emotional reactions higher than posts with just “like” reactions. If you know your patients react to specific content with “love” or “caring” reactions, be sure to utilize this to your advantage. For example, if patients typically react to posts about happy smiling patients or in-office giveaways with the “love” reaction, create more of that type of content.

Encourage Employees or Patients to Share Posts

Because of the Facebook algorithm, your posts benefit from additional engagement when it comes to sharing them. As a practice, your posts will achieve minimal ranking by just posting to Facebook alone. But if a user were to share a post, that post will automatically rank higher within their friend’s news feeds. This occurs because an individual user’s content is seen as being more credible and meaningful to the algorithm than a business page’s content. Without being pushy, encourage employees and patients to share your practice’s content to help give yourself a rankings boost!

The first step to improving your rankings is to understand how you can utilize Facebook’s algorithm to your advantage. It’s important to know your audience (when they’re active and what content they like) and engage with them. Just this alone will help your content immensely. That said, I hope that you are able to utilize all of these tips to help your practice rank higher and receive more engagement.

If you have any additional questions regarding your social content or would like to speak with the Social Team about how to integrate these tips at your practice, please feel free to reach out to us!

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post Tips for Getting Your Content Seen on Facebook appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.

If you are unsure of how Facebook decides how to display content, look no further! In this blog post, I will cover how Facebook’s algorithm indexes content. 

The Facebook algorithm is a machine learning ranking system with several layers that help determine the order in which posts are displayed on your news feed. The algorithm is continually changing and evolving to personalize content for the billions of people that utilize this platform. Its purpose is to ensure each individual user receives content that is specific, relevant, and meaningful to them. Overall, the Facebook algorithm ranks content based on what the user is more likely to engage with (content that would rank higher in their news feed) versus what they are less likely to engage with (content that would rank lower in the news feed).

In January 2018, Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook), announced that the Facebook algorithm would begin prioritizing content that sparked conversation and meaningful interaction with its users. This comes after a lot of criticism regarding the negative effects of Facebook. The hope was to make the user’s experience better and more meaningful. With this update, posts from friends, family, and Facebook groups began ranking higher than content from organizations and businesses, such as your practice. In order for content from organizations and businesses to gain traction, these posts would need to receive more engagement, reactions, comments, and comment replies. This is still the case today.

So, how can your practice use Facebook’s algorithm to your advantage? With the information we do know, there are a few ranking signals to consider when creating posts, as follows:    

Relationships

Who users tend to interact with on Facebook and the interactions they have with one another (it’s important to note that user to user interactions rank higher than an individual user interacting with a page).

Content Type

The type of content featured in a Facebook post, whether that be an image, video, or website link. How long a user spends time on a post is also considered when determining where that type of content will rank in the user’s news feed.

Engagement

The response to posts through comments and/or likes, as well as comment replies. This includes posts being shared by users to their friends, meaning posts with more engagement will rank higher.

Recency

When the content was posted versus when your followers are active. When a user opens Facebook, newer posts tend to rank higher than older posts.

Now that we have broken down some of the key ranking signals, the next step is to produce great content. Stay tuned for our next post which will provide tips for helping your practice produce higher ranking content based on Facebook’s algorithm!

—Nicole Gamble, Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications

The post How Facebook’s Algorithm Influences Content Visibility appeared first on Dental Marketing & Practice Management | Sesame Communications.