Thursday, December 26, 2013
In today’s ever-changing social sphere, there is no doubt that Pinterest has started to attract more attention, not only from individuals, but from businesses as well.
Since its launch in early 2010, Pinterest has gained more than 70 million users, including more than 500,000 business accounts. Pinterest has quickly become the top converting social media site for advertisers. According to a recent study, 47% of U.S. consumers who shop online have purchased a product or service from Pinterest. This indicates that people trust their Pinterest networks and increases the likelihood they will recommend that brand or product to their friends and following.
So the question becomes, is your dental practice taking advantage of this ever-popular and growing social media platform? Not only is it a great way to reach your audience on a new medium, it is a great way for your practice to have fun with social media and create an engaging brand persona through imagery.
In this article, we will explore how a dental practice can use Pinterest to engage with both its current and potential patients, and how Pinterest can help define the fun yet educational side of your brand.
Getting Started on Pinterest
Joining Pinterest as a business has never been easier. You start by navigating to the Pinterest for Business homepage and entering the basic information about your dental practice including your business name, business description, logo, etc. Once your page has been set-up and verified, it will look similar to this, and you can get straight to pinning!
You might be thinking “Ok, I’ve set up my page and started pinning, but now what?” Here are some tips on how to engage with your current patients and utilize Pinterest to highlight your brand persona to potential patients:
Tip #1: Pin Outside the Box – While it is important to appeal to your expertise, your practice is so much more than a dental office. When you first get started, you’ll want to create boards and pins that reflect your experience as a dentist but you also want to help your patients envision your brand in their lives.
Talking to your patients about what foods can help their teeth stay healthy is great, but pinning some healthy recipes and new dinner ideas will really bring the idea to life. Even pinning some of your favorite inspirational quotes or making a board for your favorite football team lets your patients know you have interests outside of dentistry that they can connect with you on.
Tip #2: Make Your Brand Fun and Approachable – Humor is a great way for a brand to show people that while they are passionate about what they do, they also have a less serious side that likes to crack jokes once in a while.
For example, having a board with your favorite dental jokes can help take the edge out of going to the dentist and can also make you more relatable. When your patients see that you can make dentistry fun, they are more likely to share your content and come back for more. Boards like “Fun with Toothbrushes,” “Words that Make You Smile,” and “Dental Jokes on Jokes on Jokes” give your patients an exclusive look into the fun part of dentistry.
Tip #3: Challenge Your Followers with Contests/Specials – People love some friendly competition, especially if it’s for coupons or deals to their favorite brands. On Pinterest, you can run contests where the winner is the pinner who pins the best picture or you could create a puzzle game revealing images to see who can solve it the fastest. This is a really good way to drive traffic to your website and increase engagement.
Not only can you get a lot of shares and repins on Pinterest, you can also gain a following that will be eager to participate in your contests again.
Tip #4: Create a Think Tank for Your Blog – Do you keep a folder of resources and ideas you want to use for future articles and blogs? Pinterest is a great way to keep those articles and ideas organized in one place so you can easily access them whenever you need new content. You can create secret boards that are only visible to you to curate and save blog ideas.
Tip #5: Use Analytics to Drive Traffic to Your Website – The main goal of Pinterest, and other social media sites, is to get inside the minds of your patients and share content that sparks their interest. One way you can gather this data is by analyzing both your Pinterest and Google Analytics. Pinterest Analytics allows you to measure how many of your pins have been re-pinned, how many new followers you’ve gained as well as reach, impression, likes and visit numbers.
Additionally, Google Analytics is a good tool for measuring traffic from Pinterest. You can find out which pages on your website are referred to most from Pinterest as well as which images from your website are being pinned to your users’ Pinterest boards. Once you analyze those pages, you will be able to tell which images to publish more of and which don’t get as much engagement as the others.
That’s Pinteresting…I think I’ll pin it!
These are just a few creative tips to help your practice engage with your audience on Pinterest. You can use these techniques to get started and build on them once your audience begins to grow. Remember to think outside the box and find out which pins drive the most traffic to your site. It may take some trial and error, but we promise, in the end, it will be worth it!
Let’s get to pinning!
Pinterest Logo image courtesy of Norebbo.