Twitter for My Dental Practice? What Should I Tweet?

“What should I Tweet?”

This is one of the most commonly asked questions by Roadside Dental Marketing clients and understandably so. Twitter can seem like an intimidating network because of the variety of tweets and content. It is only natural to ask questions such as:

• What should I tweet?
• How can I stand out?
• Will people see my tweets?

To help answer these questions, we are going to look out how easy it can be to populate your Twitter profile and your audience’s streams with quality content.

The “Perfect” Tweet

To get started, let’s examine what fundamentals should appear in your tweets.

(Note: the tweet elements above are in no particular order).

As seen in the tweet above, you need to include the subject, a short explanation of what it is about, hashtags, a call to action, and leave about 20 characters for retweeters to add some text.

Don’t worry if you can’t fit all of the recommended elements into 140 characters. Just ensure your tweet subject is relevant and easy to follow. For example,  if you are sharing an article, be sure to include the link, an overview, and hashtags.

Finally, it is recommended to include a link (to your content, website, etc) in the majority of your tweets, so the user remains in the sales cycle.

So, What Should I Tweet?

Anything that is interesting and relevant to your audience.

Before setting up your practice’s Twitter profile, you should understand who your target audience is. Then, through social media and asking questions, you can discover their interests. Once you have this information, tweeting becomes a breeze (well hopefully).

However, to give you some ideas we put together a list detailing the different types of tweets you can use.

• Original Content/Blog: Share a link to your blog posts on Twitter and any other original content you have -infographics, testimonials, etc.
• Link to your Website: Provide information about your services, team, or office and link back to the relevant website page.
• Updates: Use Twitter to share up-to-date information about your dental practice. This includes an appointment opening.
• Celebrations/Events: Tweet about what is happening in the office or in your personal life e.g. birthdays, vacations, national holidays, dental days.
• Personal: Include tweets that make your office more human such as vacation snaps, photos of the team, hobbies.
• Local: Use Twitter to mention local businesses. This is a great way to make new business connections.
• Ask questions: Get to know your audience and encourage interaction by asking questions.
• Offers/Promotions: Tweet your latest offers or link to them. Use strong calls to action to attract attention.
• Images/Videos: Twitter has announced that this type of media will now appear in streams instead of requiring the user to click on a link. Use images and videos to make your tweets stand out.
• Share Other People’s Content: If you find an article or video that would interest your audience, share it with them by linking to it on Twitter.
• Retweet: Regularly monitor Twitter and retweet content that would interest your audience.

As you can see there are numerous ways for your dental practice to use tweets and engage your audience. These suggestions can be adapted and used in various ways. Do not worry about not having anything to tweet about.

To finish, I just want to add one quick reminder: a tweet is the beginning of a conversation. Continually monitor your page and reply to ALL comments. We have an interesting blog to help you do this called “Get Notified: Stay on Top of Your Social Media”.

Which tweets do you find to receive the most engagement?