What are Google My Business Posts?
Google My Business is a free Google tool that allows you to take your business to the next level. The posts you share here allow you to connect with potential patients and drive engagement from anyone who is interested in your practice. This provides them the opportunity to understand what makes you unique. Before you even meet your patients, you will be building trust and credibility that can be strengthened later on.
Google My Business posts are displayed as a portion of your business profile, which is accessible by running a Google search. Potential patients searching for your business by name, or searching for dental offices in their location will be able to view these posts in the “Overview” tab of your profile, or the ”From the Owner” section. These posts appear as clickable text, photos, or videos that entice the viewer to take a closer look.
These posts benefit SEO and allow potential patients to find your practice easier. They may be searching for a specific treatment, location, or specialty which will be easier for them to find with your posts.
Contents of Your Posts
85%: Educational/Entertaining/Inspiring
To truly capture the attention of the audience you’re targeting, it’s important to make your content unique. Doing this keeps the reading interesting and avoids the generic, business-oriented attitude that drives patients away.
15%: Sales-Oriented
The best brands don’t just focus on selling. They establish themselves by adding value and identifying what they have to offer. By recognizing what sets you apart, you’re making it easier for the patient to choose you over other competitors.
The best strategy is to explore different types of content and assess how your audience reacts. This gives you a direct understanding of what appeals to the patient and how you can drive your posts to generate more attention. Always develop posts with the person that you are talking to in mind. In order to do this, ask yourself who your audience is; define your target avatar and ensure that you are delivering them the information they are looking for.
Things To Post About
Special / Seasonal Offers:
Take an opportunity to promote deals or discounts you’re running to capture the attention of potential patients.
Testimonials / Before & Afters:
When shopping online, many consumers look for reviews and testimonials. Patients do the same when looking for a great dentist! Sharing results from real patients facilitates group psychology; we are naturally influenced by what we observe in others.
Provide Some Tips / Tricks:
When the advice you deliver in your posts benefits an individual reading them, you have already begun building your reputation. This is crucial in gaining not only interest from potential patients, but also their trust. Share content that conveys your knowledge and establish yourself as an expert.
Bust Some Commonly Held Myths About Dentistry:
Furthermore, spilling more information about misconceptions in dentistry can be incredibly useful to your readers. Once you gain trust from these individuals, you may find that they are more inclined to become new patients.
Job Postings
Not only will potential patients learn more about you through these posts, but prospective team members will as well. Keeping your content unique, valuable, and honest will ensure that you continue to gather interest.
Non-profit Tie-ins / Volunteer Days
Sharing what your team accomplishes outside of work helps to humanize your practice and shows that you can make a difference in other people’s lives. Whether this is by helping your community, donating to charity, or providing services to people in need, these are contributions worth noting.
Share Links to Other Businesses / Collaboration / Cross-promote
Team up with other businesses or practices in order to generate business to and from other locations. If you perform general dentistry and have a patient that needs an orthodontist, find one locally and refer your patients to their care. Ask the orthodontist to recommend your services to their patients as well. Networking, both in-person and online, helps you reach new audiences.
Holidays / Birthdays / Anniversaries
Humans are social beings, meaning that in every aspect of our lives, we crave some level of connection. Sharing events that are special to you and your team allows potential patients to identify more with your practice personally.
Behind the Scenes
Show your audience an inside look at the operation of your business and team members. Once again, this gives potential new patients or new hires valuable insight into your practice, allowing them to develop a stronger sense of connection.
Reminder to Leave a Review
Always remind patients to leave a review once they visit your office. This helps to build a reputation and helps influence potential new patients who may be making a decision to schedule with you.
Top-Five List
A top-five list can be built around any topic and allows you to communicate a message to your audience in a quick, well-structured format. This could be five reasons to visit the dentist, five tips for avoiding tooth decay, or five things to expect when visiting your office. Lists like these draw attention and provide information necessary for potential patients to make an informed decision.
New Products or Services
When you bring new advancements or capabilities to your practice, it is important that you get the word out about it. What better way to do that than by using your posts? By doing so, you can keep your audience informed of any changes or updates.
Answer Some of the Most Common Questions Potential New Patients Ask When They Call Your Team
If your practice is getting the same questions in multiple phone calls, chances are that the answer is unclear on your site. To clarify valuable details and limit the phone calls, you can answer these common questions in your posts.
How To Improve the Impact of Your Posts?
When you’re working on attracting attention from potential new patients or team members, you want your posts to be compelling. This means you should focus on doing more than just posting, but truly work out quality content to share that will engage your audience. Using the above ideas, you are on the way to developing content that will have your business going in the right direction. Also, keep the following in mind for everything you share so that you can maximize the potential of your posts:
ALWAYS Include a Relevant CTA
After reading your post, invite your audience to take action. Did you mention your practice’s convenient online scheduling? Give them the link to schedule! Have you shared that your practice is offering new services? Provide a link to your service page. Provide them what they need to dive deeper into the topic and make it easier for them to carry out the action you’re influencing them to perform.
Mention Other Locations When Posting
If your practice has multiple locations or is affiliated with other businesses, make sure you mention these locations in your posts. This allows you to reach more audiences.
Use Your Keywords!
Think about what your patient avatar is going to be searching for, then use that word or phrase in your post! This allows the search engine to pull up your posts when a potential patient starts searching for a specific topic online.
Post at Least Once a Week
Share posts at least once a week and keep in mind that only two posts will show at a time. These entries will stay on your feed for seven days from the posting date before you will need a new post to replace them. Your content should remain consistent in the ideas you’re sharing, but always provide something new to keep your audience interested.
Test Your Posts and Pay Attention To What Gets the Most Engagement
Try out different methods to see what works best with your particular audience. What gets the most clicks, activity, and interest? Once you have this established, you will know what your audience is looking for.
Google My Business Posting Specs
- Videos can only be 60 seconds
- Optimize Images to 1200×900 pixels
- Original photography will ALWAYS work better than stock
