Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms today, and that’s not changing any time soon!
More than 80% of Instagram users follow at least one brand on Instagram, and more than 70% intentionally look up brands to follow. When you combine this with Instagram’s higher-than-average engagement rates, it’s easy to see the importance of making sure your dental practice has a strong Instagram presence. Plus it can really help you expand your reach – a simple way to attract new patients and connect with current ones!
However when it comes to actually posting content to your Instagram page it can often be very overwhelming. With such a saturated market (there are a whopping 1 billion accounts on Instagram!) often your Instagram page can become neglected, or posting can become a bit of a chore – irregular and uninspiring.
Fear not! We have created a list of 21 fun and creative Instagram post ideas to inspire you into posting regularly and with confidence.
Keep a calendar of notable holidays and national celebration days and weeks so that you can use these to create content. Plan ahead and utilise trending hashtags on these celebratory days too, to enhance your post’s reach – meaning more people will see your posts appear in their newsfeed!
Your team is one of your greatest assets, so show them off! Share pictures of the team, individually, and as a group. Give your followers a behind the scenes look at what your staff get up to on a day to day basis, injecting some personality into your feed. Potential patients viewing your page for the first time will get a great feel of who you and your team are with team selfie posts, building a natural rapport before you even meet them in person.
There is nothing quite like a smiling patient who’s satisfied with their dental treatment, so don’t forget to post them to your social media. After gaining patient consent, upload a picture of your satisfied patient, including details of their treatment in the caption. Be sure to inject some personality into your post, by adding a practice logo or border in your brand colour(s) and include as much detail as possible into the caption. What treatment did they have? What technology/products/brands did you use? What were the patient’s thoughts and feelings before, during and after the treatment?
FREE SWIPE FILE! Click here to grab our Social Media Patient Consent Form to ensure you’re covered when it comes to using patient images across your media.
Reviews are paramount when it comes to converting a follower into one that makes an enquiry, and ultimately becomes a new patient! Infact 88% of consumers say that they trust online reviews as much as they would trust a personal recommendation from friends or family. Create a branded template to showcase your positive testimonials and post these to your page every time you get a new, glowing review.
Check out our post on 5 handy ways to get Patients To Write Reviews
Before and After Photos are the bread and butter of great social content for dentists, so be sure to include these on your Instagram page. Just by spending a bit more time and effort on these posts, it can really make the difference in making your page stand out from the crowd. Develop a standard process for capturing your patients’ before and after photographs to ensure consistency throughout your posts – a stylistic curated page really does help to engage your followers.
Read our 7 Easy Do’s and Don’ts when creating your smile gallery for more inspiration.
Have you and your team just finished a training day? Or perhaps a staff member has just been awarded a new qualification! Or you’re celebrating a personal celebration like a big birthday or engagement. Include these on your Instagram page. Adding some personality and showcasing more of your staff will really help your followers get to know you and your practice. Plus people like to engage with celebratory posts, which in turn will help to build your social media presence.
Competitions are a great way to increase engagement and followers to your Instagram page. Running a competition or giveaway can be a simple way to boost your visibility, by encouraging your followers to like, comment and share your posts. More often than not these posts end up doubling your return on investment, gaining you more enquiries and patients than the cost of the giveaway.
Utilise your practice location to your advantage and engage with the local community on your social media pages. Showing your followers that you’re up to date with community news, and in the know, helps to build up a great relationship and ultimately trust in you and your business.
Everybody loves to know what goes on behind the scenes, so show your followers your practice before they even step through the door. Sharing pictures of your reception area, surgery and the general ambience will help people get a feel of what they can expect when visiting your practice. Don’t forget to show off your unique selling points, things that you have that other practices may not. Do you have a coffee machine for patients to use or perhaps you regularly supply your reception area with seasonal flowers? Share these regularly with your social media followers.
Utilise your Instagram page as a secondary dental chair and give your patients a taster of your dental knowledge by sharing some of your top tips. Educational posts make for great shareable content too, meaning that users are more likely to engage by sending them to friends and family, saving them or sharing them on their own pages. Start a weekly series called “Top Tips Tuesday” in which you share a piece of advice to your followers. Regular posting helps to build your following and engagement too!
Who doesn’t like a cute puppy picture appearing on their newsfeed?! There is a reason why animal content always does so well on social media – and that’s because we’re a nation of animal lovers. It’s estimated that, in the UK, 12 million households have pets, so you’re bound to find common ground with your followers by sharing your fluffy family member.
Hint: National Pet day is on the 11th April – a great time to share your practice’s pets on your page!
The hashtag Team Tuesday has an impressive 72K posts on Instagram alone and is a great way to show off your staff members individually each week. Celebrate your staff by sharing a picture of them and their credentials, a bit more about their qualifications and some personal anecdotes or a direct quote. This is another great opportunity to showcase your practice’s personality by making sure the team pictures reflect who you are as a working family. Warm, approachable and family friendly? Then forget your professional headshots and share a more relaxed smiley picture each Team Tuesday.
Video offers an opportunity to showcase your personality, team, and stories in a compelling and dynamic way, and make for a great alternative to a static post. We recommend creating an Instagram Reel, which is the latest video feature on Instagram that allows you to create 15-30 second video clips, which can be edited to include music, text overlays and visual effects, helping you to create fun and engaging video content.
Read our handy guide on How to Boost Your Dental Practice’s Social Media Engagement with Instagram Reels
Don’t be afraid to show your sense of humour on your Instagram. It will come as no surprise that not many people tend to think of the dentist as a relaxing, fun place to go, but you can always help to alleviate some of the nerves by showing that your dental practice isn’t as scary as some may think! Keep an eye on what is trending in popular culture and what is being used across social media and get in on the action.
Check out some of these funny dental memes on pinterest.
A sure fire way to maximise on engagement is to keep an eye on trending hashtags, in both your industry and location. Creating posts around popular hashtags increases your chances of being seen on a higher number of users’ news feeds, as well as being featured on Instagram’s “for you” page. While Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags per post, your time is better spent researching and using a handful of super effective hashtags rather than stockpiling a ton of tags per post. We recommend that on each post you use a minimum of 11 hashtags, the more relevant to your followers, the better.
Quote posts on Instagram are effective and persuasive, because people are drawn to brief but meaningful, relevant, engaging content. Quote posts can be another way to showcase your practice personality and ethos, which helps followers to connect with you. They’re also quick and easy to consume; we know with an average social media user’s attention span being 8 seconds that this is a great way to capture their attention and engagement.
When it comes to dentistry we all know there are many factors that contribute towards healthy teeth, including a healthy lifestyle and your Instagram is a great place to share some health and wellness advice. Share tips and benefits of a healthy diet, quitting smoking and looking after your mind and well being. Point to other great accounts or wellness advocates that reflect your values too.
When your patients are in your practice encourage them to follow, engage and tag you in their own social media posts. Resharing content to your own page or Instagram stories can be another great way of increasing your reach but also for potential new patients to relate to others. After treatment, ask your patients if they’d like to “snap a selfie” of their final results and to share and tag you on Instagram. It’s a great quick and easy way to generate content and make sure your posts are reaching new audiences too.
Shout about other accounts on your Instagram! Have you used a particular whitening treatment or introduced a new piece of technology to your practice? Tag them in your posts and mention them on your page to encourage them to share your account to their followers too.
Sometimes a creative post doesn’t always achieve the engagement with your followers that you might like, so engage them directly by asking your followers to interact with you through asking questions. From fun opinions to direct polls, encourage them to answer in the comments below, opening up conversations or pointing them in the direction of your direct messages.
Influencer collaborations can be a great way to open you up to new followers and to point them to your page. Collaborating with the right influencer whose niche aligns with the core of your brand is everything and can be the highlight of your decision. This is because it gives you an already engaged audience and helps your product get the attention that it needs. Do your research on local influencers and reach out to them to see if they would be interested in having a gifted or discounted dental treatment in return for some social media coverage.
The possibilities really are endless when it comes to creating unique and interesting content for your social media pages, and they can be paramount in the success of your digital marketing efforts.
However we understand that often time restraints, alternative responsibilities and simply the effort that goes into running your social media accounts, whilst running a dental practice, can become a bit of a challenge. So, why not Get in touch with us today and we can show you how to make sure that not only your social media is the best it can be, but all aspects of your digital marketing are working to deliver great results for your practice.