The past few months we’ve worked on setting up your social media manager, establishing systems, and taking better photos. These steps are crucial to a solid social media presence, and I really feel that no practice can have Level 10 social media without them! Without this foundation, your social is bound to taper off when you get busy (Anyone having flashbacks of missed lunches and Googling “how much caffeine until I die?” from the summer, or is that just me? …Anyone?). That, or your content simply won’t engage enough fans to see a real return (happier patients and new patients!). But with the right person owning your content and the right practices in place to make the process seamless, you can really let social grow. So it’s time to turn it up to 11.
The personality of your practice shows through everything you post on social and on your website, whether this is intentional or not. If I haven’t yet beat this adage to death, it’s worth repeating: a picture is worth a thousand words. What you’re saying about your practice when you post a photo covers everything from how friendly or fun you are to what you value to how professional you are. Are you hip or more family-oriented? Do you aim for elegance and designer status or is down-to-earth where it’s at? It might seem like a patient photo is a patient photo is a patient photo, but everything that goes into your shots influences the personality you’re sharing with patients and potential patients online.
This month’s reporting content focuses on staging photos and the photo background, composition, and angle choices that go into awesome patient shots. Each of these decisions helps you develop a consistent practice personality online, and that personality will develop as you take more and more photos. Once you land on the style of a shot that really works and makes sense for your practice, you’ll know it. And you get there by exploring: by taking lots of photos in many different ways, until you find a setup, a composition, a background, and editing settings that really let your practice’s personality shine through.
At Saddle Creek Orthodontics, we show a few things with our photography: we have a fun, friendly staff, we’re a bit silly, we love our jobs, and we’re professional and on top of our game when it comes to social media and technology (and that quality carries over in patients’ minds when it comes to our in-office technology, too). We want patients to connect with us before they even meet us, since they’ll feel like part of the SCO family as soon as they walk through our doors. But say we were located in downtown Memphis and mostly provided Invisalign to 20- and 30-something professionals. Our photos would be very different! We’d want to show off the fact that we’re up to speed with trends and technology and that we can connect with the voice of a 30ish patient who’s thinking more about straightening his or her teeth inconspicuously, rather than considering braces for their 11 year old.
Your imagery says a lot: be purposeful about what that narrative is and take advantage of the avenues we have to share with patients and potential patients. Once you’ve found your visual voice, your photos will reflect that. In turn, your images will be easily recognized as yours when they hit the newsfeed. This brand recognition is valuable and turns into higher engagement and interaction, which can turn into patients recommending you to their Facebook friends, positive reviews, and new case starts. And that’s what it’s all about, my friend!