25 Tips to Dominate Instagram for Dental Offices in Houston Texas

25 Tips to Dominate Instagram for Dental Offices in Houston Texas

As the experts over at runrex.com are quick to point out, Instagram, as a visually-oriented platform, can be a great platform to showcase your dental practice and your services, given that aesthetics is a key aspect of dentistry. However, it can only work for your practice if you know how to use it, and this article will look to help with that by highlighting 25 tips that should help you as a dental office in Houston, Texas dominate on Instagram.

• Set up a business account

The first and most important tip when it comes to dental offices and Instagram is making sure that you set up a business account and not a personal profile. As is explained over at guttulus.com, business accounts will give you access to crucial features such as the ability to promote posts and see analytics on how your content is performing.

• Prioritize security

The security of your dental practice and your patients when engaging on Instagram is crucial, which I why you need to ensure that you enable two-factor verification for your account. You should also set up settings on the use of third-party apps for increased security. Two-factor authentication will protect your account, and by extension, your patients as well.

• Use the name of your practice as your username

When setting up the profile of your dental office’s Instagram account, you must set up the name of your practice as the username of the account. This is designed to make it easier for people to find and recognize you on the platform, and know exactly what the account is about.

• Choose an appropriate profile picture

You also want to choose an appropriate profile picture for your account, one that showcases the professionalism of your practice. This is why it is recommended that you use either your dental practice’s logo or professionally taken headshot of the practicing dentist as your profile picture.

• Get your description right

You should also write a clear, concise, and compelling description for your account, highlighting what makes you different as a dental practice from your values to the services offered. You should also consider using emojis to be more visual as outlined over at runrex.com.

• Don’t forget to add a link to your site and keywords

You should also make sure that you include a link to your site when writing the description of your profile to help your audience get to your site quickly when they need to. Additionally, you should also include keywords in your description which you believe people interested in the services you offer will be looking for, an example being “Houston dentist”.

• Include contact information

You should also make sure that your profile’s contact information is completely filled out, which includes your phone number, email, and physical address. Make sure, also, that people know where your office is located to get qualified leads. You don’t want someone from New York visiting your website from your Instagram only to find out that you are a Houston, Texas dental practice.

• Choose the right hashtags to use

Hashtags are crucial when it comes to Instagram marketing as they make it easier for potential patients to find you. It is, therefore, important that you use appropriate hashtags in your engagements on your account to ensure that your posts are being shown to the appropriate audiences for the maximum impact. Also, don’t fill your posts with hashtags as this will make them appear clunky and will put off your followers and audience.

• Be diverse when using hashtags

As is revealed in discussions over at guttulus.com, the best results are achieved when you have a diverse mix of different types of hashtags. This means using a mix of location-based hashtags such as #BestDentistInHouston which will help you connect with local users, industry-based hashtags like #DentalImplants to ensure that you show up in relevant feeds, as well as fun and popular hashtags like #TBT for a broad appeal and which will help you drive engagement for your posts.

• Use tools to conduct hashtag research

Conducting some hashtag research is crucial when it comes to Instagram marketing as it will allow you to maximize your reach by using the most appropriate hashtags as mentioned earlier on. tools like Hashtagify, Hashtag Expert for IG, among others will help you find the best general, industry, and location-based hashtags to use.

• Follow hashtags

Finally, as far as hashtags are concerned, it is important to note that Instagram now allows users to follow hashtags and not just accounts, allowing them to see relevant content in their main feeds rather than only in the explore section, even if they are not following the account that has created the content. This opens up a great opportunity for dental practices to show up in more of their prospective patients’ feeds, as well as providing additional research opportunities as it will help you know what your audience wants to see.

• Focus on making your gallery aesthetically pleasing

It is important that when users click on your profile and view your Instagram gallery, they encounter a stunning and aesthetically pleasing gallery as such accounts are likely to attract more followers. To achieve this, you should ensure that you use a similar color palette for all of your posts, as well as cohesive image styles, to ensure consistency between your brand and your posts on Instagram, and for a visually pleasing gallery.

• Leverage user-generated posts

Any dental practice that is looking to dominate on Instagram should lean heavily on user-generated posts, which, as explained over at runrex.com, are the type of posts that are shared by your patients. Such posts help build credibility as they are trusted a lot by users, and will, therefore, increase engagement and help you grow your account.

• Put up informative, educational posts

Sharing educational posts can help establish yourself and your dental practice as a thought leader, while also keeping your audience engaged and interested in your content. You can put up posts informing patients about the procedures you offer, which will help them feel more comfortable about things, and establish your account as the place to be when looking for such information.

• Showcase your team

Keeping your staff front and center on your Instagram is another great strategy as far as content is concerned as your followers are likely to want to know the people involved behind the scenes. This will help humanize your practice and build trust with your audience.

• Keep it fun

It is safe to say that sitting down at a dentist’s office for one procedure or the other isn’t exactly most people’s idea of fun, which is why you should use your dental office’s Instagram to create a more positive association between dental procedures and your practice. This will also ensure that you create posts that your audience will love, helping you to grow your account.

• Leverage before and after shots

Before and after shots are one of the most effective images available to dental practices on Instagram according to the gurus over at guttulus.com. These photos will help demonstrate exactly what your services and products can do, which will encourage prospective patients to make an appointment. They are also visually appealing and will help keep your followers engaged.

• Take advantage of Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are made up of vertical images or 15-second-or-under videos that take up a user’s entire mobile screen. Given that around 500 million users are watching or producing Stories daily, this is one feature you should be taking full advantage of if you are to dominate on Instagram.

• Don’t forget about Instagram Stories stickers

Stickers are also very important when it comes to Stories as they allow you to do things like share Gifs on your content, increase interactivity, and so forth. Some of the stickers that you should consider using include Hashtag stickers, poll stickers, question stickers, emoji slide stickers, among others.

• Try out IGTV as well

Given that IGTV prioritizes long-form content, it creates new opportunities to share more detailed content with your audiences on Instagram. Here, you can create long-form content videos on topics like dental implants and how they work as well as the procedure involved, how clear aligners work, how to brush and floss your teeth, and so forth.

• Create engagement-oriented posts

From discussions on the same over at runrex.com, engagement is crucial on Instagram, which is why an important tip to dominate on the platform is creating engagement-oriented posts. These are posts that are created with the sole purpose of triggering engagements and getting comments. An example of such a post is one where you ask your people whether they prefer braces or clear aligners and why. Such posts will trigger engagements with your audience and will help you grow your account.

• Respond to all comments

It is also very important that you respond to all comments you get to your posts, both negative and positive, and that you do so as quickly as you can. This not only helps foster relationships with your audience, but it also drives engagement rates for your posts.

• Avoid cookie-cutter replies

While it is important to respond to all comments as mentioned above, it is important to point out that responding with cookie-cutter replies is just as bad as not replying at all. This is why you should always respond with customized replies for each user, showing that you care about their feedback and are not just replying for the sake of it.

• Consider commenting first

Another tip that will help you to boost engagements and give you the success you are looking for on Instagram is reaching out to and engaging directly with your audience. If you see someone asking a question that is related to your services, you can reach out and answer it. You can also tag users to some of the posts you put, posts that you know will interest them, to drum up engagements with your content.

• Be ethical

Finally, the gurus over at guttulus.com point out how important it is to be ethical when engaging with users on Instagram to avoid falling foul of laws governing dental practices. This includes being HIPAA compliant by ensuring that you obtain written consent and that you avoid revealing any identifying information when posting cases, and so forth.

If you are looking for more tips on how you can dominate Instagram or expert help with the Instagram marketing efforts of your dental office, then look no further than the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com, the best agencies for such services in Houston, Texas.