With a Facebook page and Twitter account, you may think you are on top of the social media game. But if you have not set up a Google+ page, you are missing out on a new way to interact with patients—and for new patients to find your practice.

Creating a Web site for your dental specialty practice costs time and money. But if prospective patients search for your practice online and instead find the site of a competing practice, your efforts have been wasted. Your Web site has to rank high on the search engine lists, and the best way to boost your ranking is to update the site regularly.

Word-of-mouth recommendations were once literally just that—comments exchanged verbally among acquaintances. Today, those comments are posted on the Internet for the world to see. Positive comments can boost the image of your dental specialty practice, and there’s nothing wrong with asking patients to write a short review about your practice. Whether you’re an endodontist, oral surgeon, orthodontist, pediatric dentist, periodontist or prosthodontist, here are a few tips about how to ask tactfully for online reviews:

We’ve said before that when it comes to impressing the search engines, content is king. “Fill your Web site with original, useful content, free of errors—spelling or otherwise—and the search engines should reward you” is how we succinctly put it in a previous post. However, Google also takes note …

While it may not be as popular as Facebook among your dental patients, Twitter can be an important marketing tool, especially if you update your dental practice’s Web site regularly with valuable content. Some people use Twitter as they do Facebook, for mundane updates. But the best way for a dental specialist to use Twitter is to tweet useful dental hygiene tips, links to relevant stories or studies online, or links to new content on your own dental Web site.

Few dental specialists would question the role of word-of-mouth marketing in acquiring new patients. But many are still reluctant to use social media. A recent survey of small businesses illustrates this disconnect. Among those surveyed …

A couple of recent marketing surveys bring to mind a crucial missing piece in the marketing plans of many dental specialists. The first survey, conducted by Sagefrog Marketing Group, found that 68% of business-to-business (B2B) companies allocate 5% or less of their revenue to marketing.

With so many voices pushing the importance of Internet and social media marketing, you might wonder, how does all this new marketing translate into revenue for your dental specialty practice? Several studies have set out to measure this on a grand scale:

With people taking a more active role in choosing their health care providers, word-of-mouth advertising is increasingly important to the success of your dental specialty practice. A strong Web presence is essential, as is maintaining communication with existing patients and referral sources. But what about the people who ask friends or family members for a recommendation?

In case you needed another reason to create a Facebook page for your dental specialty practice, the Pew Research Center published new statistics this year that reiterate the importance of social media.