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In this training, dental marketing expert, Chris Pistorius will talk about the importance of posting quality content to your Google My Business page. Chris will get into the details of what to and not do when it comes to writing content for your dental practice.

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Hey everybody, how are you tonight? Thanks for tuning in or watching the recording of this. Um anybody watching live looks like we’ve got a few folks uh pulling into the podcast right now, please let me know of any questions. We’ve got a chat feature here that uh that you can ask questions as we go through this. Um may be more than happy to either ask them or answer them live here or I’ll be sure to post them on linkedin facebook everywhere that we’re going to post this with the answers there as well.

So today I want to talk about dental practices and writing content. Usually those two things don’t go hand in hand. Um It’s something that’s a big part of our strategy here at kickstart dental marketing to get dental practices Great. S. E. O. Results. Uh Great. It’s great to build authority that way. Um content is king and you’ve just got to really, you know, bear down and write good quality content that your people, your clients or your patients and your potential new patients are gonna want to see.

So what I want to do tonight is just talk a little bit about how to write google my business posts that drive results using a google. My business profile is actually one of the most effective ways I think to gain exposure for your dental practice and improve your SEO rankings. Google my business. If you don’t know, it already is a free marketing tool. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up. It’s a great tool to capture the attention of potential patients as they are actively using google search and maps to find their next dentist.

So while most, it’s really known for giving businesses visibility on google maps and sharing customer reviews. But your google my business profile really has way more to offer than that and that’s what I want to get into. One of the most useful features that a lot of people don’t even know about. Our google. My business posts. Um Google my business posts allow you to share information about your practice, your services, your products, events offers. It’s located below your knowledge panel on your G. M. B. Profile and these posts offer room for detailed information about your practice and they do reach a pretty broad audience.

So what exactly is a google my business post, Google My business post is a type of social media update that can be published on your google my business profile. Google my business posts allow you to connect with your audience when they’re online, including the business hours, you’re open details about your practice, any events offers and more so kind of think of it as the facebook for google if you will. So when you do this right and when optimized your google my business profile shows up very highly in search and maps.

Um and by regularly creating quality and I do mean quality, google my business posts can really help you with your rankings on google posts can be used to tell patients about Events offers and specials announcements. A lot of other stuff too. But here are just a few tips that I think will help in best practices to help you write an effective google my business post that will drive results. It’s what we do here all the time. So it’s the same strategy that we’re using now. Um um Number one in the five steps to creating a great google.

My business post would be picked your post type first of all, google. My business provides several different post options here to use depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and the message that you want to get along. You know it’s really about you know your focus and your messaging um that you want to share, selecting the right type of posts on google. My business can really make your content more effective. Um one ways offer posts an offer post is a perfect for providing like a limited time deal at your dental office.

You can include a headline description. Uh Start and end date. And what’s cool is that these posts are only shown during the time that your offer is available. Another type is update posts. We use this quite a bit. It’s when you have news about your practice like new products, new services, a new doctor, maybe you’re expanding. Maybe you have a new website and you can use this type of post. This is a great way to keep patients informed about the latest updates to your dental practice event posts.

Unlike update post event posts um allow you to um if you have a special event like for instance one of our practices has a has a raffle. They do every month and they give something away. Right? So something like that. These posts can include a date range or times of day and they’ll stay live during that range product posts. Um So when you want to feature physical products that you have think toothbrushes Invisalign um sleep appliances you know anything like that. You know this is the post type to use.

You can include details like product names, description, price and a call to action which is very important. Um I think with any of these choosing the right photos and videos. Really helped to photos and videos are a great way to make your post more compelling. When you create a G. M. B. Post always include a photo or a video repeat after me. Always include a photo or a video. The posts you create need to attract engagement and photos, videos. And clear calls to action are really the foundations of a great post. Now.

The photo or video you upload with your new google. My business post should be authentic to your practice. So I don’t like stock photos here. Um Any image you should be visually appealing, engaging and represent your practice. Well if possible avoid having text over your photos particularly as images get cropped differently for desktop and mobile devices. Um you know, at the end of the day people buy from people even in dentistry, so don’t use those stock images. You know, it’s so easy nowadays with your iphone or android to do a quick picture, a quick video, it doesn’t have to be professional.

Um it just has to be authentic. I think that’s what people really want the most. So um let’s talk a little bit about picking a keyword driven title for your post. So keep your post title concise and include a keyword you want to target when you write a post if you’re not sure what keywords your audience would use to find your business. Check out the google. Keyword planner is a free tool um and allows you to get suggestions of keywords. Um you know, google my business posts can potentially influence your SEO ranking factors.

We find that it’s a huge factor in getting our clients to rank highly on google. So it’s smart to really create clear search engine friendly titles. Um also choosing the right call to action here or C. T. A. Um C. T. A. Is is an important part of this and you know we’re not selling used cars here so you don’t want to go overboard with a call to action like that’s not all or you know by now, you know, that’s that’s not really where we want to go with this where we want to go or are things like you know, learn more sign up call now, things like that are really more appropriate for dental, use a link in your post to you can use a link that relates to your google my business post.

The more specific a landing page you can use the better for example you could use the button, learn more and then send users to a landing page perhaps on your website that’s specific to the event when you’re promoting events. Now you also with google my business post, you want to consider the whole desktop versus mobile thing. So your google my business post will look different on a mobile device and then they will on your computer obviously. Um so while your post can include upwards of 1500 characters, it’s often recommended to keep them below 500.

That’s what we typically do. The entire content of a post is then visible on desktop devices but then it gets, the text gets truncated a bit on a mobile device. As a result, you’ll want to keep the most important information at the start of your post. So it doesn’t get cut off on mobile on the mobile view. Keep in mind that hashtags if you’re into social media that you use on social media won’t be relevant on google my business. Um They don’t impact your SEO or search rankings.

So it’s really best just not to use them at all. And don’t get rejected. Everybody hates getting rejected, right? So to avoid your G. M. B. Post being rejected follow google’s guidelines for G. M. B posts. They have a lot of rules for her starters don’t include your email address or your phone number in your post. Those are already listed in your google my business listing. And when you create a post to see to your call to action button will link to your website already. So there’s no need to include your website in the U. R. L. U. R. L. In the post.

So steer clear of using all caps too. I hate that. Don’t scream at people write some words may also be deemed offensive. So use your best judgment here. Don’t post anything. You know, that’s going to get you in trouble or talk badly about local competition. We don’t want to go down that that road. Um, and lastly, just like I talked about, don’t use stock images. Don’t don’t use stock photography. Google. My business posts are really meant to highlight your practice, use photos of your team, your office, you know, happy patients or even an image of yourself customers, patients love getting to know the the owner of a practice, the doctor, right?

And this is a great tool to do this, especially with video added benefits. Um, you know, your business profile has a variety of features, including a Q and a section. You may not have known that. And what’s cool is that google’s machine learning can actually try to use some of the content from your posts to answer questions in your google my business knowledge panel. I know that sounds a little robotic, but it’s true posts you create on your GMB listing also help potential patients see that you’re an active and engaged practice alongside positive reviews.

When people utilize google search and maps to find practices like yours, your posts on google. My business will help you stand out from the rest of the competition. It’s all about being different, right? That’s what marketing, a lot of it is about and finding what’s unique to you. So when you can do anything like this to stand out from everybody else, why not do it? So having such amazing visibility in both google search and google maps is a huge win for dental practices. I’ve seen it day after day, the impact that this can have on a practice and really this free marketing tool Gmb is an incredible for practice, is looking to improve their SCL rankings in search.

So you know, contact our team if you’re not sure how to create a post or what to post about. Um or if you just don’t want to deal with this. I totally understand it. We have extensive experience in optimizing google, my business accounts in dentistry and we can definitely develop a great strategy for consistent patient driving posts and other type of content. The best way to start this process if you do want to speak with us is just go to our website, kickstart dental dot com. Uh, there’s a button there there hopefully is for free strategy session that would be directly with me.

I do all of our initial strategy sessions and I’m definitely talk about google my business, google my business posts and your market, your competition and what we think it would take to get you to the next level. So, um, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it helped out a little bit. Um, hit me with any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer very quickly. Thanks and we’ll talk to you soon.