Building a personal brand for a doctor is not just a trendy fad, but a necessity for a successful practice. In today’s realities, the most effective way to showcase your expertise is to create a personal blog on a social network. How to do this is explained by the dentist Dmitry Ryabov.
dentist, author of books on personal branding for doctors, founder of DAR DENTAL UNIVERSITY
Recently, I personally faced the problem of choosing a pediatric dentist for the treatment of my five-year-old daughter’s teeth. It turned out to be a whole quest. For us, as dental practitioners, it is very easy to choose a doctor: we are in constant contact with colleagues, we know leaders and recognized experts in our field, and we have a relatively large circle of communication within the professional community. We have classmates, colleagues at work, acquaintances of acquaintances — among these people, there will definitely be a pediatric dentist. Have you tried to embark on this journey of exploration yourself? Now I will tell you.
The first thing I did was search for ‘children’s dentist Moscow.’ 1848 pediatric dentists. How do I choose one? I open websites, and they are all like carbon copies: a photo of the doctor (usually these photos are, to put it mildly, ‘an acquired taste’), a metro station, and an invitation to leave your contact details for an appointment. What criteria should I use to choose? Near the metro or through what is clearly not the best photograph of the doctor in life? As a person of the modern world, I am accustomed to exhaustive information about everything, no matter what I choose.
Why should I guess what kind of doctor you are from your photo? Like any normal parent, I am very particular about choosing a doctor. But I cannot adequately assess your professionalism because you have not provided me with any information. Neither the metro station nor your appearance correlates in any way with your professionalism. If I just keep going to consultations with everyone, my child will have already graduated from college by then. I don’t have 1848 attempts to choose a doctor.
That’s why every modern dentist needs to develop their personal brand, professional blog, or website. Give me more information about you: how you work, what your clinic looks like, what feedback you have from children who have already visited you, and show photos and videos of your work. An important aspect is your communication skills with young patients. You can be an incredibly skilled doctor, but if you are unable to communicate effectively with children, you will have significant issues with patient attendance. You can start establishing proper and eco-friendly communication long before the child comes to your office. Record a video of your visit, showing how you play with the children, give them gifts, and feature it in your blog. If a parent shows this video to their child, they will come to you in a more elevated mood.
In the end, I chose a doctor through social media, because in your blog I can learn more about you and minimize the stress level for my child. If your profile is well-designed, then you become a clear doctor to me. Social networks are your face in the modern world.
8 STEPS TO CREATING A SUCCESSFUL DENTAL BLOG BY DMITRY RYABOV
DEFINE THE PURPOSE OF BLOGGING
First, decide why you want to manage social media: is it a tool for attracting new patients, a means of communication with existing clients, or a digital business card with information about you. Then it will become clearer to you how to run and package your blog.
COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE
A clear name, a beautiful professional profile picture, clear positioning, and geolocation are important aspects of setting up your social media profile. So, set a clear photo with your face and a hint that you are a doctor as your avatar. Remember, your profile picture is the first thing a person sees, even before they visit your page, so take it seriously. When filling in the “Name” field, add information about your occupation, for example, dentist Moscow, veneers Krasnodar, teeth whitening Saint Petersburg, as people search for such phrases online. You can also add the commonly accepted nickname for doctors, ‘dr’, to the profile name — for example, dr. riabov. And it’s important to specify your location — where you conduct your appointments. Don’t forget: dentistry is tied to a geographical location, and this needs to be reflected in the profile.
DON’T CHASE TRENDS
Social networks are not just some topic that can be taken lightly. This is an important part of your image. Behind every page view are real people who might come to see you or learn something useful from your blog. Therefore, you need to focus more on expert medical content. Do not chase trends by following professional bloggers from other fields with large audiences. Remember: you are first and foremost a DOCTOR. Not all trends may be beneficial for you, and some may even harm your reputation and title as a doctor.
CREATE CONTENT YOURSELF
Some doctors hire SMM specialists to manage their social media, write ideas for posts, and scripts for videos. However, the phrasing of a person without medical education and clinical experience will be immediately noticeable. By outsourcing your social media management, you disregard all your clinical experience that you have meticulously gathered. This is your account, and only you should manage it. Hire professionals who can assist with light editing of your texts, with photography, video filming, and editing, but come up with and write the content yourself.
Remember, a social media page is part of your work and image. And handle the communication with the patient yourself if they have messaged you directly. This is several times more effective.
ADD CREATIVITY
In a medical blog, it’s better to publish content that showcases your expertise: photos and videos of your work, patient stories, their reviews, reels* with answers to current questions in your field of activity, etc. It would be great if you learn to convey information not just in a template and boring way but add some creativity.
Before/after work photos are of little interest to anyone except you and some of your colleagues. And if you wrap this case in storytelling, you will engage many people in your content.
Let’s say you are an orthodontist. When you post photos with crooked teeth in the before and straight teeth in the after, that’s one thing. It’s a whole different thing if you show the patient’s journey and tell their story. Suppose: “A 30-year-old man came in with complaints about uneven teeth” — this is how you segment a certain age group. Also, the user will associate your case with a real person, not a fictional one.
Show photos and videos of the work process and a happy patient who has undergone treatment with you. For example, if you are demonstrating work with aligners, include photos and videos of the scanning process, virtual setups, aligners on teeth, and share the patient’s impressions.
Create expert videos with a unique touch, cover broader topics, and draw interesting parallels. Avoid banal topics like “How many times a day do you brush your teeth?”. If you make videos explaining that a double chin is not only caused by excess weight, wrinkles are not only due to aging, neck pain is not only due to tension, but that all of this can happen due to a misaligned bite and abnormalities in the facial skeleton structure, it will resonate more with the audience. This is how you sell orthodontic treatment ‘without selling’.
FIND INSPIRATION IN YOUR PATIENTS
Doctors cannot be short of ideas: what to write and film? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here; everything has already been thought of before you. You have amazing scriptwriters and idea generators whom you meet daily — they are your patients. Listen to their questions. These are your content ideas. Write down these questions and record video responses to them on your social media. It’s best to package this in a reels format. This way, you will reach a wider audience and help more people with your expert information, because if this question arose in your patient’s mind, it means there are others who are also interested in this topic.
MAKE THE BLOG FLAWLESS
Pay attention to the quality of content not only in terms of meaning and usefulness but also from the perspective of technical equipment. When you are just starting out and do not have the financial means to work with a video production team, begin with what you have. It will be much better than not running your blog at all. Don’t wait for the right moment. The perfect moment is today. Even if you are a student and do not yet have solid clinical expertise, you can talk about your journey: how you are studying, what medical literature you are reading, which conferences you are attending, etc. The most important rule is to be honest with your audience. And the earlier you start blogging, the richer its history will be and, consequently, the trust.
No matter what position you start blogging from, it is important to constantly improve the quality of your content. The work of a dentist requires maximum concentration. We are dealing with very small objects, drills, files, microscopes. We are required to have high hand motor skills. Dentistry is precision work, and the quality of a doctor is often determined by their attention to detail. Now let’s project this onto your social media profile. If it is made on the principle of ‘it will do,’ then most likely, you and the doctor are ‘it will do’ as well. You may be an excellent dentist, but the user will perceive it differently because specialists from other fields have set a high standard of content quality. In everything you touch, whether it’s social media content or patient care, you must be impeccable. How you do something is how you do everything.
TELL US ABOUT PERSONAL MATTERS TOO
People subscribe primarily to a person. No one is interested in looking at teeth, teeth, and only teeth. There should be balance in everything. People want to know about your human values, too. This could become your competitive advantage over other doctors whose entire feed consists of before/after photos. For this reason, a personal blog always promotes better than a company or brand blog. People are treated by people. We choose doctors not only for their professional skills but also for their human qualities. There are doctors who separate their accounts into work and personal ones. If you do this, firstly, it will add more work for you, and secondly, there is a high probability that your personal page will not be popular. Dentists don’t have such a bright and eventful life: as a rule, they live by the principle of ‘work-home,’ possibly with some sports, hobbies, congresses, and in the summer — the sea. It is unlikely to overshadow expert content because dentistry is an essential part of a doctor’s life, and separating it from their hobbies and everyday life is impractical. Don’t complicate your life.
