Can Pinterest Work for Dentists?

Look out Facebook and Twitter. There’s a new social media site in town. Pinterest, which launched in March 2010, has slowly become the latest social media craze. How is it different from other sites? It’s essentially a public online scrapbook where you can find images from all over the web (or upload ones yourself) and “pin them” to your pinboards. This is a great way to express yourself and to let others know what your interests are. Like to cook? Find pictures of your favorite foods. Enjoy traveling? Add pictures of all the cities you’ve visited. Is your favorite color blue? Let everyone know with pictures of the the sky, Sesame Street’s Grover and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album cover.

The best part about your boards is that anyone can “repin” one of your pictures to share on their boards. Over 80% of pins are repins which can lead to more people following you on the site. When your pictures are re-pinned by others, a valuable link back to your site is created. This back link helps to legitimize your website and raise your search rankings. It can be fun and extremely addicting, but can dentists use it to their advantage?

Examples of Boards

The great thing about Pinterest is that you can be as creative as you want with your boards. A dentist doesn’t have to resort to just pictures of dental products, surgeries or dental equipment (most of which people won’t want to look at anyway). Here are some examples of boards that can not only direct more attention to your practice, but also let your patients know a little more about who’s cleaning their teeth:

1) Patients’ Before and After Shots - These can showcase your talents and, hopefully, garner new business. If you do feel inclined to post pictures of dental treatment, this is also a great way for dentists and dental specialists to quickly and easily share cases and unique aspects of their daily work. For example, endodontists can create pinboards for categories such as “Open Apex”, “Curved Canals”, or “Access Restoration”.

2) Famous Smiles - Pick out some of your favorite celebrity smiles, whether they are good or bad examples of dental health.

3) Smile of the Week – If you’d rather use your patients instead of celebrities, a Smile of the Week board would be good. This will, at the very least, make the patient you’re using as an example tell his/her friends and family that they will be featured on your board thus bringing more people to your profile.

4) Your personal interests – Here you can let your patients get to know you a little better. You can create boards of your hobbies and interests. Be creative and have fun!

5) Foods and Drinks That Are Good For Teeth – According to business intelligence firm RJ Metrics, food accounts for a little over 10% of the pinboards on Pinterest (only Home, Arts and Crafts, and Style/Fashion have more pinboards). You could also do a Worst Foods and Drinks For Your Teeth board. These boards can be extremely popular and informative.

These are just a few examples of boards you can create to attract interest to your boards. More ideas will come to you the more you explore Pinterest.

The Key to Pinterest Success

Right now, Pinterest has over 10.4 million (and growing) registered users and daily users has increased by 145 percent since the beginning of 2012. This site shows no signs of slowing down and can be a valuable social media tool for any business, even dental practices. What is really needed in order to create a successful Pinterest profile is creativity. Simply putting up some pictures of your office is not going to cut it. The more inventive you are with your boards, the more you’ll set yourself apart from other dentists who do, unfortunately, have those office pictures up (and have very few followers). Be different. Be yourself. Be successful.

At Engage Dental, we work closely with doctors and their staff to create a custom, personalized website and overall web strategy that will bring your practice to top Internet visibility. Contact us today.