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The Dental Entrepreneur
Pinterest

I find Pinterest to be of growing interest. It has a ridiculous female demographic which is a
marketers dream. The demographic may be a tad young for right now but like I said I see the
value of Pinterest increasing over time. Also when “older” moms discover what their daughters

are up to like they did with Facebook, they could become Pinterest creepers.
The strength of the sight is that it is super visual and I like the layout. It also has that element
of getting advice from a trusted friend. The other feature that is cool is the ability to “pin”
photos, vides and articles from anywhere on the Internet. I recently created a page on “Oral
Systemic Health” and am playing around with a few concepts.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great networking tool and a place to keep your CV updated. It probably will not
lead to new patient acquisition but it could help in the ability to build your “authoritative profile”
which is important to build from a marketing standpoint.

Google New Business

Previously called Google places or the Google 3 Pac, Google new business is a vital part of
your online strategy. It is the first page listing that shows your ratings and links to your Google
profile and ultimately your web site. It’s a pretty tough place to play though. This is where your
Google reviews are aggregated and for some reason they are very hard to acquire. I know of
practices with 700 demand force reviews that only have a handful of Google reviews. The
patient cannot do this from your office because the IP address of origin is taken onto account
so they have to go home and do it. I have been told you cannot do it with an incoming link
either. Here is how I would approach this today. I would go back to Dr Kuchsner note
approach. I would have the doctor write a HAND WRITTEN request that is sent to the patient
with an instruction sheet. Most people have a required Gmail account which used to be a
problem in the past but not so much today. I think you can maximize the response by doing
this.

Reputation Management

I began speaking about reputation management in 2009 because I could foresee this as being
an emerging issue for small business. I observed the way in which I saw Google driving the
importance of the ratings game. Now you have yelp,healthgrdaes, zocdoc and a host of
others. I know of two practices that went out of business almost immediately from an
avalanche of bad Internet publicity over an office incident. One a sedation death and one a
mishandled employee. Years ago, these incidents would have blown over fairly quickly but the
Internet is pretty much a permanent archive that can work for you or brutally against you.
My strategy is super simple and super common sense. Make sure the first page of Google that
is associated with your personal name is controlled by you!. How the heck do you do that?
You will probably need a sharp web person to do it but it starts out like this.
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