Question number nine is one of my favorite questions and it's about Twitter.
Hopefully you've at least heard of twitter.
The question that I get is, "Isn't Twitter just for kids?" I mean, can you possibly use Twitter to grow your practice? It's a very interesting subject because quite honestly I am not a fan of Twitter.
I don't like it, I think it's just such a strange concept.
It really doesn't matter what I like, it doesn't matter what I think, it only matters what is happening in the marketplace, and what is working today.
So with that in mind, Yes, you need to use Twitter.
Twitter can be extremely powerful in building your practice.
The question is how do you do that? Well, that's the conversation that will probably take hours.
But let's just break it down to the core of what Twitter is, what Twitter really does, and how it can build your practice.
We're just going to skim over things here because again, it's a very long conversation.
But I just want you to consider here.
Twitter is a way for you to contact many people at one time.
So think of it as a text message that instead of sending it to one person at a time, it's a text message that is sent to as many people that have decided to follow you on Twitter.
And follow you means that whenever they go to their account on Twitter they're going to see what you've said.
And you can put links in there.
So again, we're talking about off page search engine optimization.
Those links as far as their back link values not nearly as valuable as some other things but it's still worth putting a link in there once in a while.
So how do you start to use Twitter to build an orthodontic practice.
It's an interesting situation because it really can be done.
What I want you to think about is, when you do any type of marketing, especially if you do postcard marketing which we talked about in question Number 7, is you're going to buy a list and you have to pay a pretty fair amount of money to get that list.
And hopefully it's a qualified list that's going to turn into some new patients for you.
Well, with Twitter all of the lists that are available, meaning people that are following other people is what's called open source.
So, you go to a website, like - Invisalign.
Let's say Invisalign has a Twitter account and they've got a following of 10,000 people or any other website (Ormco has about 250 followers now).
I don't see Invisalign with an account on Twitter as of today, but let's say they've got 10, 000 people following them.
That list of people is available to you so you can go to their website and invite all 10,000 to be your friend of Twitter, basically follow you on Twitter.
How do you do that? Well, the easy way is to follow them and see who follows you back.
And right now, statistically it's about 30% of the time people will follow you back for no reason other than, "Hey he followed me, I should follow him.
" They are going to actually follow you back.
So if there's a list of 10,000 on a website, people who you know are good targets for you then you know you just got 3,000 people on your list.
So, that's one of the things that's powerful about Twitter.
Now let's go in a different direction and this is really interesting.
I think people are forgetting about this piece of the marketplace when it comes to Twitter.
When you put something on your website, put something on your Blog.
And let's say it's a video and it's compelling or it's interesting, it's fun whatever it is.
If you put a little button above it or below it, next to something on there that says, "retweet this.
" It gives anybody who is on Twitter the ability to click that button, sign in onto their account and say, hey, look at this video I found.
It's called a retweet, and it allows you to now have access, not only to the people who came to your website to see the video, but every person that is following the person who came to your website.
I know, it gets a little bit overwhelming when you start thinking about just how powerful this can be.
So I want you to consider how that can work for you.
Being on Twitter doesn't mean you are on it 10 times a day and telling people that you're eating lunch and that you're taking a quick little break.
No, there is no real value there.
What you want is for you or somebody on your team to update Twitter every once in awhile and say, "here's what going on in the practice" or "we are running this great event or contest.
" And that can be very powerful.
You can even say, "hey, I just read this article.
I thought this was interesting.
" But remember you've got 140 characters to say whatever it is you want to say.
And that's including any links you might put in there.
That gives you a little bit of information and background on Twitter and why you do want to get a Twitter account and figure out how to make it work for you.