Integrating social proof into your website

Google 5 star reviewUsing user generated content to benefit your marketing.

You may have heard the phrase “social proof” when researching the latest web marketing techniques and how to make your business prominent on the web?

We first looked at social proof back in 2014 in this blog where we briefly discussed what it actually is. I won’t go into detail again here as it’s easy enough to follow that link, but as a quick recap, social proof can be considered to be the use of user generated content to help validate your business and services to others. And it’s extremely powerful!

The power of client testimonials has been recognised for a long time and it’s common to see this technique used across many websites; from the traditional (albeit less impactful) hand-written versions, through to concise, complimentary, professionally filmed video snippets. These methods are still powerful if deployed on your website correctly, but times have moved on and user generated content from your social media channels, reviews and such-like, is now starting to become increasingly important to demonstrate the value of your business to potential new patients.

Another good reason to pursue social media

Many dentists are sceptical about the worth of social media and place it bottom of the marketing priority list. Whilst it is easy to see why you need a great dental website first, backed by a solid search optimisation campaign to secure good rankings, ignoring social media is missing out on lots of potential to reach new patients as well as missing the opportunity to build and display social proof.

So to get moving, you will need to maintain active profiles on at least a couple of social media channels as well as providing engaging content and seeking patient reviews. Once you have this momentum, then you can start to aggregate it and re-publish it on your website. There are tools to help you with this so let’s look at a couple of examples.

Embedding patient reviews

There are number of ways of showcasing your patient testimonials on your website. Some social channels provide a mechanism to help you do this (embed code) which will be available in the admin. console for your account. Alternatively, there are services which provide “widgets” which will do the job for you e.g. Reputation.com and Spectoos.com to name a couple. However, these tend to be subscription services and your web developer should be able to help you with alternative, cheaper options.

A word of caution about the services which offer to manage your online reviews for you – they actually only do this in part i.e. they aggregate what already exists on the likes of Facebook and Google or they publish to their own platform. They don’t publish patient reviews for you to the channels where it really counts. So for example, they may offer a tool which captures a patient review in your practice waiting room but this will not appear directly on Google – they can only send a reminder email to the patient encouraging them to leave the review directly on Google. Unfortunately this is where the process usually breaks down. So as long as you understand that these are primarily review aggregation services and not publishing services, then you should be OK.

It’s also worth noting that one of the large dental practice software companies uses a “white label” version of a well-known review service, so you may wish to keep this in mind when considering your options. You should also ask you designer/developer to guide you.

Showcasing positive Facebook posts/reviews and complimentary Tweets

Another way of demonstrating “social proof” is to capture positive content from Facebook and Twitter and post it back to your website. Techniques are available to do this without paying a fortune for bespoke website coding or fancy APIs. Twitter provides its “Curator” tool which allows you to display your best Twitter content to any screen as well as the ability to embed individual tweets via simple embed code should you choose to do so. In a similar way, Facebook allows you to embed individual posts and reviews. Ask your designer for help or try yourself if you are confident with your website content management system.

Other channels

Whilst Facebook and Twitter may be your first port-of-call when it comes to social channels, Pinterest and Instagram also offer good opportunities if you have time to utilise them. Both of these channels also offer embed code which allows you to capture positive content and re-use it on your website or possibly your practice blog. Again, your web designer should be able to assist.

Summary

Whilst the traditional ways of demonstrating third-party validation of your business e.g. patient testimonials, are still perfectly valid; user-generated content for demonstrating “social proof” is becoming increasingly powerful. By embedding positive reviews, posts and comments from your social media channels back into your website and blog, you can subtly “brag” about the quality of your services but let others do the talking!

Please call the Dental Media team on 01332 672548 if you’d like to hear more about leveraging social proof for your dental practice.