8/6/2019 Practice Management - Understanding Social Media

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Because you choose your friends on

Facebook you can control the messages you

receive, unlike with email up to 90% of

email is spam.

Facebook photosThe photos application is one of the most

popular on Facebook, allowing users to

upload albums and images. Facebook is the

most popular photo-sharing website, with

over 100 million photos uploaded to the site

each day.

Another feature of the photos application

is the ability to tag users in a photo. For

example, if a photo contains a users friend,

then the user can tag the friend in the photo.

A notication is then sent to the friend to

indicate that they have been tagged, providing

a link to see the photo.

Create a Facebook page to promoteyour dental practiceFacebook provides unique, and free, ways to

reach its 600 million users. Over 1.6 million

businesses now have Facebook pages.

People have a prole on Facebook,

whereas a business has a page. You and I can

have friends on Facebook, while a business

has people who like this.

Understandingsocial media

Ted Janusz demonstrates why Facebookand similar sites are more than a passingfad, requiring would-be users to rise abovetheir fears

Ted Janusz is a professionalspeaker, author and marketingconsultant. He has presentednearly 500 full-day seminarson a variety of managerialtopics. His website can be

viewed at www.januspresentations.com.

June 2011 Implantdentistry today xx

Practice management

xx Implantdentistry today June 2011

I

With 40% of the United Kingdom now

on Facebook, it is important that we have

an understanding of this social media

phenomenon that is rapidly spreading across

the globe, and learn how we can use this new

form of communication to grow our dental

practices. Lets get started . . .

What is Facebook?Facebook is the most popular of the social

networking sites, having garnered more than

600 million active users (thats almost 10% of

the worlds population) in its seven years. Time

magazine named Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks

founder, as its Person of the Year for 2010,

while the creation of Facebook is the subject of

a popular 2010 lm The Social Network.

Users of Facebook may create a personal

prole, add other users as friends and

exchange messages on the site. Facebook users

now post a billion pieces of content, such as

photos and messages, each day. Additionally,

users may join common interest groups,

organised by workplace, school or university,

or other characteristics.

The name Facebook stems from the title

of the book given to American students at the

start of the academic year by many university

administrations to help students to get toknow each other better.

The FacebookOn 4 February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg

launched The Facebook, originally located

at thefacebook.com. The site was founded

by Zuckerberg with his college roommates

and fellow computer science students. The

websites membership was initially limited to

Harvard students (within the rst month, more

than half of the undergraduate population

was registered on the service), but was soon

expanded to other universities in the Boston

area. It gradually added support for students

at various other universities before opening to

high school students and, nally, to anyone

aged 13 and over.

Facebook profles and pagesUsers can create proles with photos, lists of

personal interests, contact information, and

other personal details. Users can communicate

with friends and other users through private or

public messages and a chat feature. They can

also create and join interest groups and like

pages (formerly called fan pages).

Facebook requires a users name and prole

picture (if applicable) to be accessible by

everyone.

The website is free to users and generates

revenue from advertising.

Practice management

You can begin to participate in social

media by creating a free Facebook presence

for your dental practice. First of all, go to

www.facebook.com/pages. In the upper right

corner of the screen, select United Kingdom

from the drop-down menu and, right above it,

click the Create Page button.

Look out for a step-by-step guide to help

you make the most of using Facebook and

other social media sites in the next issue of

Implant Dentistry Today.

Terminology on Facebook

Prole

Represents a person

Has friends

Page

Represents a business

Has people who like this

Do you sometimes think: If I just cover

my head with a pillow, all of this talk

about social media might soon go

away?

It does seem like a new social media site

is popping up every day, and it is easy to get

overwhelmed with it all. Is it just a passing

fad? Lets look at the facts:

Forty-three per cent of online consumers

belong to one or more social networks

Seventy-four per cent of social network users

send messages to their friends as part of their

daily routines

Eighty-seven per cent of parents of teenagers

are online

Ninety-six per cent of Generation Y

participates in social media.

Why do we need tounderstand social media?If we intend to market our dental services to

younger clients, we need to understand how

they communicate. For example, when my

daughter was home from university, I never

saw her send an email. Instead she was busy

with text messages and Facebook. But lets

bust the myth that only Gen X and Gen Y use

social media.

The fastest growing segment of users ofFacebook is now neither secondary school

nor university students, but rather females

aged between 55 and 65. Why? With the rest

of their family on Facebook (the average user

now spends an hour a day on the site), its the

best way for them to keep up with stories and

photos of their children and grandchildren!

According to the video Social Media

Revolution (www.socialnomics.net), below

are the number of years it took each of the

following to reach 50 million users:

Radio 38 years

Television 13 years

The internet four years

iPod three years.

Facebook, on the other hand, has added

100 million users in just the last nine months!

Here, according to the Facebook Global

Monitor, is a listing of the per cent of a

countrys citizens (not just the per cent of

those citizens who are online) who currently

maintain a prole on Facebook:

Iceland 53%

Norway 46%

Canada 42%

Hong Kong 40.5%

United Kingdom 40%

United States 35.5%

Chile 35%

Israel 32.5%

Bahamas 30.5%.