Social network marketing is all about being personalized and thoughtful. A number of doctors and dentists like to hand over their social media accounts to their staff or outside professionals. There is no harm in delegating or outsourcing your medical or dental marketing activities on social media, but it is crucial to stay in touch with how the social interactions are taking place.

Small personal gestures on social media can make a big difference to how your local potential patients on various social networks perceive your practice. The focus of your online social interactions must be to build relationships with potential patients and make them feel that you are empathetic to their social needs.

If you or your social media handler sends out an online invite to someone to join you on Facebook, LinkedIn or another social network, it may be unwise to send out a standardized, impersonal message. Personalized, unique and thoughtful invites are bound to yield much better results.

Another gesture that can help build relationships on social media includes saying “Thank You” whenever someone “Shares” your message or link, or “Likes” or “Follows” you on Facebook or Twitter. A personalized thank-you note via your social networks can go a long way in enhancing the social media relationship with that individual.

If you have an active Facebook account, with many local patients as ‘friends’ on your network, a great idea can be to post your good wishes on their birthday via Facebook. Facebook sends you a birthday reminder in advance in your mailbox, which makes it easy to keep a track of all the birthdays.

If you interact with some key influencers on social media whom you believe to be potentially useful to your medical or dental marketing goals, it helps to be more thoughtful and personalized with them on your social networks. For instance, a time-tested way to win new relationships is to send an online ‘endorsement’ about such individuals on your LinkedIn network. Such efforts may appear insignificant at the surface, but in the world of social networking they can go a long way in boosting in the prospects of your medical or dental practice.