Social media marketing in dentistry with Dr. Tiffani Long

Tiffani:

People are getting to know you, people are looking at your videos, your stories and your photos and they’re already liking you before they even come in to see you.

Sliman:

Hello and welcome to the Care Frontiers podcast today, we have a very special guest with me, Dr. Tiffani Long. Dr. Tiffani is the owner of Epic Dental Arts Practice. The practice is located in Oregon Forest Groove. Albeit not a very good year, 2020 marks the 20th year anniversary for Dr. Tiffani as a dentist. She bought her first dental practice, sold it, and then purchased another one in 2019. Dr. Tiffani, welcome to our show.

Tiffani

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Sliman:

So to jump right in to our questions, I’m really curious, what led you to be a dentist as opposed to other fields of healthcare?

Tiffani:

Well, as a kid, I always knew I wanted to be in medicine and a surgeon. And honestly, it took me a little while during college to figure out I wanted to be a dentist. But essentially I always wanted to be a surgeon. And I spent some time around a couple of different doctors. And then I had an appointment with a dentist. I chipped a front tooth or something in college. And all the doctors I had talked to were very discouraging, very unhappy. But the dentist that I met was very, very encouraging and loved what he did. And I thought it just kind of clicked. And then really my goal during dental school was to be an oral surgeon. So I worked as hard as I could to get good grades, to be the top of my class, to be an oral surgeon. I ended up going to oral surgery school, but then after a year, I had to leave and for a variety of reasons. And then I became a dental general dentist. Which has been a blessing. I really love general dentistry now and the way my my career has changed over twenty years has been now looking back has been very interesting. So yeah, I’m glad the little experiences led me to being a dentist

Sliman:

That’s great. What do you think that is special for dentistry as opposed to other fields. What you like about dentistry specifically, let’s say.

Tiffani:

Yeah. Good question. You know, when I was in oral surgery school, I was actually in a medical an MD program, which meant I went to medical school. And what really jumped out to me then was that, yes, dentists spend a lot of time with their hands and the biology and the the medicine side of it. But we also have the artistry side of it. And so what I love about dentistry is that, well, the other aspect is, is that I can’t go home at the end of the day, very few things that we do our life or death, but we do have to do a lot of things that we do do can have negative consequences to patients. But it was nice to be able to go home. My days are kind of shorter in some ways than I think most medical doctors. But I do like the hands on clinic or the the clinical or being the medicine side, but then also the hands on all the things that we do as far as fillings and crowns and then just surgery. So I enjoy the creative aspect as as well as the medical side of dentistry.

Sliman:

That’s really something that struck me when I searched about dentistry, because they have something from both worlds. the creative side of it and the clinical side of it. so Yeah. So you have a lot of experience when it comes to dentistry and you own two practices right now, right?

Tiffani:

Well, I actually I have yes. I’ve owned two. I own one now. but I’ve had I’ve owned two in my experience.

Sliman:

What do you think. Something that you wish you had known when you first started running your dental business.

Tiffani:

I mean, that’s a good question.

Tiffani:

I feel like for me, I’ve had to learn everything the hard way.

Tiffani:

And I think even if someone had told me that they gave me advice or recommended that I do something with a different way, I don’t know if I would necessarily do. But I still have to do things the hard way. But I think. For me, I didn’t have any mentors. I don’t have any dentists or doctors in my family. I was actually the first to go to college and first that I know of to be a doctor. But I wish I guess what I could tell myself now, I wish I would have known was that everything would be OK and that that just keep trying and eventually it’ll all work out as long as you do your best. It’s going to be hard though.

Tiffani:

I think anything in the medical field or any job that you really care about is going to have its challenges. But I think if I I would like to just know that it’ll be OK. You know, we worry and we stress. And I think that’s normal for business. But it has been OK. Now, looking back.

Sliman:

Yeah.

Sliman:

From what I can tell, you have a pretty good stress tolerance to plaw through the uncertainty of things. Whether or not being OK or not, that’s a good thing. So, yeah. So what do you do to transition a little bit, Is there anything like a misstep or a missed opportunity that you had and you wish you’ve taken and you learned from it or something along the lines of that that might help the medical students.

Tiffani:

Absolutely. I would. I think well, first of all, we learn from our mistakes. You know, I think every course I as a dentist and probably for medical students as well, you’re hard on yourself and your instructors are hard and you’re trying to be the best. And I think that’s part of who we are. So I think that we always make mistakes. And when we do, we we take it we’re really hard on ourselves. But I think I don’t think we can get away from that. But what I would say that running my own practice, especially the first time and the first practice I owned, it was I think as a person I wasn’t happy with who I was. And I think that a I showed that to my employees and dentistry. And the that was the easy part. It was the owning. It was being a boss. It was being a leader. Those were the things that I think I made the biggest mistakes. And now that I have another office and that I have some experience, I feel like I have a do over. And the other thing that I would say would be that I wished that I had done more early on. I think that would be my advice is just do the things that you want to do. Don’t wait for experience, if you will. I mean, if you want to do implants, go into it right away. If you want to do ortho, just do it while you’re younger and just put in the time and the money and investment early on. Because, you know, as I look back 20 years, had I not been pushing it a couple of directions, I wouldn’t have that, you know, if you will, 20 years experience now. So it’s just you just do it. You you go in, you do your best, you learn. And eventually, you’ll refine your skills and you’ll be expert, you know, if you keep trying.

Sliman:

True, because as a dental students are after graduation, And if someone wants to start their own practice and they start, let’s say, as a as a generalist, one of the things that I like about what you did is that you just went for it. You didn’t wait until you’re ready. So to say you just went through it and it works out in the end.

Tiffani:

You know, I think we’re all more ready than we think. It’s just we don’t think we’re good.

Sliman:

So to transition from the business side of things, we’ll get back to it at the end. But I want to talk a little bit about the marketing side of things, the the social media aspect of it. What do you think the the importance of being in social media as a dentist, as a dental practitioner?

Tiffani:

Well, you know, it’s interesting, I I over the last really the year, I’ve put a lot of effort into it, but I think social media is humongous. I don’t think that we can well, as a dentist, avoid it. All younger people and I consider myself older. I’m in my 40s, but any 30 and younger, they Google or hashtag, search and use Instagram and other platforms to do their research. So it’s so if we want to build our practice and market to really the general population, we have to be part of social media if you want to reach the younger generation, because that’s what they use.

Tiffani:

It’s unfortunately true, but it’s not going anywhere. So, yeah.

Sliman:

Yeah, I’ve seen this and this it pertains to every healthcare field, In dentistry there’s a slow acceptance of this kind of social media stuff. Why do you think dentists are reluctant to use these platforms?

Tiffani:

Well, I think that I’ve really had to push myself. I to be honest, I really don’t like social media. And it’s hard for me to video and edit and do all these things. And I’d rather be doing dentistry. So I think for dentists, it’s not something we enjoy doing. We don’t feel like we’re good enough at it. We think we might need a team or a professional photographer. And I think that that, you know, it’s we were not we went into dentistry. We didn’t go into marketing or photography. And actually a lot of dentists are photographers, but it’s real uncomfortable. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing that holds us back. Plus, there’s a huge well, I say huge there’s a big time commitment to it. I think that can be managed. I don’t think it has to be as big as I’m saying. But, yeah, I just don’t think it’s something we like to do. So we’d rather and not do it.

Sliman:

Yeah because you you signed up for dentistry not to manage content and stuff like that.

Tiffani:

Yeah. plus it’s a hassle. I mean for me I have to, I’ve gotten better but I’ll have to ask staff ahead of time. OK, well you video this or will you do this. And even with my family nobody wants to take a photo or a family picture or you know, my kids are teenagers so it’s really a hassle taking a picture. But once we have that, it’s great. So same thing with work. We just have to take some time to do those videos or those photos and then we’re really glad we have it after we actually do it.

Sliman:

That’s great. How that benefited your practice on , let’s say, patient acquisition side of things?

Tiffani:

Oh, oh, that’s a good question. It’s humongous because people and they’re really the reason why I do like social media is because people are getting to know you people are looking at your videos or your stories or your photos and they’re already liking you before they even come in to see you. And the other strange thing is, which is, I guess a piece of advice I would offer is that people are looking even when you don’t think they are. And so people are searching and looking. And then they’ve already scrolled through all your content. So they know a lot about you before you come in and they may pick you. So they’ve already decided they like you. So when a patient comes in, it’s almost like you have this relationship before you’ve even actually physically met, which makes things fantastic because then the patient is happier with your treatment. And, you know, the types of procedures that you could do could just grow and then they can refer their friends. And it’s just it’s really fantastic because, you know, you can’t do that without that type of platform.

Sliman:

Yeah. I think it’s also adds to the transparency of how you run your own business.

Tiffani:

Yeah.

Sliman:

And also it’s adds this layer of trust and confidentiality when when working with patients, they want to see the the backstage, the behind the scenes, how you run things. So yeah, it’s also build rapport from the get go without even trying to talk with them.

Tiffani:

Yeah. Rapport that is! I think you know as a dentist and all dentist know this is that we. Build relationships with our patients and like you said, they’ve already we built that rapport through social media without even knowing. And so it really adds to a good patient experience.

Sliman:

Of course, that’s a competitive edge you can take when your own business. What platforms that might be good fit for, let’s say, dentists who want to acquire patients or from social media?

Tiffani:

That’s a good question as well.

Tiffani:

I would say Instagram would be my advice. But the cool thing about Instagram is you can link your Facebook to your Instagram. So that saves me. I actually have four Facebook or sorry for Instagram, I don’t know, pages. And so and that one is my personal. And then I have three professional ones and I do use one more than I do the others, which is my doctor, Tiffanie, which is the one you found Botox and bling. But I can connect to my my Facebook and with the algorithms, Facebook is weird because stuff will get I don’t know what it’s called, shadow band or or lowered in someone’s feed. So at least with Instagram, I think there’s a little bit of that Instagram too. But at least things will flow kind of chronologically, more so. But for me, Instagram, I really took it seriously really when covid hit, because the I’d say the 30 year old and younger are on Instagram and then the 40 and older are on Facebook. And I think when you decide who you want to reach out to, who your patient is, for me, that took some time, my branding and who my ideal patient was, I really took that seriously beginning of the year as well. And I decided that my my ideal patient was somebody like myself, a mom with kids who were in their early forties, late 30s, early 40s. So that is both really Instagram and Facebook. But if you do Instagram, it really can make your Facebook easy as well. So I would definitely start with Instagram.

Sliman:

Yeah, that’s really great what you did there. Because it depends on the platform, some platforms are, let’s say, millennial oriented more than others. It’s a really good choice. So other than the how how do you manage, like staying on top of all of this, like marketing and social media, being a dentist? There’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s just not an easy feat to accomplish.

Tiffani:

Like the you know, that has been something I’ve been working on over the the months and the years, really. But I have to designate certain time a day that I’ll do this. So, for example, if I have quiet time, I make myself just do my notes and do SI units or that type of thing. And then during work, if things are a little more busy, I can do a little social media post or something in between. So I really it’s I get really sucked into social media too. I could spend a lot of time there,

Sliman:

It’s time consuming

Tiffani:

Yeah it is and, you know, even in my forties, I’m thinking I should as an adult, I should I have to tell myself, OK, no, you post once and then you focus on other things and just, you know, just discipline. I think as dentists, we have discipline, you know, just because of what we have decided to do. And you have to have discipline to make it to medical or dental school and graduate. But it’s really I’m thinking of it. I’m thinking of all the things I need to do constantly, which is I think all of us to have our own business or really any dentist. And you just have to focus time to specific types of social media. And for me, taking sometime to learn and learning about Instagram and knowing what do I need to post on my page and what do I need to post on my story that is different And then on my Facebook is the same. So the stories are daily and then my Instagram isn’t as isn’t as often. So that way I can schedule that in my day as well as doing my other work.

Tiffani:

Though think I’m a little behind in my notes, not going to lie.

Tiffani:

I need to catch up. So but it’s you know. But I’m never caught up. And it’s between being a wife and a mom and a dentist and all the workups I have to do and I’m busy, which I’m so grateful for. So if I wasn’t busy, that would be very that would not be good. So I’m grateful for all the work I have and I do. I come in really early in the morning because I’m a morning person and four, 30 or five in the morning. And then by the evening I go home to be with the family. So that’s how I do. That’s how it works for me.

Sliman:

Yeah. It’s like you’re wearing too many hats as a dentist. It’s like you have to manage and manage your time well so you can balance out this kind of activities, which is really great when you when you manage to get the hang of it. did you thought of like outsourcing some of the some other stuff or are you not in the need for it right now?

Tiffani:

Hmm you know, I would love to outsource, but I’m not ready since I just bought this practice.

Tiffani:

And really with covid, it’s it’s really challenged our cash flow. So it’s something that I would like to have eventually. But it’s just not an option this time. Plus I’m picky or micromanage what goes out so I know exactly how I want my social media to be? So I guess letting go of that, I’m not quite ready to let go that either.

Sliman:

Yeah, you have to trust who you are outsourcing this stuff to because it reflects who you are. It’s a reputation kind of thing. It’s not easy to let go of.

Tiffani:

Yes, absolutely.

Sliman:

Thank you so much, Dr. Tiffani, for taking the time and being here with us. It’s really a pleasure to have you. And I’m I think our listeners will get the most out of this episode once it’s launched.

Tiffani:

Thank you. Yeah. I’m really grateful you asked me. It means a lot.

Sliman:

You are most welcome. if you’re listening right now (or reading) and you’d like more from dr Tiffani, check her links on the shownotes above. Ladies and gentlmen, that was Dr. Tiffani Long.