Hashtags in 2022 – What practice owners need to know.

19 September 2022

If you own dental practice and are focusing on growing your social media presence, it is essential to be aware of the tips and tricks you need to act on to help you attract more potential patients and engage with the right people.

If you’re stuck in a hashtag rut, we’re here to break you out and introduce you to some tried and tested tricks that will help to push your content out there. Remember – consistency is key, results may not be instant but over time, in hand with producing some quality content, you’ll be seeing the numbers and engagement increase!

Let’s get started with what you need to know…

1) Branded hashtags

One of the easiest places to start is creating your own branded hashtag which will immediately make your practice stand out. Branded hashtags are simply hashtags that include a brand’s name, or the name of its products or services. For example, if your practice was called ‘Bright Smiles Dentist’, your first hashtag would be ‘#BrightSmilesDentist . Be sure to use CamelCase hashtags when doing this (refer to our previous article on that for more information!).

A branded hashtag is beneficial as it means that if you create a lot of content for your brand like a series of reels about Invisalign if viewers click on your branded hashtag they will be able to see all the content you have created!

2) Location-based hashtags

Location-based hashtags are a great way to help filter down the people who engage with your content to help you reach people who are more likely to actually be customers. For example, if your business is based in Manchester, although you want to reach a wide variety of people from different locations, it may be more beneficial to locate people in the Manchester area who may be looking for a new dentist to visit.

These location-based hashtags can be focused on the location of your business and it can also be focused on particular treatments that are relevant to the post. For example, you may want to include something similar to the following; #BrightSmilesDentistLondon #LondonBasedDentist #BrightSmilesLondon #InvisalignLondon #ClearAlignersLondon.

3) Research your hashtag strategy

With so many hashtags out there that you can possibly use, it may be hard to decipher what hashtags are beneficial for your business. Conducting your own experimental research will be beneficial for this as you can try different combinations of hashtags and see what works. Typically the rule of thumb is that you avoid using more than 30 hashtags, this is because it may look slightly ‘spammy’ if you’re using the same set of hashtags over and over again. There are many free and paid online tools that will help you to see what hashtags are best for you to use and will help you gain more reach/ engagement.

A good technique for this would be to list out all the services you offer in your practice as well as all the content you post and create a ‘bank’ of hashtags you can use for the posts. This means you’ll have a set of hashtags to use if you’re talking about composite bonding or even Invisalign and you’ll also have a set of hashtags to use if you’re posting a customer review or a before and after post.

4) Using trending hashtags

This may not be beneficial for all practices but using a trending hashtag may help to elevate your content. As we live in an age where something new is trending every day, it may be helpful for you to ‘piggyback’ off a trend to help you increase your reach! For example, if there is an Instagram challenge or meme that is spreading like wildfire, see if you can find some relevance to your brand and use the corresponding hashtag.

We hope that this article has helped you to get started with developing your hashtag strategy. If you have any questions or would like us to go into more detail on a certain topic, please feel free to contact us and let us know!

How do you use hashtags for your practice currently?