What you need to know about HASHTAGS for your Dental Offices

You have heard about hashtags before, do you use them correctly?

It’s very different for each industry. The types of hashtags that work for a restaurant or a clothing boutique won’t necessarily work for a dental office. You need to know the industry and your goals when using hashtags on Instagram.

It definitely takes trial and error to find the hashtags that work for each account but TODAY you will learn the basics of hashtags. 

WHAT ARE HASHTAGS?

They are categories or “tags” used to categorize content on social media. People will use hashtags to look for things. They could look at the hashtag for their city, their favorite sports teams, or other interests.

Hashtags are one of the best tools to get you in front of more people.

WHY ARE INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS IMPORTANT?

• They get you seen by your ideal patients and people near your practice. For dental offices, this means people around your city and community. We don’t want people from India, Germany, or Australia following us when your practice is in Montreal, Canada.

• Hashtags constantly get found by ideal patients! Even when you are at your office working on a patient or in Mexico for your week off! If used right people will find you at all times! 

• Branding and visibility. Hashtags help you maximize the reach of every post and story. Get your brand and business out there in the public!

If you are ready to use social media as a marketing tool for your dental practice, knowing the ins and out of hashtags is ESSENTIAL.

TYPES OF HASHTAGS (CATEGORIES)

The categories you use will be very different from other businesses. Dental offices are very different.

WHY? Dental offices are location-based businesses. If you want to get seen by your ideal client your hashtags need to reflect this.

For dental offices I recommend having these categories:

• Location

• Niche (Dental)

• Treatments

How will these categories help?

1. Location hashtags get you seen by people near your practice.
2. Niche and treatment hashtags will show your post under the right section/category, which Instagram favors.

TIP: Instagram wants you to use hashtags on your posts that have something to do with the actual picture. It will favor it!

SIZE OF HASHTAGS

The size of each hashtag is based on the number of times it has been used. Take the time to look at random hashtags, you will see there’s a massive difference in sizes.

You can find hashtags with under 500 posts to hashtags with over 27 million posts in them. That’s a massive difference!

 I like to separate them into small, medium, and large hashtags.

1. 300,000 and less are considered small
2. 300,000 to 500,000 medium
3. 500,000+ are considered big. 

Why does this matter? We want to make sure each post has the right size hashtags.

What size of hashtags should you use for your dental office?

First things first, You DON’T want to use hashtags that have 5M or 27 million posts. 

Why? When you use large hashtags you won’t even get seen, there are so many posts that get added per minute, even per second, your post will be buried in no time.

So…what’s the right mix?

You want to use hashtags that are small and medium-size! When you add 2-5 large hashtags you do it to get seen by a lot of people quickly! This can be a hit or miss! That’s what we want to include medium and small hashtags.

INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS PLACEMENT

This is a very hot topic. So many opinions about where to exactly place hashtags!

The answer is that it really is UP TO YOU! Whatever floats your boat! Whatever seems aesthetically pleasing to you (many people base it on this).

PRO TIP: If I place the hashtags in my caption I will add dots to it to separate it from the actual caption. If not it tends to look very overwhelming. Please don’t add the hashtags right after the caption, it takes away from the captions and it’s not appealing.

AMOUNT OF HASHTAGS FOR THE FEED

Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags on posts that go on your feed! I recommend using all 30 if you have taken the time to research them (and they are not random hashtags). 

Yes, you can always post random hashtags but trust they are going to get you nowhere!

Don’t forget to use the formula I shared before for the sizes (small, medium, and large) of hashtags you use.

AMOUNT OF HASHTAGS FOR INSTAGRAM STORIES

In stories, you can use up to 11.

On stories, you NEED to use large hashtags to get found by potential patients. Compared to the hashtags you used on the feed. Therefore, those large hashtags (1 million +), use them on stories. Large hashtags are the only ones that perform on your stories.

Just think of it this way…

“the more hashtags + the right hashtags = more opportunities of getting seen by your ideal client”.

Don’t forget to post 30 on your feed content and 11 on your IG stories.

PRO TIP: You can make hashtags font on stories super super super small.

Knowing the basics of hashtags will make a positive impact on your online presence. Take some time this week and review your hashtags. Make the changes necessary! Start to increase your reach by using the right hashtags for your dental practice!

We only scratched the surface when it comes to hashtags. To learn more about hashtags, check out my Hashtag Ebook! PRESS HERE TO LEARN MORE

Want more social media help? Check out how I can help you and your dental practice. PRESS HERE to learn more!