Friday, October 24, 2014

Social Media is Free, but It'll Cost You Time and Effort

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin

There are many different social media platforms available for users, from Facebook to Twitter and even sites like Pinterest. The first question many people have when they decide it’s time for their business to hop on board with social media is, “How do I get a ______ account?” Getting an account is the easy part, because most sites are FREE. It will cost you no money to create most social media accounts, but what it will cost is time.

Your social media accounts are not just going to run themselves. You must put for time and effort in creating, building and maintaining successful social media accounts. Let’s put social media in a real-world perspective. Think of your accounts as plants in your virtual garden, you must tend to these accounts and provide them with extra TLC (tender, love and care) to make sure they grow. Some believe that just having a social media pages is enough, they are completely wrong. Having an inactive page is just as bad as not having a page at all. The amount of success your social media pages have depends on the amount of time you put in.

Top 5 Time Consuming Factors of Social Media:


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Promotion- Just like your social media platforms can’t run themselves, they also aren’t just going to promote themselves. You have to take the time out to promote your social media pages to your target audience on and offline.  One way to promote online is through email blasters. Email blaster are emails sent from you to a mass list of email your have collected from those who use your services. Offline promotion includes designing signage to display within your establishment. The goal is to let your audience know you’re online and know where they can find you.

Creating Original Content- In social media marketing your content is king, meaning your content is one of the main driving forces of your social media success. You have to create and distribute relevant, engaging and beneficial content to your audience. You can share links and curated sources, but nothing is more connected to your business than original content. Creating content is time consuming. It takes time to understand what your audience wants and how you can give it to them. However, if done correctly your audience will take notice and see a benefit from connecting with you online.

Consistency- You must make sure that your social media pages are active, this means making sure that you are posting on a consistent basis. The best way to do this is by creating a schedule and sticking to it!

Trend Watching- Trends online are changing consistently, what’s “in” today may not be relevant in a two weeks. Social media users follow trends. You have to stay on top of the trends in order to keep and remain knowledgeable about what’s going on and how it may pertain to your target audience. To follow these trends you must be an active participant in social media conversation, this includes using different platforms, reading articles and keeping up with social media news. A social media manager should be on top of this and making sure your current strategies follows trends most relevant to your business.

Analytics- Analytics is the process of using data collected from your social media accounts and analyzing it to identify your past trends. For social media analytics is important to see what works and want doesn’t within your campaign. There are many different tools available to perform analytics. Sites such as Facebook have “Insights” tab available for you providing you will all the data from your page. Reviewing analytics isn’t a simple task you must be able to break down what the data presented to you means. It takes time to go over data and apply your findings to your current strategies, but it is very necessary to track success.

Social media is a great way to market your business, although it is time consuming the results are worth it. If you have questions regarding how you can get started with social media or improve your current accounts don’t hesitate to contact us today!

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Friday, October 10, 2014

Montage October News

What’s New?

As we have previously announced, we have decided to expand Montage into other markets outside of the world of orthodontics. This branch out has been a big hit!

One industry Montage is gaining interest within is the wine industry. Montage brings something new into the wine industry. With 1,000s of wineries here in California alone we have a lot of opportunity for success.  President and CEO Bill Poss and Account Manager Nikki Schoettler have spent time in Paso Robles conducting market research. They have taken visits to Eberle Winery, Meridian Vineyards, Tobin James Cellar, and Niner Wine Estates just to name a few. During each stop Montage received rave reviews. One major part of wineries is their tasting rooms, which is an area visitors frequent often.  Montage will be set-up in tasting room serving as an informational display along with advertising promotions and encouraging visitors to sign-up for wine club memberships. We are extremely excited about the future Montage and development on the program.

 

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Bug Fixes:

We would like to send a special thanks to Dr. Spencer Bailey for helping us with development of Montage, which is allowing us to tweak our interface to better serve you all.

The Weather Widget is currently under construction users will now have the option of choosing between two different size widgets.

Bug Fixes: We glad to say there are no current bug issues to report.

Note: We have now expanded our support hours. Support will be available from 5:00AM to 5:30PM pacific time.

Note: Jean Noble is now our east coast Sales Director. She is currently available for in office visit for practices throughout the Eastern region of the US.

bLink October News

What’s New?

bLink 2.0 is almost complete. bLink 2.0, our rewrite of bLink Pro, will offer many new user features as well as offer integrations with Cloud based versions of your management software. We are adding a complete suite of management tools to provide instant messaging to our users advising of any missed syncs, conflict, or errors. The user interface will be easier to navigate and more interactive for administrators. We send out millions of emails through bLink and this update to the database will make the process more efficient. bLink 2.0 is scheduled to be released in the coming months.



Soon bLink will integrate fully with all cloud-based practice management applications. You’ll have the same awesome and reliable service and features, but it will be pulling cloud-stored files instead of locally stored files. bLink Cloud 9 integration is scheduled to be done in the upcoming weeks, it is currently in the final steps of completion. Be on the lookout for the official release date.

For our Oasis users, the bLink Oasis integration update is currently in test mode and will be upgraded in a few weeks.

By now you have heard about our new bLink E-toons animated cartoon messaging. E-Toon is making progress and we are ecstatic about the upcoming release. Our E-toons will be located under the Appointments, Patient Education and Events tabs.etoon-showcase

Future Updates:

We are looking into confirmation options via text message and the blink app is still in the works and should be a receiving a release date soon.

Bug Fixes:

We are currently refining the way we send out emails to make the process more efficient.

We are currently working on updating our mass email feature.

*Remember with the Mass Email feature once you click “SAVE” your email will begin to be sent out immediately. Be sure the email formatted exactly the way you and has all the content included before click the save button.

Note: We have now expanded our support hours. Support will be available from 5:00AM to 5:30PM pacific time.

Note: Jean Noble is now our east coast Sales Director. She is currently available for in office visit for practices throughout the Eastern region of the US.

Social Media Matters in SEO

Search Engine Optimization works to increase the visibility of your website and your overall virtual brand. There is a lot that goes into SEO and helps with your search engine positioning. Keywords,  backlinks ,and website design are very important factors when it comes to SEO. Also, another major factor are social media platforms.

Included in SEO success are social media platforms. Many people are unaware of the benefits that social media brings. Being on social media allows you to gain greater visibility upon your audience. When it comes to SEO social media factors into 6 of the top 8 search engine positioning. This includes social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

However, just having a page isn't enough. You must be active on your social media pages. Being active means consistently updating your content and engaging your audience. Along with engaging your audience, good content promotes social sharing. Social sharing is when those within your audience share your content with other by linking the content on their pages.

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Many organizations have social media accounts, but are you updating consistently? Are your post engaging? If not, you may need to rethink your social media strategies and help improve your SEO. If you need help improving you social media strategies or SEO give us a call today!

Making Sure Everyone Gets the Picture

A little app called Instagram has taken the social network world by storm.instagram


Instagram is a mobile application that allows user to share photos and videos with followers. This mobile app has some perplexed on why it has become so popular, “You just post pictures all day?”. Yes, you just post pictures all day. There are different social networks available to users and each serves its own special purpose. Facebook has become a hub for all multimedia content, while Twitter is convenient for quick messages, and YouTube displays video. Then you have Instagram, which allows users to receive messages through photographs. Today’s generation loves documenting all of their experiences online and photos help do that the best.

Top 5 Things you need to know about Instagram

#Selfie

The  hashtag system was initiated by Twitter, but Instagram has taken it to another level. When users post photo they are able to add hashtags (ie, #solutionsbydesign) . The hashtag is like a group or tracking feature, hashtag are clickable and when you click on these hashtag you are able to see all photos that include that hashtag. For example we clicked on #solutionsbydesign we see able pictures that have been captioned with that hashtag.1394132851_ellen-degeneres-oscars-selfie-zoom

It’s a mobile app.

Instagram is only available via mobile application, meaning unlike Facebook and Twitter you cannot use Instagram from a desktop computer. The Instagram app has to be downloaded on a mobile phone or tablet. You may view a Instagram profile from a computer, but use of Instagram’s great functionalities you must be on a mobile phone or tablet.

#Nofilter

When you upload a picture to Instagram there are different editing tools you can use right there in the app. The most popular editing tools are the filters. Instagram offers numerous filters you can apply to enhance photos. For example there is a filter to turn your photo to black and white. This allows users to have fun with their photos.120424193935186

Followers

All users have followers. Those who follow you get to see your post on their timeline, along with others they follow. If your page is private users must ask for your permission to follow your page.

Sharing

Instagram allows you to share photos and videos on other social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. You can set-up your account to sharing automatically making it easy to reach all of your audiences via each network.

Instagram is an awesome social media tool and with it's wide range of demographics the chances to reach your audience is great. If you have questions regarding how you can get started with Instagram don’t hesitate to contact us today!

ScreenPlay October News

What’s New?

Our surgical case animations are moving along great. We are adding new porter arch expander animations. Also we are adding more through view content. Along with in addition to through-view content, we are working on a consistent basis to upgrade our 2D into better looking 3D graphics.

Our new ScreenPlay release is schedule for December 2014. Those with Premium and VIP maintenance packages will be eligible for a free software update.

The Annual British Orthodontic Conference was held in Edinburgh Scotland September 18th-20th. Andrew Price, Ormco UK National Manager extended an invitation for SBD to participate in the conference as their guest.  We were able to introduce ScreenPlay into the UK market. The market was very impressed overall with the concept of having the ability to preset clinical cases to patients at the initial exam with brilliant 3D graphics. The majority of the market seems to be OrthoTrac users, the ScreenPlay/ OrthoTrac integration will provide a great fit as we develop this market.IMG_1026

Future Updates:

We are working on a feature which will allow you to import your own before and after cases by Malocclusion into ScreenPlay.

Bug Fixes: We glad to say there are no current bug issues to report.

Note: We have now expanded our support hours. Support will be available from 5:00AM to 5:30PM pacific time.

Note: Jean Noble is now our east coast Sales Director. She is currently available for in office visit for practices throughout the Eastern region of the US.

Highlighted Feature: Informed Consent Video

Highlighted Features is a Solutions by Design blog series where we go into detail about the features of our product in order to allow users to get the full use out of our products.

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ScreenPlay provides users with Full Length Videos and Video Clips on range of topics from First Days in Braces to information regarding Retainers. One video that we have available that is gaining popularity is our Informed Consent video.

Before a patient begins treatment they are usually met with a hefty packet that lays out possible risk and complications of their orthodontic procedure. However, with ScreenPlay you are now able to simply pull up the Informed Consent video.

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The video covers:

  • Results of Treatment

  • Length of Treatment

  • Discomfort

  • Relapse

  • Extractions

  • Orthognatic Surgery

  • Decalcification and Denat Caries

  • Root Resorption

  • Nerve Damage

  • Periodontal Disease

  • Injury from Orthodontic Appliances

  • Head Gears

  • Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction

  • Impacted, Ankylosed, Unerupted Teeth

  • Occlusal Adjustment

  • Non-Ideal Results

  • Third Molars

  • Allergies

  • General Health Problems

  • Use of Tobacco Products

  • and Temporary Anchorage Devices


After the patient watches the video you can then have them sign a form saying they watched the videos and understand all the risk associated with the procedure. This makes the entire process simple and for any Nurse or Doctor.

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This video, along with others, is located under the “Videos” tap in your ScreenPlay application. For more information on how to utilize ScreenPlay give us a call today!