While I do have a personal Instagram account, I decided to create a separate business account to help establish a brand identity and also showcase our dental office. Our dental team truly does a lot to make sure our patients are well taken care of, and I wanted to use this platform as a way of recognizing my staff’s efforts. Such ways include but are not limited to: birthdays, national hygiene week, anniversaries, or anything to let them know that they are greatly appreciated.

I also recommend using a business account to market to my local dentists. Since I wasn’t sure if anyone wanted to see blood-filled periodontal and surgical photos, I opted to share cases that only showed the before and after photos to effectively market to referring dentists and increase the number of patient referrals to our periodontal practice.

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread shutdowns across the globe and ultimately our dental office. With more free time during the shutdown, I began to look at more dental Instagram accounts and noticed that many surgical procedures were being shown. I could not believe the wealth of information about different techniques, technologies, and biomaterials being so readily and easily available on Instagram. I began to wonder why I had come to this game so late and whether I would dare to do the same. I was most concerned about the risk of scaring away and turning off current and potential patients with periodontal and surgical photos featuring blood. While this concern may have deterred me from seeing some possible incoming patients, I was not aware of losing any patients, and actually I was still seeing a heavy volume of patients. And even better, my Instagram account really started to grow!

Here are some tips to help grow your Instagram account:

I know that this sounds trite, but be “you” and not someone else. Make sure that your bio clearly describes who you are and what you do. Include a clear and updated profile pic along with a link to your website and other relevant content. Utilizing a popular tool such as Linktree allows you to provide your audience with access to additional content that is not on Instagram such as webinars, courses, etc. (Fig. 1).

Make sure you share high-quality photos, videos, and captions that are engaging, informative, and relevant to your audience. Especially early on, consistency is key, so try to post regularly and often. I typically create my content in Keynote and convert the slides into images before posting them. This allows me to have more engaging and beautiful visuals to share on Instagram (Fig. 2).

Respond to comments, direct messages, and return the favor by engaging with other users’ content by liking, commenting, and sharing. It is very important to build these genuine connections that will encourage people to follow your account (Fig. 3).

Partnering with other accounts in your niche can help expose your profile to a new audience and attract more followers (Fig. 4).

Tagging other accounts in your posts or stories can allow for your content to appear in their tagged photos or mentions, thereby exposing your account to their followers and increasing your visibility. In addition, tagging accounts can encourage engagement and interaction from both your audience and the accounts you tag. Just be sure to use tagging responsibly to avoid spamming or irritating other users (Fig. 5).

Research and use relevant hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts. Ideally aim for a mix of popular and niche-specific hashtags to reach a broader audience while targeting your ideal followers (Fig. 6).

Cross-promote your Instagram account on other social media platforms such as Facebook. The beauty of Instagram is that what you post there can automatically be posted to your Facebook account without any additional work! Unfortunately, the reverse does not work (i.e. if you post first on Facebook, it will not post onto your Instagram account). Make sure that your Instagram account is visible on your website, email, newsletter, business cards, and any other marketing channels you use. Our dental team does a wonderful job of sharing our Instagram accounts to other people in our community.

Take advantage of Instagram’s features such as Stories, Reels, IGTV, and Live to diversify your content and reach different audiences. Based on feedback from my followers, Instagram stories are what really helped grow our account. Make an attempt to create a story, sharing content on an interesting case that is relevant to your followers. Taking the time and dedication to narrate information while showing the corresponding videos and images can significantly attract more views and hence more followers (Fig. 7).

While I focus primarily on dentistry, I often share content no-ndental-related, more like lifestyle content that reflects who I am and what my values are. This could include content related to hobbies and interests outside of work. This could include family, traveling, pets, dining, pretty much anything that shows who you are. We ask all our patients why they chose to see us for care and quite often we hear “I have already heard that Dr. Kim is a good surgeon, but it is nice to know that he is also human” (Fig. 8).

Living in a smaller city that is truly endearing to our family, Instagram is a great way to give back to our community. Sharing stories about your experiences with local business allows you to create compelling content that resonates with your audience. People love narratives, and storytelling though your support for local businesses can captivate your followers’ attention and encourage them to engage with your content (Fig. 9).

Partnering with dental companies can provide an opportunity for cross-promotion, exposing your Instagram account to the followers of the dental company (Fig. 10).

Creating a consent form for social media use in a HIPAA-compliant manner is crucial to ensure patient privacy and compliance with healthcare regulations. In addition, it would be prudent to also get verbal consent from the patient.