Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356

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Jack Hadley teaches social media marketing to MBA students at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management in Provo, Utah. He is also a founding partner at My Social Practice, an agency that provides social media marketing ideas, content, strategy, and support to dental and orthodontic practices.

http://mysocialpractice.com/dental

jack@mysocialpractice.com

Howard: It is a huge honor today to be interviewing Jack Hadley, who … In my mind, dude, you’re a legend, I mean, you are. When I got out of dental school, the hot thing was The Yellow Pages. If you got into The Yellow Pages, all the old dentists thought, “Oh, my God.” They’d always say to you, “If you had cancer, would you look for an oncologist in The Yellow Pages?” you’re just like a bad guy. You did direct mail. Almost everything that was like the next big thing when I got out of school in ’87 is now like dinosaur stuff and you were the leading pioneer in social media, in advertising on social media.

You jumped on the internet, the internet of things and you’ve been leading the way on social media for so long. I’m so honored that you gave me an hour of your life today because so many dentists … I mean, I hear it all the time, they’re like, “Howard, does Facebook really work?” and … or, “Should I do that Instagram or should I do Pinterest or Twitter and …”

Here’s your problem Jack, here is your absolute problem. By the way, I hope everybody’s only listening to this on iTunes because if [inaudible 00:01:21] Dentaltown video or YouTube video, you’re just gorgeous, you got [inaudible 00:01:25] there. You’ve got three Iron mans under your belt, I only have two. You beat me on every category but here’s your biggest problem is the fact that these dentists studied algebra and calculus and applied math as physics and we got As in that. Applied physics is chemistry and we aced that and applied chemistry is biology and we aced that and then we went to dental school and we’re dentists.

We didn’t take one hour of advertising in the old world, newspapers, radio, billboards and TVs and now it’s the internet of things and you’ve got to try and explain in one hour why a dentist who really just wants to go to the [inaudible 00:02:07], they have fantasies of going to Seattle and seeing Dr. Kois lecture live, not Jack Hadley about a Facebook ad and it’s so important.

My first question to you is why should a dentist whose number one fantasy is to see in Kois in Seattle at the Kois Institute and now instead of listening on full mouth reconstruction and how to do a better root canal, now I’ve got to listen to this social media thing. If I hear Facebook one more time, I’m going to puke. Jack, why should a dentist pay attention to social media?

Jack: Well, I admire … and first of all, thank you for having me. We’ve been trying to get together for a little visit for a long time. Our schedules have never lined up so I’m glad they lined up. Thanks for inviting me to visit.

Howard: Well, I’m in Phoenix and you’re in Utah. You’re in Lindon Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake?

Jack: That’s correct.

Howard: You know, I’ve always wanted to do that drive. I’ve driven to the Grand Canyon several times and hiked at Rim to Rim and you take a left turn round the Hoover Dam to Vegas but how do you actually get to Salt Lake? Would you go through Vegas then on to Salt Lake or would you go around the Lee’s Ferry on the east …

Jack: Go through Vegas and we’re about five hours north of Vegas.

Howard: Are you kidding me? You’re only five hours north of Vegas? Okay, because Vegas is … When I go to the [inaudible 00:03:26] meeting, it’s five hours door to door because they built that new bridge over Hoover Dam so you don’t even slow down. It used to be [crosstalk 00:03:33]. Its five hours to Vegas so I could be at your house in 10 hours.

Jack: Yes, absolutely. We’ll go skiing this winter, how about that?

Howard: Well, I actually want to do the drive because everyone’s told me that the other half of the drive to Salt Lake from Phoenix is just some of the most beautiful gorgeous country …

Jack: It is pretty.

Howard: Yeah, what do you go through? Do you go through Bryce Canyon or …?

Jack: Well, those are a little bit off the beaten track. If you get off of I-15 you can hit, I think there are six national parks along the way. You can hit along the way but if you stay on the freeway, you’d miss most of that.

Howard: I can see why the pilgrims stopped at Salt Lake because that has got to be one of the most gorgeous terrains. If you’ve never seen Utah, wow, it’s spectacular skiing, spectacular hiking, haunting, it’s … you live in a winter wonderland. Back to the point, I want to learn full mouth reconstruction and how to bone graft around an implant. Why should I be listening to Jack Hadley for an hour about this damn Facebook stuff?

Jack: Well, I’ll tell you. I really admire how dentists are able to be the technician and at the same time run a business. It’s just amazing to me how you wear so many hats. One of the hats you know and understand that you have to wear is a marketing hat. In the old days, and you made reference to the old days of Yellow Pages, it was easier for a practice to write a check to The Yellow Pages, write a check to the billboard company, maybe write a check to the radio spots, maybe they were doing TV, to the direct mail house to send direct mail.

They could write those checks and step back and not have to be so hands-on involved with marketing but today consumers expect more. They expect this transparency and this ability to approach people and t0o get responses. It’s really necessitated that practices participate a little bit in their marketing.

The best way to participate is through social media. If you can figure out ways to manage that so that it doesn’t consume all your time, it’s really the best way to not only stay in contact patients because social media is primarily internal marketing. It’s not really marketing. There’s external components that result from effective social media marketing but it’s mostly communicating better with patients and enabling patients to help you tell your practice story.

I think not only dentists but all small business people have been a little bit backed into this corner where they have to participate. Even the fact that other people are defining the brand for a small business now and they do that through what they say on social media, through review sites, it’s necessitated that a practice become participatory in that process. That’s why it’s important I think.

Howard: Okay, Jack, I need to back you a little bit because after 75 podcasts, we pass 100,000 listens and so I’m trying to guesstimate what all the questions are, you know what I mean? I want to start with what even is the definition of social media? You also dropped two other terms that someone doesn’t know and that’s internal marketing versus external marketing. Could you explain those three definitions?

Jack: Sure, yeah, sure. I think the best delimitation of social media marketing is … there’s two or three that are good. One is that it’s relationship marketing. One is that it is patient-driven marketing. What I mean by that is people have been making recommendations about the brands and products that they love ever since there were backyard fences for neighbors to speak over.

What’s happened is that word of mouth combined with the salability of social networks has created this concept of community driven marketing. I think the best way to think about social media is to think about it that way. It isn’t about you going out with a big blow horn and just pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, like the old days of advertising. It’s about you better telling your story in such a way that you enable other people, primarily your biggest fans, your alpha audience, your patients to then help you spread that story. I think that’s probably the simplest definition of social media.

Now, back to internal and external marketing. I think that because of the way we grew up and with how advertising works and marketing works, we primarily think about marketing and advertising as external marketing. We put out things, we broadcast things, we put out a coupon, we put out a special, we put out an ad and we’re always putting out to the world messages. Internal marketing on the other hand is, again, allowing your alpha audience, your patients to then make that external component spread so you’re primarily talking to patients through social media most of the time.

Howard: The most interesting thing I’ve seen in my 20 years is, and you’ve said it eloquently, when I got out of school in ’87 all the way to Lehmann Brothers’ financial crash and economic depression in September of 2008, you could buy new patients. If you did the direct mail piece, if you bought the full-page ad in The Yellow Pages, they were coming in. it seemed like in 2008, you couldn’t really bank on buying patients. When I look at the 75 to 80 bankruptcies in 2009 and 2010 in my backyard in Phoenix Arizona after that economic loss, that was the deal. They just couldn’t get new patients so you really can’t just buy new patients.

Jack: It’s much more difficult. Now there are some markets and prior to six or seven years ago before we started my social practice, I had half interest in another little marketing that can be called Sum Media, S-U-M Media. We did a lot of traditional marketing with dental practices and we did a lot of direct mail. Some of those direct mail campaigns could be super effective. They were somewhat expensive but we could show a pretty good return on those. There are still some markets where direct mail still does okay so I don’t think all traditional marketing has gone away.

Howard: What do you think some of those markets … is that just like … is there any clear like rural versus urban, small town of 5,000 versus town of a million? Do you see any differences in marketing between a Salt Lake versus a town of 5,000 out in the southern Utah?

Jack: In terms of what’s happening today, I’m not well enough connected with traditional direct mail as I was back then. Back then, I think large urban areas did well. We had clients that did really well in Seattle. We had clients that did real well down in San Diego. It seemed like it was mostly metropolitan areas but that has been a number of years ago so I don’t know now. I only hear on the periphery because I still have some friends that are doing direct marketing and some of the more traditional strategy.

Howard: Okay, I want to just get right to the 4,000-pound elephant in the room. My average podcast listener’s got a hour commute to work. He’s driving to work, she’s driving to work and she’s saying, “Jack, cut to the chase. What I need, I need another 15 new patients a month. If I had another 15 more new patients a month, man, all my numbers would be in line, my overhead would be where it’s at. I’m just running at about 80 percent capacity and I’ve already paid my rent mortgage [inaudible 00:11:45], my computer insurance, I’ve paid all my bills. Damn it, if I could just have 15 new patients.” If someone called you up and said, “Jack, give me 15 more new patients a month,” what would you tell them?

Jack: Boy, that’s a good … boy, I don’t know how I’d answer that exactly but I do have some ideas of what I would say. First of all, and I know this will sound like it’s not direct enough but social media absolutely hands down is  a long term investment in your practice. Sometimes when I speak and have a chance to talk to practices … I’ll compare it a little bit to the telephone. It’s hard to really asses the return on the investment on the phone that you pay your phone bill every month and yet you would never dream of doing business without a telephone. There are a lot of reasons for that and mostly having to do with communicating and staying in touch with your patient base. Social media is a little bit that way.

It’s hard in some way to directly attribute new patients to it because often, patients will see you in many different places online before they actually have the need for a new dentist or they get tired of their old dentist and their old dentist does something they don’t like or they need a new one or they look for a recommendation, they ask their friends on Facebook. That could be after they’ve been then exposed to a number of your social media accounts and messages and platforms.

You’ve got to look at it as a long-term investment and the viability of your practice to create a more thriving practice. In the shorter term though, one of the things that has really taken off … Not taken off but really become very apparent to us in the last year or so is the power of reviews and how reviews tie into social media in creating quicker traction in terms of more calls, more visits. If someone’s saying, “I need new patients and I need them now,” I think the first thing I would do is say, “Well, let’s talk a little bit about how you are using reviews and how you’re integrating reviews into your social media strategy because they are absolutely connected.”

Howard: Okay, now, when you talk about reviews, I only hear really of two things. I hear … Well, I hear Google reviews, I hear Yelp reviews and I hear of Amazon reviews on books and products. Go through those. Where does the average American read a review? Is it Google? Is it Yelp? I know Amazon’s product, I know that a 52 … I know that three or four years ago, I never heard this and now I hear this all the time someone say, “I went to Amazon and it seems like everybody was saying this about Samsung and this about iPhone,” or, “I was going to buy this book but they gave me the first chapter so …” I know Amazon’s product and so for a patient, are they more likely to read a Google review or a Yelp review?

Jack: The vast majority of reviews are read on Google hands down.

Howard: Any percentages?

Jack: No, I don’t know off the top of my head.

Howard: No problem, we’ll just make one up.

Jack: Yeah, there you go.

Howard: We’ll go with 86 percent.

Jack: 84 actually.

Howard: 84, I love that joke. 92.8 percent of all statistics are made up. You say vast majority but you couldn’t quantify it. I mean, are you thinking two-thirds, 80 percent, 90 percent?

Jack: Here’s the better way to think about it. I think that the vast majority of reviews that people have easy access to are Google reviews and that’s because most people, if they’re going to search for a new dentist and they are going to use the internet to search … Now lots of people won’t do that. There are a lot of people that they might do a little preliminary research on the internet but they’re not going to choose a dentist based on a Google search engine results. They’re going to go to their Facebook page and they are going to say, “Hey, any of my friends out there in the city in which I live in Provo, who do you love? I’m thinking about getting a new dentist, who do you love?”

If you have 500, 600, 800 friends, statistically about 54  percent of those friends likely live in the geographical area in which you live because you have family members and friends in New York and all over the country, right but about 50 percent of them live locally. If you put out on Facebook, “Do you love your dentist? Tell me about your dentist. I’m thinking about a new dentist.” More people will make a decision based on that kind of feedback but in initial research, people are putting in search engine that they’re going to google and they’re searching dentist in Provo Utah.

Whether or not how many are actually reading, I think the quickest access people get is through Google reviews. Now Yelp is strong too. I know there’s a lot of hate out there for Yelp and a lot of it is very well deserved but you cannot ignore Yelp. Yelp is still an important place where people search. Whether or not you’re making decisions on it or not.

Howard: A Yelp review, would someone go … sorry, I’m ignorant on this but you just go on Yelp.com? How do you do a Yelp review? I’ve never done one.

Jack: Most people that do it do it on their phone. You download the Yelp app on your phone.

Howard: Oh, you need the app.

Jack: Yeah and you just do it … I don’t know what the percentage is but many, many Yelp reviews I think are just done on the telephone, on their cell phone.

Howard: There’s some threads on Dentaltown on Yelp. If you go to Dentaltown, there’s 200,000 members … and we’re just coming up on 200,000 members. We’re at 198,600 …

Jack: Awesome.

Howard: … and we’re just also coming up on four million posts. I think we’re going to get 200,000 members and four million posts about the same time but if you do a search for Yelp, there’s some nasty threads. Basically, this is what they are saying. Now, I don’t know if it’s true but the thing about Dentaltown, they’re all dentists, I mean, they got years of college so it’s not like they’re making this shit up but basically, they are saying that if they became a Yelp member that their bad reviews go away and then if they stop being a Yelp client or a customer and whatever then their good reviews go away and the bad reviews come up and they feel like they are held hostage. Does that happen or is that just totally crazy?

Jack: That is in part true. I’m not an expert on it but I’ve read enough to know that that in fact does happen. At least that’s the outcome of what happens. Now, it’s never described in that way when you talk to Yelp about it.

Howard: you would think that’s extortion and would be illegal. You’d think the government would step in.

Jack: They’ve been through a number of lawsuits and in each case that I’m aware of Yelp ahs come through and been able to show that … I don’t know how they do it, great attorneys I suppose but they’re able to show that their practices are okay. They haven’t …I don’t think they’ve lost a case yet. [Crosstalk 00:19:03].

Howard: They’re not doing anything illegal, they are just probably what you would callas aggressive?

Jack: Yeah, they’re aggressive. Here’s the thing, the very best way I think to handle Yelp if you’ve had a bad experience or whatever is the same way that the Mormon Church handles criticism of the Mormon Church. The way they do it is they do everything they can to flood the internet with great stuff about the church in such a way that it just continues to bury the bad stuff. The things is if you get a bad Yelp review and you can’t rid of it or Yelp holds you hostage or whatever, then just go in and get more good Yelp reviews.

If you get a couple of bad reviews, you’re expected to have a couple of bad reviews. Everybody has a bad day. Everybody has somebody they can’t please. Everybody has somebody that just has a thorn in their crotch and just can’t get over it, right. The better way than fighting with it is sometimes just to overwhelm it with good stuff.

Howard: Yeah, I got a review guy and he went nuts because I adjusted the opposing plunger cost and he just lost it. He’s like, “Oh, my God, you just drilled on another tooth. You were doing this … you just drilled on [inaudible 00:20:24],” and I explained the whole damn thing and it was funny, he kept saying … Whenever I tried to explain to him [inaudible 00:20:29] he’d say, “Well, I’m a warehouse manager.” They use the default. Whenever it started to get … “I’m a warehouse manager. I would never do this,” and I’m just like, “Wow, you’re a warehouse manager.”

So yeah, but what percentage of people do think reading reviews … so what you’re saying is that most people when they get to 50 realize that there’s a lot of crazy people out there. At 52, I’m convinced … seriously Jack, I’m convinced I’m the only normal person on earth. I have not found any other normal people.

You’re saying that most people assume if you’re a restaurant, somebody wasn’t happy but if they’re reading the deals and four out of five people are good that that will work. You’re saying just work on getting your happy customers to write a review?

Jack: Absolutely.

Howard: Would you help them to write a review on Yelp or Google? How does that work?

Jack: The reviews that will get you the most traction are Google and Yelp reviews period. Now, there are lots of other places to review. You can review on Facebook. There are a lot of companies out there that have a review system that sends the patient an email after they leave the office. If they leave a review, it gets archived somewhere. Sometimes if they leave a good review, they’ll get another email that says, “Would you mind copying and pasting that and go and put it on Yelp or put it on Google?” which doesn’t happen very often.

There’s lots of places where reviews take place but the ones that really make a difference not only in the fact that people running about the practice but in terms of Google search results love are Google reviews and Yelp reviews. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Yelp has a huge presence when it comes to Google algorithms. If you search a lot of things, especially services and restaurants and hotels and professional services, you’ll see a lot of Yelp results coming up on page one of search results. They’re a strong player and Google takes them very seriously and that’s why you can’t ignore Yelp. Again, Google reviews and Yelp reviews I think are the very best place.

Howard: Okay, so I’m a dentist, I don’t even … I’ve never even … okay, so this dentist’s driving to work and he’s saying, “Okay, I’m out there in [inaudible 00:22:50] Kansas and my name is Jack Hadley III. How would I even know if I have a review?” How does this dentist listening in a car know if anybody’s reviewed them on Yelp or Google?

Jack: The best way is if this is all completely foreign to you, is go to Google and put in the search bar Google Business. That will take you to Google’s landing page for small businesses. It’s very simple. Google will walk you through whether or not you have claimed your local listing for your practice and they’ll help you through that. In fact, they’re becoming more and more helpful. It use to be you can never … It was difficult to get support. Now there’s a phone number right there. You call, they pick up the phone, they’re anxious because Google’s anxious to provide the best content they possibly can. If they can do that by having better information, that’s what they want to do.

Go to Google, make sure that you’ve claimed your business listing, which has been kind of converted now from a local page to a Google+ page and that’s why Google+ is important because it’s basically your Google+ page is the place where your reviews reside. Make sure that your Google+ … that your listing is claimed, that your Google+ page is in order and you’ll see on there whether or not you have some Google reviews.

Howard: Okay, I’m going to nail down for this. You’re saying open up Google the browser and go in the search bar putting Google Business and then type in what your name …?

Jack: It will go to a landing page for small businesses and you can click … I think it says, “Get started,” I think it has a get started button and it will walk you through the process of claiming your Google listing. It’s not difficult. It takes a few minutes because what’s happened over the years is as other directories and other search engines have proliferated, a lot of misinformation about your address and your phone number … for example, if you listed 234 1st Street as your address in one directory and then in next directory it was 234 1st St. period and street was not written out, it could be that the internet has two listings for you, which hurts when it comes to trying to find you online.

Google will help you look through that and find … to get clarity on your local listing. Sometimes you need a little bit of help maybe from a search engine company to help you clean up some of your listings but the thing is to get that cleaned up so that you can then direct reviews there.

As far as Yelp goes, I don’t think that they have the process of going through and claiming … I don’t know. I can’t speak to that. I don’t know the specifics of how you go about finding if you have Yelp reviews. I’m guessing you just put in the name of your practice and they’ll come up if they have them.

Howard: Will they give you the name of the practice or the name of the dentist? What is that [inaudible 00:25:54]?

Jack: I’d check both, I’d check both.

Howard: You’d check them both?

Jack: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s always a problem.

Howard: The problem with me on the internet of things is I’m the second. My dad was Howard Eugene Farran; I’m Howard Eugene Farran II. Oh, my God, the last time …

Jack: So am I.

Howard: The last time I went to the government, I forgot what I needed. I needed something and they told me I was my dad and I said, “Okay, do I look dead in ’78? Pretty sure I’m alive in 52.” The lady said, “I’m sorry, I need your birth certificate,” and then in … Anyway, long story short, long story short, I had to have family members go to [inaudible 00:26:32] to get a piece of paper. So yeah, I can see the difference between street, S-T-R-E-E-T versus St. because I think anybody who puts a Roman numeral two after their kid, ought to at least pay for their college, you know what I mean?

Jack: You need to tell my dad that. He did exactly the same thing. I’m Jack Hadley II, not junior, the second. Yeah, exactly.

Howard: Yeah, that’s great. I’m going to do that Google bit. The first thing I was thinking Jack is … First thing I was thinking is I would want you to start looking into this for me. I want to ask you … I want to get to the point of you is six years ago you started My Social Practice with some of your buddies. What do you actually do? If I’m driving my car right now and I’m listening to you, what could you do for me? My first question would want to be are you only dental or are you dental, chiropractor, vets? Is dentistry your forte or …?

Jack: Yeah, we started in dentistry and for the first five years we were strictly dentistry and orthodontics. We have quite a few orthodontic practices as clients as well. Then about a year ago, we ran into an opportunity with an optometry group. We are doing some beta work with some eye doctors but short of that, yeah, the complete history has been specific to dentistry.

Howard: What’s the name of that company that was in all optometry for 25 years and now they are coming dentistry? Do you know the …?

Jack: Yeah, that’s who we’re working with, it’s called Vision Source.

Howard: Oh, Vision Source.

Jack: Their dental line is called Smile Source. The reason that … We were doing a lot of work with Smile Source with their dental practices and that’s how we got introduced to the folks at Vision Source and so …

Howard: I’m very interested in this because it looks like dentistry is going through what optometry went through 25 years ago because Lee Optical … so optometrists were all independent practice when I was a kid. It was horrible back then because one of the worst times of my life is my best friend and I were horsing around and his glasses got broke. He couldn’t get in the doctor for a month and then they sent off a prescription and he [inaudible 00:28:45] so basically, the whole summer, he was blind. He was basically legally blind and I just felt horrible. We were messing around and his glasses got broke. Then so then Texan came along it was Pearle Vision, wasn’t that the first?

Jack: Yeah, one of those.

Howard: They basically said Howard’s buddy and people like him shouldn’t have to go a summer blind. They put in the frames and the machinery and they said, “We’re going to [inaudible 00:29:11] about an hour,” and so the big change came out. Then this … What is it called, Vision Source?

Jack: Vision Source, uh-huh.

Howard: This Vision Source came along and said, “You know what, if you’re going to compete against these corporate chains, you need some sophisticated purchasing, buying whatever, whatever,” and they’ve been crushing it for 25 years and now they’re coming into dental. You were at the Dental Vision, that’s where I ran into you last.

Jack: Yes.

Howard: Now you’re working with Vision Source for the optometrist and Smile Source for the dentist?

Jack: Yes and …

Howard: Is it Smile Source?

Jack: Smile Source, yes and I think you’re right. I think that dentistry is going to go through some of the things that optometry went through 20 years ago. The neat thing about Vision Source with optometry is not only did they band together to do the buying power but not only are they competing against chains now but now you know Wal-Mart has Vision Centers, Costco has Vision Centers, I mean, everybody is in the vision business at that corporate level.   Vision Source is defending the eye care movement … not movement but defending the independent optometrist. Really, dentistry, there’s  a lot of movement towards … I listened to a podcast with Gary Takacs and Gordon Christiansen about a year ago where Gordon talked a lot about some of this movement in dentistry towards all this corporate dentistry that you see going on. I think Smile Source has positioned themselves pretty well.

Howard: Jack, you’ve been in a suit, MBA, businessman. You’ve lived half a century like I have. What is from your 30,000 feet business marketing, social media and not being emotionally … I believe a lot of people emotionally get anchored to something like if you’re a dentist; you have these emotional thoughts about dentistry. But since you’re not a dentists and you’ve been watching us for a long time, what kind of impact do you think corporate industry is going to have?

Jack: I think it’s going to have a big impact. I think that’s in part why it’s important to establish these other channels of relationship marketing because corporate dentistry can come in and they can be cheaper or they could be faster or they could be a whole lot of things and they’ve got the budgets to advertise. They can write big checks. You’re starting to see some of those ad campaigns about dental implants coming from some of the large chain implant companies that … I think they just built a facility in Salt Lake and spent, I don’t know how many million dollars on a one-stop shop for implants.

Howard: Which one was it? Was it [inaudible 00:31:53]?

Jack: No, I’m trying to remember the name of those guys. They run commercials on television in the local market here. They’ve got big checkbooks behind them. I think that people that have solid relationships with their healthcare providers including their dentist or orthodontist are going to be able to better preserve those relationships if they are on an ongoing basis. I mean, if you only see your dentist and only hear from him once or twice a year when you go in for a cleaning and you have no other relationship with him, I think it’s much easier to be tempted by some of these big messages and big discounts and in in one day and we do everything in one place. I think it’s going to be a competitive environment.

Howard: I think I’m … because I’ve lived through this. When I got out of school in ’87, Orthodontics Centers of America, Lazzara [inaudible 00:32:46] New Orleans and he made it to the New York Stock Exchange with a billion dollar capitalization. There was a dozen on NASDAQ, they all exploded but the red flags that they are going to be in my mind, nobody can predict the future but the big flags that they are going to have to overcome … I believe America, I believe about half the people just won’t buy on price. They just don’t have the money. They can’t buy a Cadillac. If their insurance says you’ve got to go to Jack Hadley to get it done, they’re going to go to Jack Hadley and the other half are really particular about who’s going to touch their mouth.

The number one complaint I get from all the chains around Phoenix is every time I went in there, it was a different dentist. Every time I went in there it was some kid and then, “Well, where’s the kid that worked with me last time?” “He’s gone,” so the chains, if they’re not going to be able to keep dentists for five, ten, twenty years, they better start competing on price and have the insurance locked up because I do believe out of 330 million Americans, at least 160 million Americans, their insurance said, “Hey, you want a root canal and crown. You’ve got to go to that box over there. You know any other box, you’re paying for it.” They’ll say, “Oh, no, I’ll go to that box.”

Jack: That’s right.

Howard: But the other half where people are very particular, then they’re going to have to slow down their staff turnover and they’re going to have to use social media to develop their brand that it’s them, they’re Jack Hadley and this is Jack. If you want Jack to fix your teeth, he’s been fixing teeth in Utah blah, blah, blah, blah. Jack, again, so I’m driving to work right now and I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do and I’m also what you could do for me. What does Social Practice do? If I call you, is it a one-time retainer campaign? Is it a monthly fee? Do you build like my Facebook page? Do you do anything other than Facebook? Do you direct mail or Yellow Pages? Do you … instead of just Facebook, they hear things like Twitter, they hear Google +, they hear Pinterest, they hear Instagram, they hear Snapchat? Some of these things … I don’t even know the words I just said. I don’t what Snapchat or … I think Instagram … Is Instagram kind of like a picture deal like Pinterest?

Jack: Yeah, Instagram’s owned by Facebook and is experiencing huge, huge growth right now.

Howard: Okay, so tell us what you do.

Jack: Basically, My Social Practice, we have two areas of focus. Social media is how we started and how we’ve grown our business. We are primarily a content company. What I mean by that is that it’s our goal to make a practice successful in social media marketing and effective with their social media marketing in 10 minutes a day is our goal. We do that by providing them with content. We have daily content, we have different types of content that we provide because we don’t do social media for the practice because it doesn’t work, that’s why we don’t do it. A practice has to participate at a certain level for social media to be effective.

Howard: Wouldn’t that be really easy because every doctor, I don’t care how old he is, he’s got two assistants, a hygienist or a [inaudible 00:36:01], one of them is on Facebook.

Jack: Yeah and the thing is …

Howard: What percentage of the non-dentists in the office would you say are on Facebook in your experience?

Jack: Well, the national average is about 72 percent of everyone that walks through the door of a dentist practice is logging into Facebook several times a week.

Howard: 72 percent and what percentage of dentists do you think are on Facebook?

Jack: You know, it used to be quite low but I’ve noticed when I go and speak in venues where there may be 100 practices in the room, it used to be I’d ask how many have a Facebook page and actually use it. I might have 10, 20 percent raise their hand two or three years ago, I’m seeing three quarters of the room at least raise their hand. Now, whether or not they’re using it effectively, that might be another story.

Howard: Okay, so you’re … Why does it not work if you do it for me?

Jack: Well, because just at its core fundamentally, social media is about transparency and engagement. I’m not in your practice. I don’t know your patients. I don’t interact with them. I don’t have a relationship with them and so some practices think, “Well, great.” Their website company calls them and says, “Hey, we just decided to offer social media and it’s all automated and you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to talk to your patients. You don’t have to respond. You don’t have to be involved in relationships at all. We’ll just auto-post a bunch of stuff and now suddenly you have social media.”

Effective social media isn’t something you have, it’s something you do. It doesn’t start online, it starts inside the practice. For that very reason, we built the company based as a content company. We’re going to make you successful with social media. We’re not going to do it for you but we’re going to make it so that you can do it effectively, quickly with great content. You’ll know what to do. You don’t have to spend five hours a day. You’ll spend 10 minutes a day and you can be effective if you have great content and you know what to do with it. That’s our first product is with social media content.

Howard: Is Deana Zost your daughter?

Jack: No.

Howard: I don’t think I’ve ever logged onto Facebook and not seen her hold up some picture that Jack Hadley gave her. My God, if she’s not your biggest fan, I don’t know who is. I wish I had a cheerleader like that.

Jack: We’ve got to get her to come to Utah and work for us.

Howard: She just loves you. She just loves you, loves you, loves you.

Jack: She’s a sweetheart.

Howard: You’re going to give a dental office things [inaudible 00:38:28] like I always see Deana … Is it Deana Zost … Deana Zost?

Jack: Yeah, Deana.

Howard: Deana Zost, I always see her holding up cute little signs and things like the ones behind you.

Jack: Yes.

Howard: If I sign up to Social Practice, is it a one-time fee, is it a monthly fee? How does that …?

Jack: It’s a monthly fee. We don’t have any set up fees, we don’t have any contracts. We found that we don’t need contracts. We have a high retention [crosstalk 00:38:51].

Howard: What is that monthly fee?

Jack: Retail’s $349 a month.

Howard: $349 a month?

Jack: Yup, with no upfront fees and contact.

Howard: But if they are bald, do you feel sorry for them and give them a discount?

Jack: Uh-huh, it’s $348.

Howard: It’s $348. So if I call up Jack and I give you $349 a month, you’re going to … Tell, me, what are you going to do? You’re going to send me … You know, seriously, I’m embarrassed to say this but when I think of you, I think of Deana holding up these signs. She’s always with a patient and …

Jack: Do you know why that’s so important? Because of what I said a moment ago and when I speak, I tell practices, if you don’t remember anything else that I tell you today, remember this one sentence, effective social media doesn’t start online. Even though that’s what you think, intuitively, it’s Facebook, it’s Twitter, it’s online, it starts inside the practice. Half of the content that we provide to practices are things that they can use inside the practice to engage with patients because remember, this is primarily directed to patients because patients then use their trusted networks to spread your message. That’s why you see Deana using, she uses so much, she uses [crosstalk 00:40:04].

Howard: Are you mailing her that stuff?

Jack: Yeah we ship all our practice content so that they can immediately just open the box and start using the stuff.

Howard: How often do you come down to Phoenix? You are 10 hours away, how often do you come to Phoenix Jack?

Jack: I have been down in Phoenix three to four times this year. I don’t know from down there the right way.

Howard: Next time you are down here, you are going to come to my office and I’m going to pay you the $348 a month because I am bald. I’m going to use your services. I’m committing right now live. I’m going to use your services because nothing that you said, it’s Deana. I just want to be like Deana when I go … so when you say … so this is all is this a fair statement. Basically, you said reviews, the lion’s share was Google and then somewhat Yelp and everything else was not really significant. Would you say that social media is basically just Facebook? Do you spent most of your time on Facebook? Is Facebook the lion … is it the 80/20 role, 80 percent Facebook, 20 percent everything else, Is that fair?

Jack: It still is, it’s absolutely the 800-pound gorilla in the room and will be for quite some time. If you look at the latest reports on social media usage it’s still absolutely … some of the other platforms are growing …

Howard: You know why that is, don’t you?

Jack: Why’s that?

Howard: Because Mark Zuckerberg’s dad was a dentist, that’s the whole reason. He was raised properly.

Jack: There you go, there you go.

Howard: He’s a good kid too. He’s the good kid. Mark Zuckerberg is the good kid and his mum and dad are Mark and Karen and everybody will vouch he’s a really … he’s amazing I can’t believe already been out there for a decade and man I don’t think Ed could be more proud of his boy.

Jack: I have some of that.

Howard: If 80 percent is Facebook, what’s the other 20 percent?

Jack: You know we’re having …

Howard: Finish your story, why did Facebook buy Instagram? What’s Instagram and why did Mark Zuckerberg buy it?

Jack: Instagram is a photo-sharing service or a photo-sharing platform. The neat thing about Instagram right now is that it’s the way Facebook was years ago where content is not being filtered. In other words if I follow your Instagram page at your practice, I see everything that your practice posts in my feed; there’s no filtering taking place.

Howard: Like Twitter, Twitter does that too, right?

Jack: Yes, exactly, Twitter is still that same model but Facebook is not that same model and it’s because they spent a decade getting 1.42billion people to sign up when they didn’t really make any money. They then recognized, “Hey, we’ve got the audience now and there’s only this much bandwidth in a newsfeed, we can filter that newsfeed to make money.” What’s happened is that you’ve gone to a pay-to-play model with Facebook and that’s one of the biggest questions that I get. In fact, we shot a video yesterday that they’re going to release next week about boosting Facebook posts because what’s happened, a year ago, 20 to 40 percent of the content that you published…

Oh, excuse me; I shouldn’t say it that way. 20 to 40 percent of your Facebook fans would see the content that you published as a dental practice. Today, it’s about one to four percent unless you boost the post. We’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with practices on what does it take to get the view and the reach back up into 30 and 40 percent. Typically, it takes about $5 a post so we’re recommending to our clients that they budget $100 a month for Facebook because it’s the best dang money they will spent in terms of being able to reach, how many people they can reach with $100 and boost their posts each day for using $5. If they’re doing 20 days times $5, they’re spending $100 a month because if you don’t boost nobody is seeing your stuff. No matter how good your stuff is … and we provide awesome content to our clients, but if nobody sees it, it doesn’t get liked, it doesn’t get commented on and it doesn’t get shared. It doesn’t spread if they don’t see it.

Howard: You’re talking about … Can you do this off the app of the phone or just [inaudible 00:44:22]. That’s where you see a little boost post?

Jack: Yes, yes and once you set up with Facebook and get your credit card information and search in there, it only  takes an extra second after you‘ve posted your post with Facebook to boost it. It’s really simple to do once you …

Howard: Can you go back and boost posts that you posted a week ago or a month ago?

Jack: Yes, you can. Yeah you can. We want to make sure … if you’re going to spend money boosting posts make sure your content is good. Great content … I actually had a chance to speak to the American Academy of Orthodontic Convention in San Francisco last week. I talked to them about how the … I lost my train of thought. I was talking about … what was I talking about?

Howard: Well, the boosting the post.

Jack: They have to spent this $5 to kind of…

Howard: I’m actually taking notes on it.

Jack: … Bridge that gap. If they don’t do that nobody sees their stuff, that’s the point. You can’t share stuff if you don’t see it. The reason why this is also important right now is because that bandwidth, Facebook knows how valuable it is. You know who else knows how valuable it is? Big brands like Nike, like Adidas, like Ford. They know that that bandwidth is extremely valuable and the day will come when a dentist won’t be able to afford what that bandwidth is going to cost. Now that may be several years from now but, Facebook knows they have a huge audience, they’re still having a lion’s share of social media audience and so right now is really a good value for small businesses including dental and orthodontic practices to be able to pay for that little bit of bandwidth with $5 to get back to 40 percent of their… If they’ve a 1,000 fans on Facebook, 400 of them will likely see their content if they pay and spent $5.

Howard: You said before you boost it, you were saying that first thing’s sure it’s a good post or good content?

Jack: Yeah, because if you’re sharing stuff that nobody likes and nobody cares about, then why spent money on that? It’s not going to get a shared because it’s not good stuff.

Howard: You’re saying that it’s $5 to boost a post or …?

Jack: No, you can start with less. No, I think you can put as little as $2. We’ve been experimenting, we’ve done some … We’ve worked with some practices that have been spending $3, $5, $*, $10, $15, $20. We’ve been seeing where it lies and obviously the more money you spent, the better but it seems like at $5, at least right now, maybe this will be different a year from now but at $5 you can get back to the levels of engagement that you saw a year ago on Facebook.

I know where I was going with my orthodontic talk a second ago. When I spoke to the orthodontic group, I talked about the six types of content that most likely will be shared through social media. My good friend wrote an article in Forbes about those six pieces that I spoke about at the Orthodontic Convention in San Francisco. They are really … We’ve looked at tens of thousands of posts in social media and analyzed what types of content seem to do the best and there’s really six types and you can learn more about what those are on our website, but…

Howard: What’s your website, mysocialpractice.com?

Jack: That’s correct.

Howard: Is it www.mysocialpractice.com?

Jack: That’s correct.

Howard: Okay.

Jack: If you’re going to spent money, I’m just saying that if you’re going to spend money, spend money on things that will most likely get shared and commented on and liked because you do not want to spend money on stuff that people don’t like or don’t care about, so that’s kind of it.

Howard: What are the six things?

Jack: They’re things that number one, things that engage in some way, and maybe they have no other purpose, they don’t provide any value or anything else, they’re just interesting. Sometimes they’re dental related, sometimes they are not. Not everybody thinks about dentistry all day in the world.

Howard: I once went an entire weekend without thinking about dentistry and …

Jack: You did?

Howard: … It was the worst weekend in my life.

Jack: You are a perfect example of someone who finds content that is interesting and fun to read about and probably I would guess that at least 50 percent of it is related to dentistry. When I look through … You and I connected on all the social accounts and so I watch what you do.

Howard: On Facebook, I only post about dentistry.

Jack: On your other accounts … yeah, I guess [crosstalk 00:49:17].

Howard: You mean [crosstalk 00:49:20] today’s dental?

Jack: No, I’m looking at your Twitter page, your Google + page and as I think about it, yeah, it’s probably more, it’s probably also dental stuff.

Howard: The only thing I ever post about is dentistry or a joke about dentistry, information about dentistry but then I do some personal not because I’m a narcissist but because I think people would like to know who you are so things that define me like I do Ironman so sometimes a bike-swim-run picture or the most thing I’m proud of in my whole life is my three-year old granddaughter who was my reward for not killing all four of my boys. I’m so glad I’m not in prison today and I have a three-year old granddaughter and so I do that because I want to know who the person is.

Jack: Remember your audience though too. Probably the bulk of the people that follow you are in the dental field and so your content is spot on for those people. When you’re a dentist …

Howard: Because I’ve got two Facebook pages, one for my dental office Today’s Dental and one for Dentaltown. You’re saying on Facebook.com/HowardFarran, they’re all interested in dentistry too but you’re saying that would be a different post than on Facebook.com/Today’sDental because my patients do not want to think about dentistry all the time.

Jack: That’s right. That’s rights your patients want to think about the things they want to think about and so they idea is to give them content that endears you to them that they like, that they think is valuable but, it doesn’t always have to be about dentistry. If you have a good audience that loves your stuff, it’s really good and important to weave oral health, whole body health, dentistry, I mean those are topics you can absolutely weave into your feeds and the things that you post but you don’t want to be posting about dentistry every single time to that audience.

Number one was engage. Number two, is content that provides value. Now that could be a whole bunch of different things. It could be things that provide value about their comfort, about their whole body health, about their appearance. When you look at dentistry’s messages, every message that comes from dentistry, I believe falls into one of those three things. It’s either about comfort, whether that is physical comfort, or emotional comfort or financial comfort or whatever comfort means, health, it’s about their health and heaven knows there’s an awful lot being said these days about the connections between oral and whole body health and appearance, which is about all the things that dentistry is about. Restoration, about prevention, about cosmetics so comfort, health and appearance, I think that those three topics embrace this whole concept of value. Content that provides value gets shared.

Number three, content that reveals practice culture. You may not believe it that your practice has a culture but if you start thinking about it this way, it does have a culture. Do you do Toys for Tots once a year? Do you do a little 5K to raise money? Do you do Habitat for Humanity? Do you do anything in the community that enriches the community or that shares the culture of your practice? Any time you talk about the culture in your practice, people like that and people like doing business with people they like and they share that content.

Number four, any content that raises the clout of the practice. What I mean by that is, let’s say that you go out and get trained on one-hour crown sack system and you bring that into your office and you talk about it in terms of saving the patient time, not having to come in twice, not getting them twice. However you position that, that raises the clout of your practice. Let’s say you go out to the AACD annual meeting and you’re there and you’re learning how to be a better dentist, post that on Facebook, post that on your accounts because what it does is it raises the clout of your practice in the eyes of your patients.

Finally, if there’s anything that builds relationships, if you can talk about the next marathon that, let’s your hygienist, this is the first marathon she has ever run in her life and she has been training hard for it, talk about that. Spot light her and congratulate her on what she is doing because people in your community know her and they like her and they’re connected to her on social media. The average person on Facebook has 300 friends or whatever,  I don’t know what the average is but if you can you can highlight those relationships that kind of content gets shared.

Whenever are going to post and especially if you’re going to spend money on it, what kind of … does it do one or more of those five things? Some things do two or three of them, some only do one but if you use that as sort of gauge you’re going to produce and post content that gets shared and that’s what you want it to do.

Howard: When they make a post should they go out and take that Facebook post and then re-post it on Instagram, and Google+, and Twitter and Pinterest or whatever...?

Jack: Usually I get asked that a lot and my usual response is, if you are just getting started with social media and it makes it easier for you to link those things together and if you post one place it sort of auto-posts to other places, I think that’s okay in the beginning. As you become more familiar with how different platforms work, I think it’s much better to learn how use all the platforms, because they’re all a little bit different. They have subtleties. As you know, you do a lot on the number of platforms and so, yes, spread the word but, don’t auto-post if you can learn how to not.

Howard: By auto-post, you are talking like automatic Hootsuite?

Jack: Yeah, just connecting everything together. You’ve been to Twitter pages where post after post after post after post just has a Facebook URL there that says, “Oh I just posted a photo on Facebook. I just did this on Facebook.”

Howard: I know and I never click them.

Jack: Yeah and people don’t really like that so ….

Howard: I’d want to see the photo on Twitter.

Jack: That’s right.

Howard: I don’t understand the Twitter people because if all your Twitter posts are on Facebook, will get the hell off Twitter and go to Facebook. I want to see a post on Twitter … I want to see the post on Twitter. You got a photo, I don’t want to link that to go to Instagram if all your posts are leave Twitter and go to somewhere else, just go there and post.

Jack: Yeah, just go there, I agree. Going back to I think how we started. Our first product is this social product and it’s the content driven product. Our second product is our reviews product. We’ve developed an application that allows a practice to get Google and Yelp reviews right inside the practice from the patient’s cell phone. That’s … we actually posted something yesterday on our blog called Google+ and zombies. In that post …

Howard: I read that, I read that and I forwarded it to my entire team.

Jack: Oh, good, good. We talk a little bit in there a little bit about how important and how… It’s been difficult to get Google reviews inside the practice and that’s why, typically what happens people get an email after they leave the practice and then you’re asking him to do it twice. You’re asking him to review and then if it’s a good review they get another email and it says, “Oh would you mind copying and pasting your review on Go Find, Google or Yelp and pasting it in there too?” The conversion rate is very low on that kind of a process but we have a product where you can actually send a text message inside the practice to the patient’s cell phone. They touch on that, we have deep embed software that opens the Google or Yelp app on their phone and they can do a review right there on their phone while they are sitting in the chair.

Howard: Now, is this part of that $349 a month.

Jack: No, this is a different product. This is called MSP Reviews and that’s a different product and I think it retails for … gosh, I don’t get involved that part … I think it retails at $249 or something like that a month.

Howard: $249 … is that also… Jack is that fair to say that’s online reputation management?

Jack: Yeah, and you know the term reputation management, I think has grown up with its own sort of identity. In reality, it’s just means able to listen to what’s being said about you and then harnessing the power of reviews. I think that’s what online reputation real means. I don’t know if the term has any more really definitive meaning than that. You can listen to what’s being said about you with a simple tool like Google Alerts. You can go into your Google account and set up an alert, put in your name, your practice name, your name without your initial, your name without your credentials into what’s called Google Alerts, it’s free. You can specify if you want to hear about … if anything is said about you, do you want to hear about it right when it happens or do you want an email once a week, you don’t want to get it all the time? You can listen to the world through Google Alerts for free and it takes you five minutes to set up.

Half of online reputation management and there are a lot of people out there that are selling products and they’re calling it that because I think practices don’t real understand what that means. Really, it just means listening and being aware of what’s being said about you and then it’s about empowering people to leave you great reviews. To me, online reputation management is just those two things. It’s listening and getting reviews.

Howard: Okay, I’m down to one minute and I’m wondering is Facebook taking away the value of the dental office website? I mean what’s more important, the dental office website? You could go to my www.todaysdental.com or you could go to Facebook.com/todaysdental. I have a Today’s Dental on Facebook but I have Today’s Dental website. How do those work together and is one of them more important than the other or are they working hand in hand or …?

Jack: I think the tendency might be to think that these tools are more important. I look at them more as an integrated digital media strategy, an online strategy. While websites are still important, it has to do a lot with the changes that are happening at Google. It used to be that your webmaster could charge you for a SEO package and could load your website with tones of content that could fool Google into thinking that it was more relevant that it real was.

Google is getting much, much, much smarter and so they want original fresh content on a website that they can crawl and that they can assess what’s really going on inside the practice. I think websites right now are more important than they’ve ever been but they’re a much different animal than they were even two and three years ago because of the changes that are happening at Google.

Howard: When I sign up that $349 a month and you are sending me stuff, that’s not just to populate on my Facebook page, it’s also stuff to populate on your dental office website?

Jack: Yes and what we do is we really help practices. Do you know when you say, “Hey Dr. Jones, you really need to start blogging.” If you say that, it’s like, “Whoa, this sounds … Are you kidding? Blogging? This is hard, I don’t know what to write, I’ve got to learn, da, da, da, da …” But blog content is really, really important in terms of Google search. It’s becoming more important as Google becomes more sophisticated in the things that they’re looking  for.

No, our comprehensive package is not just things to out on Facebook or to hold up in your practice, it includes broad content, monthly campaigns, we send out materials like for oral cancer awareness month, we send out materials to put up in the practice and then help them write a blog post about it, about oral cancer awareness and then spread that blog post throughout their social media footprint. So no, it’s just not about just handing content, it’s about really having the …

Howard: Last time I was in England, England decided to get rid of oral cancer as a term because when you google oral, the last thing that comes up is a dentist and they changed to mouth cancer and they think that has been far more effective because if you type in oral cancer, 14 trillion pornography websites pop up.

Jack: Yeah, porn sites come up.

Howard: Hey, I’m out of time. I’m a minute out of time. Hey, I wish on those amazing blogs your … Dentaltown has a blog section, I wish you’d post those in Dentaltown if you know [crosstalk 01:02:02]

Jack: Let’s do it. I talked to Anne Marie Gorceka the other day who does that and then I talked to your editor who does Ortho Town when I was at the ortho thing and we are going to do some things with some orthodontic content too.

Howard: Hey, I’m going to throw you under the bus right now. Any chance you’d ever do an online CE course for us on this?

Jack: I’d love to. I’d love to [crosstalk 01:02:23].

Howard: We are just coming up on 200,000 members with 4million posts. We put up 307 online courses and they passed 500,000 watches so this is a new thing and let’s say you’ve got an uphill battle because they really just want to learn about implants and bone grafts and your root canals.  Where you can hit them hard is I believe the holy grail of dentistry is every dentist I’ve ever met wants 10 more new patients a month. If you can educate them on that and deliver that … But hey dude, I love you to death. I totally respect you. I think you’re a  genius, I think you are cutting edge and I hate you because you’re better looking and you’ve done three Ironmans to my two. But hey …

Jack: When’s the next Ironman?

Howard: I don’t know, it’s 167 days but I’m not counting, November 15th 2015 Tempe Town Lake, that’s what me get up at five o'clock every morning because I know when 3,000 people jump in that lake, I don’t want to get swam over for an hour and a half. I want to …

Jack: I’ve done that race. I did the inaugural one, the first …

Howard: 2005?

Jack: Uh-huh, it was … was it five? I did the first one that they did in Tempe Town Lake. Yeah, loved it, beautiful place.

Howard: I love it and in all honesty, the water part scares me. It takes about 15 minutes to relax because when 3,000 people jump in a deal, you’re getting swam over by … it’s like a punch and grab and tear fest until everybody spreads out and then you can get in the groove but the first 15 minutes, there’s no rhythm, there’s no groove, you’re just trying not to drown. But hey, love you to death dude and I do want you to do more for my office. Next time you’re in Phoenix, look me up.

Jack: I will come by and I’ll bring you a big box of stuff, how about that?

Howard: Yeah, and you tell Deana Zost its game on, it’s game on.

Jack: Okay, I’ll …

Howard: All right buddy, bye, bye.

Jack: Thanks Howard, see you.