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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Howard:

It is a huge honor today to be podcast interviewing my buddy, Ed Zuckerberg. How are you doing today, Ed?

Ed:

I'm great, Howard. How are you?

Howard:

Good. You were telling me that you were really impressed with the new play on Broadway, Hamilton.

Ed:

Yeah. We have reason to go back and visit our old stomping grounds now, like three or four times a year, to visit our oldest daughter and 2 grandsons, and it's always a great time while we're there to revisit with some old buddies and check out the latest shows. The last show we saw was Hamilton, and it's just absolutely phenomenal.

Howard:

The last one I saw was The Book of Mormon. Did you ever see that one?

Ed:

That's hysterical.

Howard:

Oh my God, that was funny, and all my Mormon friends loved it too.

Ed:

Well, there was one in the row in front of us who wasn't too happy, and walked out about a third of the way into the show, but anyone with a sense of humor has to enjoy it, and that was side-splitting laughter for like 2 1/2 hours.

Howard:

Well, you know, you've got to be able to laugh at anything. My two oldest sisters are nuns and they laugh at all the Catholic joke stuff, and they cry at some of it. They cry there's a lot of bad pain in there.

Ed:

Yep. It's not all a laughing matter, absolutely.

Howard:

But they can laugh too, and I was proud of them. They went and saw that movie on the Catholic Church. What was that called? Spotlight.

Ed:

Yes.

Howard:

You've got to be able to laugh in the rain storm. Well, hey, Ed, the reason I called you is because Facebook launched a new feature, and the emails and message boards exploded. Basically, I'm assuming right now probably 99% of all the people listening to this podcast either don't even know what I'm talking about, or have heard about it and know nothing about it, so let's start from scratch. You're a dentist commuting to work right now for an hour and it's like, "What Facebook new feature?"

Ed:

Yeah, exactly. Facebook has been adding more and more videos to their news-feed for awhile now. I believe they eclipsed YouTube for the site where there's the most videos on social media, so there's more videos on Facebook than anywhere. You can't scroll through your news-feed and see what's going on without coming through a bunch of videos, and I've been encouraging a lot of my clients, who I help promote their Facebook pages, to start using video, self-producing videos. The ability to have live video now, though, is amazing, because you can schedule an event, instead of just popping up a video for people, that's pre-recorded for people to look at at their leisure, which is fine if you want to show off something going on in your office or a new technology.

You can take your time and produce a video without the anxiety of [bidding 00:03:04] live, but it's certainly an opportunity to have a live event. I imagine it won't be long before some dentists who have patients sign appropriate consent, and HIPAA forms and stuff like that, actually as showing off live video procedures from their office. Tune in live, it doesn't sound too appealing to most of the general public, but tune in live while we place this implant, something like that. Who knows, two, three years from now, that'll be a clue for people to strap on their Oculus virtual reality headsets and go watch this video that's being produced, and it'll be like you're actually in the mouth, adjacent to the site where the implant's being produced. The promise for the future is phenomenal.

Howard:

Now, a couple of things. Now, if you do this live video, is it archived? If you did that at 8:00, could someone come back at 5 pm and see that video, or is it just live then gone?

Ed:

No, so you'd actually promote it as a live event to try and get the maximum live audience. You'd probably, ideally you'd start promoting it a day or two before the event on your Facebook page, telling people, "Tune in at such and such time. We've got this great new CAD/CAM technology, where we're going to show you how we can actually now create a crown without making a temporary. You can walk out with your permanent crown the same day," and then promote the event. Run it live. During the live event where you're actually showing people the process in a live video, people can actually comment on a live stream.

You could have a staff member dedicated to interacting with the people who are watching the event, asking their questions in real time, and maybe even the doctor or whoever's doing the demonstration can answer their questions directly. Then after the live presentation has concluded, the video then is automatically archived, so it then loses the ability for people to interact real time, but anyone can then go back. The video will be permanently stored on your timeline on your Facebook page, for people to come back and watch any time. They just won't be able to interact live and ask questions live anymore.

Howard:

The interaction would be the comment section under the video, like under a Facebook post? Instead of a post, you're a live video, but the interaction is the patients would be commenting, and then you'd be commenting back?

Ed:

Exactly.

Howard:

Would you do this all on your iPhone or Smartphone?

Ed:

From your either iPhone or Android phone.

Howard:

Okay.

Ed:

It's got to be originated ... As a matter of fact, I can take you through how simple the process is.

Howard:

Okay, let's do it. Now, I am not the sharpest tool in the tool shed. My elevator does not go to the top floor, so this might be embarrassing, Ryan, for me to learn this live.

Ed:

Okay. Let's disconnect my phone from its holster here. Okay, so here we go.

Howard:

Do I have to do this from ... I have a Facebook personal page and then I have a Facebook business page.

Ed:

You could do it from either one, I believe. Here's my Facebook app opened up to my news-feed.

Howard:

Okay.

Ed:

Okay? What the first thing you will do is you will, on the top left, you can see it there, there's a little section called "status," like you're writing a new status update.

Howard:

Now, for me, on my business page it says, "publish."

Ed:

Okay, that should work also.

Howard:

Okay, so I'll hit publish.

Ed:

Okay, and that should bring up an update, a blank update screen.

Howard:

What's on your mind? Write something. Yeah, mine says write something.

Ed:

There are 5 little icons I have on the bottom.

Howard:

Okay, I have ...

Ed:

It looks like a camera. Do you have a broadcast icon next to the camera? It looks like a person with circles around their head.

Howard:

Yes, a person with circles.

Ed:

Hit that.

Howard:

Okay. Pages would like to access the camera.

Ed:

Right, so in order to go live you've got to give permission to use the camera and the microphone.

Howard:

Okay, and now it says "Live video on Facebook. Make an announcement, talk shop or just hang out ..."

Ed:

Yeah. Go live. Capture and share the moment.

Howard:

So, hit continue, go live.

Ed:

Right.

Howard:

Now I am live.

Ed:

You're live.

Howard:

I am live. I am podcast interviewing Ed Zuckerberg. My son's helping me, and we're doing this because everybody keeps asking on Dentaltown and email and private messages ... What is this feature called, Ed? Facebook ...

Ed:

It's called Livestream.

Howard:

It's called Livestream.

Ed:

Livestream, yeah.

Howard:

Okay, so this is a new feature called Facebook Livestream, and when did this come out, Ed?

Ed:

Oh, it's been out a couple months, or fairly recently. They've been constantly rolling out new features and new enhancements of it. I believe the official roll-out will be tomorrow at the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco. I'll be there attending all day tomorrow, and I'll have the latest scoop and shortcuts, and technology information about it for you after I attend the conference tomorrow.

Howard:

Basically, you were telling me before we started that a dentist, or a hygienist, or an office manager, or a dental assistant could be walking around the office giving a demo of the latest use of high-tech technology like your CAD/CAM or show milling a crown.

Ed:

Well, the options are unlimited. I mean, you could ... Limited only by your own creativity. Say you just completed an amazing veneer case, and you've got a patient in the chair. The old way is you would ...

Howard:

[inaudible 00:10:04] sound.

Ryan:

Yeah. That's what I'm trying to see.

Howard:

But can you just turn off the headphone and then it be through the speakers here? Wouldn't they hear that best?

Ryan:

[inaudible 00:10:16]

Howard:

My son's going to try to make it so on my Facebook they can hear you too.

Ed:

Which page is it on? I'm looking for it on here.

Howard:

It's on my business page, not my personal page.

Ed:

Howard Farran, DDS, MBA?

Howard:

No. Just facebook.com/howardfarran.

Ed:

I'm not sure.

Howard:

There we go. Say something Ed.

Ed:

Okay. I'm here.

Howard:

Is that out of the headphones or is that out of the ... Okay, so do you see it? Is the sound coming out of there?

Ed:

I can hear you, but you're not as clear as you were before.

Howard:

You what?

Ed:

I don't hear the sound as well as before. You're very distant.

Howard:

Yeah. Hang on a second. I knew this was going to be funny doing this live, but this is the ... There we go.

Ryan:

But now he still can't hear you.

Howard:

Now can you hear me, Ed?

Ed:

Oh, perfectly.

Howard:

Okay, now we're perfect. We've gone from headphone to just normal. Now everyone can hear you.

Ed:

Excellent. I'm just, it's the tip of the iceberg for ideas that this can come up with for ways to use this on their Facebook page. One idea I had was you just complete a great case, you have a very thankful patient. In the past, we'd be thrilled. Obviously we'd be thrilled to get our fee collected, but we'd also be thrilled if the patient would then go and refer their friends to our practice, and maybe even go to Yelp or Google Plus or Facebook or whatever and write a great review about our practice.

There are certain missionary patients who we all know and love to have in our practice because they're great at spreading the word about our practice, and imagine now starting an impromptu Facebook Live presentation with a patient that you just completed a veneer on, where you can show the patient's smile off to people live. The patient can espouse the virtues of your office, and people who are watching live, following live, who may be interested in the veneer process, can now ask the patient questions from the patient's perspective about the procedure. It's one thing to ask the dentist, "Did it hurt? Did you have to do a lot of drilling? How uncomfortable was it? Blah, blah, blah."

They can ask the patient. What better kind of referral or recommendation from a satisfied patient can you get than running a live Facebook demo with a satisfied patient? Then there are parts of our office that our patients never get to see, like for example, one thing I stress, and I have been in a lot of offices, and one thing a lot of dentists are really good about is having an immaculate sterility technique, the chain, the way the ...

A lot of people wonder how that's done, and they wonder about the safety of the equipment and how clean things are. Just taking someone on a video through the process of how instruments go from the patient's mouth to being ultrasonically cleaned, placed in the autoclave, bagged, sterilized, and getting ready for the next use. Then have patients interact with the process and ask any questions they might have to allay any anxiety they may have about the transfer of dental disease [inaudible 00:14:06]. This is limited only by the dentist and the staff's imagination.

Howard:

Ed, I was thinking that when you go to a review site and you see Yelp or Google review or whatever, that wouldn't be half as exciting as going to your Facebook page and seeing a video of a live patient who just finished her procedure, whether it be bleaching, [crosstalk 00:14:30], veneers.

Ed:

Yeah. I mean, you don't know the people that write these reviews, who they are. Are they real? Are they fake? There are people advertising on Craig's List that they will write fake reviews for any business out there for a fee. Restaurants can pay people $25 a shot to write a great review of their restaurant. They can also pay people, it's a little ... It's all unscrupulous, but people have been known to be paid to write negative reviews about businesses they don't know anything about. We're all suspect of reviews written by people we don't know. Now here you are with a live patient in the chair and you can put in a disclaimer: "No, this is not my mother, patients."

I remember when I was first in practice, Howard, 35 years ago, and I was working 3 days a week for another dentist and when I started my own office, it was a little slow in the beginning, and my mom lived a couple of blocks away. She rang on the doorbell one day, and I said, "Hey, Ma, how are you doing?" I said, "Can I do anything for you?" She goes, "No. I'm just going to ..." You know, she [inaudible 00:15:44] needlepoint or something. She said, "I'm just going to sit in the waiting room. I don't want that your patients when they come in should think that you don't have any other patients."

Howard:

Now you can write reviews on Facebook. I think there's a lot of dentists commuting to work right now that don't really understand that feature. Talk about writing your review on Facebook. How is that technically done?

Ed:

Well, any patient who's a fan of your page, and probably even not even a fan of your page, which doesn't seem right, but can go to your Facebook business page and if your business page has a location listed ... Many consulting businesses or virtual businesses, or things like that, don't have an address, so one of the main advantages of actually putting in a physical address, and I can't imagine why a dental office would not do that, although I do know some dental offices that have multiple locations.

Howard:

I know some that have multiple personalities.

Ed:

Yeah. That too. When you have multiple locations, if you have only one Facebook page for all the locations, you obviously can't ... Unless you have one main office, some of these dentists might, somewhere in the body of their Facebook page, list the different locations, but not in the appropriate address section. They don't fill out an address section. Well, not having an address section precludes you from the eligibility to have a widget that Facebook automatically places on your Facebook page that gets people to write a review. For a dentist with a location listed, there's obviously, there's an easy button. "Write a review of this page. Do you know this page? Write a review." Then the [inaudible 00:17:50] that the practice averages is located prominently under the photo of the header on the Facebook page.

Howard:

Do you have data that suggests that this is an effective ... Is this worth dentists' time to try to get patients to write them a review on Facebook?

Ed:

Oh, it's absolutely worth it. I mean, people are using search on Facebook now for a more socialized search than say five, six, seven years ago when people were first starting to chuck their Yellow Pages. I laughed the other day, I actually got a Yellow Pages delivered. I had picked it up on the driveway outside, just dropped it right in the recycling bin. Who uses the Yellow Pages anymore? But, essentially, Google Search became the electronic Yellow Pages. The same information that was available in a regular Yellow Pages was now available electronically with the added perk that someone could click on anyone's name and be taken to the practice website and learn more about them. But the reality is they don't know anything about how good these offices are, just how pretty their website is.

Now, one thing that's prominently featured in a Google search is the number of stars that a dentist gets in their Google Plus ratings. Even though Google Plus is pretty much a fairly worthless social media site, there's virtually no interaction among people on Google Plus, like there is on Facebook, in this day, in 2016, I think dentists are still beholden to have a Google Plus page for their business. It's almost mandatory, because getting Google reviews on Google Plus is critical for getting a high placement in search. But on Facebook, there is a feature that really hasn't been used that much and promoted that much by Facebook.

When they launched the feature about 4 years ago, I think that they had hopes that it would be the Google Search killer of the future, because it combines being able to search with the same kind of things you search for in a Google search, but it also adds a social nature. For example, say I just, I'm not a dentist. I'm a new mover, I just moved to San Francisco, and I need a new dentist. I've got a nucleus of ten friends or so, fifteen friends in San Francisco, and I can go calling each one of them up and saying, "Hey, who to you is a dentist that you're happy with?" Or I could go on Facebook, and in the search bar on Facebook I can write, "Which dentist in San Francisco do my friends like?" If any of my friends have liked the page of a dental office, those dentists' names are going to appear in the search and then the patients, the people who are friends of mine on Facebook, who like them, are going to be linked next to them.

It's kind of like a passive word of mouth feature for me to find out who my friends like without them having to tell me. We all know, as a matter of fact, I was just reading an article in Dental Economics today that 75% of people who ask how they found their current dentist still said they found their dentist by word of mouth recommendation. In the old days, word of mouth recommendation was the gold way to get a new patient, but word of mouth recommendation really required a lot of serendipity. I mean, you had to be with a person physically in the same room or the same place, and you had to mention that you had a toothache, or you need a new dentist, and the person you were with had to be real happy with their current dentist, had to be willing to recommend their current dentist to you.

Of course, it would be helpful if they happened to have a business card in their wallet to hand to you also so you knew how to contact the dentist. All that stuff is gone now. Now we've just got to get people to like us on our Facebook page, and now they've become a passive supply of new patient referrals through these kind of marketing techniques using Facebook. If we move to a city where we don't know anyone yet, and we do a graph search for dentists in that city, then it's going to be sort of ranked by their ... We'll be able to see a window of dentists who have prominent Facebook pages, who are based in that city, and we'll be able to visually see how many stars their Facebook reviews get. People will naturally gravitate to dentists with 4 or 5 star ratings, and so for that reason, garnishing as many positive ratings as possible is ideal.

Howard:

I would think that Facebook search for, especially services, because when you go to the store and you buy a product off the shelf, I think consumers can really analyze it, but they don't know how to analyze an auto shop who's going to repair your car. You hear so many trust issues like, "Well, they say I need all this, but I don't really know if I need a new transmission." The same thing with dentistry. They don't know if you need a filling or a crown. I would think it would be extremely comforting, the mom that's searching for a dentist, and she finds out her best friend goes to Dr. Ed Zuckerberg ... Because we're selling the invisible, and that would be instant trust with your search, where a Google search wouldn't have the social trust confirmation on this purveyor of services.

Ed:

Exactly. Exactly. That's the whole game changer of social search is that it adds in ... You know, you buy into a refrigerator, anyone can search for appliance stores in the city where they live, but on Facebook you could search for appliance stores that my friends like, and you'll find out that your good friend John bought a washer and dryer or refrigerator from XYZ and loved it. You throw out a message to John. "Hey, did you have a good experience with XYZ Appliance Store?" "Yeah. They're the best. Great prices, great service, great delivery, et cetera, et cetera."

Howard:

Again, so what is the name of this feature? Facebook ...

Ed:

Graph search, but it's not called graph search. I mean, it's called graph search, but it's not labeled as such on Facebook. On Facebook there's a search bar. Here's your page here, Howard Farran, and the first thing you see on top is the search bar that says Howard Farran.

Howard:

Right.

Ed:

In that search bar, just type anything you want. Try typing things like dentists in San Francisco, or dentists in Arizona that my friends like, and you'll see a bunch of your colleagues and you'll actually see which one of your friends likes that dentist. Now, you'll also find multiples. Even better than having one person like a business is having ten of your friends like the same business. How cool is that? I mean, that makes selecting that business a no-brainer.

Howard:

Absolutely.

Ed:

Then we as dentists actually tap into this marketing feature by marketing to the friends of people who like our business, so when we decide to say, get more visibility for our Facebook posts, or try and get new people to like our Facebook page, we can haphazardly just boost our material to people in a certain geographic area that we think makes sense for our business. Beyond that, we can further narrow the search to a certain geographic area, and add the proviso that we only want to market to people who are friends of people who already like our page.

Howard:

Wow.

Ed:

Now our paid advertising is only going to people who are going to see our advertisement and in the body of the advertisement there's going to be the name of their trusted friend who likes our business page. Seeing an ad in your news-feed for Howard Farran, dentist, is going to carry a lot more weight to some random person who doesn't know you or your business, it'll carry a lot more weight if they see the name of their friends Tom and Mary that already like Howard Farran, DDS.

Howard:

Ed, one of the most common questions asked about Facebook ads on Dentaltown, is there any difference between boosting a post and placing an ad, or is that really the same thing?

Ed:

No, they are different. When you look on your news-feed you will see some small thumbnail ads on the right-hand column. Those are pure advertisements. Boosting an ad is a more ...

Howard:

Boosting a post.

Ed:

Boosting a post, right. Boosting a post is a more ... It's a less obvious form of advertising because you're taking a post, you're taking content you already have out there, and what you're doing is you're augmenting the audience who's going to see the post, and it appears in the news-feed along with posts that people will normally look at and glance at, and just give enhanced visibility to the post. Most people are going to kind of disregard that right-hand column and they're going to focus on the news-feed column that's appearing vertically as they scroll down.

Having your ad appear there, and it's not really an ad, it's your own post, and what you're gaining is gaining extra traction and visibility for your post by having it appear in the news-feeds of people who would not normally get to see your post in the news-feed and people who might and see it at a greater frequency. Facebook rolled out pages in 2008. The average user, the first year or two on Facebook, had maybe fifty, sixty, seventy-five friends and they liked maybe two or three businesses. They were first starting to see stores saying, "Like us on Facebook."

Because the average user had less friends and liked less businesses, almost every piece of content businesses put out was seen by their fan base. You had a hundred fans, you wrote a Facebook post, probably eighty or ninety of them saw it on their news-feed. Now, fast forward eight years later, we've got forty to fifty million businesses with Facebook pages worldwide, and the average user on Facebook has three hundred plus friends in their personal network. There's a lot of content that's competing to be seen in the news-feed. Your generic news-feed posts from your business ...

When I say generic, a post that you just throw up on your news-feed and you don't do anything to market it, you don't spend a dime to boost the post, and you don't do [hx 00:30:19] average engagement, a couple of likes and maybe a comment here or there. The average post is only going to be seen by roughly about 10% of your fan base. If you've worked hard to build up a thousand Facebook fans, less than a hundred of those are going to see that message organically or generically. Unless you pay, and you don't have to pay a ton ... I mean five or ten bucks goes a long way to boost a Facebook post. That's a way to get that saturation up so that maybe five hundred or seven hundred of those thousand people who like your page get it, and going beyond, by specifying an audience of people who don't like your page yet, but who are friends of people who like your page.

Howard:

Just to be clear for our townies listening to this, you would prefer ... You think it's more effective on your page to place a Facebook ad instead of boosting a post.

Ed:

No, I think boosting is more effective.

Howard:

Oh, you think boosting a post.

Ed:

Absolutely.

Howard:

So you already have a post, and then you just hit the post and ... [crosstalk 00:31:36]

Ed:

Yeah, as a matter of fact, you have Facebook Analytics available for you to see which of your posts are doing better than others. As a matter of fact, Facebook will tell you by sending a message. I'm sure you've probably seen this message. "Your post XYZ is doing better than other posts on your page." Okay, so that means that that post is garnishing more likes and comments than your average typical post.

Howard:

Which is amazing, because in marketing they always say test your content. Before you mail to everyone, you should mail three different flyers to three different groups to see which one had the best response and then roll out the tested content to the full market, and you're saying Facebook is automatically testing your posts and telling you which one is the best of your posts.

Ed:

Yeah, and you can actually create five different versions of the same post, so say you've got a text content that you like, that you want to post, and you're choosing a visual to put with it, a photo. You can actually cycle five different photos to go along with the same text, with the same text message. Then Facebook will give you analytics on the posts as a whole, but they'll also break down the analytics to tell you which visual got more engagement than the other visuals. Now after a brief test of four or five different visuals, you can settle on one or maybe two, and then take it to market. Now get behind it with some bucks, look at posts that have already established that people are interested in the content because it's already showing some traction and getting some engagement, and now those are the ones that you want to enhance further.

Howard:

Reading between the lines, it sounds like you just said that a post with a picture does better than just text.

Ed:

Oh, absolutely.

Howard:

Will you talk about that?

Ed:

People are visual creatures. They don't like to sit and read lots of plain words, which is one of the reasons why Twitter never got the traction that Facebook got. Twitter had a great idea in limiting verbosity by cutting down posts to 140 characters or less, whereas Facebook allows people to write a tome if they want in a post, although we certainly don't recommend that. Facebook will actually chop you after a certain number of characters anyway, and then stick in the word more, because they don't want their pages to have this feel of excessive text. If you do write a very long text post, after X number of characters Facebook sticks in the word more, and people that want to see all the text have to actually click "more."

Howard:

What would be the ideal amount of text? If you're writing about a new technology, say CEREC or same-day crown, or laser bleaching or whatever, what would you advise on the appropriate amount of text with the photo? You're saying always have a photo.

Ed:

Two or three sentences is more than enough. If you want to write an expose on a topic, like say you want to write a blog, Facebook allows you to write what they call a note, and then you can write, "Check out my note on this topic," and people can click it, and it'll take them to your note or blog that's contained within Facebook. Now they're prepared to read about a particular topic, and now you can throw one or two full-page pages of text onto this note, or you can better, if you've got a new technology like CAD/CAM, send them for more information on it to your website.

Howard:

Ed, I want to switch topics completely. This is Facebook Live and it's on the technology of live-streaming video?

Ed:

Yes.

Howard:

Why do they add the word streaming? What's the difference between live video and live streaming video? What does that word have to ...

Ed:

You know, I think live ... The whole concept here is that everyone now has television or an internet video broadcasting studio on their phone, that we've all become broadcasters. We've all seen things like the Rodney King video was probably the first prominent social event that basically appeared almost virtually live, when cameras fell into the hands of citizens. Now imagine you're walking on the street and you see something amazing. Maybe there's a rare owl in the tree next to my house.

Instead of just snapping a picture of this, if it's an event that, a creature that's moving or something like that, I can start a Facebook Livestream broadcast of this owl outside my window and broadcast to all my friends live, who can start asking me questions. "Ed, can you show me a picture of it from, turn around from the back, or whatnot?" There's going to be a lot of garbage too. You're going to have people swinging their kids at the park, live streaming from a park as they push their kid on a swing giggling, which is like an updated version of sharing a picture of a kid with a happy face. [crosstalk 00:37:44] going to abuse this.

Howard:

But you know how it's going to change the world for the better that I'm already seeing? I'm a hundred miles from the Mexican border, and when some guard is down there harassing Mexican citizens for bribes and this and that, this corruption is going to be live on Facebook. I think it's going to add so much transparency to so many corrupt government practices, that I think it's going to make the world a more legal, safer place.

Ed:

Yeah. You already have now when you see an instance of police brutality or something on the street, you see people pull out their cameras and start taking video to then be published later. Imagine the spontaneity of pulling out your camera and start videoing something that's going on and transmitting that in a live broadcast to people without publishing it later.

Howard:

Well, we live in a whole new world. I'm going to ... Back to that social search. You told us last time on our podcast, which I thought was amazing, that actually one of the most under-used features on Facebook is having your patients check in at your dental office. Then you said the average person has three hundred friends, and we know half of Americans don't have dental insurance, so if Mary checks in at your dental office, three hundred friends are going to say, "Wow. I'm looking for a dentist, and I think Mary's smart, and she just checked in at Dr. Ed Zuckerberg's dental office." I think that's huge. Do you still think that's a game changer?

Ed:

Oh, absolutely. Businesses, "Like us," signs, "Like us on Facebook." I've seen in restaurants, "Check in here and get a free appetizer," or something like that, giving incentives. Obviously not many people, when they go to a dentist, are thinking, "Oh, let me check in and tell all my friends that I'm at Dr. Zuckerberg's office." We want them to, but how do we get them to do it? We've got to incentivize. I remember, I may have told you the story on the podcast, where a few years ago, we were getting these monthly supplies of travel packs of toothpaste from one of the major manufacturers, you know the small little one-ounce tubes that you throw them into patients' goody bags.

Everybody loves getting free things. There must have been a snafu, and instead of getting our usual one or two case a month shipment, we got about a hundred cases of patient-size, travel-size packages of toothpaste. My first thought that came to my mind was, "Well, let's call up some local churches and synagogues. They do midnight runs. They'll love this stuff. They'll throw it in the bags that they give to the homeless people or stuff like that. We could make this error into a good public service." While we did some of that, one of the other things I actually thought of was, "Forget about one tube. Wouldn't people love to get a whole case of thirty travel-size things of toothpaste?" Let's offer them a free case of toothpaste if they check into our office."

Within the course of a few days something like forty-seven people checked in at my dental office. Every time someone checked in, obviously not only are they being handed a case of toothpaste, but now that check-in appears on their Facebook page, and their friends see that, "Hey, John is at Edward Zuckerberg's office. That's pretty cool." Maybe they'll just use that as a word of mouth referral, that John was there. Well, why would John be there unless he obviously uses, and by the fact that he's checking in, he's implying an endorsement of my services to his colleagues.

In fact, we even had someone who came with a woman who was getting a tooth extracted. She was driving her so the woman wouldn't have to drive home, and she said, "Can I get a free case of toothpaste too?" The receptionist said, "Sure. All you got to do is check in here." We had someone who wasn't even a patient of the practice checking in, and now we're getting referrals based on word of mouth from someone who's not even a patient of the practice because of a free case of toothpaste.

Howard:

Ed, I want to change subjects right now because you are a very accomplished dentist. You are very high-tech, you're very business savvy. I want you to address one of the most common questions on Dentaltown. It has nothing to do with Facebook. In 2005, dentists' income, net income, according to the ADA, maxed at 225, and for the decade after, every year it has slid down about 4,500, and by 2015 it was down to $175,000 net.

The average American dentist has lost $45,000 a year net income, and it shows no sign of stopping. Everyone predicts 2016 it'll drop another $4,500 again. Why do you think dentists' income peaked in 2005 at 225? Why do you think it's slid $45,000 over the next decade? Why do you think that happened, and what do you think would stop or reverse [inaudible 00:43:25]? We're talking today about getting more new patients, but why do you think this happened to the average dentist over the last decade?

Ed:

I think this is a great question and it fits in perfectly with what we've been talking about here. I think that we as dentists, and our staff, are guilty of under-emphasizing the quality of the care that we provide to our patients, and we're not being compensated fairly. A lot of that has to do with the prevalence of PPOs in dental care. Now, when PPOs started infiltrating, most dentists with established practices frowned upon ... "Why should I take less money than I'm taking now?" Then you had a lot of competition from new dentists graduating, who wanted to establish their own practices, and saying, "Well, this is a great way for me to fill up my empty chairs, so I'm going to sign on with ..." You fill in the blank, MetLife, Delta, Guardian, Connecticut General, et cetera, et cetera.

Some of the fee reimbursements that a dentist gets from belonging to these PPOs are as little as 60 or 65% of their normal UCR fees that they've been charging. If you're running a 50 to 60% overhead practice, you're almost working for nothing on these patients when you do these PPOs. Then you've got to find ways to cut corners to give you a profitable bottom line, and now you're cutting the quality of your care. You're either using labs that aren't as good as you'd like to use, or you're using supplies that are grey market or second-tier quality supplies, or you're not hiring great employees. You have to hire people at minimum wage and train them as best you can to try and cut your overhead.

I think that a real awakening for me, Howard, was when I started lecturing on technology and social media about 5 years ago, and I lectured ... One of the first places I went to was in the state of Washington, in Seattle. In New York where I came from, there was no one insurance company or PPO that had a real solid foothold. My practice had a smattering of patients from Delta, Guardian, MetLife, all the big players. We got to the state of Washington, where Delta had been really cutting dentists' fees back severely, dramatically, on an annual basis. When I said to them, "Why do you accept Delta?" They said, "Well, if I didn't accept Delta, I wouldn't have a practice."

Here in Washington, the five biggest employers in the state are the state of Washington, Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, they're all Delta Dental. All these companies are contracted with Delta Dental, and there's a huge rash of employees. Even the psyche of patients ... Here's a story that'll blow your mind. I was recently in an office where a patient who was the spouse of a person who worked for a tech startup, and was an early cash-in of shares from a tech startup, and probably the family had a net worth in excess of $200 million. The office I was consulting for was not being as profitable as they should be, even though they were an extremely high technology, high quality office, but they were accepting tons of PPOs, including Delta Dental.

At the time, I convinced them to stop taking this particular PPO that this employee, who's worth $200 million, is taking. She's in the middle of care and they said to her, "I'm sorry to tell you that we're going to need to discontinue our participation with Delta Dental, but we're going to be happy to continue filling out the forms for you. It'll be pretty seamless for you. Your care won't change. We'll do all the paperwork. Just you'll pay us and the check will come to you." The patient looked at the office manager with a straight face and said, "No problem. I'm sure I'll be able to find another dentist who accepts Delta Dental." Here's a situation where money is no object to the patient, and they've been theoretically thrilled with the care, and they've been a loyal patient of the practice, and the practice drops Delta Dental and they're out.

What that tells me, I mean, can offices who are accepting fees that are 60% of what we charge really capable of delivering the same kind of care that we can? I can't believe they can. I think the offices that really stress quality should be fairly compensated for their fees, and I think we lack business savvy, and I think that's also ... We have to address the fact that our dental schools prepare us to be dentists, but don't prepare us to be businessmen. Let's face it. We're businessmen, and we make bad choices on how to run our finances, and that's why you see the proliferation of DSOs coming in and taking over dentistry, because they know how to run the business end of the practice.

Howard:

Ryan, you said ... My son, Ryan, says we're getting viewer questions now.

Ryan:

People are asking if you have a practice should you have a fan page, or if you should have a personal page.

Howard:

Okay. Great question. They're asking, Ed, should my dental office have a personal page or should it be a fan, business page?

Ed:

Absolutely without question it should be a business page. A personal page is for your friends and dealing with colleagues on a personal nature. The people you want as friends on your personal page are people that you interact with on a personal level, someone you'd go out to dinner with, someone you'd have coffee with, someone you'd go play golf with, family, people you want to share pictures of your kids and grandkids with, that kind of thing. You don't want to have a personal page where the friends on that page are your patients.

Howard:

I agree.

Ed:

First of all, you cannot advertise and boost posts from a personal page. You have limits on how many people. I think you're well aware, Howard, of the fact ... I think the way we met back in 2010, was you called me up and said that Facebook wasn't allowing you to have any more dentist friends. You had the maximum of 5,000 and why isn't Facebook letting me have any more friends? I told you you had set up your business page as a personal page. You'd been capped at 5,000. Business pages have no cap, and you can see there are figures, political figures, and business like sports teams and whatnot, and rock stars that have in the millions of people who like them on Facebook.

The ability to advertise, the ability to have unlimited ... The ability to get reviews, publish locations, the advantages, but the other main thing is why you would not want to have patients on a personal page is privacy issues too. You can be very inclusive of what you put on a personal page. You can limit the audience and whatnot. Everything you publish on a business page is public. You can't limit privacy settings on a business page, and that's a good thing. You want that, because you want maximum exposure to your business posts.

Howard:

All right. Well, Ryan, do you think ... How long have we been going?

Ryan:

You guys have been going for about an hour.

Howard:

Well, that's an hour. Our show is an hour. Ed, I want to tell you seriously, thank you so much for coming on, and this is my first time I've been on Facebook Live. It's the number one question we're seeing on Dentaltown, everything. Now, can I post a link to this on Dentaltown?

Ed:

Absolutely. Why not?

Howard:

There'll be a link on this ...

Ryan:

It's going to be video. It'll turn into a video post on [inaudible 00:52:58] and you share the link to your post.

Howard:

Are you talking about the podcast or the Facebook Live?

Ryan:

The Facebook Live.

Howard:

Really? So how do I post a link to this Facebook Live on Dentaltown?

Ed:

It should have a web address that you can link to.

Howard:

Okay. Well, thanks ...

Ed:

I think post on Facebook has its own web page address.

Howard:

All right. Well, Ed, seriously, thank you so much for all that you did for your own patients for thirty ...

Ed:

Hey, I'm actually working on an article for Dentaltown that'll be out in a couple of months on the newest Facebook posting techniques, what's new in Facebook, so look for that in a couple of months.

Howard:

One last question. My over-time question. You mentioned very early in the podcast, or this Facebook Live about Oculus virtual reality. Is that real now? Is that a buy now, or is that more futuristic?

Ed:

Oh, yeah. They started shipping that a couple of weeks ago.

Howard:

Just two weeks ago?

Ed:

Oh, yeah.

Howard:

Well, so what is that? Talk about that for a second. What is Oculus virtual reality headset?

Ed:

It's basically for games, for video games, but the vision for the future of Oculus is incredible. As a matter of fact, in our own dental industry, Nobel Biocare has been doing some work with Oculus, not with the company. What happens is, so the company makes a developer kit available so that anyone who knows how to write code can write software that'll work with the Oculus. Nobel Biocare, actually at the dental show in Cologne last spring, previewed some continuing education videos that the viewers would snap on the virtual reality goggles and there was a surgeon ...

I've forgotten who did it, but I actually wrote an article about this last year, that the surgeon was wearing this contraption on his head that has like 360-degree cameras, multiple cameras on his head. He's doing the ... He was placing an implant in someone's mouth and it's being videoed in 360 video. Now you're watching the implant surgery through the Oculus and it's like you're there. You could turn your head and look to the left. You're not limited by what's shown on the screen. As a viewer, you're in control of what you see. You want to look left, you want to look right, you want to look up, down, behind you ... Complete, it's like you're in the room with the procedure being done.

Howard:

I heard this is now also in Air Force pilots, that they put on their helmet and they don't see the plane. Anywhere ... The cameras are out on the wings and the top, so when they're in their Air Force fighter jet, wherever they look it's like they're just flying through space without a plane around them and they can see 360, up, down. There's no obstruction of view.

Ed:

Yeah. No, it's incredible, and there are shared opportunities too, so you can play with another person who's halfway across the world, and it's like you're in the same room with them. It's pretty fascinating stuff. I'm looking forward to demoing the latest version tomorrow when I'm at the Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco.

Howard:

All right. Well, Ed, seriously, thanks again for all that you do for dentistry, all that you do for Dentaltown, and thank you for being my guest on my first Facebook Live.

Ed:

Great seeing you, Howard.

Howard:

All right. Great seeing you. Tell Karen I said hi.

Ed:

Will do.