Dental Social Media Marketing: A 2025 Guide For Growing Your Practice Online

If you're a dentist wondering whether social media is really worth your time — the answer is yes, especially in 2025.

Today’s patients aren’t just googling your name. They’re checking your Instagram feed, reading your reviews on Facebook, and sizing up your vibe before they ever book an appointment.

The good news?

You don’t need to go viral or hire a full-time content team.

With a clear strategy, a few tools, and the right content, your clinic can show up professionally, build trust, and bring in new patients consistently.

In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about dental social media marketing — from the best platforms to what to post, how to advertise, and how to save time while doing it.

Let’s dive in.

Why social media matters for dental practices today

Whether you're running a family dental clinic or a cosmetic practice, your next patient is likely scrolling social media right now.

In fact, over 75% of people research a business online before deciding to contact them — and for healthcare providers, that includes checking your social presence.

Here’s why it matters:

• It humanises your practice. A friendly face in a Reel or a short behind-the-scenes video can make your clinic feel more approachable — especially for nervous patients.

• It builds local visibility. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business are powerful for targeting your community and showing up in local searches.

• It strengthens referrals. Patients who love your work often tag or recommend you in posts, boosting your credibility with their friends and family.

• It keeps your brand top of mind. Regular posting helps people remember you when they (or someone they know) need a dentist.

• It supports other marketing efforts. Social media drives traffic to your website, supports SEO, and reinforces your email marketing with visual content.

What makes dental marketing on social media different?

Marketing a dental practice on social media isn’t the same as marketing a restaurant, retail store, or SaaS product. Dentistry comes with its own unique challenges — and opportunities.

Here’s what sets it apart:

You’re dealing with trust, fear, and privacy

Let’s face it: many people don’t love going to the dentist. Your content needs to build trust and make patients feel safe and understood. Smiles matter — but so do tone, empathy, and reassurance. You also need to be mindful of HIPAA or GDPR compliance, especially when sharing testimonials, photos, or patient stories.

Local matters more than viral

Unlike global brands, you don’t need millions of followers. You need visibility in your area. This makes local targeting and community engagement far more important than chasing trends.

It’s a visual industry — but not always glam

Before-and-after photos can be powerful, but not every dental procedure is “Instagrammable.” Your challenge is to show results, professionalism, and personality without being overly clinical or graphic.

You’re selling expertise and warmth

You’re not just booking appointments — you’re building relationships. Patients are choosing people, not just services. Your tone should reflect authority and approachability.

Reviews and recommendations are king

Social media plays a crucial role in building your online reputation. Encourage happy patients to leave Facebook reviews or tag your practice in posts — this acts as free word-of-mouth marketing. Bonus points if you repurpose reviews of happy clients as social media posts. 

An additional perk of creating a dedicated social media content pillar for sharing testimonials and user generated content, is that you can reuse it as evergreen content. You can use Sendible's Smart Queues to automate the republishing of them to save time and ensure your calendar is filled with relevant content that contributes to building trust and converting followers to patients.

The best platforms for dentists in 2025

You don’t need to be everywhere — just where your patients are. These are the top-performing platforms for dental practices in 2025:

Google Business Profile

Often overlooked as “just a listing,” your Google Business Profile is one of the most powerful local marketing tools you have.
Use it to:

• Appear in Google Maps and local search
• Share photos, posts, and updates
• Collect and respond to patient reviews
• Provide opening hours, links, and booking info
• Boost your local SEO without spending a penny

Facebook

Still a powerhouse for local businesses. Great for:

• Reviews
• Local advertising
• Community engagement
• Sharing patient testimonials or practice news

Instagram

The go-to platform for showcasing your team, office culture, and results. Use:

• Reels for behind-the-scenes or educational content
• Stories for daily updates or polls
• Carousel posts for FAQs or before/after case studies

🎥 TikTok

Ideal for younger dentists, cosmetic clinics, or practices wanting to show personality. Try short, relatable videos with a fun twist — and always keep professionalism in mind.

LinkedIn

Useful for:

• Building professional networks
• Connecting with local businesses
• Marketing B2B services like training, referrals, or corporate dental plans.

YouTube Shorts

Video content is dominating search. Use Shorts to answer common dental questions, explain procedures, or share day-in-the-life clips — all optimised for search.

What to post: Dental content ideas that engage and convert

Before you start populating you social media calendar with all the amazing ideas, take your time to think about social media content pillars.

Content pillars are themes or repeating topics you'll focus on, and they might be different for each social media channel as you'll target slightly different audiences. Don't just cross post the same content, ensure it truly aligns with your audience on that platform.

For example, you might want to focus on educational tips, behind the scenes, and before-and-after photos on your Instagram. But maybe UGC, testimonials, local content, and promotional campaigns would be a better fit for Facebook. 

Take your time to analyse your target audience and audit your channels to ensure you have a strong initial plan in place. This will make content planning a breeze!

And once you're ready to start scheduling, you might want to consider labeling these content pillars with Sendible's Campaigns feature for tracking the performance of each one of them.

Here are high-performing content types:

• Educational tips
  Bust myths, explain procedures, or answer FAQs like “Is teeth whitening safe?”

• Before-and-after photos
  Only with patient consent. Highlight cosmetic cases or transformation stories.

• Behind-the-scenes content
  Show your team, tech, or how you prep for the day. Patients love seeing the people behind the tools.

• Social media holidays
  Use fun awareness days to spark content ideas and start conversations.
  → 🔗 Explore dental holidays worth posting about

• Special campaigns
  Celebrate milestones like National Dentist Day with a special message or promotion.

• Polls or quizzes
  Use Stories or posts to ask simple questions (“How often do you floss?”) and get engagement.

• Testimonials
  Encourage happy patients to leave reviews or share their stories (with permission).

Tools to save time and stay consistent

Running a practice is already time-consuming — here’s how to simplify social:

Tools to consider:

• Sendible
  Use centralised Content Library to store ideas, hashtags, and draft posts that all your employees can use to boost awareness. Once you're ready to start publishing, you can easily tailor content that you'd like to cross-post with our Smart Compose Box. You'll find that our AI Assist tool can help you tailor copy to each platform, find the right hashtags, and help you generate captions that are on-brand. If you're posting to multiple Facebook pages, for example, you can benefit from Custom Tags - pre-saved information (text, phone number, links, hashtags, and more) to ensure consistency in messaging and sharing the right information.

• Canva
  Create branded graphics, educational visuals, or Reels thumbnails in minutes. And don't forget that Sendible has a handy Canva integration that enables you to quickly access all your designs, add them to your post, and schedule them without switching tabs.

• CapCut / InShot
  Use CapCut, InShot or other video-editing apps to quickly modify short-form videos for Instagram and TikTok.

• ChatGPT or AI tools
  Generate caption drafts, post ideas, or patient-friendly explanations of procedures.

5 metrics every dental clinic should track

You don’t need to be a data expert to make sense of your social media — but if you’re not tracking anything, you’re flying blind.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing likes or follower counts, but those numbers don’t always translate into booked appointments. The real magic happens when you understand what content actually drives patient enquiries, builds trust, and gets people through your door.

By measuring the right metrics, you’ll be able to:

• See which posts resonate most with your audience
• Understand what’s working (and what’s not)
• Refine your strategy to attract more of the right patients
• Stop wasting time on content that doesn’t lead to results

Here's a breakdown of top 5 metrics you could track to get started:

1. Engagement rate – Are people liking, saving, or commenting on your posts?

2. Reach and impressions – Are more local people seeing your content over time?

3. Website clicks – Are they moving from social to your site or booking page?

4. Enquiries via messages – Are potential patients reaching out?

5. Top-performing posts – What type of content resonates most?

Final thoughts: Social media success is about trust, not perfection

You don’t need a viral video or a six-month content plan to succeed.

Start with one or two platforms, show up consistently, and focus on being helpful, approachable, and human.

Patients want to know you, like you, and trust you. Social media helps them do all three before they ever step into your practice.

And if you need some help to automate some of the social media tasks, we at Sendible are here to help.