“I just don’t buy a lot of the advice, stay with yellow pages and avoid social media.”

My reply to him:

“C., not to be a first class jerk, but you’ve NEVER bought anything from me that I can see.

Buy into social media at your own peril. Send me some proof and I’ll back off. But right now, unless someone, ANYONE can prove otherwise, I think it’s bogus and designed to separate you from valuable time and resources better spent elsewhere (almost ANYWHERE else). It’s a damn time vampire.

Show me an average dental practice that can double in size in one year or less from social media (i.e. from 500 pts to 1000 pts, or, from 250 pts to 500 pts. Or, like several of my clients, from 2500 pts to 5000 patients or more), and, I’ll write you a check for $500.

I know ANY practice can double in size from “traditional media.” Postcards, newsletters, newspaper inserts. Sadly, you’re choosing what you don’t like about what I say because it’s counter to pop culture and your opinion, yet no one has the data to prove me wrong. And, who knows, the next email I send out could be the very one that changes your practice forever. And, by unsubscribing, you’ll miss it.

You’ve got to admit: Doubling a dental office is a virtual impossibility with social media. And if it did happen, could it be duplicated? So then, what’s the point?

Are you or someone you know, adding patients at-will with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace?

To me, this is the same debate as the one about “building a brand” in advertising vs. direct response advertising’s real, measurable results you can take to the bank. Same type of argument. Still, no one can show me proof of how a logo or “brand” puts money in the bank or how Tweeting for Facebooking brings home the bacon. Except for those few fellas selling pipe dreams of doing “nothing” to put pts in chairs.

Normally, I don’t response to “remove requests” because I figure I have already incensed someone enough to cause them to unsubscribe. However, in this case, I can’t stand idly by while “social media experts” rob good dentists like yourself blind and lead you astray buying this greener pastures B.S.

Good luck, and please, if I’m wrong, I’ve got a science background, I can handle facts with ease.

Best,

Jerry

P.S. My very best clients are STILL in the yellow pages and STILL making money there; in many cases, better than other media besides postcards and the newsletter they mail to their existing patients each month. It’s a mass exodus of a still-reliable media and they’re simply capitalizing on it while they still can. To suggest they try and do otherwise would be foolish. Just like dumping insurance plans…I am sure they are thousands of dentists wishing they never had. And, no, I’m not a fan of insurance plans; however, t’s just another form of marketing.”

It’s a place were you can keep in touch with a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t be real friends with otherwise. If your friends or clients are so important to you, call them on the phone, have lunch, send them a letter.

This stuff is still so new that we’re all in the honeymoon phase with it. So what happens when the shiny luster of those new wheels wears off? Basing a business where all the leads come from one source would scare the pants off of me!