By Lucy McCarthy, Operations Manager at Hive Business

I remember when social media first started. It was something me and my school friends jumped on with no consideration. Bebo, MySpace and MSN knew everything about our friendship group but it never even occurred to us.

My relationship with social media has changed since then. I’m torn between wanting to stay “in the loop” and its obvious manipulations, data collection and the fact my older family members are now littering my news feed with embarrassing content! But I confess, I can’t bring myself to delete Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube or WhatsApp.

However, there is a new trend among companies and celebrities to do just that. Only last week my plastic-free favourites, Lush, announced they would be deleting their UK social media accounts, hinting that they’ll be using more social media influencers and their community in its place.

Last year Luc explained why he agreed with Tim Martin for deleting the pub’s social media accounts. However, Lush is playing a different game by not just abandoning social media altogether but by instead putting the onus on their community to share the correct message. Each shop will still have its own account but this will make it trickier to keep consistency across their brand. This is risky for a beauty brand, as the industry is second only to fashion in terms of user engagement on social media, but it might pay off if they can push their 1m followers across all channels over to email or web chat.

Dentists often ask us “how do I get more followers?” or other similar questions but really the questions they should be asking are: “Is this working?” “What is my return on investment?” “What is the best approach for my practice to get new patients?”

I’m not suggesting that everyone should delete their social media accounts but at least consider it as one of the options if that is what the numbers are telling you. I commend big companies for going against the norm; they’re clearly asking the right questions and looking at the facts. It shows they are innovative – it may or may not pay off, only time will tell, but at least they’re paying attention to their business’s performance and trying new things.

If you want to find out how you can assess your marketing performance and start making informed decisions about how to promote your dental business online and offline, please get in touch.