We know about Dental Economics, The Dental Advisor, Dentist Today and many of the other big dental publications for the dental industry. But are any of these publications available online? I’m not asking if the publication has a website or not. I’m asking if they offer information for free over the Internet, to allow dentists who do not subscribe to their magazines/publications to view their content online!

If any Dental Publications are out there and are reading this post I urge you to get with the times and offer your content for free on your website. You really do need to. Here are some reasons why:

• Will increase your overall content readership
• Increase branding, marketability, and credibility on the Internet
• Increase advertising ($) opportunities
• Increase writer to reader interaction through blogging
• Satisfy all Internet readers in the dental community who would rather read online than an actual physical publication

A perfect example of this is ESPN.com. If you are at all a sports fan like me than you know exactly what i’m talking about. ESPN has not only it’s TV channels, but also a very popular and widely subscribed magazine called ESPN the Magazine. But that does not stop them from offering up-to-minute news on all sports professional and collegiate. Doing this through ESPN.com has increased their readership to their actual magazine.

So as a summary, the first publication in the dental industry that decides to allow it’s content to be free on it’s website will gain a substantial advantage over it’s peers. But offering free content online, you increase your readership due to the search engines. Your content becomes “searchable” online for all to find. Also, for monetary purposes you can place ads of other companies who are willing to pay you for those ads not only in your publication, but also now on your website. Giving you two streams of advertising income for your company. And finally, by having blogs on your publication website you increase writer to reader communication helping the reader feel more connected to your writings and your publication.

In case you are reading this and you are a part of a dental publication contact us today and we can help you in setting up such a website.

When starting (or rebuilding) a dental practice there are many start-up costs involved. One of these costs is the purchase of your dental practice management software. The prices for these pieces of software are generally pretty steep. This is partially due to the level of complexity of the program, and rest due to the greed of the companies charging for it. But what if you could have your practice management software for free? Does that sound to good to be true?

Welcome to the world of Open Source. You can click here to get the Wikipedia definition of open source. That’s exactly what Open Dental is - an open source or free Dental Practice Management Software. What does this mean to you? For a much more affordable price, a programmer or IT specialist (who knows what they are doing) can set your practice up with Open Dental for free. The only cost is for whatever it takes to pay that individual for setting it up for you.

By taking a quick glance at the User Manual for Open Dental you can see that it contains many of the same features that Dentrix, Eagle Soft, and Softdent have. You can see the comparisons Open Dental has against the big dogs here.

The Potential!

The potential Open Dental has is much greater than any commercial piece of practice management system. The reason is because generally with an open source project, many highly intelligent software programmers from around the world contribute to the software building additional features and plugins. This gives Open Dental the advantage over any other commercial software they are competing with because they will naturally just grow much faster.

Remember, Open Dental is free and it works. And you will find it to be beneficial for your dental practice. Why not try setting it up? It’s free so it doesn’t really hurt to give it a try. Patientdocs.com is an expert in installing and configuring Open Dental Software for the dental office. It actually comes as an option in our entire Web Services For Dentists package. So contact us today if you would like us to help you setup Open Dental in your practice.

In the open source web-based world there are what’s called CMS or Content Mangement Systems. They are very self explanatory. Basically a website that is content manageable by those with little to relatively no HTML experience. You can on a basic level, manage the content of your own website without being a “programmer”. That is of course the end goal. These open source content management systems (CMS) are already compiled together, which means that they just need to be setup on your webserver. In more basic terms, CMS enable you to build a website for your dental practice fast and for a lot less money.

The top open source Content Management Systems on the market today are:

1. Joomla
2. Drupal
3. Wordpress

There are many others which can get the job done for you. These are just the most popular. But an intriguing feature about these systems is they are highly configurable and customizable. They allow dentists to have a high-end custom website for a fraction of the cost of doing it otherwise. If your web company does not know about CMS, or about any of the 3 systems before mentioned - then you probably should go to someone else for your dental web services. That’s a sure sign of someone who does not know what’s going on. As a dental practice, you need a web company to help keep you up-to-date with the latest technologies that will benefit your internet marketing capabilities.

The top 3 CMS systems  of Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress come highly recommended by me. I have been using them since their existence and have seen them grow. They are great for the dental practice. All 3 systems follow typical web standards:

• Clean URL’s
• Not many code errors
• simple to use site navigation
• good organized file structre and so on…

CMS (content management systems) are help greatly with search engine optimization. Here are a few benefits:

• Tons of content
• organized navigation structure
• SEO Friendly URL’s and much more…

Patientdocs.com is an expert in providing these content management systems for dentists. Our development team has many years of experience in working with various CMS systems to help provide a custom, robust website at an affordable price for the dental office.

Marketing your dental practice using online local classifieds can be a very productive way of spending your marketing time and energy. Usually these routes are free of charge so you don’t worry about throwing more money at advertising. Typically the average Internet user who looks up classifieds is looking for some sort of discount. So it’s a perfect opportunity for you to advertise free teeth whitening, free consultations etc. Online local classifieds are and have been a great tool for local marketing for many years now. Generally speaking, dental practices have not yet adopted this concept. Which gives you, the reader of this article much advantage over your competition by doing so. Every state or area has it’s own local online classifieds website that is popular. For example, here in Utah it’s KSL.com which is the website for one of the local news stations.

It will be up to you or a professional who is helping you to find out what that website is that is currently getting all of the traffic for your area. You can contact me if you need more information regarding what that website may be in your area by leaving a comment to this article.

There is one thing you can almost guarantee with online local classifieds. Almost all of the searchers are local people! That means that they are all people within “striking” distance of your dental office. You can also see what your competition is up to. If you don’t see them advertising on the local classifieds, you know that you have tapped a resource that they have not thought of yet. Which gives you a wonderful advantage. If they are already advertising on this spot, you can see what they are up to and what offers they are offering. Remember, online classified ads are also crawled by the search engines giving you twice the opportunity for your ad to be seen.

There are some important tips that I wanted to give you concerning the writing of your dental online local classified ad. They are as follows:

• Write an eye catching title to your ad - Make sure to write a title that you feel will best attract your local customer. For example… “Free Teeth Whitening at Fairfield Family Dental”
• Include A Link To Your Practice Website - Instead of having to deliver all important information pertaining to your practice in one little ad, just link to your website (which should include all helpful information for the potential patient)
• Clearly State Your Offer - Be clear and simple in stating your offer. Whether it be free teeth whitening, free consultations or whatever. Make sure you clearly state what the offer is and that you can actually deliver it.
• Post A Testimonial - Give your potential patient the opportunity to see what others are saying about your practice and about your work. You will be surprised how effective this tactic is.
• Image of Practice Logo - Post with your ad if you can an image of your practice logo. This has a branding effect on the viewers and portrays to them your value above all other related ads.
• Phone Number & Address of Practice - this is critical to your success with your online classified ad. Make it simple and easy for people to contact you and to find your practice.

Good luck with your classified ads. If you need any further advice or help you can ask us. Patientdocs.com MedeRank services help Dentists with their online classified ads as well as with many other aspects of dental internet marketing.