Many of you wowed us during Save Your Tooth Month with your social media savvy, but a select few especially stood out. Meet our Social Media Movers & Shakers, Class of 2021! If your social media handle did not make the list, we encourage you to keep shining and stay tuned for another chance next year! Thank you to everyone who developed content during Save Your Tooth Month — and thanks for everything you do year-round!
Get to know these movers and shakers:
Featuring AAE Members: Drs. Rolf M.W. Wuerch, Stephen W. Hansen and Jeremiah J. Hawkins
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
We are endodontists, which means we are experts in saving teeth! This message needs to get out not only to our colleagues and partners in saving teeth who are of course general dentists and all other dental specialists, but the general public needs to know as well.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Keep it fresh, relevant, and interesting. Form a marketing committee and synergize ideas that invite engagement and have broad appeal not only to potential referring offices but also the general public
Currently Instagram is one of our favorite platforms, although we use Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
We plan ahead and have content ready ahead of time, this allows us to stay consistent with how often we post.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
We loved the opportunity to interact with, and see what our colleagues are doing with their offices and social media.
Advanced Endodontics (AE) – (@aeorlando)
Featuring Owner & CEO Dr. Peter S. Chen and other AAE endodontists in the practice, Drs. Luis Alcalde, Ryan Brennan, Tina Ren, Neha Pandya, Tej Vaidya and Bonne Yang; and PR& Social Media Specialist Abree Reed
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
At Advanced Endodontics (AE), Save Your Tooth Month means raising awareness about the importance of maintaining oral health while demystifying the public’s misconceptions about root canal treatments. We were able to leverage AAE resources about root canals to educate our patients and the community about the available treatment options that are quick and virtually pain-free. Many people are not aware that preserving your natural teeth as long as possible is a healthier and less costly option than other dental treatments. We want people to know the complete picture to make an informed decision regarding their health.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
- Always be audience-centric. It is about making sure you provide something valuable to your patients, referring dentists, and the community. Be consistent, be relevant, and most of all, be FUN with your content, so they know, like, and trust you.
- Our current social media of choice: Instagram. The platform has enabled us to share our practice’s brand personality and culture through visual moments and highlights about our patients, referring dentist practices state-of-the-art practice office, skilled endodontists, exceptional endodontic team, and the community.
- We have a fantastic social media manager who handles the curation, creation, and execution of our social media. In addition, she works diligently with our digital agency to develop unique topic ideas, creative design, and deployment to ensure consistent brand and voice.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our favorite social media moment from SYTM was sharing AAE resources through our social media channels emphasizing the importance of saving your natural teeth. Though we make every effort to remind our patients, being able to dedicate a month in collaboration with AAE made it extra special for our patients and AE team.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Robert Corr, Ryan Jack and JT Crepps, and Cristina Bayron, CDA
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month is our opportunity to educate the communities we serve about the benefits of conservative dentistry, and to emphasize the role of the endodontist in complete dental health. Every year, endodontic treatment becomes more conservative for teeth and also easier for patients, and this is a venue to present these advancements to the public. SYTM is a time for the endodontic community to work collectively to dispel common misconceptions that create barriers for many patients. Equally important is the opportunity to continue to educate our dental colleagues about our role in comprehensive care by showcasing how we preserve pulps to prevent endodontic disease, and of course when necessary, to demonstrate how we resolve disease while conserving biology at a specialty level.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What is your favorite social media platform, and how to you find time to create content?
Perhaps the most useful advice would be to tap into the creative resources of the office team. Our social media activity is the direct result of an inspired team member who saw the educational opportunities with social media and took charge of establishing our online presence. I expect that every dental team has at least one individual who has the vision and the social media savvy to communicate an engaging story about their practice. Professional services also helped us get started with the analytics and optimized performance, but I think for content to be truly engaging it must be organically developed from within the practice with a personal touch. I don’t think social media is a task to “delegate”, but instead is best born from inspiration by a motivated team with the freedom to be creative.
We prefer Facebook to tell our story to the public community, and we like Instagram as a platform to engage more with our dental colleagues. Finding time to create the content is not easy, and it is another challenge to the work/life-balance conundrum. However, by empowering team members who naturally enjoy social media, this can be a fun and rewarding role that is shared.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
SYTM posts are all so fun and creative, the ones that stand out the most would be of the states that have officially recognized SYTM as an actual “holiday” and how its bringing to light the hard work endodontists and their teams do every day to save natural teeth and help people be healthier because if it.
Featuring AAE members Dr. Shawn Jordan, owner, and Drs. Cynthia Czaperacker and Anthony Domenico
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save your tooth month speaks to the heart of why we practice endodontics and provides a platform for us to show the benefits of seeing an endodontist to keep your natural teeth. We routinely post about root canal awareness, and having a dedicated month gives us a good excuse to do it more often.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Advice: When we opened our office someone told us to treat social media like a “potted plant”. Not too much water (posts); regularly posting is best. Don’t take a long break from posts, or the followers will dry up. Don’t post too much or we will drown them in content. Also, vary the subjects. Move “the plant” to a different window, bring it into a personal space, build a relationship with it. I know it’s an odd comparison, but it has worked for us and we love sharing personal stories, funny office humor, or shared content from another office. We have a social media photographer at our office (one of our talented dental assistants) and she helps us with content a few times per week.
Instagram is our favorite. It easily links to Facebook, which saves time when posting content.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Dr. Czaperacker visited referring offices during SYTM with succulents and decorated with superhero endodontists. She and a front desk team member gave away over 20 decorated plants to jump start spring and SYTM.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Sonia Chopra, Mark Tadrissi and Tanya Reiter
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Our motto is Give Teeth a Chance, and SYTM means just that. Every tooth deserves the chance to be saved.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Our favorite social media platform is Instagram. IG allows us to share both educational contents as well as content on our practice culture. Who says dentistry can’t be fun right?
We would encourage other practices to be honest, genuine and informational. The right combination of these things will lead to success on social media!
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our favorite part about SYTM was getting to see the entire endo community join together to share the importance of endo in the world of dentistry.
Featuring AAE member Dr. Daniel J. Pierre
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
SYTM means educating the public on root canal treatment, procedures, and the important role endodontists play. I love saving teeth and helping show patients why seeing a specialist is necessary. I like teaching them about the advanced training and equipment endodontists have and helping them realize keeping their natural teeth is the best first option. I also like that the SYTM campaign gives great resources for educational tools to share with patients and is a great way to reach potential patients.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
The best advice I can give is to find what works best for your office and the platforms you would like to utilize. My office has experimented with a few social media platforms, but our favorites are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram because that is where we find the most success in sharing information and reaching people. Next, it is important to find a team member who uses social media and shows interest in creating content, look up social media algorithms, and keep your posts fun and interesting. Social media is great for educating people, but you also want to keep it personable and relatable. Maybe include holidays to post about, birthdays in the office, office anniversaries, and even patient testimonials.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
My favorite social media moment from SYTM was sharing the importance of seeing an endodontist and getting so much positive feedback from previous patients, our surrounding general dentists and other specialty offices. It showed how important this social media movement is in today’s world.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Harold Martinez, Ronald Vranas, Madelyn Morris, Steven Barbieri, Timothy Finkler, Michael Morris and Stephen Schroeder
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month is an opportunity to educate our patients on the importance of saving their natural teeth and dispel the myth that root canals are painful. It’s a time to promote awareness about the role an endodontist plays in a patient’s dental health.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Finding the time to post on social media and create original content can be challenging! Utilize your Team to help with ideas. You may have a social media guru on your hands that you didn’t know about. You can also share posts from other Facebook pages (like the AAE), post patient reviews, highlight your employees (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), and make educational posts about your services. Videos are also an engaging way to share information and having monthly/quarterly contests with prize giveaways can be a fun way to get your referring offices and patients involved.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our favorite social media moment from SYTM was announcing the winners to our Save Your Tooth Month contest. We gave away seven complimentary root canal treatments (one from each of our endodontists) and posted video messages from our doctors and staff on Facebook. The seven winners were our referring offices who could gift the complimentary treatment to a patient of their choice in need of care.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Jesse Harris, Richard Sedwick and Adam Sarnowski; and Professional Relations Coordinator Lindsay Nichols
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
SYTM provides an excellent platform to spotlight endodontic therapy today and how using the most innovative technology, such as CBCT and the GentleWave Procedure results in a better treatment. Root canal therapy isn’t designed to be painful, it’s designed to relieve pain! Today’s endodontic therapy is not your grandfather’s root canal.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
My advice to other endodontists looking to up their social media game is to have fun! Keep it light, but informative. Your social media should not be 100 percent straight endodontic facts, photos or studies; you’ll lose your audience. It should most definitely highlight those things, but sprinkled in each week. Spotlight things your office does that set you apart from other offices.
Most people think they don’t have the time to curate their social media platforms, but with apps like HootSuite, Zoho Social, and CanvaPro, they can design and schedule content for a whole month in just a few hours.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
My favorite part of SYTM was that it was sponsored by GentleWave! We love the GentleWave system and we were the first practice in Virginia to start using their amazing technology. Being able to promote that we are a GentleWave office in conjunction with the fact that GentleWave was the AAE SYTM sponsor for 2021 was just another ringing endorsement!
Featuring AAE members Drs. Robert W. Heydrich and Francisco N. Gari
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month is an opportunity for endodontists to come together and educate the community at large on the value of endodontic treatment and saving your natural teeth.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game?
See one, do one, teach one. Find something that strikes you as interesting, inspiring or funny as it relates to endodontics or your practice and create a post. If that’s not your thing, find someone within your practice that is tech savvy to take the lead or outsource.
What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Instagram. It allows you to post simultaneously to Facebook and Twitter. Posting from your smartphone or tablet is the easiest way to jump in. There are many apps that can help create content and look like a pro.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
It is hard to cite just one, but it was really phenomenal to see our colleagues and the [AAE] organization advancing this cause with some very insightful and interesting content.
Featuring AAE member Dr. Charles Kass
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
In our office, “Save Your Tooth” month represents a second chance, hope and hard work! When a patient comes to our facility, they are usually being referred because their general dentist believes and has hope that the tooth can be saved with root canal therapy. It is our mission to give them the opportunity to do this- to save the tooth. For us, it’s giving someone a second chance at resolving an issue that could potentially cause other problems down the road for their dental health. When you give a patient the ultimatum of root canal therapy or extraction, it is ultimately in their hands to make the decision but we are here to educate them and be an advocate for saving teeth. It’s hard work, but we love what we do.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game?
I would tell other endodontists to add education along with interesting facts in order to grab the attention of their followers on social media. People like to learn, they like new information and interesting information. Give them something to think about! If you’re having a tough time doing this, hiring someone to utilize your social media pages is a great alternative to stay present and active in minds of your followers.
What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Facebook is our “go to” method of media because it seems to be the easiest platform for others to respond, comment and keeps people engaged.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our favorite moment, hands down was receiving a glowing review from a patient who left our office feeling educated about her treatment, taken care of, and important. We are in the business of helping others and saving teeth! We can do that through information, a caring doctor and great dental care.
Monument Endodontics and Periodontics (@monumentendoperio)
Featuring AAE members Drs. Kent McBride, Katie Kickertz and My Trinh
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
SYTM is the perfect opportunity for us to advocate for our specialty. We feel that educating our patients and referring doctors is one of our primary responsibilities as specialists. Most people (including some that work in the dental field) don’t know the full extent of what an endodontist can do. It’s our job to tactfully and lovingly show them what’s possible.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
We are certainly no experts, but we’ve found that the two biggest keys to success are consistency and a personal touch. It takes time to build a following and have meaningful interaction, so patience is key too! Our favorite platform is Instagram. It lends itself perfectly to the visual nature of endodontic radiographs.
North Shore and Brookline Endodontics (@nsbendo)
Featuring AAE members Drs. Yuri Shamritsky and Fiza Singh (practice owners); Erica Moulton, professional relations specialist; and Holly LeBlanc, practice manager
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month provides an opportunity for the endodontic community to educate the public about why saving their teeth is so important. It also offers an incredible platform to dispel myths and misconceptions about root canal treatment.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
As endodontists we try to appeal to several different audiences: referring dentists, new patients, and to a lesser extent, returning patients. For this reason, we love branding and posting our 5-star reviews. It not only gives us an opportunity to showcase our work, which is relevant to all of our audiences, but also allows us to tag our endodontists and dental assistants, broadening our reach and post interactions.
Our most active social media platforms are Facebook and Instagram and while they are both extremely important to us for different reasons, our current favorite is Instagram. Facebook has a broader radius, but research shows audiences spend more time interacting with company pages once they are engaged on Instagram.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our favorite social media moment from SYTM 2021 was hands down the #itsgonnabemay Instagram video featuring Dr. Wurech (Advanced Endodontic Care). This TikTok style video was clever, fun, and relevant. With TikTok’s popularity booming across all demographics, in large part due to the pandemic, Dr. Wurech’s Instagram video gives us a wonderful glimpse at how endodontics might successfully enter this burgeoning platform.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Ronald Taylor, Adam Orgel, Badri Jureidini, Juheon Seung, Chayne Coston, Marc Jiorle, Tierney Winberg, Eunice Kim and Alexis Herring
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
SYTM has always been a cause our practice enthusiastically supported from its first launch. We strive to create a culture of selflessness and support. During STYM our doctors and staff all come together for a beautiful day of donating endo services as well as enjoying a team-building day. To date, RCT Endodontics has donated root canals to 65 patients since the SYTM inception in 2018. The total value of the treatments is valued at $126,580. We plan to continue these efforts in the years to come.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
#1 Just go for it! Your audience wants to see your skills, personality (especially your sense of humor) and learn about your practice’s competitive advantages. Our favorite platform is Instagram. Content is planned in advance. Every week we dedicate time to plan posts and create content. In addition to that, a few hours are spent on updating and sharing our posts. Third-party social media management tools are also helpful to us.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
We loved seeing the endodontists throughout the country do their part to spread education, demystify myths and share fun posts. These posts inspired us to keep our campaign going for the entire month of May.
Featuring AAE member Dr. Sara Markovic
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month promotes public awareness about saving the natural dentition to preserve oral health, function, and aesthetics through endodontic therapy – a safe, timely, and often more affordable treatment alternative.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
I recommend all endodontists to embrace social media in order to network with a newer generation of patients and referring dentists. Start with simple posts that showcase your practice, highlight examples of your work, introduce staff, and share office culture. Instagram is my favorite platform due to its reach and ease of use. Instagram is also fully integrated with Facebook so you can sync your posts seamlessly saving you time and effort. We create content as a team with me doing more of the legwork with posts having to do with dentistry whereas my staff takes the lead on posts focused on office events and holidays. We set aside time to create content on days where we have some downtime due to a cancellation or at the end of the day when staff free up.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
It’s difficult to narrow it down to one social media moment. What I really enjoyed about SYTM was the ability to get an inside look at what my amazing AAE colleagues do on a daily basis. From completing root canal therapy on a pregnant patient to helping an individual with a serious facial infection – endodontists really are Superheroes to the patients they help!
Featuring AAE members Drs. Robert Coleman, Martha Zinderman, Steven Edlund, Andrew Racek, Michael Shapiro, Dmitry Vodopyanov, Christopher McWatters, Young Bin Bok and Jae Shin
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
Save Your Tooth Month is about showing our dedication to advancing the field of endodontics, providing excellent patient care, and saving natural smiles!
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game?
Our advice would be to 1. Make a plan. Identify your audience, their needs/challenges and create a strategy that is relevant for them. 2. Content. Identify a few themes to address consistently and leave room for spontaneous posts that could be relevant. 3. Stay consistent. Create a frequency/posting plan to keep your profile ranks high.
What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Our content lends itself better to the Facebook platform – we also leverage their advertising tools. Our team dedicates time each week to schedule posts for the upcoming week. Having a plan keeps us consistent, ensures relevancy, and avoids any last-minute scrambling.
Favorite social media moment from SYTM?:
San Diego North Endodontics (@sdnorthendo)
Featuring AAE member Dr. Matthew B. Chesler
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
An opportunity to highlight what we, as a specialty, do for our patients.
SYTM gives us an avenue via social media to address issues that patients may have toward having to have a root canal treatment done by a specialist as opposed to having the treatment done by their general dentist.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
I find that it makes the most sense to approach it as a team effort. Soliciting ideas from everyone in the practice creates a dynamic perspective that can yield new direction. I don’t necessarily have a favorite platform, but find that whatever platform you choose, viewers tend to be visually driven and love seeing the people behind the words.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
Our office enjoyed all the SYTM posts! We loved seeing the doctors and their offices share of themselves and their efforts to educate their patients and the public at large of the importance of not neglecting their oral health and not ignoring tooth pain.
Featuring AAE members Drs. Carla Webb and Malissa Vacharakiat
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
It’s a great time to come together as specialists and create awareness not only for what we do as Endodontists but how the patient can take control of their own health and be informed about saving their natural tooth.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
First, consider outside help in this endeavor. We use LAIRE and love how they help us come up with great ideas. Our Creative Director with LAIRE, Lisa Morgan, is awesome!
Second, get your team involved and help them understand how a social media presence can help grow the practice. Sharing knowledge about endodontics with the public and our patients is important to us, but also we need to have fun and show the faces of our practice. If everyone is involved, snapping a quick photo of the team in action may be no big deal to us, but on Facebook or Instagram, it creates a relationship with our followers when we post it.
Our patients are active on Facebook, and I find I communicate more with other dental practices on Instagram.
At the beginning of the month, we plan our posts so that our presence is consistent, and then we add “in the moment” photos and posts when we can.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
We love educating our patients. So, knowing that patients seeing our informative posts helped to start conversations about their dental health options. That means the world to us!
Featuring AAE member Dr. Anne Wiseman
What does Save Your Tooth Month mean to you?
It’s wonderful that the AAE initiated Save your Tooth Month! Save Your Tooth Month elevates awareness about how oral health can impact your overall health! Spreading the positive message that teeth deserve a second chance. Teeth that once were immediately condemned for extraction can now be saved and restored through close coordination between endodontists and dentists.
What advice would you have for other endodontists who are trying to up their social media game? What’s your favorite social media platform and how do you find the time to create content?
Be true to yourself and your vision for how you practice. I use social media primarily as an education/information tool for my patients and referring doctors.
What was your favorite social media moment from SYTM?
I absolutely love seeing the impressive array of creativity among the dental community and how the convey their messaging for SYTM. Whether it’s a GIF or a boomerang of candid practice antics, it all helps reinforce the message that teeth really are worth saving!