Facebook page for a dental practice: what it is really for

A dental practice's Facebook page does three specific things. It carries practical information, which must say exactly the same thing as your Google Business Profile and your website. It advertises an open position at the practice. It reaches an older patient base that reads a lot and comments little.

A Facebook page does not play the same role as an Instagram account. It replaces neither your Google Business Profile nor your website. This article details the three roles, backed by audience figures, then explains what a page does not do. At the end, you will find a checklist to run on yours.

What Facebook and Instagram do differently

Facebook and Instagram belong to the same company, but they do not bring together the same people, or at the same pace.

In June 2026, Facebook reached 52.1 million unique visitors in the month in France and 35 million per day, and Instagram 45.3 million in the month and 26.8 million per day, based on the population aged 11 and over (Médiamétrie and Médiamétrie//NetRatings, June 2026).

Here are the monthly audiences of the other networks, for the same month and on the same base.

Source: Médiamétrie and Médiamétrie//NetRatings, June 2026, based on the population aged 11 and over, in unique visitors.

Two useful takeaways for a practice. YouTube ranks ahead of Instagram, which often surprises people: a video is still found there months after it goes up, whereas a story disappears within a day. And a large audience says nothing about the attention paid to a dental practice's page: what counts is what the post explains.

First role: practical information that does not contradict itself

A practice's Facebook page is one more public source stating your name, address, phone number and hours. What it shows must be identical to what the others show.

Google's official criteria for the map are relevance, distance and prominence (Google help). No source shows that a Facebook page moves a practice up on that map. On the other hand, a page that contradicts your Google Business Profile creates unnecessary doubt.

Take a fictional practice, Cabinet des Quatre Chemins. Its website says "Cabinet dentaire des Quatre Chemins". Its Facebook page, opened six years ago, says "Dr Lemoine chirurgien-dentiste" with the old phone number and the hours from before the associate dentist joined. To a patient, it is the same practice. To a machine, they are two businesses whose details do not match.

The rule is simple: name, address, phone number and hours are written the same way, down to the character, on the website, the Google Business Profile, the Facebook page and the health directory of the French national health insurance (Assurance Maladie). It is the same work described in our article on the checklist for moving a dental practice, where a single forgotten address is enough to make a practice disappear from the map.

Our Google Business Profile for dentists page details each field to align.

Second role: advertising an open position

This role is rarely discussed, and it is very concrete. People also look for dental assistant jobs on Facebook, by city and by department (the French equivalent of a county).

Check it in thirty seconds. Type "emploi assistante dentaire facebook" (dental assistant job facebook) into Google's search bar, without pressing enter. Google fills in department names on its own, Morbihan for example. These suggestions come from real searches made in France.

An up-to-date page, with real photos of the premises and the team, serves as a first impression. Our recommendation for the text of a job post, which is a choice of method and not a Dental Council rule:

• the position and the type of contract, clearly, in the first line;
• the actual hours, including the days worked;
• the pay, or a range, rather than "depending on experience";
• the training provided, especially for a work-study contract;
• the software and equipment, described as facts;
• who to contact, how, and how quickly you reply.

No public source measures the number of unfilled positions in French dental practices, so we will not put forward any figure. What can be verified is that the search exists.

Third role: an older patient base that reads without commenting

Social media participation in France in 2025: 94.9% of 16-to-24-year-olds, 87.5% of 25-to-34-year-olds, 81.1% of 35-to-44-year-olds, 71.0% of 45-to-54-year-olds, 55.1% of 55-to-64-year-olds and 38.9% of 65-to-74-year-olds (Eurostat, 2025). These levels were measured for 2025 alone, with no comparison to previous years.

Remember the middle line: 45-to-54-year-olds, an age group concerned by prosthetics and implants, are present at 71.0% (Eurostat, 2025).

The question is what these people do once they are there. Among people on social media in France, 33% post or comment every day, 49% do so less regularly, 13% only read content and 6% are inactive (digital barometer from Arcom, Arcep, CGE and ANCT, 2026). The base is people aged 12 and over who are on social media. Among those aged 60 and over, 17% only read (same barometer, 2026).

The consequence is concrete. A post seen by fifty patients and commented on by no one is not a failed post. The number of likes is a poor gauge for a dental practice. So write to be read: complete sentences, the information in the image as well as in the text, and never an explanation saved for the comments.

The Dental Council's rules apply to the page as they do to the website

The code of ethics names neither Facebook nor Instagram. It governs the content, not the platform.

Article R.4127-215-1 of the French Public Health Code (code de la santé publique), created by Decree No. 2020-1658 of December 22, 2020, states that the dentist "is free to communicate to the public, by any means, including on a website". The same article adds that this communication "does not use third-party testimonials". A screenshot of a review, or a patient's post that you reshare, therefore falls within what the text rules out.

For practice information (hours, access, team and equipment), the recommendations of the national board of the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes) on professional communication, in their version of June 19, 2026, set a short limit: "without promotion and without comparison". Describe what a piece of equipment does, not that it is supposedly the most advanced in the area.

For photos and videos, the same recommendations are categorical: "As soon as a patient is filmed inside a dental practice, they must under no circumstances be identifiable." The patient's written consent does not change this rule. Our article on the visibility levers that remain allowed goes through this split, lever by lever.

What a Facebook page does not do

Saying what a channel does not do keeps you from expecting the impossible from it.

• It replaces neither your Google Business Profile nor your dental practice website: it complements them and points to them.
• It does not answer health questions. A photo of a tooth sent by private message is handled by phone or in the chair, never in writing.
• It is not an advertising channel. No Dental Council text names paying to have a post shown more widely: the ban is inferred from Article R.4127-215, under which "the dental profession must not be practiced as a business". It is also inferred from the ban on advertorials, written in issue 196 of La Lettre, the Dental Council's newsletter, from March 2022. Our line is to abstain, and we would rather tell you that this ban is inferred than present it as written in black and white.
• It does not belong to the person who created it. An associate dentist or dental assistant who leaves without handing over access leaves behind a page that no one can correct anymore.

Your page checklist, in half an hour

Open your page and your Google Business Profile side by side, then go through these nine points in order.

1. The practice name is identical, down to the character, to the one on the website and the Google Business Profile.
2. The address and phone number are identical, in the same format.
3. The hours are accurate, and vacation closures are filled in.
4. The page category is indeed that of a dental practice.
5. The action button calls the practice or opens the official website.
6. The page's link points to your website, not to a directory.
7. No patient photos, no X-rays, no recognizable faces.
8. No reshared testimonials, no review screenshots, no comparison with a fellow dentist.
9. Two people at the practice have admin access, and you know which two.

A page kept up on these nine points works for you without demanding anything each week. What comes next depends on the network where you decide to really post, and on what you can show there: that is the subject of our page on social media for a dental practice.

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