One reel a day over 30 days – the follower challenge run by the Stankovic dental practice in Hanover sounds like a simple formula. In the Queens & Sons of Dentistry podcast, however, trainee dental assistant Sarah and practice owner Dr Nebo Stankovic describe how much work daily practice content actually involves, which formats work and what downsides the sudden reach brought with it.
Spontaneity instead of a shooting schedule
Most of the videos were made unplanned and unscripted: if an idea came up between two treatments, the phone was picked up and filming began immediately. Only on some days did the team deliberately set aside an hour or two to gather ideas and consider what should be filmed and how. In the view of those involved, this spontaneity is not a makeshift solution but a factor in the success: everyday practice life can never be planned perfectly, and it is precisely this genuineness that comes across well.
The underestimated effort of post-production
Dr Stankovic points to something that, in his experience, newcomers to content production underestimate brutally: post-production. The recording itself is the lesser problem – the real effort lies in the editing, in subtitles, captions, tags, music, in zooming in and out and in trimming individual scenes. In the practice, a videographer friend who also works for international brands takes on 80 to 90 per cent of this work, according to the owner; afterwards it is refined together. A short reel can therefore take up to two hours, and longer videos up to four. The finishing touches cost the most time – Dr Stankovic reports a three-hour car journey on which he spent the final hour alone on the fine-tuning of a single video.
Which content works
According to the practice owner, the analysis of the published reels revealed a clear pattern. The following work well:
- Videos in which Sarah explains things in youth slang – they provoke reactions, positive as well as negative
- Interactions between employer and employee, with which viewers across all sectors can identify – the setting could just as easily be a bank or an insurance company
- Humour and mild silliness, such as Sarah's spontaneous joke that she was 36 years old, which many viewers took at face value
- Personal rather than professional content: Dr Stankovic admits that it used to annoy him that posts about him as a person performed better than posts about his dental work – that is simply how social media works
The analysis of when a reel is liked is also revealing: by far the most likes come at the end of the video – a sign that viewers stay until the very end. Even the roughly two-minute opening reel, which by conventional expert opinion would have been far too long, was watched all the way through and reached 1.4 million views.
Perfectionism as a brake
The greatest practical obstacle proved to be not a lack of ideas but personal standards. Sarah describes herself as a perfectionist: some finished videos were never published because she did not like the angle, because she had stumbled over her words or because she doubted whether the content would interest anyone at all. By her own assessment, the practice could have posted considerably more. At this point the podcast host brings the Pareto principle into play: 80 per cent of the result can be achieved with 20 per cent of the effort, whereas the final 20 per cent is disproportionately laborious. Dr Stankovic adds that in the core business at the teeth, top marks with a gold star are the right standard, even if that costs time and nerves – for social media, by contrast, that standard may be deliberately set aside, because mistakes are permitted and not everything has to be perfect.
Reach has a downside
The viral reel brought more than 1,000 comments – most of them positive, but not all. Dr Stankovic describes how young people in particular filter out the negative voices and take them to heart, even though these are the opinions of strangers and are not actually important: such comments are good for the algorithm, but not healthy for a young soul. The host explains this in terms of human biology: to this day, the brain reacts more strongly to the negative than to the positive. Among a thousand positive comments, two malicious ones are enough to dominate a person's thoughts. At one point, abandoning the challenge was therefore even under consideration – no account is worth someone suffering for it. In the end the decision was to carry on, not least because such experiences make people grow.
Authenticity instead of high gloss
By way of conclusion, Dr Stankovic formulates an attitude that reaches beyond marketing: Instagram does not reflect real life, glossy stories are not reality – and nobody should let their mental health suffer as a result. Those who remain authentic, by contrast, can be successful too. Highly aesthetic videos, of the kind the practice's videographer is capable of producing, certainly have their place there, but everyday life can be planned however one likes – everything turns out differently anyway. That is precisely what makes it worth telling.