How AI is Changing the Way Dental Practices Get Found with Rita Zamora

Recently, I had the privilege of hosting one of my favorite people in the dental industry on the podcast: Rita Zamora. Rita is the founder of Connect90, an international speaker, the author of Get Found, Get Liked, Get Patients, and one of the smartest voices I know when it comes to dental social media.

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What made this conversation especially timely is that Rita is not just talking about social media anymore. She is talking about how AI, Google, and social media now work together to influence whether or not patients find your practice online.

And if you use Dentrix, this matters more than you might think.

For years, most of us have talked about being on the first page of Google, having a good website, and maybe posting a few times a week on social media. But the digital world has changed fast. Rita shared that Google now indexes social media content, which means your public content on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms can influence how Google and AI systems understand your practice.

That is a huge shift.

Patients are no longer only typing “dentist near me” into a traditional search box. Many are asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok for recommendations. They may ask for a gentle dentist, an office that offers implants, a place that has online scheduling, or a dentist that takes their insurance. AI systems can process all of that and then pull data from your reviews, listings, website, and now your social media to decide whether your office is a match.

So what does that mean for your practice?

It means your social media strategy can no longer just be about entertainment or random posting. Rita explained that for years many of us leaned into an “80% social, 20% dental” mindset because we did not want to overwhelm patients with too much dentistry. But now that content is being indexed by Google and evaluated by AI, the strategy has flipped. We need to think more intentionally about what our content is signaling.

If you want to understand that shift more deeply, one of the best companion pieces on the Novonee blog is Maximize Your Dental Practice’s Social Media Presence: Insights from Rita Zamora. It reinforces the same themes Rita and I discussed here: engagement, content strategy, and systems that make social media sustainable for dental teams.

I have always believed your marketing should reflect what you love to do in your practice. If you want more clear aligners, smile makeovers, whitening, implants, or emergency patients that turn into long-term relationships, then your content should consistently reflect that. AI is looking for patterns. It is looking for repetition, relevance, and consistency. If your reviews mention implants, your website talks about implants, and your social media shows implant-related content, AI is more likely to see your practice as a good fit when someone is searching for that service.

That ties directly into another strong article on your blog: The Role of Data in Dental Marketing Success with Justin Ellis. That article emphasizes that marketing only works when it is tied to real goals, clear calls to action, and measurable outcomes. That is exactly where this AI conversation is headed. More visibility is not enough. The right visibility is what matters.

Rita and I also talked about online scheduling, and I think this is where many offices are still behind. We have been talking about frictionless scheduling for years, but only a small percentage of practices are truly using online scheduling in a meaningful way. That needs to change. If AI agents are going to help patients book appointments in the future, your scheduling process has to be accessible, visible, and integrated. Otherwise, you may not even show up as an option.

That is why I would also connect this article to The Dental Patient Journey: Building an Efficient and Engaging Experience. It speaks directly to the importance of online scheduling, digital forms, and making it easy for patients to move from interest to action. That convenience factor is no longer optional. It is becoming part of how patients choose their next dental home.

My biggest takeaway from this conversation was simple: consistency still matters, but strategy matters even more. Posting just to post is not enough anymore. If you want your Dentrix-powered practice to be more visible online, your content needs to be aligned with your services, your goals, and the way patients are searching today.

This is not about chasing trends. It is about making sure your practice is visible, relevant, and easy to choose.

And that is a conversation every high-performing dental team needs to be having right now.