It may be safe to say that if you have ever been on “DentalTok,” you would recognize Dr. Joyce Kahng (@joycethedentist).  With over 1 million followers across all platforms, she has been posting since 2018.  She is known for her viral green screen videos in which she explains various dental procedures.  

Dr. Kahng is as bubbly and humble on social media as she is in person.  Her journey to being one of the top content creators in the world of dental social media hasn’t been easy, but it has certainly paid off.  Not only has it helped her attract patients to her practice, but she now has a second career from her sponsorships and courses.

LS: So tell me about your background.  Where did you go to school, residency, etc?

JK: I went to the University of the Pacific (UOP) – the accelerated program in which I did three years of undergrad and three years of dental school.  So I graduated in 2010 when I was quite young. And then I did a residency in the Bronx at Jacoby.

LS: How was New York?

JK: Those were the best years of my life – living in New York City was the best. And then I practiced in New York for a few years and met my husband who is from California. He’s from Southern California, and I’m from Northern California. So I moved to Southern California for him, and I made him propose. I was basically like, “Dude, I am moving for you. So the countdown begins.” He’s also a dentist and went to NYU.

LS: Do you keep your husband hidden on social media or am I just not paying attention? Haha

JK: He hates being on social media.  You’ll get glimpses of him, but it’s usually not of him talking to the camera. It’s just like him doing something, and when he realizes the camera is on, he’ll put on a sad/annoyed face haha.

LS: How did you get into social media? 

JK: So I started my Instagram account in February 2018 which wasn’t the beginning of Instagram, but I do think that was before a lot of dentists were on Instagram.  I was teaching at USC at the time, and I didn’t really understand Instagram at all. I kind of thought it was a website.  I had just taken over a practice, but it wasn’t that busy so I had time to teach part of the week. I was at USC just trying to figure out this Instagram thing, and there was this student – Courtnie Yoon (@cariousity_).  She was an Instagram OG and had about 7,000 followers. She was in one of my classes and was like, “It’s not easy. You have to put in a lot of time.” She told me enough to be like, “Okay, this is more than a website.”

LS: What were your original intentions in creating the Instagram account?

JK: I made it for the practice. My actual first post was two xylitol lollipops in an X, and then it just said xylitol over it. It got very few likes. I didn’t have pictures of myself because I was huge in dental school. So I deleted all those photos, and I didn’t have anything to post.  So that’s why I started doing videos because I didn’t have any photos.  I remember I got a comment from one of my previous dental school professors and was like, “My god how did he find me?”

LS: Are you the one with all the creative direction or do you have other people helping out behind the scenes?

JK: I make all of my own short-form videos.  I just do it directly on the platform. My whole thing is to make it easy enough for you to do it every single day. I think a lot of people overcomplicate things and outsource them. And then once you get people involved, it gets bogged down. If you depend on an editor, the editor’s taking their sweet time getting the content out. And then you have to review the content.  So for me, every Thursday I just sit in my kitchen like what I’m doing now, and I just make the videos, and then I have them ready to go. I don’t have anyone filming. It’s just me in my kitchen.  I also find it very difficult to film myself if anyone’s around because I’m self-conscious.

LS: Where do you get your ideas from?

JK: I scroll on TikTok.  I then save it in a Notion planner. Some weeks, I get to Thursday and have no ideas, and those are hard weeks because then you’re just staring at a blank piece of paper. I try to post three times a week. I also have a reserve of videos that are not my best work, but I’ll still post if I need to.

LS: And talk to me about your course.  How did that get started?

JK: A lot of people would ask me questions about growing on Instagram.  I didn’t want to do a course initially because I didn’t want to be known as the Instagram dentist because I feel like I’m actually a legitimate dentist – like clinically a legitimate dentist.  So I didn’t want to be known as a marketer.  I realized that even if you make a course,  it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, but it doesn’t do anything unless you can get leads. And then I was faced with this problem because my Instagram is where I have a lot of eyeballs, but it’s all patient-facing, and I didn’t want to start making videos to attract dentists.  But dentists are the ones that I need to buy the Instagram course. In order to not dilute my message to the patient, I run ads for the course.  It’s actually not a major part of my income, but I did it because people kept asking.

LS: What recommendations do you have for dentists who want to get into social media?

JK: I think that people can get into social media, but I think the expectations of what you’re going to get have to be extremely reasonable. Like you may grow in followers by outsourcing, but are those followers legitimate people who will convert and come into your office and want your services? Not as likely. There has to be a certain feel to your page. They have to get a sense of who you are. And if you’re not upfront and center on your Instagram, it’s like going into any other dental office and just taking a chance on a dentist that has good Yelp reviews. Your Instagram is your opportunity to show who you are in the absence of dentistry. And that’s why it’s so powerful.