Facebook now has 1.55 billion monthly active users across the globe.
That figure illustrates just how wide-reaching Facebook is, and how crucial it can be to your practice marketing strategy. It’s likely many of your patients—and others in their demographic—use Facebook. And what better way to reach your patients than through part of their daily routine?
Use these 10 tips to build up your Facebook profile and use your page to attract new patients.
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Complete and optimize your profile.
First things first: you need to create your medical practice’s profile page if you haven’t already. If you need a few tips on how to do that, just read our Guide to Creating a Facebook Profile for medical practices.
Make sure to fill out your profile completely with all of your contact information, and a catchy but informative description of your practice. Optimize your practice bio with keywords (for instance: pediatrics, top pediatrician in Houston, medical care for kids, etc). This will help patients get in touch with you for questions and appointments and will boost your profile’s rank in searches.
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Share links to relevant articles and websites.
Many people use Facebook to find articles to read and websites to explore. You can become a go-to resource for information about your specialty or about healthcare in general by regularly sharing links and adding a quick bite of insight to go along with it.
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Share your own helpful tips.
You have plenty of your own expertise to offer about your field, so post relevant, helpful tidbits for patients in the form of status updates that your followers can share with their family and friends. They could even be simple reminders (cold season is coming up – don’t forget to get your flu shot soon!)
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Respond to comments and posts from your followers.
Patients and other followers may post on your page or comment on your posts, so make their thoughts feel welcome. Fostering engagement with your followers is key to attracting more comments, shares, and likes for your page.
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Encourage conversations in comment threads on your page.
In addition to responding to comments, why don’t you kick off the conversation? Ask a common healthcare question or share an interesting fact about your specialty in a status update, and encourage followers to respond in the comments and engage with you and other followers.
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Direct followers to your website or blog.
Use status updates to plug your website. Mention the convenience of an online appointment schedule portal, or promote your blog posts and ask readers to share them with their own followers.
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Use multimedia to spice up your content.
Status updates can be engaging and insightful, but you can take your Facebook posts one step further by adding multimedia, such as photos and videos. Multimedia encourages more shares, clicks, and engagement, and it makes your content stand out in your followers’ never-ending news feeds.
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Join Groups, and/or create your own.
Groups don’t work for everyone, but if your specialty or patient demographic lends itself to the creation of an actively engaged community, creating a group for your followers to join could help establish your practice’s presence. You can also join other Groups relevant to your specialty and actively post in them to entice other group members to check out your practice’s page.
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Create Facebook Events.
Organizing an event for your practice? The next time you host an open house for flu shots or an informational seminar for patients, create an Event page to invite your followers and provide an easy source of all the event’s info.
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Create a contest or challenge to engage patients.
Advertising a contest or challenge on your practice’s Facebook page entices your followers to return to your page and engage with others to win a prize. Ask a question like, “What’s your favorite remedy for a cold?” and encourage followers to leave comments, with the best comment winning a special discount on a service at your practice. You can also offer a prize to one of any new people who Like your page or who share a particular post.
With these 10 tips, you can start growing your practice by connecting with patients on the site you know they check daily—Facebook.
Have you used any of these strategies to grow your medical practice?
We'd love to hear from you in the comments below!
