Should Health Care Practitioners Have Facebook Business Pages?
If you are a doctor, dentist, therapist, or health care practitioner, should you put your time or resources into developing a Facebook business page?
The answer is, it depends on your goals. Our research has shown that some medical, health, and wellness practitioners have gotten great results using Facebook to enhance their practice or to get their message out to the public.
Why should you have a Facebook business page?
Facebook Reach
Facebook reaches 2.6 billion monthly users globally, yet Facebook organic reach is abysmally low. That’s because Facebook wants you to pay for advertising, but before you can even consider advertising, you need to build up your page.
Your Facebook Business Page Strategy
After setting up your page, you are going to need to develop a strategy for posting. You have to be consistent with your posts. Decide what is feasible for you or your practice You will need to post content once or twice a day, three to seven days a week. Decide what the best time is for your particular demographic. Are they on at lunch time, after dinner, or late at night? You might have to do a little research or experiment to know when your posts have the greatest likelihood of being seen.
What Should You Post About?
You need to mix up your posts. There is an unspoken 80 / 20% rule. 80% of your content should be informational and 20% should be promotional. Recently on Quora, I was asked, what my marketing takeaway from Whole Foods social media pages was. First, it’s a great strategy to study successful pages, which have significant resources behind them, to figure out what does and doesn’t work.
Here are a few ideas you can take away:
Whole Foods varies the content in their post types.
- They pick a theme for the week or month, such as bee keeping awareness. Then, they will post educational information or videos tied that topic all month long.
- Their posts feature attractive photos – sized for Facebook
- One type of post will feature sales and discounts
- Another type of post will feature local events such as store openings or cook book signings
- They feature regional producers- such as craft beers and cheese makers
- They feature educational posts – e.g: How does your food get to market?
- They feature seasonal products Рwith the advent of summer, they are showcasing ros̩s and sparkling wines
- They feature products associated with holidays- such as flowers for Mother’s Day.
- They tie a product to a current event – e.g: Celebrate the arrival of the royal baby with English cheeses.
How can you adapt that strategy to your Health or Wellness Practice?
- Feature beautiful photos
- Feature a monthly or weekly theme
- Mix up your posts – they should vary in type. Don’t be afraid to let your personalty shine . But post in a logical and coherent manner. First introduce the topic, then educate, then sell your services.
Social media posts adapted for your practice
Images
- Post photos of yourself, your office / space/ staff.
- Source photos from Shutterstock, Pixels or Pixabey
- If you are going to create memes then use Canva or Adobe
- If you practice aesthetic medicine, you are in luck because social media the perfect forum to share before and afters, or videos of various procedures.
Relevance
Is there anything going on in the news or in your practice?
- Flu Season
- Breast cancer awareness month
- A topic that is hot at the moment
- Controversial health news that may be of interest to your patients
Are you featuring any events in your practice?
- Openings
- Fund Raisers
- Product Launches
- New Procedures
- Book signing / launching events
- Free screenings
- Educational Content
If you are a blogger when should you share your posts to Facebook
- If you want to raise awareness of certain topics
- If you want to post helpful tips
- When you want to share interviews
- With each post
Tips you should know about
- Drive traffic to your website with linksÂ
- When you are sharing content from other pages, introduce the topic and source a photo of your own, then link, you will have more views then just by sharing a link.
- Link your own Website in the comments section
- Target your posts. You will reach the followers that are most interested in your content. Remember this only pertains to your page followers, not everyone on Facebook.
- Video or not? For the past two years, video has been heavily promoted by Facebook. Now that they are inundated with video content, they are less gung-go. If you feel comfortable being filmed or talking about certain topics, giving advice, then use video.
Remember your content can be shared to all your social media , so if you have a Youtube channel then share those videos on Facebook and your blog as well.
How are you going to build your fanbase?
You are going to have to ask your patients, clients, and friends to like your page. Please remind them to follow and utilize the see first feature. This will indicate their level of interest and make sure your posts get seen.
Your organic reach will still be highly limited, so you will have to ask questions to inspire interaction from your fans. One thing that works almost universally is to post something at the beginning of the week and ask them to respond with their location. It shows Facebook algorithms that there are page interactions and that boosts your visibility. This is an example of a well-developed medical Facebook page with daily likes and some engagement. Remember, the more comments you can get your fans to make, the more the algorithm will boost your visibility.
How to get more Fans
- Ask for reviews from clients/ patients
- Invite everyone on your customer/ subscriber list
- Link to your business page from your personal profile
- Interact with your fan base
- Promote your page on and offline
- Add a link to your email correspondence
- Engage by leaving insightful comments on similar pages with large subscriber bases
- Advertise
Advertising on Facebook
You can target your desired audience by area, zip code and demographics, but please be wary of look a like audiences and HIPAA compliance.
Medical Justice / Social Media for Doctors
Advertising is an art, not a science. Marketers can promise you rates of return on your investment but really, no one knows what will work unless and until it’s tested. Just because they have had success with a certain campaign previously doesn’t mean they will have the same success with your demographic or your specialty.
In the meantime, you have to decide what it is that you want from Facebook.
- A moving billboard
- A platform for disseminating knowledge
- A place to gather emails and grow your list
One thing Facebook works well for is creating a funnel. That includes an advertising campaign that will offer the user something valuable and free in exchange for their email so that the relationship between the practitioner and the client can begin. One simple form of free information is a newsletter, free guide, booklet or pamphlet that shares information and your expertise on a topic of interest to the user. The middle of the funnel is the information you share with them or offer them something for free, and the bottom of the funnel is when you ask for the sale, but only after your subscribers get to know know and trust you.Â
An example of a funnel
A complex funnel could consist of a an automated free webinar, which gives valuable information but then has upsells, be it a book, an eating plan, vitamins, shakes, taped lessons, consultations, and /or joining a Facebook group where knowledge is freely shared. Usually included are several upsells ranging from low priced to your most complex, highest priced offering.
Last year, after being diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I watched a free online webinar given by a doctor. The topic was about why thyroid medication often doesn’t yield the weight loss results we expect to see. His lecture was very informative and he specifically addressed eating correctly and gut health in the conversion of T4 to T3. The first upsell included his book, which was an in depth examination of the topic; an eating plan / elimination diet, beautifully presented and delivered weekly into your in box; and an invitation to his Facebook group where any questions could be asked or information shared.  His next upsell was to vitamin supplements and the third upsell was to vitamin fortified shakes. There was nothing salesy or pushy in the approach. The upsells were presented as possible accelerators to improving overall health and the doctor’s entire approach and demeanor was that of one who desires to disseminate knowledge and help the concerned public who were not in a position to visit his office.Â
Social media / Facebook is constantly evolving and algorithms are always changing. We’ve presented some general ideas you can use to build your brand. If you desire specific advice, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
