Many clinics find that Facebook is a fantastic tool to reach out to and engage with potential, past and existing clients. Whether you’re already using Facebook but want to make your clinic page more effective, or you’re thinking of creating a business page for the first time, we’ve put together our top 15 tips on how to make a Facebook page for your business successful.
1. Know why you want to use Facebook and who you want to reach
It’s estimated that, at the start of 2017, there were around 65 million local business pages on Facebook with only five million of those using paid Facebook advertising to build their profiles. But just because Facebook is a popular channel for social media marketing doesn’t automatically make it right for every business.
Before you rush off to create a business page for your clinic, it’s important to answer some important questions:
- Why do you want to use Facebook?
- To grow your brand?
- To create a community?
- To showcase your expertise?
- To increase sales?
- Who do you want to reach?
- What are their problems or goals?
- How can you give them value?
- Do they definitely spend time on Facebook?
- How are you going to reach them?
The main reason that many businesses struggle to see results with Facebook is that they don’t understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it or, crucially, who they’re doing it for.
Our biggest piece of advice is to take some time to think strategically before you create a Facebook page.
2. Understand the platform
Did you know that not all of your Facebook ‘likers’ will see the content you post on your business page?
Every user sees a unique newsfeed that gives them a constantly updated selection of posts from their friends and the pages they like. Given how much content is posted to Facebook on a daily basis, it would be impossible to present users with updates from every single friend or page they have connected with on the platform. Instead, Facebook uses complex algorithms to decide who sees what.
To date, Facebook has prioritised the posts people see based on factors such as:
- The affinity between the viewer and the creator of a story – the more someone seems to interact with a person or business, the more likely Facebook is to show them fresh content from that source.
- The type of content users interact with – if people on a page tend to engage more with photos and videos over text updates, Facebook may prioritise these post types in newsfeeds.
- The age of the post – the older a post is, the less value it will have and, therefore, the less likely it will be to appear in a newsfeed.
This is why providing content that resonates with your page likers is so important because engagement is an indicator to Facebook that it should continue to share the content from your page, particularly to the people who are regularly liking, sharing and/or commenting on your posts.
Facebook is currently trialling a major change where non-promoted posts from business pages would be shifted out of personal newsfeeds and into a separate feed for business pages. Facebook says this is in response to users’ desires to connect more easily with friends and family. It is also a way to ensure that paid-for advertising is seen over organic content from businesses.
The trial is currently taking place in six countries, including Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka, but it may be rolled out more widely in the future. Facebook users would still be able to see non-promoted business posts but they would have to specifically click to view this feed.
When using a Facebook page to promote your business, it’s always important to remember that the platform makes the rules and can change how you can use your page at any time. For this reason, although Facebook really can be a fantastic way to grow your audience, it’s essential that you keep doing other marketing activities to grow your mailing list and connect with potential clients outside of social media.
3. Use the space that Facebook gives you for branding your page
Facebook gives you some key spaces to brand your business page and help your clinic stand out from its competitors. These spaces include:
- Cover image
- Profile image
- About section
The cover image is a fantastic place to drive lead generation, feature forthcoming events, highlight products or services, or show off your clinic. You can change it regularly or opt from a strong, branded image that remains at the top of your Facebook page.
You’ll find a helpful blog about Facebook cover image best practices over on Blog Snappa.
Make sure that you complete the About section of your business page. The short bio is the ideal place to describe your clinic and include the web address.
4. Provide value
Social media is about being social, building relationships and having conversations. People will quickly turn away from businesses that constantly go for the hard sell.
The most successful clinic pages are the ones that consistently add value for their followers by posting advice, information, reassurance and links to other resources. Think about what will give your clients value and also show your knowledge and expertise.
5. Plan a content calendar
Social media marketing can suck a lot of your time, especially if you’re managing it in-house. It can also be challenging to generate fresh content. A great tip is to map out your content calendar in advance. For example, you could plan out your blog topics for the next three months and then plan what social media posts you’re going to share around the blog, as well as what treatments you want to promote, what information you want to share, and what pages you might share content from, as well as generating your own.
6. Post regularly and consistently
Facebook tends to reward business pages that post regularly and consistently by giving posts further organic reach. Your audience will also appreciate a consistent flow of content rather than a flurry of activity and then months of silence.
To make it easier to plan your content, Facebook has a handy tool that lets you schedule your posts weeks in advance. This means you can post in batches but still appear to your followers as though you’re online daily.
7. Vary the type of posts
Most people feel that pictures or text posts supported by images get the best engagement on Facebook pages. In our experience, the best approach is to mix up the content you post so that there’s a good selection of pictures, text posts including questions to encourage conversation, videos, and content shared from pages that might share a similar audience, e.g. official pages for the treatments/products/manufacturers available through or used by your clinic.
8. Use Facebook’s features
Facebook has a whole host of features that you can use to build the profile of your business page. You might want to try some or all of the following:
- Claim your vanity URL
- Pin or highlight offers or important posts
- Create and promote an event at your clinic
- Add milestones that tell the story of your clinic
- Add and use custom tabs
- Link your Instagram and Facebook pages
9. Engage with your ‘likers’
According to recent stats, less than 30% of brands active on social media respond to comments or questions from their followers. This goes against the very essence of social media, which is all about creating and taking part in a conversation.
It can be daunting to respond to clients on such a public forum – what if someone says something negative or you make a mistake? However, people usually appreciate receiving a response because it makes them feel like they matter. Successful Facebook pages welcome the chance to learn more about their ‘likers’.
10. Encourage reviews
Back in August 2017, we blogged about the importance of clinic reviews. Facebook is the ideal channel, in addition to Google, to ask for and feature reviews that act as social proof to potential clients that your clinic is the one to visit.
To encourage reviews, you can activate the Reviews tab in the ‘Edit page’ option of your business page settings. Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews – even if you receive negative feedback, you can use it as an opportunity to show that you care about what clients have to say.
11. Interact with other pages
Each time someone likes a Facebook business page for the first time, they see a horizontal banner of ‘More pages you may like’, which shows similar pages or often pages that are liked by the page they’ve just liked.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to like other pages as your business page. For your clinic, this might mean liking your suppliers, governing bodies, treatment-specific pages, or local businesses with whom you have some connection. This means that when people ‘like’ those pages, your business page may come up as a recommendation to follow.
Also, if you can spend some time interacting with other business pages as your business rather than from your personal profile, you can subtly introduce the audience of other pages to your business without a hard sell.
12. Create milestones
We mentioned milestones above but they’re a handy feature that lets you tell the story of your clinic. Try adding milestones such as the date the clinic opened, when you moved to new premises, when you received certain awards and so on. This will help you to show the credentials of your clinic to potential clients.
13. Cross promote your content
If you regularly produce fresh content such as blogs, information resources (e.g. a free ebook), videos or tutorials, we always recommend cross-promoting them on every social media platform you currently use, as well as on your website and in your email marketing campaigns. Facebook is a great place to share what’s happening on your website or to promote your enewsletter.
14. Keep an eye on your insights
Facebook provides a wealth of data insights into how people are interacting with your clinic page. You can see when posts are most likely to be read (days and times), the most popular types of posts, the content that gets people talking, the age and gender of your fans, and more. You can also keep an eye on your competitors’ pages.
Keeping an eye on this data at least once a week will help you to make informed, strategic decisions about what you post in the future.
15. Run Facebook ads to increase engagement
According to stats by the social media management tool, Hootsuite, 95.8% of social media marketers worldwide say that Facebook gives them the best return on their investment (ROI) of all social platforms for advertising.
One of the greatest strengths of Facebook is that it offers multiple layers of targeting, letting you narrow down your audience by location, interests, demographics, behaviours and more. There are different ad formats depending on your campaign objectives and you can even create ‘lookalike’ audiences that reflect the characteristics of your most loyal clients.
Facebook advertising can be an effective way to increase your followers, boost engagement and encourage bookings for a relatively low budget.
If you need help with any aspect of Facebook marketing, including creating effective ads, give us a call at Cosmetic Digital on 0115 9140 640.