Saying that everyone is on Facebook would hardly be an exaggeration since there’s reportedly over 1 billion active Facebook users in the world right now. With so many users, Facebook has become one of the central communities for friends and family to connect with each other.
In addition to pure social relationships, Facebook has also become an extremely effective resource for businesses to connect to their clients. Medical marketing is certainly not separate from the Facebook era either as Facebook turns out to be an excellent platform for medical practices to market to patients.
Of course, none of this is a secret, which is why the majority of businesses have professional Facebook pages. This is also why it’s so important to make sure your practice does all the right things on Facebook so your healthcare social media can effectively reach patients before the other practices do so.
Now, there’s no rulebook on using Facebook as a healthcare practice, but there are certain guidelines, tips, and tricks that can help your practice best connect with patients on Facebook. So, if your practice just made a Facebook page and needs direction, or you’re just checking on your Facebook marketing strategies, here are 6 tips and tricks for marketing to patients on Facebook:
1. Don’t be an outsider!
Facebook is an online space where people like chat, watch videos, see their friends’ pictures, catch up with family, and just enjoy some social time in a leisurely and fun manner. With that in mind, it’s important to be a part of the community with your practice’s Facebook page.
In order to become a part of the community, you need to join the conversations, connect with people, and be as personable as your practice can be. Using any hard-sell tactics on your Facebook page, or just over-advertising in anyway whatsoever can result in you becoming an outsider on Facebook.
By coming off to Facebook users as strictly an advertisement, and not something they can connect with, you will struggle to get follows and bring engagement to your practice’s page. So, join the community, don’t be an outsider.
2. Attach a human voice to your practice.
Let Facebook users see the human side of your practice so they feel connected. Facebook is a great place to let patients get to know who works at your practice and what goes on behind the scenes.
By giving a voice to your practice and providing patients with a bit of a transparent platform, you can make your practice “personable” enough where patients may feel more comfortable engaging with your page. Facebook is a great forum for bridging the gap between professional and patient for your practice.
3. Engage with patients as much as possible through Facebook.
The ultimate goal of Facebook for your practice is to engage with patients so they feel connected to your practice. So, whenever possible strive for engagement. You can engage with them in many ways.
For instance, post questions or inspirational quotes for your patients. Posts such as those, or any other “common” Facebook post will come off as more accessible for engagement for patients on Facebook. Additionally, make sure your practice replies to every comment and message as quickly and as personally as possible. This will encourage further engagement as people will engage less and less if they never receive responses.
You can also further engage with patients through mutual interests or collaborating on various concerns, issues, current medical events, or solutions.
4. Focus on high-quality visual content.
Facebook has seen a pretty lengthy and continuous trend of increasing popularity of visual content. This includes both pictures and videos, so make sure you’re posting informative images and interesting videos, not just paragraphs of medical information.
It is important that images are eye-catching, clear, self-explanatory, and original. High-quality image content and infographics can produce a significant amount of engagement among Facebooks users as well as videos.
5. Take advantage of Facebook Insights to see what’s working.
As there is no definitive way to maximize your page engagement and page traffic, it is important to check in on what types of things are and aren’t working for your practice. On your administrator page, you can look at Facebook Insights and see what’s been working and what hasn’t.
Facebook provides analytics on who looks at what and when and compiles data for you to see which of your practice’s posts or campaigns has done well. Once you compile enough data and try enough strategies, you will be able to determine what has worked best for you, why, and then focus on those things in the future. For instance, if your posts in the morning have gotten significantly more likes, comments, shares, and clicks than your night posts, try posting in the morning a little more.
6. Don’t be lazy with your Facebook page.
Again, your practice is not the only practice with a Facebook page, so make sure you put the effort into making yours whole and professional. Being lazy not only allows other practices to market to patients more effectively, but it might even look bad to any people who do click your page.
Be sure to put the effort into fully creating your professional page and all the descriptions and tabs. Also, be certain that all the links and information for patients to reach or connect to your practice are easily accessible, like your practice’s phone number.
Other ways you can create a well-designed, well-functioning, and professional page is by creating clear goals and objectives, and scheduling posts in advance to maintain consistency.
At the end of the day, make sure your Facebook page engages with patients in an interesting, light-hearted, and genuine manner while maintaining a high level of professionalism and expertise. Facebook is certainly an integral aspect of any effective healthcare marketing strategy, so make sure your practice effectively takes advantage of what it has to offer. Just remember, Facebook is a place for people to connect, so make sure your page is always accessible, inviting, and personable – Facebook is not a place for cold, hard ads.