Don?t look at your Facebook page as just a marketing avenue. Your Facebook page should be its own entity and an extension of your brand. You?ll notice that the most successful pages on Facebook are community oriented. Communities share content, like posts, and leave comments. As we found out in FB Marketing Tip #3, engagement is extremely important for Facebook.
But how do you create a community?
Creating a strong community is actually a lot easier than you might think, particularly for doctors. Most of your Facebook fans will be fairly local, so some of them might already know each other. If you post about events in the area or local news, your fans will be able to relate and join in on the conversation. This creates the magic ?E? word, engagement.
You need to interact with them and acknowledge all of the people who like or post on your page. One of the best ways to do this is by spotlighting your fans and patients. You could have a ?fan of the month? award, mention your fans in Facebook posts, and reply to their comments. This will show that you care about your fans and create 2-way communication.
The biggest roadblock you can put up when creating a community is establishing a sense of one-way only communication. If the fans feel ignored, they?re not going to remain fans for very much longer, and might not be your patients either.
Another step in creating a community is to encourage interaction between your users. You can do this by linking to your fans? pages or websites when it?s appropriate. You could also set up a video chat with all of your fans and do some type of Q&A session (not addressing personal medical issues of course) with Livestream right in Facebook.
You could also ask your fans questions and hold polls. For instance, asking something along the lines of ?What makes dental visits easier for you?? will show patients and fans that you value their opinion and add some fun to your page.
Once you?ve built a strong community, you have a team of loyal people who will share all of your content for you, like all of your posts, and check your page daily.
Change your mindset from ?how many patients can I get from Facebook? to ?what can I do FOR my Facebook page fans?? and you?ll be shocked by how much more you get in return.