We want your dental practice’s Facebook Page to grow. A vibrant community on Facebook means that your current patients are announcing to their friends that they are big fans of their dentist. You will be reminding them that you care about their oral health and you will be reaching new patients who may not know about your practice.
The success of your social media campaign lies in two crucial strategies: (1) Helping people find your Page, and (2) Giving them a reason to engage with your Page. In this blog post, we want to cover the first strategy by giving you 10 essentials to help people know that you have a presence on Facebook. We call them essentials because they are basic, foundational steps that every practice should follow in building a Facebook community.
- Place a link to your Facebook Page on your website. (Smile Savvy does this for free!)
- Get 25 Page likes as quickly as possible to make sure your custom, short URL has been claimed. This way, instead of the address to your Facebook Page being a long string of letters and numbers, the address will be a short version of your website (ex. Facebook.com/mywebsite).
- Tell all of your friends and family members. The more popular a Page is, the easier it is to find in a search on Facebook. Start with who you know.
- Make sure everyone in your office that has a Facebook profile has liked your Page
- Encourage your staff to SHARE your Page on their own Facebook Timelines and encourage their friends to like your Page.
- Include a link to your Facebook Page on everything you send out. It should be on your business cards, stationary, billing/invoices, appointment reminders, email signatures (for everyone in your office).
- Send out an email. Do you collect patient emails? Send them a quick note asking them to like your Facebook Page.
- Prominent office signage at check-in or check out, and especially in waiting areas should let people know that you are on Facebook and should encourage them to follow you. Make it easy with a QR code, short URL, and a clean, bold sign that asks for the like.
- As dentists, you have a naturally captive audience! Don’t forget to verbally tell patients and guardians about your Facebook Page and encourage them to like your practice.
- Mention your Facebook Page on voice mail messages, hold recordings and automated confirmation systems, etc.
