With half of the almost 600 million users now spending an average of 50 minutes a day hanging out on Facebook, creating a Page that represents your business is quickly becoming an essential component of your long term marketing campaign.
If you currently have a page for your business on Facebook then you have probably noticed recently – like in the last month – that there are some changes in the way your page looks and functions.
While many of them are not a huge concern for us as Chiropractors who trying to understand and use social media as just one of the legs in our overall marketing strategy, a couple of them are a little more significant in how they can impact getting a greater number of Facebook fans.
Before we get going too far into this, let’s make sure you are good on the difference between your Profile and a Page.
• A Profile is your personal page that is assigned to you automatically when you sign up to be a part of the Facebook community.
• Your Page is something you have the option of going in and setting up only after you have signed up for a personal profile. It is often referred to as a Fan Page or Business Page.
Whew!…glad we got that out of the way.
Probably the most significant change to Facebook Page functionality and the one we will focus on in this article is that you can now interact with other business pages as your Page verses as your personal Profile.
To access this new ability, you click Account and then click ‘Use Facebook as Page.’ You are now able to do almost all the same actions directly from your business Page as you could via your personal Profile.
OK, so what does this mean and how can it benefit you exactly?
Previous to this new change, you could only interact (make posts and comments) on business pages as your profile which means that anyone who thought fondly of your post or comment would need to send you a friend request to connect with you. Most people are not going to ‘friend request’ a stranger.
Now you have the ability to interact on business pages as your own business page so if someone digs your post or comment and checks you out further, they will be taken directly to you page where they can simply click the Like button to become a fan of your business page. In other words, you now have direct page exposure to people who interact on that page verses giving you only personal profile exposure.
Let’s review some ways you can use this to your advantage in gaining an increased number of fans.
1.
You can ‘Like’ a business page as your Page. So, basically instead of liking or becoming a fan of another business Page from your personal Profile, you can ‘like’ another business Page from your own business Page. So in other words it is a Page liking a Page verses a personal Profile liking a Page.
This benefits your business because it is now directly connecting your clinic with other businesses who have fans verses only connecting you personally.
2.
You can now comment on other’s posts as your Page. If you go to a local business page such as your city’s Convention Center or Chamber of Commerce Facebook Page, you can…
comment on posts that their page administrator makes on their own page
comment on posts that others make on their page
comment about others comments to post
A great benefit to this is not only that you are showing activity and life, i.e. socializing, with your page but also because now everyone who ‘liked’ or commented on that post before you is also going to get a notification that you made a comment, unless they have their own setting configured to not get notified….which most people do not.
If you make a clever comment that adds to the topic of the post and other’s find interesting, then there is a good probability that a couple of people who see your comment will click on your icon and go see what you are all about. If they like the page they land on, they will click the Like button so that what you post on your page will now populate into their news feed. And just like that you have another fan who will be receiving the great content and occasional marketing promotions you post to your Facebook Wall.
3.
You can make posts on other business Pages as your Page. In the old days (a few weeks ago) you could only post on another business’ wall from your personal profile. In other words, if you were to post a great link or the article you wrote on ‘6 Tips to Help Headaches Naturally’ onto you local nutritional store’s Facebook Wall, you could only have done that from your personal profile. Now, you can do it directly from your page.
So what would you post on another business’ page? Well, let’s get to that by first discussing what you would not post. You do not want to take a self serving approach in any of your Facebook posts on other pages; this would include anything that directly mentions a promotion at your office. In other words, it’s not cool to go onto a business page and make a post about your upcoming ‘Free Patient Exam’ promotion. Sure you will announce promotions through posts on your own page wall on occasion but not on other people’s page.
You want to limit your posts to good quality content that gives the reader tips and advice or discusses a subject that relates to what you are an expert in. You can even ask a question on occasion to provoke more responses from those that visit the page.
Once you find local pages that you like and begin to share comments and posts on, make sure you don’t hog the stage. By that I mean space out your intelligent comments and great posts so that you establish a presence but don’t become a nuisance. If the administrator of any page decides you are a little more than they want for their page, they can erase your comments or posts and ban you from their page with roughly 2 to 3 clicks of their quick little mouse. That’s not the type of response you are looking for in marketing your clinic online.
