It’s always tempting to denigrate the current king…of anything. Maybe it’s the American idea that anyone can be the best, despite your means or upbringing, so a case needs to be made to bring the leader back down to the rest of us. Don’t believe it? Just look for trolling of Apple, or Tom Brady, or Nick Saban, or Taylor Swift, or whoever else is on top today.
So it goes with Facebook. Now that older people have sort of taken over Facebook, forcing our kids to the hinterlands of Instagram and Snapchat, it’s somewhat popular to think Facebook will soon be the next Internet Explorer. You see stories about the “end of Facebook” or how Facebook doesn’t have the same power now that it’s not the preferred choice of today’s youth.
Wrong. After passing one billion users in 2012, the social media behemoth now has over 1.71 billion users. And in the U.S. 72 percent of online adults visit Facebook at least once a month. Do you think that spells shrinking influence?
At MyAdvice, we encourage all of our clients to have a Facebook for Business page. Whether we help you build it and manage it, or whether you choose to do that on your own doesn’t really matter. What matters is having a page for your practice. Here are some reasons why we believe that.
Strength in numbers
Your practice is always happy to have new patients. If you think of it, Facebook has 1.71 billion potential new patients, give or take a few million! Just the sheer numbers make Facebook for Business worth your time. This spring, Facebook announced they had passed the 50 million mark of Facebook for Business pages. Here are a few other stats about businesses and Facebook.
- Percentage of U.S. small businesses that use Facebook: 47%
- Percentage of U.S. companies that use Facebook: 86%
- 2.5 billion comments are made on Facebook for Business pages each month
- 49% of Facebook users Like a Facebook page to support a brand or business they like (do the math on THAT one!)
Facebook is cheap
Want to create your Facebook for Business page? Here’s the cost — $0. You may pay us to build and manage it, but regardless, your Facebook buy-in is zero. Your first expense will be if you start paying for ads to get page Likes, to boost posts, or to run sponsored stories.
Facebook is inexpensive in these areas, as well, especially compared with more traditional media such as newspaper or radio. Plus, since Facebook knows everything about its users, those ads and page boosts you buy can be ultra targeted.
See the performance. Be the performance.
Facebook loves statistics. That’s why it is so valuable to businesses — because it has the statistics on users. But when you have a Facebook for Business page, it also provides you with tons of useful statistics in Facebook Insights for your page. Here are just a few of the myriad statistics they provide:
- How many page Likes you have
- The reach of your posts and your page
- Engagement of the page
- Post performance
Try getting those statistics the next time you place an eighth-page ad in the local paper.
Facebook for Business builds loyalty
As long as your posts show that you’re active, entertaining, useful, and showing interest in your followers, they’ll keep coming back for more. A video of a patient who is talking about how stoked she is about her brow lift. A contest to guess how many shades whiter teeth whitening makes your teeth. A photo of your aesthetician’s new baby. A link to a Time magazine article on the popularity of the aesthetic industry.
These kinds of posts allow your followers/patients to feel engaged with your practice far more than they could before Facebook for Business was around. And when they comment on your post, and you comment back, now you’re really showing them the love.
Plus, every time a follower clicks on one of your posts — whether those clicks come in the form of Likes, comments, photo views, or shares — that follower is sending a signal to Facebook. That signal says, “I’m interested in this content. Please show me more!”
Link back to your website
Using your Facebook for Business page to drive traffic to your website is a necessity. Link posts in Facebook now generate a full-width thumbnail image if your website makes one available. These thumbnails draw more attention and are likely to get clicked, which sends the person to the linked page on your site.
Now, instead of simply being amused by a Halloween dress-up day at your practice, if you have a link post to a blog about teeth whitening after eating dyed cupcakes, your follower may be interested in booking a whitening appointment. And the interaction started because the user thought the receptionist dressed like Barney was a hoot!
At MyAdvice, we’re big fans of Facebook for Business. If you have any questions about either building a page or managing it, or anything else really, contact your MyAdvice representative and ask away!
