As a practice/small business owner you’ve heard it — you have to be on Facebook and possibly other social media platforms. We’ve told you that. After all, your patients will engage with your practice in ways they never would when in your office. If they had a bad experience, they are much more likely to rant about it on your Facebook page, rather than in your office. And vice versa with a good experience. If a procedure you performed made one of your patients the hit of her high school reunion, she may post photos of the happy event right there on your page. Talk about good marketing!
The problem is, you’re not committed to doing your social media right. You or someone else in the office makes a bland post every couple of weeks and call it good. You’re not on there every day posting interesting content. You’re not on there every day responding to patients who have posted or commented on your feed. You don’t do it right.
And if you’re not going to do it right, you may as well not do it at all. Here’s what you need to be doing, or have us doing, on your Facebook page.
Spend the time or the money
One of the problems with Facebook and other social media outlets is they are so easy to get on and set up your page. You and your staff are all gung ho in the beginning, posting pictures, linking to fun content, writing stuff about your practice. All is well…for two months. Now it’s getting to be old hat. Because you don’t have a person designated to attend to your social media every day, a couple days go by without any interaction, then weeks, then it’s been a month or two since you posted anything.
So? People do this all the time with their personal Facebook pages, right? And the only thing that happens is their girlfriend/boyfriend from the 9th grade is hurt because you didn’t respond when they tagged you in an old yearbook photo.
But on your practice’s Facebook page, such cold-shouldering can come back to bite you. If a patient posts those photos from her high school reunion on your page, she’s expecting a reaction from the very people who made her so popular. But you haven’t checked your page in two weeks, so she doesn’t get any feedback. While this may not make her mad enough to leave your practice (after all, you’re not the only plastic surgeon, dentist, or dermatologist in town), it definitely is a missed opportunity to fully acknowledge the patient and how great she looks and how proud you are that she’s a happy patient. And it’s a missed opportunity to possibly mention another new procedure that could make her look even better for her next reunion, maybe something like Kybella or ThermiRF.
Put it this way, a dead Facebook page is worse than not having a Facebook page in the first place.
These are the things you need to do:
Post content — Are you regularly creating visually appealing content on your Facebook page? Are you posting pics of the new baby of your aesthetician? How about the new CoolSculpting machine you just purchased? How about a link to a funny video? How about a contest with a free Botox session to the winner? That’s the kind of content you need to put up, and you need to do it every day.
Monitor activity — You need to pay attention to your social media. Did someone comment on that photo of the aesthetician’s new baby? Well, you darn well better comment on her comment to show that you’re paying attention and care. Or if someone is grousing about something, you absolutely need to respond and hopefully fix the patient’s problem. To leave it there, unaddressed, is the worst customer service you could ever provide. You need to consider your patients as your friends and treat them that way when they come to your Facebook page.
A dedicated person — Dedication to your social media is important, so you should probably dedicate one person to be in charge of it. This doesn’t need to be the person’s full-time gig, but it can’t be the 117th item on his or her job requirements list, either. As the practice owner, you need to choose this person carefully. Will he or she be good at it? Can they interact with your patients creatively and in a thoughtful manner? Are they diligent about responding and posting? Make the person’s social media portion a real part of the job, not a sideline to be done five minutes before he or she leaves for the night.
If you’re not prepared to do all of this with your Facebook page, and any other social media accounts you have, then you’re probably better off NOT having those social media accounts. Or you can pay us to handle them for you.
If you have questions about your social media, ask your MyAdvice representative.
