5 Ways to Attract New Followers to the Facebook Page for Your Diabetes Clinic
A successful Diabetes Marketing plan for any medical clinic includes a strong Social Media Strategy. While there are many social media platforms available to growing businesses, Facebook remains the proven platform for maximizing patient engagement.
In fact, Facebook is the most widely used social media platform; It has over a billion active users and five new users are added every second.
Attracting relevant, engaged followers to your Facebook page takes time, but you’ll get the most rewards. Here’s how you can build your Facebook strategy to rapidly scale up your diabetes practice.
1. Build a Solid Foundation
Whether your Facebook page has been live for years or you are new to social media, the first step to increasing traffic to your medical practice’s Facebook page is reviewing, adding, and updating your practice information. Accurate information with attractive images will get you more followers and boost SEO on your medical website.
Here’s a checklist you can use when evaluating your Facebook Page information:
- Add your location, phone number, email address, and hours of operation so that relevant clinic information is accessible without much effort on your Facebook page.
- Create a username for your clinic name page to streamline the URL. This way your URL will appear as facebook.com/YourMedicalPractice instead of showing as facebook.com/pages/37429576. This makes it easy to share your Page with patients and your community.
- Include short and long descriptions of your clinic. A good rule of thumb is to have friends and family review your page descriptions objectively. If they won’t click through to your page based on your details, potential patients won’t either.
- Include your website URL in the long description along with the “About Us” section provided. Adding the URL of your website creates a backlink to your medical website which can improve your SEO.
- Select a primary page category.
- Choose sub-categories that better describe your specific target audience.
- Include specific information such as parking directions or assisted driving directions.
- Add profile and cover photos. Your profile photo must be of a real person! Avoid using stock photography or an image that is unrelated to your clinic. A picture of your team or major healthcare provider makes your Facebook page more attractive and builds trust.
2. Promote With Pride
Once your Facebook clinic page is customized with thoughtful information and images, share it with your community. Link your clinic page to your personal profile by updating the work and education area of your personal page. Encourage the rest of your staff to do the same so that everyone in their network is 1-click away from the information on your clinic page.
Here are more proven and effective ways to promote the clinic page of your diabetes practice:
- Add social media widgets to your diabetes website and email signature.
- Add your Facebook URL and practice signage to marketing materials including business cards, brochures, print and digital ads.
- Send an email to current patients. Be sure to list the benefits of liking your Facebook page, so that it doesn’t appear as spam to your patients.
- Post an interesting article related to your practice on your Facebook Clinic page. Share articles on your personal page to encourage your friends to explore your clinic page.
- Use hashtags to reach people outside of your immediate circle of followers. Hashtags make your post visible in search results. Choosing a trending or frequently searched hashtag can help bring outsiders to your page. However, be careful with your use of hashtags; Too many hashtags can be considered spam.
3. Post-smart
There is no magic number regarding social media posting. Continuity and content quality in posting are two important elements to remember. Commit to posting on your medical practice’s Facebook page 2-3 times per week to start building a following.
Keep these considerations in mind when creating a post for your practice:
- Research shows that posts that include images get more overall views, clicks, and shares. In fact, when an image is included, social media users are 44% more likely to engage with your content.
- Follow the 80/20 rule to avoid too much self-promotion – 80% about them, 20% about you. When sharing a link to a health article or other type of valuable patient material, add your own thought to the post to personalize. Commenting with a shortlist is a great way to attract users to your posts, as lists are easier to follow than paragraphs of content.
- Keep your posts short and relevant. Each post should have a theme or main idea. If you find yourself trying to sum up too many ideas in a single post, break it up into separate posts. Posts with too many views will seem cumbersome to Facebook users, increasing their chances of not engaging.
If you get a comment on one of your posts, be sure to reply! Leave thoughtful feedback, ask an open question to keep the conversation going, or “like” the comments you leave on your posts to show your thanks. Whatever you do in response to comments, make sure it is timely. It is best to reply within 24 hours.
4. Follow Smart
Strategic alliances with other relevant local clinics can help attract local followers. Like clinic’s Facebook pages, you work regularly in your diabetes practice. This may include a local diabetes clinic or healthcare service. Facebook uses Page Likes to help provide suggestions on who to follow.
To save time, follow popular medical news sites you trust. This will make it easier to share their content when posted, as it will be directly in your own News Feed. Other pages you can share frequently are also smart to follow, including pages with workout routines, or other health-related activities.
5. Evaluate Regularly
Once your page is optimized with accurate information and engaging posts, it is important that you regularly review your Facebook clinic page in the same way that you review your diabetes clinic website.
Update the content of your page as it becomes out of date. A good rule of thumb is to spend 10 minutes once a month verifying the information on your page. Add any new photos, staff member information, or practice information. Consider refreshing your cover photo with a new service or product taking over your office, a monthly special, or an updated photo of your medical staff.
During this short monthly audit, check your Facebook Insights as well. Your insights help you determine which posts have made the most impact on your patients’ news feeds by showing you post impressions, clicks, likes, shares and more. Knowing what types of posts your patients respond best to can help you create impactful posts in the future.
With millions of clinics on Facebook, don’t let your diabetes practice page get lost in your patient’s news feed. Here’s what to remember:
- Customize your page with the latest information.
- Use any opportunity to promote your Diabetes Clinic Facebook page to your patients and community.
- Make the content of your posts interesting, unique and shareable.
- Build strategic community relationships to promote your diabetes practice.
- Evaluate your Facebook page regularly and monitor the success of your strategy to make necessary improvements.
I am also a Facebook Marketing Consultant or Entrepreneur; I also help many diabetes clinics with this diabetes marketing. Contact us if you would like to take advantage of our services. +91 888-22-66-111
