Posted on June 2, 2014

Tips to Improve Your Practice’s Facebook Page

Everyone wants to get the most out of their Facebook business page, but do you know which elements make up a compelling profile on the social media network? There are a lot of different factors that go into creating a successful Facebook business page and many of those share common elements. From adding a clear cover photo to completing your page’s About Section, here are a few easy tips to help you make the most of your practice’s Facebook page.

Add a Customized Cover Photo

This sounds like a relatively simple concept, but you would be surprised how many pages fall flat at completing this task. A custom-made Cover photo can go a long way in the social media stratosphere. Just like all other places on the World Wide Web, you want to make sure your brand is properly presented to potential customers. When users land on your Facebook page, you want them to be able to figure out who you are and what you do in about 3 seconds. When you page has a customized Cover photo it not only allows visitor4s to understand what your practice is all about, but it also looks professional and represents the branding associated with your practice and your practice’s website.

Claim Your Facebook URL

Another easy way to improve your Facebook page is by claiming a custom URL for your page. If you’re not certain what a Facebook URL is, check out the URL that appears in your browser’s address bar when you visit your Facebook page. Here is an example of a Facebook page that has not claimed their custom URL:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Equine-Calculator/857469375913

Compare that URL with a page that has claimed their custom URL:

www.facebook.com/GlacialMultimediaInc

The vanity URL makes the link cleaner, neater and more importantly, branded.

Claim your custom Facebook URL by updating your Page Info through the Admin Panel of your page.

Complete Your Page’s About Section

There’s plenty of space to tell the Facebook world about your practice, so make sure that you don’t leave your About Section blank or incomplete. There are two main fields to fill out for your page’s About Section: Short Description and Long Description. Facebook allows 155 characters to be used in the Short Description of a business page, which is the first thing users see when they visit your Facebook page. Make sure your Short Description is clear and concise; use the same branding associated with your website’s tagline here.

The Long Description in your Facebook’s About Section allows you a lot more room to describe your practice, specialties offered and even include your website URL. If you have multiple locations you can also list those in your Long Description. Use this space to also insert relevant keywords in order to maximize search potential for your practice.

Have a Posting Strategy

Optimizing your Facebook page to look aesthetically pleasing as well as professional and properly branded with all of your practice’s information is the first step in achieving success on this particular social media platform. The second stop is to have a posting strategy that involved interesting and engaging content that will keep your followers coming back to your page.

I recommend a posting schedule of twice per week. This way followers’ News Feeds are not being bombarded by constant updates from your page. Of course it is perfectly fine to post more than twice in a week if there is a special event or offering happening within your office. Just be certain that you aren’t posting items mere minutes apart. You can use Facebook’s Page Insights guide to help you determine when posts perform the best and tailor your posting schedule around those statistics.

Your posts should be engaging, interesting and informative. On top of that, make sure that your posts, whether they include a link to a certain story or article, include some sort of image. According to research as little as 7% of a Facebook Page’s fans will actually see updates on a daily basis. This is due to what is called EdgeRank, the Facebook News Feed algorithm that determines what people see when they log in to their Facebook account, but there are ways to increase the number of fans who see your updates. One such way is to make sure that all of your posts include images.

Of all the types of content you can share on Facebook, it has been found that image-based posts elicit the best results as far as engagement and fan reach go. People love visual content and so does Facebook’s EdgeRank. This means that photos get more visibility on Facebook rather than text-based updates. If you’re got something to say, make sure you use a photo to ensure higher visibility to your fans.

Timeliness is also an important thing to factor in when posting content to your practice’s Facebook page. The faster your address your followers’ questions, concerns or comments, the more likely those same followers will engage with your Facebook page and its posts in the future.