Looking to grow your Facebook following? Of course you are. No matter how many fans your page has, a few more could never hurt. More fans mean more people engaging with your brand when they spend time on social media, and high totals look impressive to new visitors and hospital stakeholders alike.
Growing your Facebook page doesn’t happen overnight, but following best practices can help expedite the process. If you’re not already doing all of these, they could be just what you need to stand out online.
1. Post regularly
It may seem obvious, but people don’t “Like” empty pages. If you successfully direct people to your page but there’s no recent content, you’ve probably wasted your time or advertising dollars. And even if they click like, they’ll quickly forget about you if they don’t see any new updates.
Make a habit of posting at least a few times a week—daily if possible—and don’t break it. If you don’t have time throughout the week, set aside some time on Monday (or any other day—just pick one and stick with it) and schedule a week’s worth of posts. That way you only need to monitor performance instead of posting all the time.
2. Help fans stay healthy
Let’s face it—no one WANTS to see the inside of a hospital if they can help it. But if you can engage members of your community when they’re healthy, they’ll be more likely to think of your hospital when they (or their loved ones) aren’t. Healthcare leaders like the Cleveland Clinic (with 1.45 million Facebook fans) keep readers engaged with lots of healthy food ideas and recipes, active lifestyle tips, and timely health and wellness resources.
Content marketing isn’t just for your website—useful, relevant health information will always attract more likes and shares than straight up promotion.
3. Share photos and video
Facebook videos are exploding in popularity, and people are much more likely to see—and share—vibrant, visually attractive images than plain text posts. Every share you get on a post extends your page’s reach to more people in your community, often with an endorsement of the shared content, without having to spend a single dollar on advertising.
4. Curate content
You don’t have to create every bit of content shared on your page. New studies and health advice from reputable sources provide your fans with even more information that’s useful to them and increase the chances of the people or organizations you share sharing your content in return.
5. Promote high-quality, targeted posts
Which ad would you rather click on—a name and description in the Facebook sidebar or a promoted post that thoroughly answers a health question relevant to you or a family member? With Facebook’s ad targeting tool, you can make sure your posts are shown only to users who want to read them—increasing the chances of those users liking your page and the value of your advertising dollars. Promote a post about packing healthy school lunches to moms with kids aged 6–11, or make sure the over-65s in your audience see your latest post about heart health.
6. Retarget posts to website visitors
Stay on top of the people who visit your website without contacting a doctor or making an appointment with Facebook’s custom audience tool. When you add a Facebook pixel to your site, you’ll be able to target ads at those people to bring them back or create a “lookalike” audience to target similar users instead. It even lets you set standard events so you don’t show ads to people who have already converted.
7. Add Facebook CTAs to every page of your website and blog
You probably have CTAs for your email list already, but what about those who just want to find you on Facebook? If people are looking for your page and don’t see a link right away, most of them will just give up. Make sure they don’t have to dig around or click onto a social media page to find that link.
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