Optimize Facebook: Prime Your Practice for High Growth

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By Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD

A web site and a presence on social networking sites such as Facebook isn’t enough. Implement a focused strategy to create an effective Facebook group for your practice, and use that group to find new patients and keep existing patients loyal.

If you are like most optometrists who took ROB’s Digital Aptitude Test, you found out youare Digital Ready, but perhaps were not certain where to start. To keep it simple, I recommend that you start with one social media network instead of diving into all of them at once. For most people, it makes sense to start with Facebook because it is the most widely used.

Start a Personal Account
Get acquainted with Facebook as a personal user first.If you do not have a Facebook account, go to http://Facebook.com and open a personal account. Fill out only the sections of your profile that you are comfortable completing. As with all forms of social media, you’ll need to decide how much information about yourself you’d like to share. The good news is that you have control over this, but you have to learn how. Take some time to read Facebook’s Privacy Guide and this post from All Facebook. Regardless ofhow carefully you set up your privacy settings, remember that no system is perfect. Never post comments, pictures or videos you don’t want others–including your patients–tosee.

“Friend” to Begin Networking
To start communicating, you need to link your profile to other people by “friending” them. Start by finding your family members and friends. Also start finding pages of businesses and organizations that interest you and “like” them. You can start with ROB’s Facebook Page. You will also learn how other businesses reach out to their customers, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Create a Page for your Practice
Now, take what you learned by creating or optimizing your personal page to create a page for your practice. It is important to understand that this is a page, orFacebook group,and not another personal profile. (Read this for more information.) Fill out the page info completely with all the ways patients can find your office.Encourage people on your personal network to “like” your practice page to begin gaining a following.

Get Attention!
The primary purpose of the Facebook page of your practice is to gain the attention of patients and potential patients. The more interaction you have with your patients, the more others will see your updates. (Read why here.) Share links from other optometric sources, so that you don’t have to write all the content on your own. Encourage patients to leave comments by using questions, practice photos or humorous comments. Remember to keep it professional and positive–just like you do at your practice.

Use Facebook Applications to Reach Patients
While Facebook controls the layout and structure of your page, there is a lot of flexibility with the ways you can reach patients. You can use applications to show graphics, play videos, take polls, and many other interactive things. Facebook is always growing and changing and there will definitely be even more options to reach patients in the future.

Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warfordof Bright Eyes Family Vision Care in Tampa, Fla., is a graduate of Illinois College of Optometry.He isa member of the American Optometric Association, and is currently immediate past president of the Hillsborough Society of Optometry, as well as chair of the Children’s Vision Committee of the Florida Optometric Association. To contact him:Doc@BrightEyesTampa.com.