There are a few quick updates you can make to your practice page that will have big impact!
1: Vanity URL– Is your practice facebook page easy to find? If you aren’t using a custom url that say your practice name it might be. These are often called vanity url(s).
My vanity url is: https://www.facebook.com/dogdaysconsulting/ . It works like this, if you tag my business in a post and you use my Facebook username @dogdaysconsulting I will get a notification that you tagged me and if others click on that link it will go to my page! Win-win. You definitely want your clients using your @username in their posts about how great you were with their pet so their friends can click on the link and find out more!
If you aren’t sure what your username is, open your Facebook business page and look on the left hand side below the profile picture. You will see it listed there as your page name. You can edit this from the ‘About’ page.
2: Update Basic Info: Keeping your hours, phone number, address, website and other pertinent info updated is critical to making sure that your existing and potential new clients can find you easily!
3: Use Your Keywords: Not gonna lie, keyword research can be time consuming. It is one of the things that you can do over time and just make a list that you look at when you are creating content. More like a marathon not a race. The quick explanation for ‘keywords’ is to ask yourself what are people typing into a Google search bar to find veterinary hospitals like yours? ‘Veterinary Hospital Near Me’, ‘Vet for cats’, ‘vet for bulldogs’, etc. You get the idea.
Google ‘crawls’ our pages and websites and measures the use of keywords and that will help with SEO and searchability but don’t go overboard or use the same ones over and over. It’s too obvious that you are stuffing your page. It’s like in school having to write a paper and being required to use ALL the vocabulary words.
There are a few free tools you can use to find relevant keywords. I like the chrome extension Keywords Everywhere, and I also use Ubersuggest by Neil Patel. Both of these tools will list keywords found on a page and show you how they rank. Add the ones that relate to you to your keyword list.
4: Short Description: This is the short description area on the About page. This is where you can enter your practice/business mission statement. Use some of your keywords in this box as well.
5: The Practice Story: This is a longer description area that tells the story of the practice and your ‘why’ for doing what you do. Remember to use keywords that naturally fit into the flow of the story. Be compelling. Remember why you started your practice in the beginning. What brought you to the doorstep the day you decided to buy/open/start your practice.
6: Customizing Tabs: There are tabs on the right hand side of your page that help the viewers navigate your page. These tabs are there by default and can be moved around or turned off. For instance if you don’t have ‘Groups’ that you want linked to your page you can hide that tab from view. You can also rearrange the tabs to be in an order that you want listed.
7: Profile Picture: This will be what people see when you post or comment on posts. This image is small but needs to be good quality and represent your practice/business/brand well. Some practices use their logo, that isn’t a bad thing but can be a little cold. If you have images that are of you with a pet or something that shows your practice brand in action that would be a great profile picture. You can change your profile picture but remember you should be faithful to your branding and once people recognize your ‘brand’ you don’t really want to mess with it too much.
8: Cover Image: This is your business imaging real estate, much like a billboard on the side of the road. This image can and should change based on current seasons, monthly themes and so on. It could mirror the ongoing marketing agenda you are following INSIDE the practice. If you are promoting a certain product or service this would be a great space to highlight that. Always add your logo to the bottom right corner of the image to continue with your own branding.
9: Quality Content: Video, Shared Posts, Trending Topics, Images are all types of content. The kind of content you post will appeal to some and bore others. That is okay. The main idea here is to TRY to reach the broadest sampling of your intended audience and strike a balance. Check your resources. Don’t post things that are inflammatory, controversial, gross, ultra emotional or devastating. Your audience is not prepared to handle what you handle every day in practice.
10: Have Fun With It: Engage with your audience, respond to comments. Post fun things that happened at the practice or great community outreach you just participated in. This is a social site. It is in our nature to be be introverted professionally but in this instance there is a fine line you can walk that allows you to be extroverted professionally. Celebrate practice events and holidays, use random social media holidays for post ideas.
If you need more ideas on how to optimize your Facebook page or your other platforms please reach out to me! I’m happy to answer quick questions. I am accepting new clients and would love to work with you.
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