YESTERDAY, FACEBOOK MADE ITS NEW TIMELINE FORMAT AVAILABLE for business pages. By March 30th Facebook will switch ALL business pages to the new timeline layout. Here at My Social Practice, we’re super excited about the cool features that we believe will make your dental practice’s Facebook marketing page even more powerful and effective in telling your practice story.
1st Thing To Love – Cover Image
Now you have the ability to place a branded cover image at the top of your new timeline. The image above shows the solution that we are rolling out for all of our clients. However, you will have the capability to easily change that image periodically if you’d like. More details about dental social media strategies for changing this cover image coming soon.
2nd Thing To Love – Direct Messaging
Now your patients, practice friends, and prospects can send you a private, direct message through Facebook without posting the comment publicly. You will see the message in your new admin panel. And by the way, you’ll like the new admin panel too!
3rd Thing To Love – Easy, Visible Navigation
That tiny, hard-to-see-and-find, left sidebar navigation is gone! Thanks, Facebook! Now we have the ability to show up to four links right up at the top. Facebook doesn’t allow you to control the first one—it will ALWAYS be a link to your photos. However, we can control the next three. If there are more than four, the little dropdown icon will let people view the rest.
This now helps you prominently display a “Request Appointment” button and a link to your current Promotion and/or Offer!
4th Thing To Love – Prominent Contact Info & About Page
This is SO much nicer than before. For a gigantic brand like Coca-Cola, this change may not be very important because people typically don’t need to easily contact them using a phone number or address. Also, things like hours of operation hold little value. But for a dental practice these things are especially important and nice to have more visible.
5th Thing To Love – Friends Display
Now there’s a prominently displayed place on the landing page that shows your patients and prospects which of their friends also Like your practice, as well as their friends’ public mentions of related topics.
6th Thing To Love – “Pinning”
This is awesome. Now you can “pin” a specific post at the top of your page for seven days at a time. For example, when you roll out a new Facebook promotion, you can “pin it” at the top so that it stays visible.
7th Thing To Love – The Timeline Itself & Milestones
When Facebook rolled out the timeline for personal pages, one of its primary objectives was to better tell your individual story. Now, your dental practice’s story (and culture) can be more easily shared as well. For example, dig out that great photo you took on the day you finished dental school! Or, the day you cut the ribbon and opened your first practice! Upload the photo and tie a timeline date to it to begin sharing the history of your practice. The age-old rule always applies—people do business with people they like. This feature can help your practice become even more personal in the eyes of your patients and prospects which leads to strengthened relationships and increased loyalty.
Rollout For Our Clients
Some of you have asked us what you need to do. You don’t need to do anything. We’ll make the switch for you and take care of the changes by the March 30th deadline. Of course, it’s your page and as an administrator to your page, you can “switch” to the new layout anytime you’d like. However, your page won’t look like the example shown in this post until we work on it. So, it’s up to you, but it may be best to wait until we make the changes for you.
Stay Tuned
As we work more with the new timeline, stay tuned for more training topics and tips.
We Strongly Suggest…
We strongly suggest that you take a few minutes and go through Facebook’s training about your new page! It’s easy and important. Click >HERE
About the Author: Jack Hadley is one of the founding members of My Social Practice located in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is passionate about helping dental practices grow by using dental marketing strategies. If you’d like to book Jack or one of the other members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that on our dental marketing consultant page. Interested in learning more about the benefits of SEO for dentists, and our incredible dental website offering? Learn More!
