Top Key to Facebook Marketing Success

Is your practice Facebook Page flailing? If so, chances are you may not have a Facebook champion in place. Social marketing is all about people, growing relationships, and interaction. Without the right champion in your practice, your Facebook efforts may go nowhere. An effective champion can help to motivate patients to like your Page and build excitement around your online community with both staff and patients. So what traits make for an ideal Facebook champion? See the list below for several important qualities:

• Enjoys talking with people. This is a person on your team who can connect with just about everyone. They are gregarious, friendly, cheerful, and may smile a lot:)

• Is a life-long learner. The one thing that will remain constant moving forward is change. You want your champion to be open to new ideas and technologies. This person enjoys learning and exploring new opportunities.

• Is web 2.0 comfortable. An ideal champion will not fear digital conversation and interaction, whether it be via Facebook interaction, email or live online chat. Here is where some practices are struggling, but rest easy, you can always train and educate your champion. This trait will continue to become even more critical with internet marketing taking over a growing portion of many practice marketing budgets. And while some social marketing activities can be outsourced, even the best social media program will fail without internal participation at some level.

• Is a natural at nurturing relationships. Remember you can teach someone technology skills, however there are some traits that you can never change. People who connect well with others and can nurture those relationships—whether online or in-person—are naturals at what they do. You’ve heard the term “hire for personality”, and the same holds true for your champion. Just because someone “loves Facebook and has hundreds of friends in their network”, doesn’t mean they will be effective at asking patients to like your Page. Natural relationship builders also often have an internal sensor that guides them on the right or wrong thing to say.

In working with numerous practices across the United States and internationally, I’ve heard many team members say, “None of our patients are on Facebook” or “Facebook isn’t working for us”. However with the right person, training, and tools in place, their Facebook Page efforts skyrocketed resulting in amplified engagement and word of mouth.

Who is your Facebook Champion?