Fact: People like to take advice and recommendations from friends and family.
Well, Facebook is actually turning that into…wait for it…an app for that.
What does Facebook Recommendations mean for you as a hospital marketer?
(Also, don’t forget to download our eBook: 10 Content Marketing Answers for Healthcare CMOs.)
What is Facebook Recommendations?
Facebook Recommendations is a new way for people to poll their friends and then interact directly with businesses. Here’s how it works:
- I post that I’m looking for a pediatric ENT.
- My friends write back with their recommendations.
- Facebook automatically populates the reply with Facebook listings of those doctors, including an interactive map to their offices/locations. I can click directly on those listings and see the name, address and rating of that business. And I can contact them directly through Facebook or a third-party connection.
For Facebook, the goal is to keep you on their app as long as possible. They know that people jump around the web trying to collate information from different sources to help them make a decision (Think about the last time you checked Yelp and Google for recommendations). This way it’s one-click shopping—and most importantly, from people your customers already trust.
Why is it important for me to control?
This could potentially be a game changer. Not only for proving social media ROI, but also for ensuring your Facebook presence is as good as possible.
If people have a direct link to your doctor or hospital, they don’t have to move off Facebook to the web to learn more about your services. They can go directly to your page and learn more about you there, or follow the link to your website.
And, if you connect your “make an appointment” module to Facebook, you’ll have data about how much traffic Facebook pushes your way. The next time your CMO asks you why you spend so much time and money on cultivating your Facebook presence, you’ll have rock solid numbers to prove ROI.
What you should do?
- Clean up your Facebook pages: Make sure all of your pages are up to date with pictures and relevant calls to action. Maybe “watch video” or “donate” aren’t the best choices anymore—maybe make an appointment makes more sense.
- Update your addresses: Since Recommendations pulls up a map, make sure your locations are plugged in appropriately. More than one location? Use Facebook Locations to manage those options.
- Developers to the rescue: Talk to your developers to make sure all of your feeds are working. You want to make sure all of your pictures and logos are showing up appropriately.
- Revise your calls to action: Make sure people know how to get in touch with you. That’s probably what they’re going to want to do when they land on your page.
- Connect your feeds: Can you set up your make an appointment system with Facebook’s call to action? If you can, you can gather valuable data about the ROI of keeping up all those different pages.
You can watch this video to learn more about Facebook Recommendations.