Facebook Marketing for Physical Therapy Private Practices – How to Stay Engaged

No doubt you have already set up a Facebook Page for your practice and hopefully you have a number of fans that have joined your page since then.

Your goal now is to build a relationship with these fans and interact with them. You want to let your fans know that you value them and they are special. By doing so, you will encourage them to continue to read and interact with your posts. You need to consistently give your fans a reason to care about what you have to say.

Here are six ways to make your fans feel special and encourage them to stay loyal to your practice:

Fan of The Month

This is a great way you can make your fans feel special. There are so many variations of this theme. For example, it could be a fan of the month or a birthday of the month. Or if you want to take it a step further, crown a patient of the month for someone who has improved significantly over the past month. You get the idea, but whatever theme you use, your fans will love it.

To make it fair, you could make a random drawing where you pick a name out of a hat. Some people even video it and upload the video to YouTube and then post the link on their Facebook page.

Or it could be a reward for a fan that you think has made the most valuable contribution to your page. Or you could come up with a short-list and encourage other fans to vote and base it on how many “likes” a particular nominee has received.

This type of promotion is very simple but works well by highlighting individual fans on your page and putting them in the spotlight.

Here are some examples from companies who do this well:

The beauty with this kind of promotion is that you don’t have to give any prizes out other than the recognition they get from being featured as a “fan of the month.”

It is a good way to interact with your customers and fans. It shows that you appreciate and value them. It also encourages them to stay loyal to you and your patients as well as interact on your Facebook page.

Ask The Physical Therapy Expert

This can be excellent way to drive traffic to your site and to provide valuable information for your fans.

For an example of a good ‘Ask The Expert’ topics, take a look at this web page: https://csspt.com/ask-a-pro/

Now consider making these topics live events.

Here’s one from PRO PT that we really like:

https://www.facebook.com/PROPTPHYSICALTHERAPY/videos/1855558364473172/

This is how it would work:

Choose a day where you or another physical therapist from your practice shares their expertise about a certain topic. Have another employee (or even a patient, if possible) interview the expert with some general questions about physical therapy treatment, general health or exercise tips. Change the topic a couple times per month and use it as a platform to open a conversation about something you feel patients can benefit from.

This is a win-win situation for everybody involved. Your fans will be happy because they can learn more about physical therapy and have some important questions answered. You win because your fans are happy and more educated, and you may have also managed to draw in new patients.

For this to work effectively of course you will need to have a decent amount of active fans or you will not get enough participation.

All About the Fans Day

This is a similar theme to the fan of the month as it is yet another way to make your fans feel very special and appreciated.

A great way to do this is to allow your fans to promote themselves on your page. So if your fans have a website or a blog, let them post a link.

Create a special day each week or month where your fans can post anything they like about themselves. It can be their site, a picture of their kids, pet, car or whatever they want to post.

Obviously, you will be around to moderate the posts and make sure that they don’t violate any rules or directly compete with what you are offering, but it is a great way to encourage interaction.

Three More Ways to Turn Your Fans into Ambassadors:

1. Run a Live Event & Feature a Fan
2. Promote a Local Cause & Increase Their Reach
3. Use Facebook Live Video to Share a Topic of Interest

Make Sure Your Message is Seen – Boosting Posts

You may have read that Facebook has essentially eliminated organic reach of Facebook Business Page posts (Reference) .  At the time of this post, that’s exactly what we are seeing.  For example, if you have 100 Facebook Page fans (Likes), and you posted something this time last year, 20-30 of your fans may have seen that post in their news feed.  Today, that number has been reduced to single digits.

Side Note: if you do get your fans (hint, hint your staff members for example) to share your page posts, you will still get some organic reach.

To combat your loss of organic reach, you will want to boost your Facebook posts.  It’s fast, easy and for a few dollars (i.e. $10 – $20) you can still reach a significant number of people.  Therefore, when you do post something of value as described above, make sure you use the boost function to get the message out.