Facebook recently announced new rules regulating posts from business pages. These new rules could potentially filter out your pharmacy’s promotional posts from your patients’ news feeds on Facebook, making your business less visible.
Facebook will implement these new controls for promotional posts from business pages beginning in January 2015.
According to Facebook’s announcement, these regulations seek to curb the amount of promotional content from business pages that contain these three traits:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
Even before these new filters, the number of users who saw posts had greatly decreased for many businesses, according to Forbes. In 2012, business pages reached about 16 percent of users, but as of December 2014, they were lucky to reach 2 percent.
With your promotional posts getting pushed out of your patients’ news feeds, it might be time to change how you approach Facebook. Don’t throw away the work you put into building a fan base on Facebook just yet. Instead, try these tips to make your Facebook page work for your pharmacy despite the dwindling number of users who see your posts in their news feeds.
Promote your Facebook page in your pharmacy
Promote your Facebook page by offering a discount off your front end if patients go to your Facebook page and get the coupon. Direct patients to your Facebook page with flyers, posters and in-store promotions. Even if your pharmacy’s posts gets filtered out of your patients’ news feeds, your Facebook page can still be effective if your patients visit it directly. Plus, once you get them there, they’ll scroll through your pharmacy’s page and see the great health tips, discounts and other important information you post regularly.
Maintain your Facebook page for visibility
According to Pew Research, 71 percent of adults in the U.S. use Facebook. Even if your posts aren’t making it to the top of patients’ news feed, maintaining a Facebook presence is still important to reach that large audience.
Many current and potential patients use your Facebook page to check your address, hours and contact information. Facebook’s search feature also allows users to find pharmacies near them, so keeping your pharmacy’s page up-to-date with the latest information makes it easy for new patients to find you.
Demonstrate your expertise
Although the new regulations promise to filter out posts that promote your products or services, you can still make your way into patients’ news feeds by sharing content that doesn’t sell anything, such as health news or tips. Sharing articles or blog posts you’ve written is also a great way to boost your profile as a knowledgeable health care professional. And, if you share quality content on Facebook, you’ll have patients searching for your page to read up on the latest health news.
Plan and schedule posts
Keep your pharmacy’s Facebook page fresh with an ongoing series. This could be a series of health tips that you publish every Friday afternoon, or a weekly deal that you post every Monday morning. Pick a topic and stick to a schedule when posting it. That way, even if your posts get buried in patients’ news feeds, people know to check in at the regular day and time each week. If the content and deals are good enough, they’ll seek out your page regularly.
Use Facebook’s other functions
You can do so much more than just post to your Facebook page. Make groups, invite people to events, share great articles or other information that’s important to your patients and your community. All of these functions create opportunities to interact with your patients and build awareness about your pharmacy on social media without paying for ads or to promote your posts.
As Facebook’s new rules and increased competition continue to cause the number of users who see your posts to decline, remember to get creative, not discouraged, when it comes to social media posts.
