Facebook advertising for dentists is one of the best ways to grow your practice and get people into your sales funnels. To take advantage of powerful Facebook ads and other features, however, you need to first set up your dental Facebook page.
Your dental Facebook page will act as your office’s home base on Facebook to grow an audience of raving fans, show people your practice’s culture, share your best social-media posts, attract new prospects into your funnels, and more.
If you don’t yet have a dental office Facebook page, your first step in mastering the amazing effects of Facebook for dentists is to set up your dental office Facebook page. Here’s how to do that.
1. Create a new Facebook page for your dental office.
After you log into Facebook, set up a new Facebook page for your dental office right here.
2. Choose your business category and enter your practice’s name and address.
Facebook’s Page creation will ask you to select a business type and enter information about your business on the next page. In all likelihood, Local Business or Place will be the right category for your dental office Facebook page.
Once you select your category, enter the name and contact information for your practice.
In the “Page Category” section, start typing “dental” and “dentist” to see what category best fits your practice from among “Dentist & Dental Office,” “General Dentist,” “Cosmetic Dentist,” and “Pediatric Dentist.” Facebook changes the way they do things frequently, so search for and choose the best category for your practice.
Once you enter your information, click “get started.”
3. Upload a Facebook profile picture and cover photo.
When you click the “get started” button, Facebook will ask you to upload a Facebook profile picture and cover photo for your dental office Facebook page. Having high-quality Facebook profile pictures and cover photos help you present a consistent image that captures your practice’s brand and culture.
Your profile picture could be a high-quality photo of you, particularly if you’re a one-doctor dental office, or it could be your logo. Either way, your profile picture should be a high-resolution, square picture. For the tech-savvy dentists: your Facebook picture should be at least 180 x 180 pixels.
Your dental practice Facebook page cover photo could be a picture of your office or your team, or it could be a custom image that demonstrates how great your practice is. The picture itself should be 820 x 312 pixels, but must be at least 399 x 150 pixels.
4. Complete and customize your profile.
Once you complete the Facebook page profile picture and cover photo step, you’ll be taken to your new dental practice Facebook page. Your page will be three columns. The left column will be mostly navigation. You’ll see your image, a “home” link to take you to your main page, a “services” link where you can list the services you offer, and more.
The middle column is where your posts will go. When you first create a page, you’ll see a welcome message in this middle column with page tips below it. If you skipped the step to add a Facebook page profile picture and cover photo, you will be prompted to do that there. In addition, you’ll be prompted to add things like a custom username. That allows you to create a clean, custom url for your dental practice Facebook page that is easier to remember and doesn’t have a long string of numbers. You do this by clicking the “create username” prompt from Facebook.
You will also be asked to enter a short description of your practice, where you can enter a couple of sentences to tell people what your practice is all about. Let them know why your practice is different.
Facebook does a good job of walking you through the steps to complete your dental practice’s Facebook page. Be sure to complete the following extra steps when setting up your dental practice’s Facebook page and keep them up to date if anything changes.
Add your hours of operation. Let people know when you’re open, so they can see how your practice could fit with their schedule.
Add trusted team members as administrators or give them posting privileges, so your team can help you manage your page.
Add a link to your website or contact form. Underneath your cover photo, you will see a blue button with a call to action. This is usually set to “send message” as a default, but if you hover your cursor over the button, it allows you to edit it. If you want to leave it as “send message,” you can click the button and enter a message to automatically reply to someone letting them know you will reply as soon as possible. If you want to change the button, you can edit it to do a number of things by clicking the “other options” button on the bottom of the pop-up window. That opens a window with all of the options for customizing the buttons, including letting people book an appointment, call your office, send you an email, link to a video or page, and more.
5. Add posts and get ready to grow your new dental office’s Facebook page!
Once you finish these steps, you will have a professional dental office Facebook page that’s ready for you and your team to post the best dental practice Facebook posts out there and build a following of raving fans and new patients.
To get you started, here are some additional tips for posting to and growing your new practice Facebook page. For more help using Facebook to grow your practice, sign up for your 14-day trial to Delivering Wow U and check out my Facebook Mastery course or join my free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook group, where thousands of dentists and I help each other build better practices.