5 Reasons to Keep Your Business and Personal Facebook Pages Separate

Here are five recommendations on using Facebook from practice management expert Audrey McLaughlin. This is excerpted from the new ebook, 26 Social Media Tips for Your Medical Practice: Expert Advice on Making the Most of Social Media. The book brings together tips from experts across healthcare, marketing, and social media to provide you with best practices to effectively use social media for your medical practice.

1. Facebook’s user terms say so, and you are better off following their rules on their platform. You may find yourself with a cancelled account for violating Facebook’s Terms of Services if you are utilizing one of the “personal profiles” strictly for business promotion.

2. You may reach the ceiling. Your business page allows unlimited fans to “like” it and see your content. A personal page however is capped at 5,000 friends.

3. Analytics. Personal pages don’t offer the analytics that Facebook’s business pages offer. If you are not measuring what is effective in your efforts and what is not, then you are doing yourself and your practice a disservice.

4. Advertising. The very problem that most practices have with Facebook is also what makes it so great. Extremely targeted and cheap advertising.
You won’t find any other advertising source (outside of social media) that will allow you to drill down into specifics about your ideal patient more than Facebook.

5. Respect of your IRL (in real life) friends. Friends and family want to support you so they may put up with your constant promotion, but polls show that they just want to see things of a personal nature. It is okay to occasionally share something from your practice’s page, but try to keep them at least semi-separate.”

Looking for more ways to use social media to engage with patients and colleagues in your practice? Download 26 Social Media Tips for Your Medical Practice: Expert Advice on Making the Most of Social Media now!