After not so many phone calls, emails, IMs, text messages, Skype® conversations, and even some actual face to face communication, we thought it our duty to lay out simple step by step instructions on how to add the recent Facebook Questions application to your dental practice page. It can represent a highly effective social media tool for your dental practice.
To recap, Facebook Questions is an updated on-page application people can use to:
- Learn from your friends – Get recommendations on restaurants, music, and more…people do look for a good dentist from time to time.
- See Where People Stand – Create a quick poll to gather opinions and learn about your friends…or patients.
- Share What You Know – Answer questions, or point your friends in the right direction…you know a lot about dentistry.
No more prodding on how to use the Questions tool for your dental office, this post is solely dedicated to making sure you can easily add Facebook Questions to your practice Facebook page. If you don’t yet have a Facebook presence for your dental practice, click here for a super simple social media action plan for the dental practice.
1. To add the ‘Questions’ tool to your practice page, start by logging into your Facebook account, then begin using Facebook as your practice, not your personal profile. If you are already administering your own practice page, this initial step should be no different from any other change you’ve made. Obviously you want to be using Facebook as your dental practice, and not your personal profile.
2. Go to http://www.facebook.com/questions – and click the ‘Get Questions Now’ green button seen here:
3. Success, you should see the following confirmation, click ‘Okay’:
To make sure everything is hunky-dory, click over to your practice page and make sure you see the ‘Questions’ functionality added. You will notice it right by your status bar seen here:
If you don’t notice the ‘Questions’ functionality added to your page, take a look at the left-hand side of the page, it may be listed under your page navigation. Simply click on ‘Questions’ and it will load right up.
Ipso facto, your dental practice can now ask questions, run polls, take surveys, and generally communicate with your patients where your patients are communicating with each other.
After you ask your question, it will be posted to your practice page wall. Experiment with the questions tool, take a poll, or just have fun with it. Ask what to name your fish, what color to paint the reception area, how many patients follow the local HS sports team…the possibilities for engaging your patients (and their friends, and friends of friends) are endless.
One more thing, Facebook does a great job of archiving your practice questions. You’ll be able to go back and view the results of past questions – things like how popular a particular question was, and who participated in the process. Best of all you can track the involvement to dial-in topics popular with your fans, followers, and loyal dental subjects.
Get started asking questions!
