Social Applications for Your Practice
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Facebook just launched new social apps from 60+ companies that will allow users to share their activities with friends via the timeline on their personal Facebook profiles. Facebook had already given us a glimpse of this with the apps they released last year, but now they’ve gone full stream by integrating with sites like the Wall Street Journal, Living Social, and Ticketmaster. Now, by simply logging into to these sites with their Facebook ID, patients are able to automatically post their activities as they occur on other websites. For example, when you managed to score tickets to the NFC Championship game here in San Francisco earlier this week via Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster’s social app would have made it possible to post that achievement directly to your Facebook profile without the need for you to manually submit this update via your profile at facebook.com. (As a bonus, it would also automatically create both widespread jealousy and a sudden influx of ‘friends’ trying to reconnect with you!)
Now, we realize that most doctors don’t have practices with a software development team the size of the Wall Street Journal. So, building one of these apps for your own practice to enable patients to share your great work with their friends is likely a bit of a stretch. But, this move by Facebook does support an ongoing trend of how we all use Facebook to share & recommend services. And, it’s another affirmation of how we’ve been telling doctors to best use Facebook to reach new patients.
We commented last October on how Facebook removed the ‘review’ tab from their business pages; and these new social apps are another step away from businesses doing their own self-promotion. We’ve also maintained for years that the best marketing is done by your patients – not by yourself on your own page that few potential new patients will ever see. While it’s still a valuable branding resource to have a Facebook page for your business, the best way to actively reach new patients is to have your existing patients telling their friends about you. And, as it becomes easier to share online with more sites integrating with Facebook, the simpler it becomes for your patients to make these genuine word-of-mouth referrals online.
This latest move by Facebook to enable even more users to seamlessly make realtime recommendations keeps forging ahead with what we’ve been preaching for years – have your patients do the work of referring their friends on Facebook, just like in the real word. We’re happy to see that Facebook themselves are also committed to this far more effective & efficient approach to increasing your word-of-mouth referrals.
Want your patients to refer you to their friends on Facebook? Claim your free DoctorBase profile to and the Panda will give your practice the referral-power of a social app at:
http://doctor.DoctorBase.com/claim
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