Fine-Tune Your Facebook Following Through Smart Contact

Over a billion people appear on Facebook every day to do everything from checking in with friends and family to seeing what’s new at their local hospital. Sure, they show up on your page and maybe weigh in on a patient education issue, or “like” a photo of the new urgent care center you just opened, but how do you actually tap into their personal interests more directly than randomly throwing information into the mix?

Paid ads and promoted posts have been helpful at extending organic reach, but their approach is still more or less “shotgun.” Fortunately, Facebook has introduced two new targeting techniques that boost clientele intelligently. We call them smart contact, since they give you the tools to take more precise aim at the right consumers.

Interest Targeting allows you to reach audience members by identifying their tastes using categories like location, demographics and interests. Here’s how it works: Lets say you are trying to tout your hospital’s maternity facility. Rather than just have anyone and everyone read your MIDWIFE UPDATE, now you can have it appear only in the feeds of female followers ages 18 to 40 interested in pregnancy who live within 30 miles of your hospital. Yes, you wind up targeting fewer people total, but the yield is potentially greater, since you’re reaching out to the right crowd, not just haphazardly hitting up everybody.

Another hot offering is Facebook’s Post End Dates feature. This innovation allows page administrators to specify a date and time when posts expire so they disappear from live feeds. What this means is that when your hospital’s blood drive is over, for instance, the story will stop materializing in people’s streams. The post will continue to appear on your business page, though, which always houses the bigger picture, without disturbing your audience with outdated information in the place they expect to see current details, not yesterday’s news.

Never underestimate the power of social media marketing — especially the omnipresent Facebook.

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