INBOUND ACCELERATOR

We’d all love to create that piece of content that lights up the metrics meters on our website’s dashboard or Facebook Insights — comments, shares, clicks! But we know that the majority of content created today won’t hit that huge payoff. But what kind of content does?

Facebook is an essential part of any small business’s marketing strategy today — after all, nearly 8 in 10 American adults use the platform, and as many as 74 percent of purchases are influenced by social media.

Is your small business on Facebook already? How confident are you that you’ve set up your page in a way that puts your best foot (or should that be face?) forward?

When we asked healthcare providers about their most successful social media channel, more than half pointed to Facebook, likely due to its position as the social media platform that reaches the most American consumers of all ages.

Your social media posts are written to engage followers and hopefully link them back to your website. But the true power is not simply in your original posts (which may only be seen by a small percentage of followers), but when those posts are shared.

Here are a few stats to chew on for a minute:

• Facebook users view more than 8 billion videos every day.

• One in five Facbook videos is now a live broadcast.

• By 2020, over 75 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video.

Now a question: Is your business’s Facebook page a part of this future?

If not, do you have plans for joining the crowd? Sadly, if you don’t, you may be left behind.

If you’ve taken the time to create a great social media image — whether it is a beautiful photo of your facility or a meme meant to make your followers stop and think (or giggle) — the last thing you want to have happen is for parts of the image to be hidden when it is displayed in your followers’ news feeds.

When you share your business Facebook page with someone, what does the URL look like?

Is it a random jumble of letters and numbers, which may have been assigned by the platform when you first created your page, or is it clear that this Facebook page belongs to you?

Healthcare is one industry that straddles the line between tradition and new technology when it comes to marketing. While social media now tops the list for how healthcare marketers distribute content to reach new and existing patients, more traditional formats such as print magazines remain an important part of many marketing strategies.

If a Clutch survey of small businesses is correct, within the next year more than 85 percent of businesses with 500 or fewer employees will be using social media. It seems to me like a reasonable prediction, as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and others have changed the landscape of how we connect with one another and share information, for both personal and commercial reasons.

Wondering what little changes you can make to your Facebook strategy that will increase engagement and exposure?

Sometimes, it’s as simple as following a “less is more” philosophy — such as keeping your posts to 80 or fewer characters — or asking a question.