The Facebook algorithm: social media for dentists decoded!
Social media platforms like Facebook have 2.91 billion active users each month.
If you have a business that you are aiming to promote, this is a great way to do so. Social media platforms enable you to connect with customers or if you are a dental surgery, patients and potential patients, by increasing awareness of your brand and boosting leads.
Much like Google, there is a Facebook algorithm that is important to understand when it comes to a successful marketing campaign.
At Dental Focus Marketing, we have been working to boost the prominence of dental surgeries using social media for dentists, and we are all too familiar with the Facebook algorithm. We can help you to get more people to visit your dental surgery web page and hopefully turn into patients at your practice, using the social media algorithm to benefit your surgery. Great!
But how exactly does the Facebook algorithm work? When it comes to social media for dentists, it is well worth at least knowing a bit more about this. So, read on to find out.
The algorithm
When somebody checks their Facebook feed, posts will appear. It may seem that the posts appear in the order that they were posted, but this is not the case. The Facebook algorithm determines the posts that people see every day and every time they check their Facebook feed. When it comes to social media for dentists and promotion, in order to get people to visit your dental surgery page, you will want to make sure your posts appear at the top of the feed.
The factors
The algorithm has 4 main ranking factors. The first is a listing inventory of the posts that are available to be shown on somebody’s feed. Then, there is a signal from each post that tells Facebook exactly what the post is about. In your surgery’s case, it may be dental implants or Invisalign aligners. Next, Facebook predicts how users will react to each post in said inventory, and a final score is based on all of the ranking signals.
To break that down a bit more, if you have a dental patient who is a member of your practice and they have been looking at articles about dental implants, the next time they log onto Facebook, the algorithm will list a recent post that you made about dental implants at the top of their feed, as they are more likely to respond to it.
Categories
Next, the algorithm looks at categories.
You’re more likely to see content on Facebook or other social media from sources that are interacted with, and this is why it is so important to write content that is engaging for your social media web page. If people do not engage with your social media posts, the algorithm will rank your posts lower.
It also explores the categories that people interact with. If you have dental patients who are linked to your surgery page and prefer reacting to videos rather than blog posts, then it is important to post a variety of media types to ensure that you get a higher ranking on the algorithm and on their feeds.
And finally, any posts that we create for your social media page will be aimed at getting interactions from the people who will see them. This will promote your dental surgery page and will prioritise this post in the general algorithm.