By Anna Laura McGranahan
With over 2.4 billion monthly users, Facebook is a fantastic asset for medical practices and businesses to connect with patients and potential new customers. However, if you have multiple brick and mortar locations, it can be complicated to properly reflect your entire company on one Facebook page. This is where Facebook Location pages can help.
Here’s why your business needs Facebook Location pages:
What Is a Facebook Location Page?
Think of a Facebook Location page as a piece of digital real estate. Each one you create for your company is reflective of the brick and mortar locations associated with your practice or company. For example, if you have locations in Atlanta and Tampa, you should create Location pages for each location and each will be properly associated with your business page.
Facebook Location pages have a parent-child relationship, in which the main company page acts as a “parent” or “corporate” page and each location has a child relation. Location pages allow you to create individualized “child” pages while remaining affiliated with your main company page. Therefore, while you may have a Facebook page named after your business, each location page will be created underneath the page, connecting all of the locations to the main business.
What are the Benefits of Facebook Location Pages?
If you have multiple brick-and-mortar locations, it could be hurting you not to have Facebook Location pages set up. Here are some of the benefits you should keep in mind:
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) implements best practices to increase your website’s discoverability and rankings in organic search results. This same principle applies to people searching on Facebook. Creating location pages for each of your locations on your company’s Facebook page increases the likelihood that your business will show up in search results. Fully optimized Facebook location pages will help more people find you.
Contact Information
The “about” section of your Facebook page tells viewers essential details about your business. This includes hours of operation, street address, and contact information.
Enabling Facebook location pages makes it easy to add the correct information for individual locations, therefore making it easier for potential patients and customers to find wherever your business is located.
Ease of Access
Integrating all locations under the main company page makes it easier to see who has access to each page and helps manage individual locations. You can also set the main location page to share all posts to individual locations or manage each location page separately. Learn more about managing Location pages.
How Can Facebook Location Pages Help My Business?
Here are some ways location pages can benefit your business:
Encourage Check-Ins
Whenever a user writes a status on Facebook, they have the option to “check-in” wherever they are. If they choose to do so, that location’s information is shared with their entire network.
An optimized location page is a great way to pop up first in their search results and make your business more visible to nearby visitors. The more check-ins your business receives, the more new faces can discover your business.
Recommendations
Once you set up Facebook locations, you will have the option to receive recommendations on each of the individual pages. By enabling this feature, patients and customers won’t be leaving recommendations on your main company page. Instead, they will leave them on the correct location page.
This is a fantastic way to build trust with the local audience around that brick and mortar location.
Get In Touch
You will also have the option to receive messages to an individual location page. When properly managed, this can help patients and customers get in touch with the appropriate location quickly, thus finding answers to their questions faster.
How Do You Set Up Location Pages?
You’ll need to set up the Location Pages Manager from within the Facebook Business Manager. Here’s a helpful guide from Facebook if you’re new to it. Once Location pages are enabled, make sure you do the following for each location:
- Select the appropriate page template.
- Create a custom URL/username for each individual location.
- Update the profile and cover photos to be reflective of that location.
- Revise the “About” sections with all relevant contact information.
- Start posting to your Location page(s).
Need Help With Facebook Location Pages?
As Atlanta’s Top Healthcare Marketers, Lenz Marketing specializes in integrated marketing services, including digital marketing, PR, design, and advertising. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about Facebook location pages. Click here to contact us today.