What is social media?

Social media is distinct from traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film. Where traditional media requires significant resources to publish information, social media uses relatively inexpensive and accessible tools that enable anyone to publish or access information.

Why should you care?

The basic idea is that social media is designed to disseminate information through social interaction – often referred to as social networking. Social media supports the human need for social interaction with technology, transforming broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). Social media allows you to connect with your clients in a more powerful and affordable way than ever before. Social media also gives the information you contribute the potential to become viral. What that means for you is that your message can often get out to a much larger audience than you ever expected – or paid for!

Facebook

Facebook is a free social networking website that allows users to add friends and send them messages as well as update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by various interest groups, including businesses, schools, clubs, etc.

If you're looking to tap the marketing potential of Facebook (Facebook has more than 250 million active users, many of whom are in your town!), your first step is to create a free Facebook Business page. Leveraging Facebook business options can provide a new method for you to interact with your clients. At the same time, these pages, called Public Profiles, can also help you acquire new clients as your Facebook fans spread the word about your hospital to their friends.

Setting Up Your Hospital’s Facebook Page

If you’ve already created a personal Facebook profile, you’ll find the process pretty simple. Either way, Facebook’s step-by-step form pages make creating a business page painless.

You will need to have your hospital’s basic information ready before creating the page —decide on a page name (typically the name of your hospital) and find any images you want to upload. Remember that your logo is best for the profile picture. With this information handy, let’s get started! You can navigate to the Business Setup section of Facebook or simply use this link.

Choose either ‘Local Business’ or ‘Brand’ from the three available categories. I recommend using ‘Other Business’ under Local. Once you select a category, you are required to enter the hospital name. When you submit this information you will then see a business page for your hospital that looks like a personal profile page on Facebook – except it will be void of any information other than your hospital’s name.

Now you will want to upload your logo (if you have one), provide information about your hospital, contact information, hours of operation, and a general description of your hospital and its services. As you add more details about your hospital, you can view the changes live on the page you are creating. You’ve now setup your hospital’s Facebook Page!

Next Time: Adding More Detail and Interactive Content to Your Hospital’s Facebook Page and Getting the Word Out!