Planning A Social Media Strategy For Facebook

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to be a part of the customer spotlight series from Demandforce and was interviewed byfrom Eric Ng, Demandforce’s Social Media Specialist. Below is part one of the actual interview that I had with Eric: - Betheny Green

Like Annie, I too am on the hunt to find small businesses that embrace and effectively utilize social media. Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to speak with Betheny Green, the Social Media Specialist at one of Demandforce’s customers in our dental vertical, Mortenson Family Dental, regarding the practice’s robust Facebook Page. This customer spotlight will be a three-part series that will touch on the entire process you should consider when using social media: planning, executing, and adapting.

For the first part in the series, Betheny spoke at length about her social media strategy for Mortenson Family Dental and how she set her goals:

What is your overall Social Media goal for Mortenson Family Dental?

For Mortenson Family Dental, my goal is to “humanize” our social media initiatives while staying true to our brand. I accomplish this by sticking to three principles – educate, inform, and entertain. Educating, informing, and entertaining our Facebook fans not only ensures that they continuously visit our Facebook Page, but engaging with them on a consistent basis also solidifies our sense and feeling of community. Ideally, I would like to make our Facebook Page a one-stop shop for our practices – a place where they can interact with the doctors, other patients, and ultimately schedule an appointment.

What is your overall Social Media strategy for Mortenson Family Dental?

It is impossible to achieve our goal and implement my three principles without engagement! Just posting on your Facebook Page is not enough – lead off each post with a question, respond to each comment, or throw a contest. Equally important is making sure you know your target audience. Your posts will be ineffective if it is not geared toward your Facebook fans. I work hard to understand our target markets needs and interests and then work harder to build a relationship between our brand and our fans/target market. Knowing your target market will get you into the mind of your audience, allowing you to connect with and get a response from the right person, while also making your Facebook Page lively and social.

Betheny’s focus on engagement, trust, and community are certainly characteristics of a successful social media campaign. Understanding your target demographic is a critical step during the planning and strategizing process of social media, and I really enjoyed talking to Betheny about all the things she considered before even starting her Facebook Page.

In the second section of the three-part series with Demandforce, I spoke with Eric about the results of my campaigns and the impact on my customers that her Facebook Page has made. Be sure to check out my next blog post!

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