Facebook v. Website…
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Doctors often ask us whether they need their own website. While a blog is definitely the way to go when it comes to search optimization, a website can still serve a purpose for your practice. It allows you to message your own brand (i.e. – you!) and present yourself to potential patients as a form of an online brochure.
The advice we always give is to keep your existing website if you feel it’s giving an accurate & up-to-date portrayal of your practice…just make sure you’re not getting ripped off! Sadly, we hear from doctors paying $50 to as much as $400 per month just to host a website. Unless your webmaster is running paid advertising for you along with hosting the site, this is waaaaay too much. You can host your own site for under $10 a month through hosts like GoDaddy or 1and1.
Or, with the advent of a pretty cool new Facebook application we played around with this week called Pagemodo. It’s not the most polished app yet, but you can use it to create a welcome page that looks just as professional as the average templates medical/dental website for your Facebook page. (Plus, it comes along with all of the search-optimized-social-networking-goodness of Facebook!)
Here’s what I did, in under 30 minutes, for free:
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelHaverhals
1. Created a public fan page on Facebook
2. Created a welcome page on Pagemodo
3. Felt uncomfortably arrogant creating a fan page for myself
Again, this is all for free – so please don’t fall for claims that a ‘professional Facebook profile’ costs a few hundred dollars! And, if I did want it to look more professional by removing the Pagemodo links, it would only cost me $20 a year. Still a much better deal than $50+ a month!
Want to learn even more about Facebook, how it works, and how to make it work for your practice? Join us for an educational webinar and Q&A session to learn about Facebook in more detail.
No Ads. No Sales Pitch. Only Education.
Join us this Thursday, July 8th at 12p PDT (3p EDT) by RSVPing here:
http://www.DoctorBase.com/webinars
