Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

April 23-29, 201212 Social Media United Kingdom Edition 16/03/2012 15:49 A s of March 30, 2012 drastic changes were seen on all Facebook business pages. In addition to the visible changes Facebook’s new timeline design brought to page walls, there are also many unseen modifications that are important to note. One of the most important changes to note is the removal of the prominent “recommend this place” option. I’ve touted this as one of the most power- ful ways to actively promote your practice on Facebook. If you never saw this option, it used to be located in the up- per right hand corner of your page. It was a place where rec- ommendations (testimonials) lived. If you had lots of rec- ommendations, take comfort in knowing that each of those recommendations likely re- sulted in dozens or hundreds of pieces of word of mouth be- ing shared on Facebook about your practice. From here forward Face- book has yet to decide if they will continue to feature recom- mendations in a separate box or not. Regardless, you will get the same ability to automati- cally feature testimonials or comments from patients in a box labeled “recent posts by others”, which is essentially similar to the recommenda- tion box, except it’s labeled and positioned differently... It will still provide benefit in messaging that will be pub- lished to the poster’s Face- book friends when they post a testimonial or comment on your page wall. Again, the ben- efits are the same; it’s simply an adjustment on the layout and wording. Remember inviting patients to share their likes, comments, recommendations or thoughts on your business page is still the most powerful way to ac- tively market your practice on Facebook. A second change, and per- haps the most welcome of en- hancements, will be the ad- dition of what Facebook calls Rita Zamora outlines the most important changes and how they can affect your practice Important Facebook changes impact your business page ‘Inviting patients to share their likes, comments, recom- mendations or thoughts on your business page is still the most pow- erful way to market your practice on Facebook’