Facebook Pages for Therapists: How to Set Up a Practice Page

In a previous post I talked about why social media matters to therapists. The number of people using social media on a daily basis, and Facebook in particular, are astounding! Facebook is a great way to raise visibility for your therapy practice and keep your personal profile and clinic page separate. Before you set up your page it's important to know the difference between a profile and a page.Facebook Profile vs. Page

• You must have a personal profile to set up a professional page.
• Facebook profiles have friends (limit of 5000). Facebook pages have an unlimited amount of "likes".
• Facebook pages are visible to everyone. Facebook profiles can be set so that only people that you accept as "friends" will have access to your personal information. Be sure to set the highest security levels on your profile.
• When you post on your therapy practice page wall it will post as your professional practice name or the name of your clinic, not your personal profile name. Visitors to your practice page will not be able to click through to your profile. Here's a screen shot of my clinic Facebook page. When I post anything on the page wall it shows as "Wasatch Family Therapy" with our logo not as "Julie Hanks."

How to Set up a Facebook Page for your Therapy PracticeHere's a quick YouTube tutorial video I put together that walks you through the basics of setting up a Facebook Page.In future posts I'll dive into more details of how to customize your practice page, use the applications, tag, post video, connect with other referral sources, and more. Do you have concerns about setting up a Facebook page for your therapy practice? I'd love to discuss them so please feel free to post comments below.