Should I friend questionable people on my veterinary practice's Facebook page?

If you are able to accept friend requests from your practice's Facebook page then it's not set up correctly—it's set up as a personal page instead of a business page—and you need to address that issue first and foremost, says Brenda Tassava, CVPM, CVJ, author of Social Media for Veterinary Professionals (Lulu, 2010). She says Facebook doesn't like businesses that set up personal accounts and knows practices whose accounts have been banned because they made that mistake.

Clients will only be able to "like" your business Facebook page—they won't even have the option of requesting friendship. Team members weild full administrative privileges, which include monitoring and reporting spam. You can also change your page's settings to only allow wall posts from the practice, but Tassava doesn't recommend this. "Social media is meant to be a two-way communication within a community of like-minded people," Tassava says.

Most importantly, don't worry what your followers are doing on their personal Facebook pages—this cannot be seen by the rest of your community simply because they "liked" your practice's page. The content you generate is the most important thing you should focus on, Tassava says. After all, that is what the members of your online community will see in their news feeds.