A common scenario: You have a website for your practice, but you’ve been told by Search Engine Experts that a domain of the doctor’s name (eg. SidSmithMD.com) will help you come up first on Google. So what to do?
Enter redirects. What are redirects? Redirects let you forward one domain to a different domain. Eg. the user enters SidSmithMD.com, but it forwards to his practice website. And if you do it right, it is also good for your Google results.
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The short answer to this question is a big fat no. But let’s dig a little deeper.
Firstly, being personal friends with a patient on Facebook will very likely not fit the requirements of appropriate patient-doctor boundaries. Is it professional to let your patient see a post about your family outing? Or your position on a political issue? Or a photo of you from your freshman year in college? Feel free to have a personal FB account, but limit its privacy settings to family and friends only.
Luckily Facebook is for businesses too. There are many medical organizations on Facebook. The American Medical Association as well as the CDC both have Facebook pages. Even the President has one. It makes sense for doctors to do the same. MORE
We all agree online reviews are powerful tools. Many practices get patients from their reviews. So let’s teach you how to harness their power!
First decide which review sites you want reviews on. Perhaps the 2 most popular:
• Yelp
• Google +
There may be others based on your specialty and location eg. Yelp is not popular in every city.
As your satisfied patients leave your office, slip them this card along with a reminder for their next appointment.
You’ll be surprised how effective some of these review sites are. A recent article in Forbes discusses growing power of patient reviews.
Reviews are influential. And if you’re a great doctor, your patients will be happy to let others know it. Harness the power of reviews to improve your practice.
My love of the movie “The Social Network” is what allows me to say, with conviction, that in February of 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, he did not predict the degree to which it would become a stomping ground for companies and entrepreneurs. But that’s exactly what it has become. In fact, as of March 4th, Facebook hit 15 million business pages!
With this massive shift towards social media oriented marketing the next logical step is to have clinics and practices putting themselves out there as well.
But why?
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As more Internet users choose to present consumer reviews online, reputation management and ensuring your practice’s online presence remains unblemished will continue to grow in importance. In this series of blog posts, I will explore four different pathways of preserving one’s online reputation:
1) Monitoring Web Search Results
2) Dos and Don’ts When Responding to Online Comments
3) Pre-Emptive Measures
4) Reminders
This first entry will deal with methodically keeping tracking of what is being said about yourself and your practice online.
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POSTED BY Page Penguin AT 08:50 am
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