In the last installment of this blog article, we covered some of the basic components of an internet marketing program for physicians, such as SEO, Blogs, Organic Search and Long-tail Keywords. In this installment, we will discuss Social Media sites and their importance to your inbound marketing plan.
Social Media: These are websites that are used by millions of people around the world to connect with friends and colleagues to keep up to date on what’s going on in their personal and professional lives. Individuals can endorse a business by “liking” the page on Facebook (www.facebook.com) or giving it a “+1” on Google+. (Go to www.google.com and click on “+You” at the far left of the top menu bar). When a page is “liked” or “+1’d”the status updates posted to that page appear on the pages (newsfeeds) of every one of that person’s “friends” or “circle.” Getting people to “like” you on Facebook or Google+ is a way of exponentially increasing your exposure to the public. Registration on all these sites is free.
LinkedIn is a website for professional networking. If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, you should be, and the same for Facebook. Go to www.linkedin.com to register. There are forums for physicians including the AMA, and any number of other medical associations. When you go on the site, you can search to find topics of interest to you and get involved in the conversations. Later, prospective patients looking for information on any of these conversations can view your comments in their search engine results. You also want to publish links to your blog articles on the social media websites—this again will increase your exposure by showing up in the newsfeeds of your followers’ circles and increase the chances one of them will in turn like you or click on the link to learn more.
Twitter is the site where members can post “microblogs,” short messages of 140 characters or less, to announce blog articles posted to your website, comment on other articles on the web, or post random commentary on issues that matter to your “followers.” I’ve even seen physicians post play-by-play reviews of conferences they’re attending—giving a micro summary of a speaker’s content or commentary on it.
There are also sites where patients can “rate” or “grade” a physician. Sites like RateMDs, HealthGrades and Vitals.com are all sites where patients can post reviews of their physicians for all the world to see. While not all of these sites allow physicians to manage their own profile, it’s a good idea to search for yourself on these sites anyway to see what kind of reviews you have. HealthGrades and Vitals.com allow physicians to enter information about themselves and thus enhance the patient’s experience when searching for reviews about a particular provider. Unfortunately, it’s as common to see negative reviews of a physician as positive, and there is little a physician can do to combat or respond to negative reviews or reviews that are simply inaccurate—usually because patient privacy laws would stand in the way of giving details that correct the record. Nonetheless, presenting a positive profile experience to the person searching for you online can do a lot toward getting that person to make the appointment.
The goal here is to engage the prospective patient and make him or her feel comfortable with the idea of choosing you as a healthcare provider. Giving prospective patients the confidence they seek is tantamount to building your practice, and the use of web tools is just one of the essential components toward achieving that confidence.
In the next installment of this blog post, we will discuss the three pillars of inbound marketing: Attract, Convert and Analyze. We will also discuss SEO best practices, and what NOT to do when trying to boost your practice’s website and social media traffic.
