Understanding Online Reputation Management for Doctors

In this digital era, reputation management has become a crucial aspect for any medical practice. 

Reputation is all about how the brand identifies itself, and how the public perceives it. And having a great online reputation is an excellent means to enjoy a partnership with current patients as well as prospects! 

However, many doctors are unaware of the fundamentals of online reputation management. 

Keep reading if you’re interested in learning more about healthcare reputation management, and why it is crucial for your medical practice.

But firstâ€Ķ

Does Online Reputation In Healthcare Really Matter?

Glad you asked. In the internet era, your online reputation is your reputation.

It used to be that you practiced great medicine and patients came through the office doors. Today, patients have more choices and more tools than ever!

Regardless of whether a patient was referred by another provider or a family member, chances are they’re going to check-up on you online. And what they see about you can greatly influence their decisions! It’s your job to ensure that the offline realities of your practice match the online reality these potential patients see. 

After all, you want your online reputation to be as stellar as your practice’s clinical care and customer service! So, to help you understand the importance of keeping tabs on your reputation and reputation management a little better, we’ve incorporated the most important aspects of it for you below! 

Negative Coverage Is Often Overlooked!

Unfortunately, we live in a society that can be harsh and negative! 

Although nearly every doctor makes every attempt to have a positive impact on each patient, it’s often impossible to please everyone. 

In fact, when surveyed, 98% of searchers won’t look past the first page of Google results for any query. Therefore, the content that shows up on page for a medical practice (good or otherwise) overwhelmingly controls public perception. 

Let me explain a little better. When patients are dissatisfied with a doctor, they regularly use the internet to convey their dissatisfaction through negative content. What makes it worse is that some doctors, through no fault of their own, receive these negative reviews but do nothing about them. Then the domino effect happens!

The Domino Effect Of A Negative Review

What you as a doctor need to understand is, negative reviews can spread like a rash! Then when searchers look for a doctor in your niche they will see these negative review(s). This can then lead to you losing many potential patients, and gain a possible bad reputation. 

How can this happen you ask? Well, negative coverage is frequently overlooked by doctors, and believe me when I say this..ignoring bad reviews is not a healthy long-term approach! 

Instead, doctors should take a more proactive approach to control their online reputation to make their practice stand out! 

For example- Patients looking for a new doctor will be able to find yours on the internet and on message boards. They then see how successful your practice is based on the positive reviews that your patients provide. On the other handâ€Ķif your practice has numerous negative reviews they will also see this! 

EXTRA TIP- An agency can help filter and negate any negative reviews and turn it into a positive outcome and control the narrative.

How To Turn Negative Reviews Into A Positive

There’s a few basic ways you can turn a negative review into a positive outcome which include:

  • –Monitor your online reputation constantly. 
  • –Don’t ignore negative reviews- always answer!
  • –Reply quickly. 
  • –Take it offline.
  • –Be respectful.
  • –Offer something for their inconvenience so potential clients see how it was handled.
  • –Offer a sincere apology.

The important thing to remember is that people who post complaints just want to be heard. Ignoring a bad comment, a social media post, or google review, will show them and other potential patients that you don’t care about their experience.

Many prospects regard an unacknowledged negative review as more believable than an acknowledged one on review sites. They may give the impression that you can’t improve your business. When medical practitioners answer, they send a positive message that the patient experience is vital, leaving a positive impression.

When responding to negative online reviews, you can prevent misunderstandings and get people to change their negative feedback to helpful feedback.

However, if you take the time to thoughtfully respond, you can take control of the situation and turn negative feedback into a positive experience for your business. 

Create an Online Reputation Management Strategy

Identify Your Unique Value Proposition.

Before jumping into creating a reputation management strategy for your practice, you’ll want to first identify what makes your practice different from the rest. What can you offer to your patients that they can’t get anywhere else! 

Focus on Providing Valuable and Helpful Information.

One of the best reputation management tactics is being helpful to your current and potential patients.

Many marketers know this too, as several are increasingly focusing on content marketing through blogs or social media posts to share helpful information around their industry. A doctor can do this too!

Focus on medical content that can help people see that you’re an expert in your field. And this can even help you develop strong relationships with your current patients and help you bring in new patients after they see your willingness to keep providing value.

Choose the Platforms Where You’ll Engage with Your Audience.

Just as important as knowing what to share is where you’re going to share it. Understanding your patients’ most preferred platforms for engaging with medical practices like yours can help make sure you not only reach your clients but also makes sure that new clients can reach you.

Part of an effective reputation management strategy also involves you effectively engaging with your audience. Email marketing is one of the most popular and profitable platforms to engage and nurture existing subscribers who can later turn into return patients. 

You may also be on Facebook or Instagram to share helpful tips that will get clients results, based on your practices strategies. Just make sure you stay within HIPPA’S guidelines. 

Read up on one of our other blogs- “How to use Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing for your medical practice”.

Here are some tried-and-true tips for enhancing your healthcare practice’s online reputation:

Use Digital Patient Engagement Platforms

Many patients today demand greater healthcare interaction because it can help them achieve better health results. Positive treatment outcomes lead to increased patient satisfaction and a better reputation. A digital patient interaction tool can help you accomplish this. And it gives your patients more input into their treatment decisions while using technology.

Display Positive Online Reviews on Your Website

While negative comments should not be ignored, positive comments are what bring you new referrals, patients, and retention. Make a page on your site dedicated to good patient testimonials. Allowing the good evaluations to shine and stand out is a successful tactic.

Survey Patients After Their Appointments

You may capture essential components of care that cause unhappiness and have an impact on your reputation by conducting patient satisfaction surveys. 

Surveying patients shortly after their session provides the most honest and useful responses.

Maintain a Positive Online Presence With the Right Strategy

As a healthcare provider, it’s critical to have a strong online reputation management strategy in place. The digital age has made it easier for patients to share information about their experiences with you and your team on review sites like Yelp and Google+. But without the right strategy, tools in place, and proper management of reviews, it can be overwhelming! Modfxmedia can help you with all of your medical marketing needs including reputation management and your strategy. Click Here to schedule your FREE strategy call with us!

For more healthcare marketing tips, follow ModFXMedia on FB!

How do you manage your practice’s reputation online? Share your experience with us in the comments section below!

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How SEO Benefits Your Medical Practice

Successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) requires finding your niche and making it more visible to an audience looking for you online. It is valuable whether you are a blogger, an e-commerce shop, business professional, or medical practice.

Implementing SEO strategically will have a positive impact on the visibility and patient volume of your medical practice. Since all physicians are in such a competitive field, they stand to gain a huge advantage by applying search engine optimization to their website in order to help them stand out.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” The practice of SEO is the practice of employing a methodical approach to increasing your web page’s ranking on internet search engine results. Although SEO involves many tactics and approaches, one important pillar involves analyzing common searched-for keywords and phrases and building the website’s architecture around them to maximize their effect.

Through well-implemented SEO, you can promote your medical practice to achieve the top web page in search engines like:

  • –Google
  • –Bing
  • –Yahoo
  • –DuckDuckGo

Why Is SEO Important for Physicians?

SEO is important to physicians for 4 distinct reasons.

  • –It can help you rank at the top of the page
  • –It increases virtual foot traffic
  • –It makes information and services easily available
  • –It provides a better patient experience

75.1% of people click the top three results of a Google Search according to recent study. An increase in virtual foot traffic means a potential increase in real-world clients. An SEO-driven page highlights your skillset and expertise to a wider audience.

When health care is involved, patient emotion and anxiety often increase. A well-designed web page can help alleviate that anxiety by providing information quickly and easily, positioning your physician brand as knowledgeable and trustworthy.

Besides boosting your search result rankings, there are a number of other ways that your web presence can be optimized which results in a higher quality patient experience. This includes:

Targeted Leads

When patients search for a doctor online, millions of results will come up. However, when patients add keywords, such as specialty and location, the choices drop sharply. Having a strong SEO strategy will put your site in front of patients who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. 

Lower Costs

SEO is one of the most affordable forms of advertising and produces an exceptionally high return on investment (ROI). 

SEO has ongoing long-term results, such as constantly increasing traffic to your website and increasing brand awareness. Using the many strategies that SEO has to offer, you will be able to market your practices’ products and services to the patients that need them most. 

Build Authority

Trust is essential for any healthcare practice to lead patients further down the patient journey. Search engine rankings are determined by the number of people visiting a website and how they react, such as time spent on the site or if they immediately “bounced” back to the search engine results. Therefore, a website that ranks higher on search engines is seen as more trustworthy than one that ranks deep in the search results.

How Can ModFXMedia Help?

ModFXMedia can help provide SEO services specifically geared toward medical practices, including a full suite of features designed to enhance your patient experience. Those features can include:

  • –Medical Website Design & Management
  • –Medical & Healthcare SEO
  • –Google Advertising
  • –Reputation & Review Management
  • –Social Media Management
  • –Healthcare Content Marketing
  • –Creative Medical Brand Messaging

We can help you build and manage an effective website that ranks highly in browser search results, drawing new patients into your practice. ModFXMedia is able to take that increased visibility one step further by helping you manage your social media marketing campaigns, and making sure that positive patient reviews are prominently displayed in search results.

Amplify Your Practice with Proven SEO

Practices aspire to dominate their local market and be at the top of Google. 

ModFXMedia works closely with each provider to determine your practice’s niche and areas of opportunity and then promotes your expertise to an audience that is trying to find your services. 

With our proven experience executing medical SEO strategies, your website will receive a boost in website traffic, which will result in new patient visits and an increase in revenue.

Are you ready to boost your medical practices SEO strategy? Contact ModFXMedia for an SEO consultation today!

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How Hiring A Medical Marketing Agency Can Help Your Practice

When you think of healthcare or medical marketing, you might picture TV ads for prescription drugs with smiling couples. While this is one form of medical marketing, it’s not really the kind  medical marketing used by regular doctors for their practices.

Doctors who are working to build their own brand or grow their practice require a more personalized digital medical marketing approach that will target their specific needs, goals, and audience. Hiring a professional medical marketing agency is a good way to start, and it will allow you to focus on your job, which is treating patients.

Medical marketing professionals are trained to develop campaigns and creative tactics that will bring tangible results and patient leads to your practice. 

Here are some ways in which doctors can benefit from the help of a medical marketing agency.

An Expert Healthcare Marketing Team

There’s no better sales tactic than quality care, great customer service, and showing true empathy to your patients. Patients interact with each department in your clinic, allowing each employee the opportunity to make a positive or negative impact on the patient experience. 

When there’s a need to “get the word out” about a new service offered or provided at your practice, a physician generally doesn’t have the time or expertise to effectively engage in marketing.

Maybe you want to set up a PPC ad on your latest service, or share a video on your social media channels educating the public on ED treatment, or make updates to your website. 

Whatever it is, your time is valuable as a physician, and a marketing agency has a team of experts that can creatively execute the right strategies and tactics for you. 

There’s no need to burn yourself (or your staff) out simply because you are trying to be a marketer as well as a physician. 

Strategy & Planning Analysis

A marketing agency can help you perform a deep dive into complex business development challenges, and implement solutions to keep your practice afloat and profitable. 

Have you seen a dip since a new practice opened in your town? Are consumers going elsewhere based on online reviews of your practice?

Hiring a medical marketing team can help doctors determine things like: 

  • What number of patients and “sales” will guarantee enough income for overhead costs? 
  • How to set a goal for profit. 
  • How to put a strategy into action in order to reach more people and drive conversions on your site.

They Will Handle SEO Smoothly

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method of ensuring your practice will come up near the top of the search engine results when potential patients are looking for a medical practitioner in your geographical window and area of expertise. 

Multiple factors determine what moves a particular practice to the top of the search list, with just a few including competition, backlinks, website structure and readability, and age and credibility of their domain name. Those are just a sampling of things taken into consideration when improving SEO.

Most physicians would prefer to spend their time caring for patients or improving their specialty over learning the logistics of SEO. 

Choosing not to participate in SEO monitoring isn’t a feasible option, though. Medical practices are missing out on prime growth by not paying attention to their ranking on search engines. By hiring a medical marketing agency, this allows physicians to use their time where it is most valuable.

They can help to target your ideal patient utilizing paid advertising

Unlike traditional broadcast and print media, a medical digital marketing agency helps you to be specific with your target through the ability to streamline them through certain features.

Digital marketing enables physicians to target patients by a specific condition, age, gender, demographic, or even zip code.

The ability of digital marketing to target consumers through the use of certain keywords increases the chance to reach the patients you want. 

Also, this ability to target certain conditions can be done in real-time, and is a cost-saving move that cannot be done via traditional advertising methods.

PPC advertising allows you to pay for targeted ads across a specific demographic and/or geographic location. 

For example, an orthopedic practice could invest in Google Ads to target a specific location – for instance, “Orthopedic specialist in Waco, TX” – this will help push prospective clients to visit their website or call their practice.

A medical marketing agency can help make sure you reach the patients you want in the area you want. They know all the ins, outs and tricks to make sure your paid advertising is successful. 

They Can Create an Text & Email Marketing Campaign

Hiring a medical marketing agency like ModFXMedia allows you to ensure your communications with your patients aren’t going straight into the spam folder. 

The marketing team will carefully craft the texts and emails and then schedule them at appropriate intervals. 

They can also help you determine what type of text and email marketing would work best for your practice.

Some physicians send out bi-weekly or monthly informational content and practice updates to patients on their mailing lists. While others prefer to stick with a simple pre-appointment reminder email and patient satisfaction survey. 

Working with a professional agency can help you to determine what works and what doesn’t to ensure your practice is keeping your current patients up to date while constantly gaining fresh leads from new subscribers.

They can improve patient reviews

Consumer-driven review websites like Yelp and Google are influential to consumers when looking for everything from a new hair salon to a doctor’s office. 

As a consumer, why ask one or two friends for a recommendation when they can have instant access to dozens of reviews to get a variety of perspectives and help make their own decision?

These reviews can really make or break a practice, and they may be the reason you aren’t seeing return patients or even new patients. 

Having a medical marketing team on your side can help you analyze these reviews daily and help you understand a common theme of either good or poor service. 

It’s important to know what your consumers are saying about your office to help decide what changes are needed to improve patient quality and happiness. 

Once you know what to fix, your medical marketing agency can launch campaigns to promote these changes and get more patients through your door who will, in turn, leave better reviews!

The time is now to invest in a Digital Marketing Agency

From well-established healthcare practices to fledgling offices, maintaining a robust digital presence will provide the stability required for a business to flourish. 

If you want to win patients, you’ll need to create social profiles, optimize your website for SEO and mobile, and run paid advertisements to attract new patients. 

Adopting a digital marketing plan for your practice will level the playing field so your practice can reach potential patients who are searching for services also offered by larger healthcare systems. 

At ModFXMedia, we have years of experience in healthcare/medical digital marketing. We handle Healthcare practices, Dental Practices, Regeneration Clinics, Integrative Medicine, Ophthalmology/Vision clinic as well as Veterinary clinics. And the best news is you start to see results right away! 
To learn more about ModFXMedia, and how we can help your practice, request a free strategy call with us by CLICKING HERE to fill out the form on our website. Or call us directly at 1-904-673-7587.

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How To Spice Up Your Medical Practices Social Media Content

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably already know why it’s important that your medical practice has a strong presence on social media! But, unless someone has a health condition or is specifically looking for a doctor online, gaining and keeping new followers on social media can be difficult.

I mean, it’s not like medical practices post about the hottest celebrity breakups or makeup tutorials. Instead, they post about health conditions and their services, (which is great) but let’s face it, even the most valuable client can lose interest and stop hitting that like button after a while. 

When followers stop liking and engaging on your social media posts, your content comes up less and less on their profile. Then before you know it, you’re wondering what happened to your social media presence altogether. 

So, how can your medical practice spice up your social media content? 

The goal is to post informative content, but also find ways to keep your content fresh and engaging. Easier said than done, we know! Especially when you’re trying to simultaneously run a successful medical practice. 

So, we decided to ‘assist’ and share a list of our favorite content ideas that your medical practice can use on social media. 

1) An Intro: 

Post a current photo. Introduce yourself and tell people about your training. Explain why you became a doctor, and why you are passionate about what you do.

2) A Family Photo: 

If you are comfortable doing so, post a family photo and introduce your spouse and children. Talk about your family pets, too. The more your social media visitors can relate to you, the more they’ll trust you, and likely choose you over a competitor.

3) Your Staff: 

Post a photo of each staff member and tell people about their education, training, and any special interests they have. 

Make sure you mention why they are an important member of your team, and talk about what they love most about their job.

4) Upcoming Events: 

Share information about all upcoming events that you are holding or attending.

5) Events Updates: 

Share photos and an update on how those events went.

6) Helpful Tips: 

Post short photos and videos with helpful tips for your patients.

7) Staff Celebrations: 

Share staff birthdays, parties, events, and anything else that shows your company’s culture and caring nature.

8) Products & Services: 

Share information about your products and/or services. Don’t SELL themâ€Ķteach about them. 

Explain their benefits and talk about how they can help your patients. Make sure to add photos if appropriate.

9) Success Stories: 

Post patient success stories. Use before and after photos, along with their story. 

NOTE: Make sure you have their written permission before doing so, and be sure to adhere to all HIPAA regulations!

Read our other blog on Hipaa social media rules for your practice

10) Inspirational posts: 

Post anything that can inspire your clients, help motivate them, help them to focus on healing or improve their well being. 

Post an inspirational quote or share a success story from another medical source. 

11) Awards: 

Talk about any awards you or your staff receive. Share a photo of the award and some information about it.

12) Press: 

Mention any press you receive. Make sure to share a link to the article and their logo.

13) FAQ’s: 

Answer frequently asked questions. Post a question that many of your patients ask, and then post the answer to it below. 

You can also post the answer in the comments. By adding the answer into the comments, it makes the reader click the post which raises your engagement percentage.

14) Demonstrations: 

Demonstrate how your equipment works. This can help relieve the fear of the unknown for your current and prospective patients.

15) Tests & Procedures: 

Give an explanation of specific tests or procedures that are common for your patients to have.

16) Industry Findings: 

Talk about the most recent industry findings in your field, explained in layman’s terms. 

Remember that your clients and followers don’t understand medical jargon. Always break it down for your reader to understand. 

17) Discounts or Promotions: 

Mention all discounts and/or promotions that your practice is offering. Make sure you give patients a code to use to get the promotion that is specific to the social media platform you are posting it on. Doing this will help you to know which platform is the most effective for this purpose.

18) Holidays: 

Celebrate the holidays with your social media followers. You can post photos of your office decorations. Or share pictures and videos of your in-office holiday celebrations. 

Always make sure to send out well-wishes via social media. You can do this by scheduling your posts.

19) National “Something” Day: 

Basically every day is National “Something” Day. Pick out the ones that apply to your business or patients, and create fun posts around those.

20) Reviews: 

Anytime a review is posted, on any website, make sure you share it.

21) Charity work: 

It’s important for every business to support a cause or help their community. Whatever you choose to do, share photos and information before, during and after. Invite your social media followers to participate.

22) Office tours: 

Create a short video showing your office and explain what each room is for.

23) Giveaways: 

If appropriate, consider holding a giveaway for a product or service. Make sure you have people who enter the drawing, like the post, following your social media page and tagging another individual.

You can also send them to a page and have them fill out their first name and email address in order to enter. This is a great way to add to your email list. 

NOTE: Make sure you follow all of the contest rules on each social media platform.

24) Anything & Everything New: 

If your business adds a new product, service, location or staff memberâ€Ķshare that information on social media.

25) Basic information: 

Make it easy on your viewers. Share your address, phone number and office hours every so often in a post.

26) Humor: 

Share a funny meme, quote, video or photo that is appropriate and relates to your field. Remember, people come on social media to be entertained. You can still be professional while also showing a sense of humor. People appreciate seeing that side of a doctor and their medical practice.

27) Fun facts: 

Share any useful, helpful or interesting information that relates to your area of practice.

28) Community Information: 

Share in the joy of, and congratulate any local business or organization that has big news. 

By sharing the news of other businesses, most of the time they will do the same for you. This means twice as many eyes seeing your posts and knowing about your medical practice.

29) Infographic: 

Post an infographic that will help your patients to visualize a process or an outcome.

30) Other People’s Content: 

This is basically #10 & #28 butâ€Ķ.share really good posts created by others that will be interesting or helpful to your patients. Make sure to credit the content creator. 

31) Polls: 

Create a poll to find out what your prospective patients are interested in.

32) Introduce A Colleague: 

Talk about a trusted colleague who you would recommend to your patients. Ask them to do the same for you! 

33) Staff News: 

Celebrate your staff! Share birth announcements, marriages, birthdays, promotions, awards, courses taken, etc. 

Seek a second opinion!

If after reading this, you still feel your content marketing and social media management could use a face lift, then hiring a professional agency is the best ‘treatment’!

We’re prescribing your medical practice Modfxmedia! 

At ModFXMedia, we specialize in online medical/healthcare marketing, and have created creative content for hundreds of medical practices.

If you want more traffic, leads and patients..then we’re the business for you.

Our job is to reinforce your Google Ads, SMM and SEO goals into a cohesive strategy that will transform your online visitors into paying customers.

Set up your strategy call with us today by Clicking Here. One of our experts will be in touch within 24 hours!
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