With another Father’s Day come and gone, men from South Florida to the Pacific Northwest are looking at ties and socks they may never wear and longing for something they’ll really enjoy. According to The New York Times, that something could just be a bit of Botox or liposuction. As the paper reported last week, [...]
7 Reasons Why RealSelf is One of the Fastest Growing US Companies (Inc 500)
Inc. magazine has announced its annual list of America’s fastest growing companies, and RealSelf made it ...
Infographic Friday: The 7 Principles of Social Design
In a world where dancing college kids and a Korean pop star can go viral seemingly overnight, it can be tempting to think your latest video, tweet or blog post can have the same kind of viral impact. Alas, it doesn’t work that way for the rest of us, especially when you’re trying to market [...]
Did a Penguin Just Put the Squeeze on Your Practice Website’s Search Results?
Wondering what a small, flightless bird native to the Southern Hemisphere has to do with your practice website and its ranking in search results? If the bird in question is Penguin 2.0, the latest update to Google’s search algorithm, the answer is everything. Rolled out late last month, Penguin 2.0 promises to fine-tune Google’s already [...]
Live from the OR: Want to Demystify Cosmetic Surgery? Social Media Can Help
As RealSelf CEO Tom Seery likes to say, most doctors are at one of three stages in their approach to social media. There’s the Crawl stage, which entails basic reputation management, the Walk stage, where doctors freely share their expertise, and the Run stage, in which they embrace the kind of two-way conversation that leads [...]
Infographic Friday: Is Your Online Reputation at Risk?
Every minute of every day, people are online talking about the brands and companies they’ve done business with or are considering doing business with. They’re asking questions, posting compliments and complaints and reading and writing reviews about everything from baby clothes to mommy makeovers. Given the above, the answer to the question “Is your online [...]
Women Are from Pinterest, Men Are from Google+ — NOT
This time last year, media outlets from TIME Magazine to TechCrunch reported an interesting phenomenon: While women dominated the pages of Pinterest, men represented the majority of users of Google+. That was then and this is now and, going forward, it’s safe to say that women are thinking beyond pretty pictures of food and fashion. [...]
Infographic Friday: Kickstart Your Marketing with Collaborative Input
As a Web-savvy doctor, you no doubt recognize how important it is to monitor your professional reputation by listening to what’s being said about you online. Perhaps you’ve even taken the next step, creating quality content, sharing it via social media and building the sort of following that leads to brand advocacy and great word-of-mouth [...]
Desperately Seeking Consumers? The Internet is the New TV
You don’t need a Ph.D. in communications to know that the media landscape is undergoing rapid and far-reaching change. Newspapers are folding, books and magazines are going digital and now, it seems, even that mainstay of the living room is losing its lock on viewers. Truth is, more people are spending more time online than [...]
Resistance is Futile (and Self-defeating): If You Want to Survive, Get Social
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know many of the reasons we believe aesthetic professionals need to embrace social media: Patient education. Reputation management. More effective marketing to today’s consumer. But, in light of a recent study by researchers at UCLA, there’s one that may trump all of the above: [...]
Infographic Friday: A Farewell to (Saggy) Arms
If you’ve ever found yourself looking at an image of Michelle Obama — or Jennifer Aniston or Jessica Biel — and found yourself thinking, ‘Wow, impressive arms,’ you’re definitely not alone. With summer and its sleeveless style fast approaching, women all across the country are seeing similar images and giving serious thought to giving their [...]
Bargain Hunters Aren’t Bad People, They Just Need to Know about Better Alternatives
Everybody loves a good deal — and that’s as true for cosmetic surgery as it is for clothes, cars and cosmetics. So says Regina Lewis of USA Today, whose article in the Money Quick Tips last week led off with the line: Demand for nips, tucks and wrinkle-free faces has consumers clamoring for bargains. The [...]
Best Practices: 7 Tips to Creating Your own Code of Conduct
At last month’s ASAPS conference in New York, I was encouraged to see the number of doctors who are coming to understand how valuable social media can be in promoting their practice. Slowly but surely, more and more aesthetic professionals are realizing that engaging with consumers online is the future and that they can do [...]
Infographic Friday: Listen Up, Doc, but Don’t Be Intrusive
There’s a reason they call it the “art” of listening. Trying to ascertain what consumers want is definitely more of an art than a science and nowhere is that more true than in social media. As this infographic from NetBase.com suggests, such “social listening” is especially tricky, in large part, because consumers aren’t sure how [...]
Go with the Flow: 3 Channels to Connect with Aesthetic Consumers
We spend a lot of time at RealSelf talking about the “consumer decision journey” for a very simple reason: When people begin considering cosmetic surgery, they really are embarking on a journey. It can take weeks, months or years as they consider and evaluate their options and it can extend long after the fact as [...]
Posting for Profit: 7 Benefits of Doctor Blogging
As an adjunct professor, pediatric ENT surgeon and CEO and chief medical officer of Annica Media, Russell Faust would seem to have his hands full, a jam-packed schedule and plenty of reasons not to take on the potential time-suck of social media. And yet, despite all that, he’s not only a firm believer in the [...]
Openness, Engagement and Trust: The 3 Essentials of an Effective Code of Conduct
After our presentation at the 2013 ASAPS Conference in New York, a doctor came up to me with concern about establishing a Code of Conduct (CoC) for her team. “My world is already surrounded by rules, policies and regulation. Doesn’t a Code of Conduct just create more rules for my team? Isn’t social media supposed [...]
Infographic Friday: Generate Buzz with Brand Advocates (not Online “Celebrities”)
Imagine Jennifer Aniston standing on the red carpet thanking you for her new nose or Victoria Beckham telling Oprah about how delighted she is with her new breasts. Well, “imagining” pretty much sums it up. Even if you were the doctor who performed those procedures, the reality is that celebrity endorsements are not all they’re [...]
More than Scores: Reviews Trump Ratings for Patients and Doctors
If you’re looking to score well with aesthetic consumers, the folks at PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) have a little advice: Stop! As the Institute notes in a new report, “Scoring Healthcare: Navigating customer experience ratings,” doctors who focus on stars, letter grades and other one-dimensional ratings miss an excellent opportunity to connect with patients, [...]
As Doctors Embrace Social Media, Creating a Code of Conduct Is Crucial
It’s only been 3 years since I’ve joined RealSelf as the EVP of Doctor Community, yet it’s amazing to me the tremendous shift that’s taken place in how doctors are embracing the world of social media, online reviews and the empowered consumer. Social Media is no longer considered to be just a fad and has [...]
Doctors Don’t Need to Be on Facebook (and other good news)
Facebook and social media are not lead generation tools. These services provide an opportunity for prospective patients, fans and followers to get to know you…at an appropriate arm’s length When I presented about the social media-empowered patient at the recent ASAPS and ASDS conferences, one statement I made got audible sighs of relief from doctors: [...]
