Alas, it doesn’t work that way for the rest of us, especially when you’re trying to market a product or service. Online virality is the digital equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle and if you want to get seen and heard, you can’t just leave it to dumb luck.

Smart marketers, on the other hand, enlist others in the effort by making sure their content is easy to share, appropriate to the people they’re sharing it with and, most important, worth sharing. As this infographic from the marketing and advertising experts at Ogilvy & Mather suggests, it needs to be social by design.

Ultimately, it all starts with understanding what people are looking for and providing the sort of content that delivers it. For aesthetic consumers, that means more stories, less overt promotion and a focus on their needs and concerns rather than your own successes. Read the community comments on RealSelf, for example, and you won’t see people touting their doctors’ credentials; instead, they share stories about support, empathy and the fact that a doctor did or didn’t listen to their concerns.

Others read those stories and take them into account when they’re making their own decisions. As the folks at Ogilvy note, we live in a world where randomly relevant marketing constantly floods past us, so word of mouth is often the only way to decide what to pay attention to.

That’s why it’s so important to encourage sharing. The easier you make it — by encouraging patients to share their stories online, by posting their reviews on your practice website — the more likely they are to do so. Unlike, say, the Harlem Shake, it doesn’t “just happen.” Chances are you’ll have to ask but you’re almost certainly going to like the answer.

Ultimately, it’s all word of mouth — the key is to get others to help spread your message.

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 powerful search engine and penalize websites that violate its guidelines.

It’s going to have a pretty big impact on web spam, said Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, on the “This Week in Google” webcast. It’s a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentially only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper.

At its simplest level, the latest update zeroes in on linking practices based on the premise that the sites that link to yours are a good indicator of the quality of your content. Websites that feature low-quality links, lots of comment spam and other frowned-upon elements in an effort to improve visibility will be penalized with lower search rankings.

Unless you’re fluent in SEO, determining what impact Penguin 2.0 may have on search rankings and taking corrective action are jobs best left to your web manager or marketing agency but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the issue entirely. Your website is nothing less than your digital storefront and the last thing you want is for someone to take a look and move on or, worse, not see it at all.

As Cutts says,

Try to make sure you make a great site that users love, that they’ll want to tell their friends about, bookmark, come back to, visit over and over again, all the things that make a site compelling. If that’s your goal, we’re aligned with that goal.

Doctor Takeaways

1. Quality content attracts better links

If you consistently publish generic, impersonal content, you’re unlikely to attract links from other respected websites. Conversely, timely, relevant content — regular blog posts on topics that your visitors have expressed interest in, for example — do more than just offer value to those visitors. They also establish you as an authority and attract links from other reputable websites.

2. Bad links make for bad search results

Conducting a link audit is the only way to find out if bad links — those from sites with paid links, for example — are impacting your SERPs. If you’re comfortable doing so, sites like Open Site Explorer can show you who’s linking to your sites; otherwise, your webmaster or marketing agency should be able to tell you what they’re doing to combat the problem.

3. Good links are good for business

Penguin-friendly link-building entails engaging with other reputable websites. Claiming your profile on all major social networks, contributing articles to local media outlets and answering questions in online forums are all ways to reach a larger audience that might not find your practice website on its own. It’s no silver bullet — effective online marketing takes time, energy and an ongoing commitment — but it’s the best way to ensure you don’t run afoul of Penguin 2.0.

]]> http://www.medibeauty.biz/did-a-penguin-just-put-the-squeeze-on-your-practice-websites-search-results/feed/ 0 http://www.medibeauty.biz/live-from-the-or-want-to-demystify-cosmetic-surgery-social-media-can-help/ http://www.medibeauty.biz/live-from-the-or-want-to-demystify-cosmetic-surgery-social-media-can-help/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:15:12 +0000 Rob Lovitt http://www.medibeauty.biz/?p=1465

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 to great word of mouth and more business.

By that reckoning, Jennifer L. Walden, MD, of Austin, Texas, is running a marathon — and sprinting the entire way. For doctors hoping to ramp up their own social “fitness regime,” tagging along is highly recommended.

Two weeks ago, for example, Walden performed a facelift/blepharoplasty/fat grafting procedure with a twist. In addition to letting a local news station film the blepharoplasty and fat grafting, Walden provided live updates for the entire process via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Vine (Twitter’s video-clip service).

We caught up with Dr. Walden afterwards and asked her to walk us through the process.

MediBeauty.biz (MB): What prompted you to undertake this project?

Jennifer Walden (JW): I recently saw a Twitter/Vine/Instagram feed of live brain surgery performed at UCLA and thought it was a brilliant idea. I also like the idea of being a forward thinker, sometimes out of the box, and early adopter of new technology as it relates to my specialty.

MB: How did you approach the issue of patient consent?

JW: I thought about the concept over the weekend and did a little online research, learning how Vine worked, etc. I came to my office on the Tuesday after Memorial Day and called my surgery patient who was booked for the following day. I proposed the idea to her — she is a nurse herself — and she readily agreed to participate.  Of course, she signed a written consent preoperatively for her images and videos to be transmitted via traditional and online media.

MB: What sort of preparation did you do in order to be able to post updates during the procedure?

JW: I had previously notified my student intern that she would be expected to help me Vine/Tweet/Instagram with feeds to Facebook for a facelift/blepharoplasty neck liposuction/autologous fat grafting/chemical peel case to be done the following day. I asked her to research the procedures on YouTube that have been previously uploaded by reputable surgeons whom I knew so she could understand key technical steps and the videography of cosmetic surgery better.

MB: What were the logistics of tweeting, taking pictures, etc., during the procedure?

JW: We began the tweets and Vine feeds pre-op on the day of surgery and continued throughout all of the planned procedures until the patient was in the recovery room. 100% of the filming and tweeting was done by my intern and a member of my staff who is particularly good with computers and information technology (both younger than me, of course!); both had the patient’s permission to be there and were in OR attire.

MB: So you weren’t actually posting updates yourself?

JW: My attention and hands remained on the patient the entire time. It wasn’t much different than the feeling of filming of a procedure in the operating room for industry-focused cosmetic surgery symposia, except all we needed was an iPhone and the welcomed absence of a space-consuming production crew, cameras, and booms. The other difference was the immediacy of the information reaching a much wider audience including the lay public via the Internet.

MB: Speaking of reaching the lay public, what role do you see social media playing in that effort?

JW: I think we as a specialty need to embrace social media as an avenue to reach the public for education regarding what we do, how we do it and a means to demystify procedures. Of course, it’s also a no-brainer for sending marketing messages in an inexpensive format. Other specialties and providers do this, including some who are doing cosmetic procedures without proper board certification in the core specialties, and that is something to think about.

MB: And, finally, what sort of response did you get from your experiment and do you think it was worth doing?

JW: The response was larger than I expected.  Without giving away too many of my secrets, let’s just say I gained Twitter and Facebook followers, and some new patients booked consultations.

]]> http://www.medibeauty.biz/live-from-the-or-want-to-demystify-cosmetic-surgery-social-media-can-help/feed/ 0 http://www.medibeauty.biz/women-are-from-pinterest-men-are-from-google-not/ http://www.medibeauty.biz/women-are-from-pinterest-men-are-from-google-not/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:00:41 +0000 Rob Lovitt http://www.medibeauty.biz/?p=1455

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. For doctors who cater to female patients, understanding the changes can mean the difference between reaching consumers and missing them entirely.

In fact, according to a new report from Burst Media, women are now the dominant users of every major social network except LinkedIn. Not surprisingly, Facebook still sits atop the social media pyramid — 56% percent of female respondents had an account vs. 49.5% of males — but it’s perhaps telling that Google+ now claims the No. 2 spot: As the chart below shows, 26.1% of women have Google+ profiles vs. 24.5% of men, far less than Facebook, but significantly more than Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram.

Given their increasingly dominant role on most social media networks, it should come as no surprise that women are more likely to interact with brands than their male counterparts. As the chart below notes, they do so for a variety of reasons, ranging from showing their support, accessing discounts and gathering and sharing information.

The upshot of the above information is two-fold. At the simplest level, earlier reports that Google+ was a bust or a “ghost town” are turning out to be premature. Thanks to Google’s dominance in search, its ownership of YouTube and the popularity of Gmail, Google+ is destined to prove its value as a social network. Doctors who want to connect with its growing user base should fill out their Google+ profile and ensure their content appears on the site.

More important, perhaps, the network’s growing stature points to the ever-shifting landscape of social media. Knowing what type of information users are seeking — and the networks they’re turning to in order to find it — is key to ensuring your message is reaching the right audience.

Obviously, this becomes more challenging with highly personal subjects, such as cosmetic surgery, where those considering procedures may not be interested in broadcasting their intentions to everyone in their social graph. Instead, think of the mainstream social networks as digital outposts or embassies where you can connect with consumers as a means to direct them to more-private, more-focused aesthetic forums and ultimately your practice website.

Doctor Takeaway

Women may be from Pinterest but they’re branching out

With women accounting for 90% off all cosmetic services and procedures, knowing where they spend their time online and what they do there is crucial to understanding their interests and intent. Maintain a presence on all appropriate social networks — this will also preclude others from appropriating your practice name, etc. — and use them to deliver messages that will do double-duty as lead generators back to your practice website.

That’s a great start on building a patient-centric marketing campaign but, according to the marketing experts at CrowdTap, that’s only two-thirds of the battle. Going forward, the key to success will entail not just listening and talking to consumers but actively seeking their input beforehand.

They call it collaborative marketing and they support their case in the following infographic:

What’s all that have to do with cosmetic surgery? Consider laser treatments. According to the RealSelf Buzz Index, a measure of what procedures people are talking about, there’s been strong interest in Active FX and CO2 lasers recently. Explaining the differences in a blog post or newsletter and then asking readers to rate their interest can provide invaluable information on everything from what equipment to buy to how and where to promote your services.

In turn, those contributors are more likely to share their experiences with their own social networks, spreading your message to audiences you might not reach otherwise. As the folks at CrowdTap explain it,

Collaborative marketing is not a pipe dream. It’s a reality already set in motion, one that is consistent with consumers’ innate tendencies to share and contribute. It’s a future where the companies that are closest to those who buy, use and advocate for their products win.

Doctor Takeaway

Bringing consumers into the marketing process benefits all concerned

The key takeaway is three-fold: Consumers appreciate providers who listen to their input, they take pride in their contribution and, having done so, they’re eager to share their experience with others. Doctors can foster the process by monitoring the questions consumers ask online, seeking input from the subscribers to their newsletters and asking website visitors to weigh in on products and services they’d like to see.

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 ever. Mind you, no one’s suggesting that TV is going to disappear anytime soon but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that it may not be the best medium to reach consumers.

Consider some recent numbers compiled by the research company GfK. Over the last two years, the number of hours U.S. consumers spent watching TV dropped 8.8%, from 5:27 hours per day to 5:05 hours. Those consumers also spent less time listening to the radio, reading magazines or perusing the newspaper.

So where did they go instead? Not surprisingly, they headed for the Internet, where daily access increased 21%, from 2:34 hours in 2010 to 3:07 hours last year.

And where did they spend those hours of online time? The top 3 destinations were:

• Social networks (up 42% to 37 minutes/day)
• Reading email (up 19% to 33 minutes/day)
• Watching video (up 140% to 24 minutes/day)

While the shift presents a challenge for doctors rooted in promoting their practice through traditional methods, such as advertising, it also provides a major benefit for those who understand and embrace the new reality. Instead of pushing a message out to an anonymous audience that may or may not be interested in your products, the Internet fosters communication with highly targeted consumers whose actions directly indicate their interest.

It also makes it easier to connect with potential patients at multiple touchpoints along the way. Echoing the idea of using different channels at different points as proposed Nate Elliott of Forrester Research, it’s easy to see social networks as a “reach” channel, video as a “depth” channel and email as a “relationship” channel.

Seen in that light, it’s clear that the Internet is ready for primetime and that doctors who want to connect with consumers will need to tune in.

Doctor Takeaway

The shift from old media to new is influencing every aspect of brand-consumer interaction. Instead of interrupting people with intrusive ads and messages, doctors will need to increase their social efforts by sharing information freely, fostering two-way communication and encouraging consumers to do the same.

Multiple benefits aside, savvy doctors recognize that incorporating social media into their practice is inevitable. (Source: ASPS)

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: Love it or hate it, there’s a good chance your competitors are embracing social media to the detriment of those who don’t.

Published in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (PRS), the study, Social Media Use and Impact on Plastic Surgery Practice, analyzed the responses from 500 members of ASPS. Among the findings:

• 50.4% of respondents use social media in their professional practice vs. 49.6% who don’t.
• Among those who use social media, 38.5% report posting messages weekly, 26.5% post monthly and 12% post daily.
• Of those who use social media, 54% have a designated staff member manage their social media activity vs. 46% who manage it themselves.

Perhaps the most compelling findings, however, relate to the answers doctors gave when they were asked why they use social media in their practice. Among their answers, in ascending order:

• 21.3%: said it facilitates more efficient communication with patients
• 24.3% said it generates new patient referrals
• 25.5% said it gives them a competitive edge
• 27.8% said networking with peers and colleagues
• 49% said it provides a platform for patient education
• 52.1% said it’s an effective marketing/advertising tool

And the No. 1 reason? 56.7% said incorporation of social media into medical practice is inevitable.

The bottom line is simple: Today’s consumers don’t buy anything — neither shoes nor electronics nor the services of plastic surgeons — without researching the businesses and service providers they’re considering. They ask questions of other users, they devour online reviews and they begin narrowing their choices long before they pick up the phone or send an email.

Given the above, the 49.6% of doctors who don’t use social media are missing a golden opportunity to connect with potential patients who are unlikely to find them any other way. Inevitable or not, the trend is obvious and the alternative is obsolescence.

Interacting with people worldwide with some kind of online network will be part of our social fabric, says Rod J. Rohrich, MD, PRS’s editor in chief. Now is the time to get together and start communicating with patients, colleagues and students about plastic surgery.

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 problem, of course, is that what looks like a good bargain can be a really bad deal when cutting costs is achieved by cutting corners. Unfortunately, getting price-conscious consumers to understand that is a challenge and one that is best met when board-certified doctors speak up and provide viable alternatives. To do that, it helps to understand how aesthetic consumers make their decisions.

Ask the 4 million people who visit RealSelf every month and they’ll tell you 3 factors dominate the process:

Price: The proliferation of med spas and office-park clinics has clearly fostered a price-comparison mindset among consumers and wishing won’t make it — or the practitioners who foster it — go away. Whether to fight fire with fire — by posting prices online, for example — is an individual decision but the bottom line is that you need to be prepared to explain to bargain hunters that the best “deal” is the one that provides true value in terms of training, outcomes and follow-up care.

Board certification: While the pursuit of bargains may prompt some people to act hastily, board certification remains a high priority for informed consumers. In fact, data compiled by RealSelf shows that patient satisfaction rates are 15% higher on average among those who had procedures performed by board-certified aesthetic experts, versus doctors from other fields of medicine. Doctors can help consumers — and themselves — by helping spread this crucial educational message.

Procedure expertise: Part and parcel of the above, a doctor’s experience with a particular procedure is a high priority for aesthetic consumers. Read the Worth It Ratings on RealSelf and a pattern quickly emerges: From arm lifts to Vaser lipo, potential patients turn to others in the community to inquire about their impressions about their providers’ familiarity and facility with the procedure(s) they’re considering.

To her credit, Lewis does encourage bargain-hunting readers to ask questions — Is the doctor board-certified and in what? How often has he or she performed the procedure in question? — but the reality is that consumers’ decision-making process is fraught with uncertainty that doctors can help alleviate to the benefit of all concerned.

The decision to pursue cosmetic surgery is based on more than a pocketbook connection, says Jen Longtin, director of marketing at RealSelf. It’s an emotional decision that leads to trust, successful procedures and positive reviews.

Doctor Takeaway

To counter discounting, emphasize value

With the Internet fostering a sense of transparency, price-comparison is a fact of life. Rather than fight it, doctors need to counter the resulting commoditization by weighing in on the virtues of experience and board certification. Whether that’s by writing blog posts or answering questions online, the result is more informed consumers who have the tools to make smarter decisions.

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 so without fear as long as they develop a plan to ensure that they and their staff do so appropriately.

As we’ve discussed before, the key is to develop a Code of Conduct that governs social interactions before they take place. With a CoC in place, you can tap into the power of social media to manage your reputation, protect patient privacy and introduce yourself to millions of aesthetic consumers.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all in the advice I can share on what a Code of Conduct should look like for each practice.  It has to be tailored to fit your brand and the persona you want to represent you and your practice online.  But to get you started, here are 7 best practices I’ve learned from the RealSelf 100:

1. Be Authentic. Remember, social media is a conversation. Talk online as you would talk to real people and patients in professional situations. People are wary of the conversation that’s ‘too polished.’
2. Be Relevant.  Keep the online conversations meaningful and relevant to the community.
3. Be Social.  Encourage your staff and feel comfortable yourself with being social online. In social media, people want to connect with humans.  So have a little fun — it’s ok to blur the lines just a tad between personal and professional.  Grant Stevens, MD of Marina Del Rey, CA does a great job of this balancing act.
4. Be Responsive.  Internet consumers want info free and fast!  And when they don’t get it, they move on to find it somewhere else.  So discuss with your team expectations for response time to relevant comments, questions and patient inquiries.  Remember, time is of the essence on the web.
5. Be Respectful.  You won’t always like what people post on your social pages, but you know as well as I do that people are watching how you respond to feedback.  Discuss with your team the manner in which you wish your practice to be represented when disagreements occur. Everyone needs to be professional, courteous and RESPECTFUL, even when they disagree with what’s being said.  Respond, don’t react!
6. Be Transparent.  And don’t sanitize your pages.  It’s ok to have comments you disagree with on your social media pages.  People do not trust overly sanitized pages where everything is positive.  Welcome all types of conversation – supportive, critical or otherwise.
7. Be Legal.  Don’t break any laws!  All privacy laws followed within the walls of your practice are applicable online.  (Hint: HIPAA)

Above all, remember that social media is organic.  Your CoC doesn’t have to be perfect from the get-go.  As you discover what does and doesn’t work, continue to tweak and iterate on your own best practices to ensure alignment with your values and your practice.  In the meantime, click here to download a customizable template as a starting point for your own Code of Conduct.

As this infographic from NetBase.com suggests, such “social listening” is especially tricky, in large part, because consumers aren’t sure how they feel about it. They want brands to listen to what they’re saying in social media, except when they don’t, and they want to be serviced without feeling that they’re being spied on:

While there are clearly contradictory trends going on here, the data underscore what we see on a daily basis at RealSelf. Aesthetic consumers want doctors to be accessible but they don’t want them interjecting themselves in conversations uninvited. They want to talk among themselves, sharing their concerns, decision journeys and post-procedure reviews, but they also want doctors to weigh in at appropriate points along the way:

The best way for doctors to connect with these consumers is to participate when they are asked to participate, says Jen Longtin, RealSelf’s director of doctor marketing. We see this most often through Q&As but also through the millions of views of before and after photos provided by RealSelf doctor members. If doctors jump in without an invitation, it appears invasive — like having your mother jump in on a call with your boyfriend.

Ultimately, it comes back to the concept of patient-centric marketing, letting consumers drive the conversation, keeping their needs top of mind and fostering the relationships that follow.

As Lisa Joy Rosner, NetBase’s chief marketing officer, says,

It’s really important that marketers consider these findings when developing social media strategies. The companies that take the time to understand what customers are saying, and engage in a way that considers context and builds relationships, are the ones that will benefit from social listening and engagement.

Doctor Takeaway

Don’t just listen, understand

Unless you’re telepathic, social listening represents the best path toward understanding the needs and concerns of aesthetic consumers. Always consider the context — are they seeking support from other like-minded people or specific insights from an expert? — and if you decide to respond, do so in a non-promotional way that sets the stage for building a relationship rather than making a sale.

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