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 value of social media — blogging in particular — he also believes it holds the key to better care, better connections with patients and more efficient operations.

It’s an argument he lays out well in (where else?) a post on his blog: Why Physicians (like me) Blog. In short, his answer is simple: the potential return on investment is extraordinary. Among the benefits he cites:

• You will gain market share – yes, it will help grow your practice!
• You will be recognized as an authority in your area of practice (which will also grow your practice)
• You will be better connected with your patients: compliance with your diagnostic and treatment regimens will improve
• Your patients will arrive in clinic better-educated, and take less time in your clinic: it will streamline your clinic work flow!
• Your patients will be less needy outside of clinic: they will require less time on the phone with you and your nurses
• You will more closely approximate the relationship with your patients that earlier generations of physicians enjoyed
• In short: your participation in social media provides a win/win for your practice and your patients. It is good medicine.

While Faust is clearly an advocate for social media — Annica Media is a medical practice marketing company — he’s not blind to the fact that it can be yet another time-consuming commitment for doctors who are already busy with consults, surgeries and running a small business.

But spending 1-2 hours per week on his own blog, he says that he began receiving 5,000 unique visits to it after 12 months and, three years later, now receives 15,000 to 20,000. More important, perhaps, 30–50% of his new patients arrive at his clinic by way of his digital presence.

When you think of it that way, the question isn’t why a physician like Dr. Faust blogs, but rather, why more physicians don’t.

Doctor Takeaways

1. If content is king, context is queen

Writing a blog is about giving aesthetic consumers information they seek, not about touting your credentials or promoting your practice. Pay attention to trending topics in the news, the questions consumers post on sites like RealSelf and the issues current patients raise and you’ll build an audience that turns to you for both thought leadership and future appointments.

2. Don’t reinvent the wheel, repurpose it

Unless you’re a natural-born writer, creating good content from scratch can be tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, there’s a wealth of good information out there — statistics, original research, trend data — that you can tap into. Adding insights based on your own experience will personalize your posts and ensure they align with your readers’ needs and concerns.

3. Use social tools to extend your reach

Once you’ve created a post, don’t just let it sit there. Repurpose it again by posting a link to it on your social media profiles, creating a YouTube video based on it or recasting it as a press release for local media. Invite your readers to share your posts, as well, by including sharing buttons for ShareThis, Reddit, RSS, etc.

4. Update your patient intake form

If your patient intake form doesn’t ask potential patients how they found you, it should. You can either ask an open-ended question — Where did you hear about us? — or include a list with check boxes for your major sources of referrals. Either way, you’ll gain invaluable insights as to exactly where best to expend your efforts.

SoLoMo. It’s the connective tissue that’s helping aesthetic consumers navigate their consumer decision journeys and, as this infographic from Geonetric.com suggests, it holds the key for doctors who hope to connect with them along the way:

While it’s entertaining to think that more people own mobile phones than toothbrushes, perhaps the most compelling fact is that 20% of health consumers search for health-related content on mobile devices. When you consider that health-related searches on Google were up 47% last year and mobile Internet consumption is expected to surpass traditional desktop usage by next year, the trend is clear:

More smartphones mean more informed consumers — and more informed consumers are unlikely to find, let alone patronize, providers who don’t utilize intelligent Internet marketing.

Doctor Takeaway

As online interaction evolves, doctors have a choice: Be involved or become invisible

While the SoLoMo movement gives aesthetic consumers unprecedented power to evaluate their options, it can also help doctors position themselves well when those consumers are ready to become patients. By contributing to social media, emphasizing a local presence and enabling a smooth, easy-to-use mobile experience, you improve the odds that those consumers’ searches will lead them to your door.

]]> http://www.medibeauty.biz/infographic-friday-the-search-for-health-info-goes-solomo/feed/ 0 http://www.medibeauty.biz/5-reasons-why-good-reviews-are-good-for-business/ http://www.medibeauty.biz/5-reasons-why-good-reviews-are-good-for-business/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 16:55:19 +0000 Rob Lovitt http://www.medibeauty.biz/?p=1317

Online reviews are like personal referrals but with much greater reach.

5 stars. 2 thumbs up. A++. When it comes to trusting information found on the Internet, there’s no escaping the fact that consumers give online reviews, well, glowing reviews. In fact, despite occasional reports of “astroturfing,” it seems they put more trust in them all the time.

In fact, according to a survey conducted by BrightLocal.com, 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, trusting those reviews, in turn, engenders trust in the companies being discussed.

Doctors should trust them as well. Here are 5 reasons why:

Most online reviews are positive: According to DemandForce.com, 87% of reviewers say the reviews they post are positive some or all of the time. By comparison, just 2% say their reviews are negative some or all of the time.

More consumers are reading more reviews: In 2012, SearchEngineLand.com reported that 67% of survey respondents read 2–10 reviews vs. 58% in 2010. Having a high number of reviews also boosts consumer confidence by diluting the impact of any negative commentary.

More reviews provide better results in search rankings: With so many consumers reading reviews, it’s not surprising that search engine algorithms are giving them more weight. Adding reviews to your practice website aligns it with the way people actually search which can give you ranking leverage against both the competition and third-party review sites.

Positive reviews engender increasing levels of consumer trust: When asked how online customer reviews affect their opinion of a local business, 58% of respondents in the BrightLocal survey said positive reviews made them trust a business more, up from 55% two years earlier.

Positive reviews can be more important than price or location: 52% of consumers are more likely to use a local business if they have positive reviews. Conversely, just 28% cite price and/or location as the main decision-making factor.

Put it all together and it’s clear that building up a roster of reviews is a powerful tool, both for building trust and generating new business. And while asking patients to write a review of their experience may feel uncomfortable at first, chances are you’ll like their answers.

Mention website analytics to many doctors and you can almost see their eyes glaze over. Visitor flows, bounce rates, multi-channel funnels — to the uninitiated, the parameters that give Google Analytics and its counterparts their punch can seem all but indecipherable.

The good news is that they don’t have to be. On the one hand, your web vendor should be able to explain any aspect of the analytic ecosystem to you in plain language. (If your vendor resists — or worse, doesn’t share your website’s analytics at all — it may be time for a new vendor.) On the other, there’s a lot more to metrics than just a bunch of charts and numbers.

Here are four ways your analytics can help you enhance your marketing efforts:

Blog content

Let’s face it, not all blog posts are created equal. Some days, you share things that resonate with readers; other days, not so much. If you want to see for yourself, click on the Content tab in Google Analytics and you can easily see which posts attracted the most visits (good) and which ones prompted people to leave your website (bad). If your site has social buttons (e.g., Google +1, Facebook likes, etc.), you can also track what site visitors share with others via the Social tab under Traffic Sources.

Takeaway: Ask your analytics person to give you a list of the posts that generated the most visits and shares. These are the subjects your readers care about, which can provide valuable insights for future content and marketing efforts.

Partnership opportunities

At the simplest level, knowing which sites deliver Internet users to your practice website is a powerful tool for determining where you should be focusing your marketing efforts. (This is true for both direct referrals and indirect referrals, which requires an understanding of marketing attribution.) Often overlooked, however, those same sites may offer opportunities for joint efforts, such as reciprocal guest posting, which can expand your audience exponentially.

Takeaway: Have your vendor provide data on which sites are referring visitors to your website. With the info in hand, visit those sites and poke around. If you like what you see and they’re not direct competitors, reach out to see if they’re interested in joining forces on content, promotions, events, etc.

Mastering mobile

Do you need a mobile version of your website? Your analytics can tell you everything from what percentage of your users access your website on mobile devices to the specific devices they use. Considering that 25% of mobile Internet users in the U.S. call themselves “mobile only,” you don’t want to turn them off with a site that loads slowly or is hard to navigate.

Takeaway: Between Wi-Fi and high-speed cellular networks, mobile users expect their phone- and tablet-based surfing to be as smooth as it is on their laptop or desktop computer. If 25% or more of your visitors are accessing your site via mobile device, you should definitely have a site that’s optimized for the unique challenges of small screens and touch-based interfaces.

Go local

While visitors to your website are referred by other online entities, it goes without saying that they also exist in the real world. Click on the Location tab in Google Analytics and you can see which states and countries generate the most traffic, valuable information as you plan content, ad campaigns and offline marketing efforts.

Takeaway: Assuming most of your traffic is coming from the local area, ask your marketing team if they’re including geo-specific content on your website (e.g., Seattle cosmetic surgeon, Boston breast augmentation, etc.). Conversely, if a significant portion is coming from farther away, it can provide direction for additional advertising and offline marketing efforts.

Bottom line: Too many doctors shy away from asking about their website analytics. This is a mistake. You don’t have to crunch the numbers yourself but if you’re paying a webmaster or web vendor, they should be providing regular reports that translate the data into actionable information. If they’re not, it may be time to rethink the relationship.

Consider the infographic below, created by the web-hosting company, 34SP.com, which highlights the fact that 2012 will go down as the year in which shipments of smartphones and tablets overtake those of desktop-based computers. In fact, by 2015, it’s estimated that desktop sales will account for just 18% of all computer purchases.

The move to mobile promises to remake every aspect of Internet usage. As the folks at 34SP note, average smartphone usage nearly tripled between 2010 and 2011; mobile search has grown 500% in the last two years, and 25% of mobile Internet users in the U.S. consider themselves “mobile only,” meaning they never or very rarely use a desktop or laptop computer to access the Internet.

Doctors who hope to connect with those consumers have a choice: provide an enjoyable experience on mobile devices or go the way of the desktop.

Doctor Takeaway

Analyze, optimize, capitalize

Analytic tools make it easy to see where the traffic to your practice website comes from. If mobile devices account for more than 20% of visits, you need a version that’s optimized for the unique demands of smaller screens, virtual keyboards and non-Flash-compatible platforms. Your webmaster or vendor should also be able to incorporate click-to-call and location-based features to facilitate contact when potential patients are in the area and most inclined to buy.

What’s that got to do with cosmetic surgery? More than you might think. In recent years, the hotel industry has come to realize that the way travelers make their buying decisions has changed. Sure, reserving a hotel room and a rhinoplasty procedure are two very different things; nevertheless, doctors can glean some valuable tips from what forward-thinking hotel companies are doing.

Here are four of them:

Adding reviews turns lookers into bookers

Recently, executives at the Wyndham Hotel Group recognized the obvious: many guests won’t book a hotel without reading user reviews — good, bad or otherwise — on sites like TripAdvisor. The solution? Incorporate those reviews right on each property’s website.

“Consumers are going to look at reviews anyway,” Gareth Gaston, senior VP of global e-commerce recently told HotelNewsNow.com, “and we don’t want to give them a reason to go somewhere else (for them). After adding TripAdvisor ratings and reviews, we saw an increase in conversions by 30%.”

Negative reviews are not all bad

At Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, management uses software to track reviews and respond to negative commentary. The result is a scorecard that lets property managers see how their response rates compare to company benchmarks.

Furthermore, the company reaches out to reviewers with direct responses, which provides a personal touch that takes the conversation out of the public eye. “It’s a direct conversation, not an opportunity to market,” said Robert Simon, director of interactive marketing.

Tell a story and people will listen

Four Seasons further enhanced its websites by adopting the social-media mantra to “think like a publisher.” To accomplish that goal, the company created an editorial group to write and post stories about each property, efforts that have made the sites more “sticky.”

“The average time people are spending on the site is seven minutes, which is fantastic,” Simon told HotelNewsNow. “Before it was five minutes; now they’re looking at photos, watching videos, etc.” That, in turn, has led to more bookings and increased revenue.

Keep it simple for better clickthrough rates

According to Gaston, Wyndham has pared its site-search features to four basic questions that save visitors from having to enter in extra information that takes more time and raises visitor frustration. After making the change, the company saw a 40% improvement in clickthrough rates.

Needless to say, visitors to your practice website aren’t choosing between thousands of options but the same rules apply to contact forms, information requests and any other website element that requires visitor input. (This is especially true for mobile users.)

Keep your website simple, keep it fresh with good content and keep it real with reviews from other patients and visitors will keep coming back.

Lisa Reath

David B. Reath, M.D.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably heard us say that producing the kind of content aesthetic consumers are looking for is crucial in today’s competitive environment.

But don’t take our word for it. As business manager for David B. Reath, MD, a  plastic surgeon in Knoxville, Tennessee, Lisa Reath probably says it better than we ever could:

It’s basic Inbound Marketing 101; it’s the way you get found. Content is the best way to bring patients to your practice. Period.

It’s a message she shares in “Creating Content That Matters,” a presentation that she gave with her husband, Dr. David Reath, at the recent American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) meeting in New Orleans. (Dr. Reath serves as Chairman of ASPS’s Public Education Committee. Embedded below, it offers compelling (and entertaining) evidence that if you’re not sharing fresh content on a regular basis, you’re missing a great opportunity to connect with today’s online consumers.

It’s almost 2013: Do you know where your Internet marketing plan is?

If not, you should probably start thinking about it as next year and the years to come promise to be ones of rapid and major change. Keeping up with those changes is the key to staying ahead.

That was the focus of a wide-ranging webinar sponsored by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery on Wednesday night. Called “Staying Ahead: Practice Management, Marketing and Maximizing the Internet,” the event drew more than 300 participants who were treated to the insights of five industry experts.

You can download the webinar here.  Otherwise, here are some of the major takeaways from the participants:

Dana Fox, President, Strategic Edge

In an industry where everyone has similar training and credentials, says Fox, successful marketing is a matter of differentiating yourself from the competition. It’s not about getting more patients in the door as quickly as possible; it’s about determining your strengths (and weaknesses) in order to develop a strategy that delivers the right message to the right market to establish an identity that potential patients will relate to.

Often, when we think of a brand, we think of a logo — that’s not a brand, says Fox. A brand is who you are, what you stand for, what people think about when they hear your name. Everything that represents you needs to speak with that same voice.

Ryan Miller, President, Etna Interactive

SEO, paid (PPC) search, doctor directories, social media. With so many avenues to pursue, it’s more important than ever to have analytics in place to determine which channels provide the best ROI. Your vendor, says Miller, should be able to provide data that shows what keywords offer the best value, which sites deliver the best leads, the relative cost of acquiring them and the trends over time. The key is to insist on accountability.

If you’re paying a flat fee every month, it’s easy for your vendor to sit on their laurels and keep cashing your checks, says Miller. Tell your vendor that you want to know how they’re spending your money.

David Phillips, CEO, NKP Medical Marketing

As your outpost on the Internet, your practice website has to appeal to two audiences: the people who come looking for information and the “robots” or mechanisms that search engines use to determine how your website ranks in their results. Fortunately, says Phillips, the keys to appealing to both are the same: clean design, easy navigation, content that inspires interaction and a better all-around experience.

Your website should be bringing in new patients, says Phillips. If you invest the money in it and do it the right way, it will convert new patients and increase your word of mouth, as well.

Tom Seery, CEO, RealSelf

As aesthetic consumers turn increasingly to social media to inform their buying decisions, it’s crucial that doctors become part of the conversation, says Seery. Sharing your expertise (without trying to sell your services) is seen as a sign of integrity while encouraging existing patients to share their experiences shows that you value their opinions. As the saying goes, the audience is listening.

With the rise of social media, the connections that started out with patients coming in through patient referrals are now happening between thousands of people, says Seery. It’s ‘Back to the Future.’ It’s about good old word of mouth.

Marie Oleson, CEO, Real Patient Ratings

According to Oleson, dissatisfied patients represent a tiny fraction (1–2%) of all patients yet they can have an undue influence if they share their dissatisfaction online. Instead of ignoring their concerns, she says, they should be addressed quickly and privately, both as good customer service and as a means to protect your online reputation.

We need to know in advance what they think, says Oleson. In the end, solving problems brought to you by your patients is a way to learn and improve your practice, protect your reputation and build retentions and referrals.

Perhaps you saw the figures released earlier this year from the number-crunchers at Nielsen. Looking at what sources of information people trusted most, the company found that less than half (47%) of the people surveyed trusted paid advertising. Depending on the outlet — TV, magazines or newspapers — that was a drop of 20–25% from 2009.

Instead, says Nielsen, they were more likely to trust recommendations from friends (92%), followed by other consumers’ online opinions (70%) and content found on branded websites (58%). And while the first should be obvious — one-to-one recommendations from friends have always been the gold standard — the other two are expected to play a more powerful role in the years to come.

Consider the following stats from BazaarVoice.com, which underscore the increasing importance of online conversations as Millennials begin to dominate the marketplace:

• 84% of Millennials report that user-generated content (UGC) has at least some influence on what they buy, compared to 70% of Baby Boomers
• 64% of Millennials feel that companies should offer more ways to share their opinions online in the future
• 51% of them say consumer opinions found on a company’s website have a greater impact on purchase decisions than recommendations from family and friends

That last one is especially telling as it represents a seismic shift in who these new consumers are listening to, where they’re choosing to do so and what they’re going to demand from those that they ultimately give their business to.

Question is, will they find what they’re looking for on your practice website or somebody else’s?

Doctor Takeaways

1. Prime the pump by encouraging UGC on independent sites

At RealSelf, we’re proud of the “roaring conversations” that our community of 3 million users engage in on everything from Accutane to Zoom Whitening. By extension, doctors who encourage patients to post reviews get a de facto introduction to a highly targeted audience that represents a great opportunity for conversion.

2. Tighten the bond by adding reviews to your practice website

As noted above, more and more consumers expect the providers they patronize to incorporate UGC on their branded websites. For doctors, this not only shows that you “get them” but that you truly value their input. At the same time, posting reviews on your site can lead to a better ranking in search results because reviews are what many of those consumers are looking for.

3. Act fast to convert those motivated visitors into new patients

Whether visitors to your site come from a search or referral, they’re still nothing more than leads that need to be qualified. With the power of the Internet at their fingertips, these potential patients not only expect quick responses to their inquiries; they also have no compunction about reaching out to multiple providers at once. Have a response plan in place for those leads, set reasonable expectations and then beat them, and you’ll beat the competition as well.

What’s that got to do with cosmetic surgery? Quite a lot, actually, as it’s further proof that the future of computing is increasingly mobile. This is especially true for consumers researching aesthetic decisions as many don’t necessarily want to share what they’re doing with coworkers or computer-sharing family members. Prime example: more than 40% of RealSelf visitors now arrive by mobile device — up from less than 25% a year ago.

And yesterday’s announcement is only going to hasten the process. Add in a pending Windows 8 version for smartphones set to be released next week and it’s safe to say that doctors who don’t optimize for mobile will discover that that PC tether is really a ball and chain.

As the following infographic from Ion Interactive shows, it’s all about making the mobile experience fast, focused and finger-friendly. If your practice website isn’t all of the above, it’s time to get moving.

As Sally Lowery of Ion Interactive says,

Mobile adoption isn’t coming, it’s here. It’s time for marketers to drive meaningful, engaging experiences regardless of what channel they are coming from or how they are accessing your campaigns.