Five MORE Ways To Improve Your Online Reputation
6. Create news
This is a classic PR idea. Large and reputable news sites trump almost every other site in terms of search engine placement and overall value of a link back to your site. Theyre important resources, people go to them for information and Google treats them as such. You should focus on creating newsworthy events and then getting them out to the news sources because this information catalogs extremely well. If youre going to do anything, try to make it newsworthy. Seminars are newsworthy. Events are newsworthy. Saving peoples lives or changing peoples lives is newsworthy. What better way to tell Google youre a prominent Sarasota plastic surgeon than to be featured in the Sarasota Herald Tribune with a link back to you? Google sees the geographic relevance and the significance of the source and catalogs you accordingly.
7. Cultivate good reviews
Most practices dont keep an email list of all their patients. If you did, you would have a direct mail database of every one of your word-of-mouth referrals and all your vocal proponents that you could contact at will. Your patient base is incredibly powerful as a tool to help manage your reputation. You should reach out to every patient at one, three, and six months post operative and thank them, ask for referrals, and then ask them to go out and give you good reviews. If you weave this into the fabric of your practice youre going to have a lot less problems with your online reputation. Its as easy as sending an email, like this: Thanks for visiting Dr. Jones. If youve had a good experience here, please visit these sites and submit a review of our practice. Sincerely, Dr. Jones. The best practices have created systems that thank people, ask for referrals and ask for positive reviews. It just makes sense and should be part of YOUR practice.
8. Super Signatures
At most practices, theres a lot of email correspondence that goes back and forth between your practice and your patient base. By creating a good signature at the end of all your practice email correspondence youre giving patients the tools to refer and recommend your practice. Youre going to be pointing people to reasonable places in your network and theyre going to be more prone to join up and become part of it. A good email signature should have your name, email, phone, fax, website, Facebook, and a link to a satisfaction survey. Its easy to set up, only needs to be done once, and gives everyone the tools to support your practice and refer new patients. It also makes your emails look more professional and put together. A good email signature points people back into your network - it closes the loop, marketing-wise.
9. Harvest testimonials
All you marketing becomes better when it becomes testimonial driven. This content can go anywhere - blog, Facebook, print, brochure, etc. and tends to create the most compelling advertising. People are looking for social proof and testimonials from patients are the best way to provide that to your prospect base. You should seek out testimonials, find them and cultivate them. Its the ammunition for great content about your practice. You should ask every happy patient: Can we have your testimonial? Can we use this on our website? Can we use this to market on the web? It gives you great things to talk about, anywhere. Its the most valuable content a patient can give you and a lot of times, if theyre happy, theres no other obstacle to getting a glowing testimonial other than to ask. Its also a huge time saver. Someone else generates great information about you and theres no corollary work, just cut and paste it.
10. Leverage your digital assets
All your patient photography, PDF files, print ads, radio ads, video and more exist in a digital form. You should be aware of these assets and leverage them on your website and within your network. Putting your existing before-and-after cases on Facebook gives you a very search engine-friendly version of your before-and-after cases. Putting your recorded TV spot on your website gives you more great content that catalogs exceptionally well on Google. Youre really putting yourself in a position to showcase what you do and occupy the search engines at a much, much higher level. Be aware of your digital assetsthese things youve already created can have a big presence on the search engines. The hard part, creating the content, is already DONE. When used intelligently, your existing digital assets give you a way to control your reputation and show how on top of it you are.
