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Business Section • Spring 2016 • Kentucky
Third, consider adding social media as a
way for you and/or your staff to better connect with existing and prospective patients.
A well-designed and maintained
Facebook page and result in massive exposure for your practice. Social media is a terrific tool for providing helpful information
about your office, general information about
conditions and/or treatments, new services
or procedures, etc. Used effectively, it can
reinforce your position as the subject matter
expert. I’m not recommending you try to
become pop-medicine’s next Dr. Oz or Dr.
Phil. Consider, however, why major brands
implement social media campaigns. They
can have a positive impact on the bottom
line.
Fourth, explore the option of starting a blog.
Blogging is an extremely effective way to
provide information about your specialty.
If done properly, blog posts can appear in
Google search results, just like websites,
directories and other sources of information.
A blog enables you to demonstrate your
expertise. For example, you might begin
providing updates and answers to common
patient questions. An office manager can
easily upload a “Question of the Week” to
your blog. That information can be disseminated to your social media properties and
featured prominently on your website. The
time needed to do this is surprisingly brief.
The impact, however, can be significant.
Finally, for those of you who like to push
the envelope, implement a video component
to your marketing campaign.
The power of video is astonishing. The
information in a video allows people to feel
connected to you in ways plain text simply
can’t match. Surprisingly, video content can
show up in Google search results, can be
included in blog posts and uploaded to your
social media channels.
Here are some interesting facts about
video:
• Videos will soon be 90% of all Internet
traffic (Robert Kyncl, YouTube VP)
• Videos show up in 65% of the Google
search results (Search Metrics)
• Videos have a 41% higher click-through
rate vs. plain text (Econsultancy)
• 60% of visitors will watch a video before
reading site text (Diode Digital)
• Cisco predicts online video to become
75% of all mobile data traffic by 2019
• The retention rate for video can reach
65% vs. 10% for text-based information
(Social Media Today)
Over the years, I’ve written many industry
articles and provided seminars designed to
help professionals with business develop-
ment issues. I’ve spoken on a local, regional
and national basis to audiences in highlycompetitive environments. There are business fundamentals that some have been able
to ignore up until now. The market is evolving and how professionals chose to adapt
will determine their success rate. Thinking
of yourself as a brand is a key step in developing a strategy to increase your exposure
to new and prospective patients. It also puts
into place processes t ]