Russ and Randy Podcast | Healthcare's Prescription for Web Social

Ever wonder why your healthcare website doesn’t rank?  Do you get frustrated by the fact that new patients can’t find you or your website.

While many medical practices now have a website, most are frustrated because;

Can’t measure the ROI

Website Doesn’t Rank - aka it’s not growing the practice

Work/Cost Benefit ratio seems unfavorable

Becoming a new patient can be quite stressful.  There are many "unknowns" which create hurdles in the new patient process;  e.g. forms, directions, parking. The easier you can make this experience for your new patients, the more likely they will tell others.  The more "user friendly"and frictionless, the happier patients will be.

This episode of the Russ & Randy Podcast is a short (3 min) chat that between Russ & Randy on the benefits of using posts or pages for content on your website.

This is a chat that Russ & Randy had about the differences between your website and your blog.  We also discuss providing an "RSS Feed" of your website for your community: what is an RSS Feed? What benefits does it provide you and your community? And how would you set up the RSS Feed for your website?

According the Pew Institute*, over 80% of Americans first use the Internet when faced with a health related question or problem.  When your next prospective patient searches the Internet for solutions to their problems or answers to their health related questions, the only way you (and your practice) can get noticed is if you have a website or social media account.

Like it or not, doctor rating sites are here to stay.  There are dozens of theses sites and all collect data about you, your colleagues and your hospital.  Many encourage readers to leave a review. Here's how to find and monitor your online reputation.

As a professional, what are the best practices for using social media?  Do you maintain separate accounts for your business and personal life?  Do you "friend" patients?

As we learn to use social media to connect with patients, what are the most effective ways of avoiding liability, yet at the same time, not ignoring those who want to connect with you or your medical practice?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - is the process and techniques employed to get your website to rank.  SEO is the process that gets the information on your website found by your prospective patients. It's that simple. 

Patients have questions.   Search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) help patients find answers to these questions.  The best webpages with the best and most relevant answers get ranked higher.  Getting your webpage to rank high use the techniques and of search engine optimization.

For many clinicians, our first encounter with social media may be when disgruntled patient posts a nasty comment about our practice, or directly about us, and someone brings it to our attention. 

If you don't already know this, it's time to accept this as fact: your online reputation can make or break your clinical practice.

Whether or not you have a website or even use social media (Facebook, Twitter, for examples), you have an online reputation.  For most of us, our reputations and reviews online are favorable, positive and good.

But what do you do with a negative online comment or review?