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

There are only 3 types of websites.  Static websites, those which rarely get updated, function as online business cards and are known only to your existing patients.  Static sites have no marketing value because they will not get ranked by Google.  Dynamic sites, those with fresh content, have marketing value because they can get ranked.  Dynamic and interactive sites, those with fresh content and which allow comments to be asked have marketing value and are most likely to engage and convert your next patient.

Russ and Randy

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

No one likes waiting.  Do you?

This episode provides a deep-dive into improving your Patient Experience by improving their Waiting Experience.

Karen D. DeCuir-DiNicola (Karen D3) is a two-time cancer survivor. In other words, she has plenty of experience with waiting rooms either for her doctors or in the hospitals. 

Listen how she can show you how to optimize that waiting room experience to provide an optimal patient experience!

In this episode of Russ & Randy Podcast, we chat with Karen D3 about the potential of your waiting room to ...

• educate your patients
• reassure your patients
• distract them from their worries
• better prepare them for the exam room

The benefits to your practice or hospital are unexpected, yet many. 

Take a listen to hear about the benefits, and how you can achieve them for your practice or hospital.

Russ and Randy

 Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

This is an introduction to the value of analytics.  Analytics, once installed on your website, gives you data about the behavior and preferences of  your website visitors.  Similar to TV rating sites, this information tells you what your readers like to read.  Knowing the most popular browsers and devices to visit your website allows you to ensure that your website looks and performs...on most popular ways to visit your site.  Analytics is free and an SEO requirement.

All the best!

Russ and Randy

 Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

Do you have a brand?  Russ and I introduce the concept of "brand" in preparation for an upcoming interview with Duane Knapp...world-class brand strategist.

Your reputation is your brand.  Every doctor, medical practice and hospital has a brand.  Your brand is difficult for healthcare providers to understand because the quality of the actual healthcare provided is but a tiny fraction of what we call brand.

Your brand is the sum of all the "touch points" a patient has with your business, office or medical institution.  Every encounter and every interaction a patient has with "you" constitutes your brand.

We discuss our own experience with brand and how important it is to grow your practice. 

All the best!

Russ and Randy

 Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

Lead magnets and value offers are marketing terms used to define the process of engaging your visitor to your website.  What can I give you (the reader) in exchange for your email address?

A lead magnet is an irresistible bribe to exchange something of value for their contact information. 

In the healthcare world, our "value" can be health information, eBooks, recipes (healthy eating), etc.

Listen as to how this is integral to relationship develop and building your practice.

All the best!

Russ and Randy

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

Use images in your articles, aka posts, to increase the number of views.  Articles with images are much more likely to be read than those without.  We discuss other advantages to images including attracting attention, adding meaning and information, improving reader retention, etc.

From an SEO perspective, there are "best practices" on how to use stock images most effectively to improve your website rankings.

We also review proper use of images on the Internet and reveal low-cost/free sources of royalty free images.

All the best!

Russ and Randy

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

In this edition, you'll learn why we encourage you to email your patients regularly.

Collecting email addresses in order to stay engaged with your patients and attract others is one of the most powerful ways to grow your practice.

Everyone needs to be collecting email addresses.  Website or not, you should collect addresses now.

Email addresses are an easy way for you to keep in contact with your patients and those prospective patients who have expressed an interest in you and your website.

Patients and your followers appreciate learning more about your practice and their health.  Your periodic email newsletters can keep your audience up-to-date about;

1.  Practice news;  new hires, birthdays, etc. 2.  New Associates 3.  New diagnostic tests or treatments available 4.  New office technology such as an EMR system 5.  Health information - educational articles provide value 6.  Increase your brand

Your existing patients, those with whom you already have a relationship, will become bigger ambassadors of your practice.  This is the first step to creating a stronger relationship with potential patients who might soon convert to patients and join your practice.

Manually collect email addresses in the office.  You may ask for addresses when new patients arrive and/or as part of your check-out process.

Set up an email subscription box on your website to collect addresses from visitors to your website. 

The Internet is sensitive about spam. 

In the office or on your new patient forms, it's as easy as asking "Would you like to receive our newsletter?"

On your website, the subscription opt-in form will automatically send an confirmation email to your brand new contact.  This "opt-in" verification will be handled by the email service provider (ESP) which manages your subscribers.  Examples include Mailchimp.com and aWeber.com. 

As you collect email addresses, start to publish a newsletter regularly.  Frequency can range from weekly to monthly or more. 

If you don't have a website, you'll need to create an email newsletter to send to your subscribers.  If you do have a website, published articles can automatically generate these regular emails - it becomes an automated process. 

Now that you have started your email collection process...you'll be ready for the next episode on "value-offers" and "lead-magnets."

See you next week!

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

Ever sign up for anything online?  If you did, it was probably a result of a "call to action or CTA.

"Call to Action" is a marketing tool where an instruction is given to initiate an immediate response. There are examples of "Call to Action" everywhere; TV, radio and the Internet.

CTA marketing is very important to Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing, too.

Listen to this episode of Russ & Randy Podcast to find out what your ultimate Call to Action is for your website. 

Read on.

You have a website to grow our practice.  How does a Call to Action grow your practice (see below...)?

It's very simple, in order for you to grow your practice via your website, you need to have potential patients;

1.  Sign Up to your email subscription list 2.  Call to schedule an appointment

These are the two ways a website can grow a medical practice.  Building an email list and generating patient appointments are the only call to action examples you will need. 

A Call to Action simply invites your reader to complete 1 or 2 tasks which are the goals of your website.  They are simple reminders.

Other CTAs might include, but do not necessarily pertain to healthcare;

• Buy now
• Download Now
• Talk to Us
• Chat Now
• Click Here

Everyone in business should be building an email list.  Asking your potential patient to subscribe to your website via email allows you to;

1. Educate them/provide value
2. Increase your brand
3. Update your patients with current practice news
4. Most importantly - stay engaged with your patients

The Call to Action should be easy to find and obvious.

There is a special place on every website where your CTA should be placed.  Russ explains why this placement is so critical on both your desktop/laptop version of your site and on a mobile device.

Even on a mobile device, there should be ample room accommodate both an email CTA and a "call now" for an appointment.

Want to know more?

As we discuss, use www.mobiletest.me to test your website on a particular smartphone or tablet.  This is much easier than manually searching your website on numerous phones and tablets.

And it's free.

Next time you go to a website, listen to the radio or watch TV - see if you can find the CTA!

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

In this episode, Isaac Porter, M.D., a solo practitioner in Raleigh, North Carolina is interviewed.  Listen how he uses his website and video to successfully market himself.  Learn his most effective digital tool in helping him get new patients.

Isaac and I met several years ago as we share a common interest in Internet marketing and social media. 

This interview was recorded at the recent AAO meeting in October 2016.

Well not actually in the room, but just outside our "quiet" office space we found in the McCormick Place in Chicago was a construction zone.  The background noise is from a helicopter lifting generators to an adjacent roof top.

While the background noise could not be digitally cleaned, he has some great "pearls" and insights on how he successfully implements YouTube and reviews to market his practice.

Enjoy!

Isaac is an ophthalmologist and cornea specialist.  He is now in solo practice after having purchased his practice from his senior partner.  Isaac describes his older partner as an "early adopter," having a website as early as the mid-1990s.

Porter Ophthalmology has a website, video blogs and produces a written transcript from each video.  To date, there are approximately 130 patient education videos on YouTube where various eye diseases are discussed.

These videos have taken him about 4 years to produce.  He produces the videos himself using a DSLR (Nikon D5000) in his office.  Episodes are continuous and not edited.  Videos are short, between 2-2.5 minutes each.

His videos, a series called "A State of Sight," have attracted almost 600k views.

It's important to notice that he does NOT pay a commercial vendor for video production.

Porter Ophthalmology takes the team approach, all sharing in their digital marketing strategy. Though Dr. Porter takes the lead, it is quite clear that the entire "team," shares in their marketing effort - truly impressive.

Isaac takes the lead by asking patients for reviews and the team follows up with emails including directions for both mobile and desktop.

Each team member contributes to the effort of producing content.  Listen how they do it!

Isaac Porter, M.D. Porter Ophthalmology Raleigh, North Carolina www.EyePorter.com

Twitter:  @eyeporter

Thanks for listening. See you next week!  If you have a question or comment, please ask here or on our website.

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social

Both Russ and I are physicians who independently wandered into Internet Marketing over the past 10 years.

Russell Faust, MD, PhD is a pediatric ENT surgeon and I (Randall Wong, MD) am a retina specialist.

In this episode we talk about ourselves and how it is that two physicians are collaborating to create a podcast on Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing.

Though we preach about the About Page, we have neglected to be fully transparent about ourselves...until now.

The condensed version is that Russ became annoyed with patients arriving in his office with reams of health MIS-information from Dr. Google (the Internet).  His mission was to provide his own information about pediatric ENT health maladies on his own website, BoogorDoctor.com.

In a short while, he was noting traffic ranging from 20-30k per month. 

Using his experience, he forged into the Internet Marketing world, first helping friends and the like and found his niche in brand strategy for healthcare systems.

Russ may be contacted by visiting www.russellfaust.com.  Alternatively, here is his email:  [email protected].

As a retina specialist (ophthalmologist), I became frustrated after creating a huge website for my group in the mid-1990s and not being able to search/find ourselves on the Internet.   We were unwilling to pay for blackhat gimmicks to get our website to rank.

Google has made the Internet more objective and trusted and I entered healthcare and medical Internet marketing by creating my own site www.retinaeyedoctor.com.

Like Russ, we became quite good at content marketing and getting our pages to rank.  Not only do I get patients from all over the world, but I found that patients really enjoyed the information.

Medical Marketing Enterprises, LLC was co-Founded with Amy, my attorney wife, who shares the same passion and knowledge about the Internet.  The company teaches and consults about SEO, website rankings, patient engagement and reputation management.

Email: [email protected]

Very few docs understand or take Internet marketing seriously.  Russ and I "followed" each other for several years before collaborating for this podcast.  One of these days we'll get around to writing a book, too.

Our hope is combine our efforts to create courses and seminars.  There is a growing need for doctors and healthcare institutions to understand the importance of engaging the Internet to grow their brand and business, but do it sucessfully...and correctly.

Thanks for listening. See you next week!

Please download us at iTunes and leave a review.

All the best!

Russ…and Randy Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing Healthcare's Rx for Web and Social