Having a good reputation online is critical for any business; doctors and healthcare professionals are no different. Did you know that even if a doctor is recommended to patients by someone they trust, nearly 80% of patients still check out online reviews and feedback on doctors before making an appointment?
Some of the major issues that affect the online reputation of doctors are negative reviews, negative press coverage, medical mishaps, bad patient experiences, etc.
Know What Your Patients Think of You
By monitoring what is being spoken about you and your healthcare practice online, you get valuable insights into what patients think and feel.
Here are 4 tips for doctors to have a pristine and healthy online reputation:
Build positive rapport with the community
The biggest driver of success is ultimately the real-life interactions that doctors have with patients who visit them. Make sure to have positive conversations, help them out with procedures and be transparent upfront about the service fees. You can even ask them to provide anonymous feedback at the clinic itself with drop boxes. By analyzing feedback, you can bring about changes required to make the experience for patients overwhelmingly positive. This exercise will gradually influence patients to leave positive reviews online as well for your services. Over time, any negative sentiments that existed will be overshadowed by positive reviews.
Create your own website and web presence
When a patient does research about a doctor or seeks information about them, it is best that they get access to all details from one authentic place rather than having to aggregate the information from multiple search engine result links. This is possible if you have an SEO-optimized website especially if the domain name is your name or closely related to your name. The website can have the latest bio about your profession, information on fees, operating hours, and even a review section where potential patients can check out how well other patients are rating your service. Once you have the website ready, go ahead and update your information on all popular online information services like Google Listings, Yelp, professional forums, and much more. You need to offer a consistent stream of information across the entire web landscape of searches that are directed at you.
Maintain an informative blog
The medical profession is one that relies on the universal sharing of information, best practices, and knowledge about specialized care. A doctor builds credibility when he or she is knowledgeable about the latest developments in his specialization, and they are willing to share their knowledge for the greater good of the community. This knowledge could be tips to prevent diseases, managing care at home, advisory to help other doctors and caregivers deliver better treatments, and much more. The best way to deliver this information is to maintain a blog of their own as a part of their website. This also allows doctors to continuously generate organic leads for their service from the internet as blogs bring in a steady stream of visitor traffic as well. Doctors can also write guest columns in other popular online medical journals and public platforms to increase their reputation.
Have an interactive social media presence
There are doctors and medical professionals having millions of followers on social media platforms. It is because of the engaging content they put out in the form of videos, short posts, and informative links to the masses through a variety of social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, and much more. Social media influences the daily lives of billions of people worldwide and hence an online reputation management exercise cannot be run without leveraging social media’s influence.
Online reputation management for doctors is not an easy task and requires a dedicated focus on building a slow but steady outreach program. Medical professionals are often busy and overburdened with work, especially when the COVID 19 pandemic is creating havoc worldwide.
This is when they can rely on a trusted ORM company to help build their online reputation.
