In October, at the recent American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting in Chicago, I interviewed Andrew Doan, M.D. That “live” interview may be found on my podcast on health and medical Internet marketing.
Andy and I met almost 10 years ago. I attended one of his courses on blogging. Graciously, he asked me to teach the course with him the following year and we’ve been teaching together since then. It has become a very popular course and it’s likely that you and I may have met there!
Early Adopter of SEO
Andy tells the story of how he became interested in blogging and the power of SEO early on during residency. While at the University of Iowa for his residency, Dr. Doan was the webmaster for their clinical website which posted daily grand rounds.
In his words, they’ve received millions of views. He experienced the value of SEO by posting great content and on a very regular basis. He recently received an award for his work as a young doctor from the university.
Reputation Management
Dr. Doan once received some undeserved negative online reviews about his practice in Temecula, California. These bogus reviews served as a catalyst to form Credential Protection, a verified doctor review company.
Credential Protection has a unique system to generate and post legitimate reviews about your practice. The reviews can appear on your website, but more importantly, the reviews themselves enjoy high rankings as they are hosted on the Credential Protection servers.
3 Arms of Digital Marketing
There are 3 pieces of the marketing puzzle which are equally important for your digital marketing to be successful. The 3 pieces are;
- Website
- Engagement
- Reputation Management
You can’t have one without the other two. Your website provides the content and captures attention, but then you have to engage your readers (allow them to leave comments AND you answer them) if you have any hope of converting them to patients.
At the same time, you can not ignore your reputation. In theory, you could have a great website, engage your readers and have great rankings and SEO….but have a reputation of being a bad doctor.
Andy – Thanks for taking the time for the interview!