Online Reputation Archives - Medical Marketing Enterprises, L.L.C.

Interview with Dr. Andrew Doan | Early SEO Adopter | Founder Credential Protection

March 8, 2017 by Randall Wong, M.D.

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!

Your Online Reputation| Reputation Management

May 26, 2015 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Whether or not you like it, you have an online reputation. With or without a website or social media account, you’ve got people saying things about you.

Most of us fear the negative online review yet ignore the positive ones. Here are a few tips to monitor the Internet looking for reviews, respond to all reviews and improve both your SEO and reputation at the same time.

At the end of this post is a YouTube presentation on Managing Your Online Reputation.

Locating Your Reputation?

Where exactly is your online reputation?

Your reputation is composed of all the comments and reviews written about you on the variety of review and business listing sites. Most of these sites aggregate business information about you and your medical practice to a comprehensive directory for their readers. Other sources include any number of social media platforms such as Facebook and Google+ and perhaps your own website (if you allow comments or questions to be asked).

There are dozens of directory sites; Yelp and Healthgrades are great examples. Fortunately, almost all of these sites allow patients to leave reviews about you and your practice.

Here’s how to automatically monitor the Internet to find all those reviews.

Monitor the Internet

First, “follow” yourself by creating a Google Alert. Google will send you an email anytime it finds your name or practice (actually whatever you want) mentioned on any the sites indexed by the search engine giant. This will cover most of the Internet.

For the few sites (e.g. Angie’s List) not indexed by Google, make sure to create a free account for your medical practice. Create a link to your website and add your contact email address. Angie’s List will automatically notify you when a new review is created.

If you’ve got social media accounts, you should already automatically receive notifications about new comments.

Claim Accounts

You are going to be surprised to find that many sites already have your practice listed. Search for yourself on Google+, Facebook and Angie’s List. In many instances, you’ll already be listed.

“Claim” these accounts so that you can respond to any reviews and correct any incorrect information. This is extremely if you’ve have EVER changed offices or practice locations.

Be consistent in using the same abbreviations and formats when entering your contact information (NAP).

Local Search Becomes Bonus

As a bonus, by claiming and linking all these aggregators to your own site you’ll also be improving the SEO of your website (because you should be linking each aggregator to your own website) and improving your rankings on local search (you’ll earn a position on the local search map).

All the best!

Randy

How to Create a Google Alert

March 21, 2012 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Monitor your online reputation with a Google Alert.

A Google Alert is an email alerting you of something recently published on the Internet about a subject of interest.

Google, for free, will monitor the Internet; webpages, blogs, articles, press releases, comments, etc, for any search terms and/or subject you desire. Anytime someone publishes content relevant to your search terms…you’ll get an email.

Google Alerts are great ways to;

follow conversations about a company, such as your medical practice
follow developments in a news story
follow the competition
follow yourself

Follow Yourself for Negative Reviews

Particularly useful and highly recommended is to set up a Google Alert on yourself, your colleagues and your practice.

With this simple tool, you can then monitor the Internet for any information published about you or members of your practice.

This is especially useful for keeping abreast of comments made about the practice; both good and bad.

Negative Comments

Negative comments posted on another website are a big concern. It is our opinion that all comments be dealt with in the following manner;

Answer all comments within 24-48 hours, but not immediately. Wait until the next day to calm down a little bit. Answering quickly, however, will actually demonstrate that you care and are concerned, not only to the negative reviewer, but also to future readers.

Always be positive, never defensive nor accusatory just as a concierge handled your recent complaints at a 5 start hotel or fancy restaurant.

We have some other tips about how to handle negative reviews in another post.

Positive Comments

Just as important are finding and responding to the positive comments. There are too many positive comments on too many review sites that remain idle….just begging for a response.

Take the time to find your comments and respond to each and every review remaining polite and thankful.

Responding to a positive comment can enhance your transparency, shows your practice is willing to engage and you are appreciative. In addition, your responses alone (just the mere action of responding) will illicit even more comments in the future.

Patients innately want to say “thank you” and will do especially if there efforts are appreciated and acknowledged versus falling on dead ears.

Setting Up Your Google Alert

Setting this up is easy. Make sure you (or someone in your practice) has a Google account.

If you need a Google account, set one up via GMail.
Here’s the address for setting up the alert: http://google.com/alerts
Follow on screen directions (should take < 1 minute)

TIP: Placing “quotes” around the search phrase will only produce alerts using those exact words in the same order. For instance, “Randall Wong” will bring up only articles using that exact phrase. Whereas Randall Wong (no quotes) will find anything containing Randall or Wong.

The point? If you have a common name or phrase, you might consider using quotes to limit the search. You can always go back and change it!

To Your Growth And Success!