By Dick Pepper

In the article “10 Tips for Online Orthopedic Practice Marketing”, Laura Miller of Becker’s Orthopedic, Spine and Pain Management Review offered ten tips for effective marketing via online and interactive means (http://bit.ly/yqlNVE). I wanted to (a) recommend the article and (b) give some color commentary and a few additions.

1. Send electronic newsletters to patients. You’d think this is a no-brainer: it’s cheap, easy, and effective. Laura suggests you “offer patients the option to sign” which means you need to add this on your website. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, its easy to drop in a signup graphic that points to a signup page. You’ll want to do this on EVERY page to drive patients to your sign-up page. Another tip – look at your Google Analytics (you do have those, don’t you?) and see where most trafficked pages are, and drop an ad or sign-up link there.

One more tip for newsletters – if you have a blog, you can automate this with FeedBurner! Another reason for a blog as Laura mentions in item number 2…

2. Interact with patients through a healthcare blog. Great idea if you have loads of time, which you don’t. But it really is a great idea and almost a necessity. So how do you manage to have your cake and eat it too? Ease into blogs by Content Curation. What this essentially means is that as you read materials that you think may be interesting, post these to your blog with a short synopsis of what the article is about. Because it has your stamp of “endorsement” on it, your patients will read this. As your time permits, write more content.

With regard to interacting with patients, many doctors are hesitant to do this because of perception of legal issues that might arise, as well as lack of compensation for interaction. The facts are that 90% of blog readers “lurk” or just read a blog post, 9% occasionally interact by comments or questions, and only 1% continually interact with your blog. Starting your blog without benefit of commentary is a safe move. But if you do choose to interact, make sure you set your blog to “Moderate” so you’ll have a chance to review and accept posts from patients as you see fit.

Remember, content is KING! You have to publish to get the mileage out of a blog. If you really want to pump up your blog, as well as your social presence, consider working with a content strategy and creation team such as PracticeMarketingRx. We provide pre-written content at scheduled intervals that can be customized to your site. More on this later.

And reuse these blog posts – you can turn your blog into an email newsletter with services from FeedBurner, MailChimp and more!

3. Create pages and applications on Facebook. Social media is not without fear in the medical community. Advertising and applications are still less engaging than you posting on your business page and keeping it fresh and current. Your social strategy is imperative to success. As suggested, involve an office manager in the strategy and use a marketing specialist like us. Our recommended first step is to define the Content Calendar that fits your practice – those types of articles and frequency of publication that you can maintain. A big tip: use HootSuite to publish automatically to Facebook, Twitter, and many other social sites. Its quick, easy and free. And you can point it at your blog and its automatic!

Applications on Facebook are difficult and expensive to build, but using pre-built applications that leverage your content are great. You can easily add your blog or videos or other website content through many Facebook apps that are free or of little cost. This turns your Facebook presence into a more comprehensive destination.

Finally, make sure you claim your Facebook Places page. It’s amazing how many practices don’t know they have it, yet all of those Check-Ins are occurring in your own waiting room.

4. Promote community events online and through social media. Great tactic and good PR. Post events on your blog. Lead with a short descriptive paragraph, about 100 characters. Your HootSuite setup will pick it up and post it to Facebook and Twitter. Twitter will grab the first 120+ characters and create a link back to the event post on your site. Use HootSuite and post additional reminders to Twitter and Facebook at critical times of the day: 9 am, 11am, 1pm, and 4pm – your patients arriving at work, getting ready for lunch and after lunch, and getting ready to go home.

And use that other social media platform DESIGNED FOR EVENTS… MeetUp. It continues to amaze me that doctors don’t jump on this. It’s targeted at your demographics, and there are likely meetup groups that you can join. Create an event on Facebook as well and promote to your followers. These social media outlets can give you an idea of the size of the crowd showing up and extend your reach to their friends as well.

5. Encourage patients to use social media at the practice. Post simple signs at front desk, on doors leading in and out of practice, at patient focus points (bulletin boards, below TVs in waiting room), and make sure you’ve added your social addresses to all collateral. Encourage patients to “check in” on Facebook and tweet their news about their condition.

Make it easy for your patients to find your practice by getting a vanity name for your Facebook page. It’s free and at http://facebook.com/username.

6. Post videos showing patients how to avoid injury. Don’t stop at avoiding injury. Post videos of you, your staff, insurance options, all of your conditions and treatments, etc. Anything you might say to a patient should be a video, posted on both your YouTube channel (and any other video channels) as well as your website. You CANNOT have too much video.

7. Upload patient education material and practice forms. Let’s split these out a bit. Patient education material should already be a part of your website. A pdf about back pain isn’t going to cut it. You need condition and treatment articles and you need to “prescribe” them to your patient. Each of these articles can contain animations that also produce branded handouts. When we create websites, you automatically have a library of patient education and animations are available to tie to that content. This not only educates your patient, it also helps you with Informed Consent. As far as practice forms, by all means post everything but look into some of the tie-ins available for your Electronic Health Record. More and more have patient self-service portals that drop the information directly into your systems.

8. Include a photo tour of your facility on the practice website. I’m a bit lukewarm on this point. These photo tours turn out to be glory pages for many practices, but if you have a nice facility, with PT or imaging in-office, then showcase that. Bear in mind that your patients are using your site as a resource for their condition and treatment, not to admire the furniture. Priority-wise, this is later after you’ve completed a lot of other things.

9. Post patient testimonials. This is grass-roots marketing at its best. Patient testimonials are always reviewed – everyone wants to identify with someone who has the same condition, so the more testimonials you have, the better chance to have someone identify and hear that patient extoll your virtues. Use photos of the patient at the very least, and video if possible. There is much more human factor in a video that you cannot capture with photos or written words. And be sure to post these patient testimonials on your social media presence as well.

10. Publish press releases to positively promote your physicians. Yes, but make sure they’re fairly current. And if they’re not, why aren’t you releasing more press? You have to be engaged with the real world, not just online. Put on events, ask your reps about co-marketing, call the local media and invite them to lunch and share new technology and techniques you’ve just learned.

Summary All things considered, this was a nice article, but it really only scratches the surface of what you can do to market your practice. Leverage every channel you have, both online and offline, and try to create reusable content that can appear on both social and web.

And contact us to look at your practice, discuss your goals, and see what we can come up with to market your practice.