It’s not too difficult for most healthcare professionals to understand the need for a stellar reputation.  A high level of trust is needed for patients to willingly put their health and even their lives in the hands of medical professionals.  Some of this trust is earned through education and medical degrees, but building a reputation for correct diagnoses, successful treatment, and a compassionate bedside manner will give you a competitive edge over other professionals with the same degrees.

What you may not realize is just how important your online reputation is these days.  If you have yet to partner with a talented and experienced Asheville digital marketing firm to build and maintain an online reputation, you might not even know what you’re missing out on.  Even worse, you may have a terrible online reputation that is affecting your business and be none the wiser.

If you want your practice to flourish and outshine competitors within your market, you really need experts in online marketing and social media management in Asheville to get you on track for an exemplary online reputation.  Here are just a few reasons why this is so crucial for doctors, both in the hospital and private practice settings.

Patients Are Looking for You – What Will They Find?

With information so readily available online, patients no longer need to sift through directories, call doctor’s offices, and ask family members and friends for trusted referrals.  All they have to do is search for local doctors to peruse websites, or simply look at review sites like Healthgrades, RateMDs, or even Yelp to find out what patients are saying about doctors.

What can you and your partner in digital marketing in Asheville, NC do to control the information prospective patients find?  For starters, you need to be aware of what patients are finding when they search for local doctors.  You can do a lot to control the message you send by optimizing your website and social media accounts, especially with the help of a talented Asheville social media services partner, but what can you do about review sites?

For starters, you need to participate by encouraging satisfied patients to post reviews, improving your stats.  From there you can interact with dissatisfied patients, commenting on their negative experience and finding ways to turn their reviews around, or if reviews are false, calling them out (or seeking removal).

The right experts in digital marketing in Asheville, NC can help you with reputation management, but first you need to know where you stand and what patients encounter online so you can turn a negative situation around and populate search results with positive associations.

Get the Inside Track with Help from Asheville Social Media Services

Patients that might be hesitant to criticize you to your face may not be so shy about voicing their disappointment online, where they enjoy some measure of relative anonymity.  How can you track negative reviews and address them to improve your online reputation?

There are tools that can help you to find social mentions by your name, the name of your practice, or even services you offer or keywords related to your optimization efforts.  This can help you to track your reputation and address concerns and negative comments.

It’s important that you not make things worse by telling people they’re wrong.  Look at negative reviews as an opportunity to improve, especially if many patients are voicing the same complaints.  If long wait times for appointments are a problem, you might want to rethink your scheduling strategy or increase staffing.  If a brusque bedside manner is a common issue, consider how you might present a warmer professional vibe.

This gives you the chance to not only address negative online reviews but correct the underlying issues that are at the heart of your reputation problem.  Promptly addressing comments online can also yield positive results when it comes to turning around negative reviews.  Often, disgruntled patients just want to feel heard and understood, and this is a time-sensitive issue.

Get Proactive with Your Asheville Digital Marketing Team

Cleaning up your online reputation after the fact is something you want to avoid.  Operating from a reactive standpoint will cost you, not only in terms of time and money spent mopping up messes, but also in terms of potential patients that encounter negative information and write you off – no second chances.

Your partner in marketing and social media management in Asheville can help you to plan for a proactive approach to reputation management that boosts positive associations with your name and your practice and makes it more difficult for negative associations to gain a foothold and become the first thing prospective patients encounter online.

If you need help building and managing a positive online reputation, contact the marketing, SEO, and social media experts at Barking Dog today at 828-450-2551 or online to get started.

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