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Before you roll your eyes and think, my patients don’t go online, I don’t have time for this, this is just a fad or a craze, or even think it’s stupid- we urge you to think again and come up with a plan for not only managing your online eyecare reputation but to also get involved in ‘social media-eye-zing’. This is not a fad or a craze- this is the future of eyecare marketing. If Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites go down, another will replace it. YELP is not going away- and most probably another online rating service will come up.
First realize the most time consuming part of online optical marketing is setting it up. Start slow and keep adding in other venues. Once you get the hang of it becomes easier. Yes, you will have to let them go through your address list- very scary but a good thing.
5 Quick Tips on Managing Your Online Optical Reputation
- Appoint a staff member as your new ‘Social Media Director’. The job description entails spending 30 minutes/day online. No offense against us older folks, but the young have this process down pat! Make sure it’s a staff member who you trust and can write and edit correctly!
- Have staff book 30 minutes a day for you to go online and monitor online reputation or your social media.
- Google Alert (very easy and free) your name, your competition name and or any other key words-subjects you might be interested in. Alerts will come up daily or weekly and you can read all about yourself in the news.
- Make a list of ‘online’ sites to monitor, such as yellowpages.com, YELP.com , Angies list.com, RateMDs.com, MDjunction.com, merchant circle, measuredup.com. rateyourdoc.com, doctorratings.com
- Pick 1 Social Media to start with. Facebook is very easy to start and maintain. On our Facebook we have several optical shops, that post their new products and events. We currently have 244 ‘friends’ and keep growing. That is 244 people that will see your new offerings- If you are blogging- Sign up for Twitter- it takes about 3 minutes to tweet your news.
As a side note on Facebook- one sunglass online retailer has almost 170,000 Fans. That means that 170,000 people can get daily updates on new products- more people than most optical professionals see in a lifetime!
If you think I’m wrong about this- check out Al Cleinman blog, Current issue of Visioncare Product News has articles by Ed DeGennaro and Frank Giammanco, Jobson just started a new e-mag called Click, Vision Expo is running a series on Social Media (a good reason to go) and I am doing a seminar on Social Media at Monterey Symposium.
Still have questions- check out some of these sites and articles:
Similar Posts:
- Managing Social Media For Eyecare
- Unvarnished- A Website To Trash People or Manage Your Online Reputation?
- Who Uses Facebook, Twitter, Linked In And MySpace
- Social Media-Eyes By Crystal- Should EyeCare Be On Facebook?
- Social Media Webinar by Vision West
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