Online Reputation Management for Doctors – Why is it Important?
If your appointment cancellation rate is increasing every day, it’s high time for you to look into online reputation management for doctors. It has become a trend among customers to read reviews before visiting a physician due to the ever evolving digital world. According to several surveys, it is noted that 94% of patients use online reviews to evaluate doctors. Online reputation management for doctors has become more important than ever. It allows doctors to market themselves outside their practice and allows them to connect with their patients and get their honest feedback.
Regardless of the industry, people trust online reviews, and it is one of the most crucial factors impacting their purchase decision. Even if you rely on referrals, people will search you online, and their final decision will be based on the doctor’s online reputation. Physicians worldwide have realized the importance of online brand protection, which is why they hire an online reputation management agency for doctors or assign someone within their team to manage their brand and online reputation..
What Are The Benefits of Online Reputation Management for Doctors?
Online reputation management for doctors offers many perks and benefits. As discussed earlier, patients search for doctors online before making a visit. So, having a good ORM strategy can help doctors win new patients. Whereas negative reviews can lead to canceled appointments and loss of income.
Online Reputation Management for doctors ensures that the online information about the doctor is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant. This also impacts repeated visits, more referrals, increased patient inflow, and patient’s trust in the doctor’s ability.
How Online Reputation Management for Doctors helps in Handling Negative Reviews?
Everyone wants to avoid negative publicity, but you can’t provide 100% satisfaction to everyone regardless of how good of a doctor you are. So you are bound to get negative reviews and bad feedback from some of your patients. Maybe it is because they had a bad experience in that particular scenario which has been taken care of later, but they have already published a negative review online.
Online reputation management for doctors is sensitive to negative reviews. But that makes your reviews all the more real and that’s how you can keep them engaged. Being a part of the digital space, we have understood this behavior that customers believe unacknowledged negative reviews more than they trust the acknowledged ones. By responding to negative reviews generously, you can clear the misunderstandings and get people to change their negative feedback into a more helpful one. This also sends a message to your future prospects that you value your patient’s feedback and that their experience is vital to you.
Online Reputation management for doctors is all about proactively managing your online presence and handling any negative information or news that may surface about you or your practice. It also involves having a well-prepared crisis management plan in place to effectively deal with and minimize the impact of any adverse events or situations that may arise.
Online Reputation Management for Doctors – 4 Ways To Build Customer Trust
Doctor online reputation management is determined by their website. You should immediately launch a website if you don’t have it yet. This website will provide accurate information about your certifications, and affiliations. It can also streamline the appointment process for your patients, which will eventually help them in maintaining their records.
Other than a fully functioning website, there are several tools for physicians to do sentiment analysis and manage their online reputation.
GMB
Google My Business or Google Business Profile is an important tool to get your clinic or health facility listed on Google. This’ll help you get more patient inquiries within your vicinity. People tend to do searches like “best physician near me.” Having an optimized GMB will help you to get featured in Google 3-pack, and you will be on top of the local searches. This will also allow patients to leave reviews that will ultimately contribute to improving the online reputation management for doctors.
Social Media
By creating and maintaining active profiles on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, doctors can share valuable content, engage with their audience, and showcase their expertise, thereby shaping a positive online reputation. By responding to patient inquiries, sharing health tips, or addressing common concerns, doctors can build trust and establish themselves as accessible and caring healthcare professionals.
ReviewTrackers
This tool is specifically designed for managing online reviews. It aggregates reviews from different platforms, provides sentiment analysis, and offers features for responding to reviews and gathering patient feedback. It is a highly effective tool as you can monitor and track online ratings in one place. This saves time and provides a comprehensive overview of the online doctor rating system.
BrandYourself
BrandYourself allows you to monitor and improve your online presence. It is a tool that monitors search results, manages social media accounts, and optimizes doctor personal branding. This platform enables physicians to track mentions of their name or personal brand across the internet. It provides notifications and alerts when new content is published, allowing doctors to stay informed about their online reputation and promptly address any negative or inaccurate information.
Best Websites for Reviews on Doctors
Getting good reviews in medical-specific directories is important for a good online reputation management strategy. Other than Google reviews, there are other review websites for doctors that people visit before booking an appointment with a physician.
-Yelp
-RateMDs
-WebMD
-HealthGrades
-Vitals
-PatientPop
-ZocDoc
A Word for the Wise
To improve doctor online reputation, getting listed on healthcare review sites and asking your patients to leave a good rating for your services is important. This will help you maintain a good online presence and stand out from the wide range of options while promoting your business.