Where to Get Online Reputation Management for Your Medical Practice for Only 50¢/hour

Where to Get Online Reputation Management for only 50¢/hr

By Maria K Todd

Table Of Contents What is Online Reputation Management?

01

Why is it Crucial to Your Business?

01

How Online Reputation Can be Manipulated

02

It's Up To You And Your Staff to Encourage Fresh, Authentic Posts from Patients Delighted with Their Experience at Your Practice

03

How Much Does Online Reputation Management Cost?

04

How Long Does Reputation Management Take?

05

Don't SEO Vendors Do This Too?

06

Why We Don't Offer Both SEO and Online Reputation Management

07

Our Reputation Management Services

08

Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online Reputation Management is a part of public relations, a subset of your marketing and professional branding strategy.

The management aspect is to help you maintain a positive image or repair and improve your online visibility.

You have little control over what people post about their experience doing business with you and your staff under your brand identity. You can control their experience.

Why is it Crucial to your Business Success?

Industry research indicates that 88% of people check feedback and comments about their experience doing business with you and your staff prior to scheduling their first appointment.

If practice growth is not a concern to you, and you are satisfied with things as they are, maybe online reputation management is of little significance to you.

Insurance plans and third-party payers also check your reputation and patient satisfaction indicators before negotiating new contract agreements or renegotiating contract renewals and rate increases.

If they view your reputation as suboptimal, they will be less likely to respond favorably with higher rates and changes to their boilerplate agreement. That's because their own accreditation as a health plan is measured partly on patient satisfaction.

If they identify cause for concern, they may place you on monitored status without your knowledge. This can give rise to more chart note requests, patient surveys, and positioning in less preferable patient access tiers, lower rates of pay, or even contract termination "for cause".

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

How Online Reputation Can be Manipulated One way your reputation can be affected is by untruthful posts. Your competitive rivals may engage or even reward shill posters to post negative comments about you by "sock puppet" posters with fake profiles. These shills hire themselves out on various websites and work for pennies from places within and outside the country.

For as little as $5, your competitive rival or an angry patient can obtain as many as 15 online posts about your business from offshore posting agencies that can post content over a period of weeks to paint your reputation in a less than favorable light.

If you cannot prove these are fake posts (which is difficult and time consuming to find and then prove them to be phony) all over the internet (Google, Yelp, HealthGrades, RateMD, WebMD, onlne yellow pages and other directories and hundreds of other sites), you cannot require site owners to remove them.

In this case, your best tactical response is to respond to them. But if you are unaware of their existence, you can't address them and post a reaction... can you?

This is where our reputation management and monitoring system helps you the most.

We constantly (24/7/365) scan the entire Internet to find any mention about you.

This is too time consuming to assign to a staffer or do yourself.

Once you know where the posts are, you can thank people for praise and valid complaints and show you care about your professional reputation and image... or we can respond on your behalf according to your guidelines and response specifications.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

It's Up To You And Your Staff to Encourage Fresh, Authentic Posts from Patients Delighted with Their Experience at Your Practice Individual physicians, dentists, veterinarians, therapists, hospitals, clinics, and medical supply companies all have the opportunity to encourage their patients and customers to post online reviews about the services they received.

But in healthcare, some people are not only shy, but they really aren't of the ilk to post feedback - not about restaurants, hotels, bakeries, or medical services. This reduces the number and frequency of those who will post no matter how happy or disappointed they are.

Others are so grateful and delighted about how they were treated and want to praise you to the whole world. Organic, honest comments accrue on platforms such as Facebook, Yelp, Google and other sites need to be kept fresh and unique. This accumulates to your positive image and reputation in a way that appears truthful and trustworthy and informative.

The other side of the spectrum is the world of posts about billing accuracy, surprises, access to appointment issues, receptionist demeanor, and encounters that were less than delightful but were not about the practitioner. You may eliminate the problem staffer or retrain them, and improve performance, but the complaints will remain until the poster who wrote them elects to remove them, if ever.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

How Much Does Online Reputation Management Cost?

The cost of online reputation management varies across the internet. We searched Google with the search question "how much does online reputation management cost" and the results indicated that the standard charges for online reputation management should range from $900/mo ($1.25/hr) to about $3,000/mo ($4.17/hr).

Other sites claimed that "extremely detailed" reputation management which is what we offer, starts at about $3000/mo and can range upwards to $10,000/mo (13.89/hr).

We are very niche focused, working only with healthcare providers and suppliers. Our basic service includes: Brand Monitoring Public sentiment makes and breaks all brands, but it affects healthcare professionals and hospitals with greater impact. Emotions and stressors run deep. Brand monitoring keeps tabs on the visibility of positive and negative content. When something negative pops up, or when it goes away, brand owners and managers must know and respond quickly. This is a basic service we offer all our clients that is continual 24/7/365. We monitor all posts, not just the negative ones. We believe in showing appreciation for kind, positive posts as well as for negative complaints or constructive criticism.

Review Management Review management includes the removal of negative online reviews when possible, and finding ways to encourage higher, truthful, organic star-ratings on sites like Google Reviews, Yelp and others, and the curation of good reviews. It also helps to intercept bad experiences before they become bad reviews by improving customer experience.

We have special tools to intercept these reviews for you and address them if people post reviews via your website. If a bad review is received through the portal we place on your website, it can be addressed directly with the complainant rather than popped drectly onto Yelp, Google Reviews, and other sites. These are called "curated" reviews. These tools are only available to agencies, and not to individual business owners. To use them requires special training and an agreement to follow rules and policies to be able to upload them where they are posted.

Competitive Online Reputation Monitoring Research Examination of the online search and social environment for your competitive rivals to better understand what makes their search and social results succeed or fail. By analyzing the content and technical underpinnings of search results, we then perform a gap analysis to help you understand that which could be leveraged to improve your results and differentiate you.

Monthly Report Card Generation We prepare a roll up report for you each month and reserve time to chat with you if there are any issues or areas of concern to address. If everything is copacetic, we leave you alone to see patients and practice medicine. But we are always available during regular business hours to chat with you at your request.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Small independent practices, clinics and healthcare professionals who wish to improve how their brand is perceived online usually only require a minimum service, unlike restaurants, retail outlets, and chain brands or integrated health systems with tens of provider-based departments (PBDs) and clinics.

Reputation Strategy

Our standard plan for small practices, clinics, and practitioners is our most popular. It provides just enough resources to solve the most common onlline matters, monitor your brand around the clock, and responding to posts and feedback no matter where it pops up.

The content and reputation strategies we help you to create produce the most natural search profile possible.

This minimum service package we offer is priced at $350 per month (or $0.50/hour.)

The employee you pay $15/hour in wages really costs you about $21-$25/ hour.

We work on your online presence and reputation around the clock 24/7/365 for what it costs you for 3 hours of their time per week.

That leaves them available to produce more than $21-$25/hour by doing what they were originally hired to do in your practice.

Online reputation strategy follows the competitor research phase. in this phase we help you to develop an action plan to launch or improve your brand's online presence.

The strategy is most often presented in a serial (step-by-step) format for later execution by members of our social marketing and reputation team or by you or your staff.

Having a strategy is very different from consistently executing a strategy. Many of our clients initially assume someone internal can handle the tasks to activate the strategy and soon realize they overestimated and call us back to ask for help.

We're always glad to accommodate them.

The best part is that they see improvement straightaway.

Most of our clients under social media management and marketing enjoy 5-star ratings everywhere for $0.50 per hour.

How long does reputation management take?

When your reputation is well-managed and maintained, keeping it that way can take a few minutes each day using our special technology and tools. That's why it costs 50 cents per hour. But if you let it get out of hand and require lots of remediation, you can easily spend $10,000 to "attempt" to remove or suppress or "bury" the bad stuff. Sometimes you'll spend that much and still not be able to remove legitimate complaints and negative posts.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Don't SEO vendors do this too?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is generally concerned with getting a website to rank better for product or service-related search terms.

Our CEO, Maria Todd, holds advanced degrees in healthcare administration and is one of the rare healthcare experts also certified in Digital Marketing by Google.

Online Reputation Management is generally concerned with getting many websites to rank well for the brand name and feedback and ratings.

Both are subsets of online marketing.

We know all about SEO treatments but we don't offer SEO as a service because it requires full-time staff and ongoing training to keep up with new Google releases. It is a discipline unto itself.

You will need a website to optimize a search engine ranking. One with content, keywords, images, video, podcasts, and other branded assets.

Online reputation management is about how your brand appears online. You can have feedback ratings and star ratings without ever having a website for your business.

Online reputation management contributes to improved rankings, ratings, profiles on directory websites, social media platforms and more. So even when you don't have a website if your own, you will show up online when someone searches your name, practice brand name, or address or phone number... but what is said will be controlled by the website owners. Don't you want control of your brand reputation and narrative?

SEO treatments increase your visibility. SEO impacts where you appear in online searches as far as your ranking on the first page of a search.

We have one client, a mobile veterinarian that signed up with an SEO vendor 7 years ago.

They registered a new domain name almost identical to his established domain name. He discontinued their service 4 years ago but they still run their old media and site and won't take it down - tantamount to brand infringement. The URL they paid $3 for 7 years ago will only be taken down if he pays them $1500 to buy it from them.

This creates lots of problems for him as they still have a curated feedback tool on their site and people find it and post glowing comments there. The comments end up in an unmonitored, dead end, "black hole." It's maddening. Be careful whom you engage for social media marketing. There are some real winners out there with nefarious intentions.

Get stuck in their clutches and you may be held hostage to get them to stand down and get out of your affairs.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Why we don't offer both SEO and Online Reputation Management The methods of SEO are always changing, like a frantic game of "keep away" between internet users and search engine companies. The game becomes even more interesting considering the fact that Google changes its algorithms between 500 and 600 times a year, with major changes interspersed through the years.

True SEO experts manage to figure out key aspects of these algorithms and apply them to website creation and upkeep. Dabblers are a dime a dozen and don't keep up with those changes. We take pride in our work so we decline that which we don't believe we can manage to the level of quality we take pride in. We can't offer everything and we do branding and reputation management very well.

Besides, if you don't have good quality content, no level of SEO treatment will drive you up the page ranking on Google. But no matter what you post yourself, branding and reputation management is often done on sites other than those you control. You have to know a feedback post or comment about you exists in the first place and that's our value proposition. We find every listing and post for $0.50 /hour all day, all night, every day of the week.

If a doctor, dentist, veterinarian or group practice is haunted by past events or PR problems, we help them to reinvigorate the brand and their online image. We structure a plan, known as a "campaign".

We will work hand in hand with your chosen SEO vendor and can even recommend some we are very impressed with. All you have to do is ask us to do this on your behalf.

While online reputation monitoring and management services are charged at $0.50/hour for our minimum service package, strategy development and campaign creation are a different service and our fees are billed at our regular consulting rates.

The charges for the time we spend working on collaborating with your SEO vendor is charged in 15-minute increments, billed each month as we do the work. The rates are in line with our usual consulting rate schedule for occasional use or for long established clients who enjoy preferred discounted rates. Call us to ask about the rates and how you can become a preferred client at our most discounted rates.

All new clients also pay a one-time account set up fee that includes your initial consultation, our set up in the system to find and manage all your online presence as a baseline and then work on improvements through monitoring and management of new instances where you appear.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Our Reputation Management Services Our popular minimum service package is what most physicians, dentists and veterinarians select most often.

Minimum Service

Content Services

Reputation Repair

Initial Competitor Research

Content Marketing Strategy

Initial Reputation Strategy

Content Planning

Remove from search results

Monthly Meetings (PRN)

Content Development

Routine Monthly Reporting

Content Distribution

24/7/365 Brand Monitoring

Content Curation

Rapid Comments Response

Account set up $1500

Account set up $500

Monthly Fee $2500

Monthly fee $350

Negotiate Removals Solicit positive content to add to your online presence and push bad results down in Google Address Google business reviews and complaints Improve Yelp and other online reviews Account set up fee waived Project fee varies by scope and time and complexity

Services Limited to Healthcare Providers and Suppliers

Let's chat: (800) 727.4160 Request a quote to design your next website

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Brands Have 24 Hours to Respond to Customer Comments on Social Media Customer comments on social media represent expectations — 83% of the writers require brand responses within 24 hours, finds a new survey. Here’s what you need to know about what customers expect.

Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews company, learned from a recent survey of U.S. social media users on Nov. 1: Not all customer comments on social media are complaints. Some are praise. Others are requests for customer service. Still others are miscellaneous opportunities for social media marketing. And customers expect brands to respond to them all.

I once had a bad check in experience at a Holiday Inn Express in Madrid. I posted a complaint on Twitter and my phone rang in eight minutes! Corporate monitors called me back to see how they could make it better. But in return they requested not a removal, but praise for their quick response, which I agreed to post.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

Customers Will Surprise You Even if customers are irate on social media, “they don't necessarily expect an immediate fix,� the announcement says.

They do expect an answer within 24 hours, though. Your response makes people feel as if they've been acknowledged. Otherwise, they are left to believe you really don't care at all.

Responding to Criticism Online Can Elevate a Company's Brand Clutch says: Nearly half of people (45%) say they would view a brand more positively if it responded to negative comments on social media.

Being able to show the way that your business responds in a crisis is actually helpful, because patients get reassurance that if something goes wrong, you will take care of them.

Acknowledge the problem/complaint and offer a solution, if possible. Start with a detailed, honest assessment of the problem but take it off line. Don't publish the exchange dialogue for all to see. If applicable, explain your fault, commit to a resolution, provide a sincere apology. Keep things light so your malpractice carrier doesn't have a kniption or have to defend you because of how you handled the complaint. If you have a concern about risk ask your carrier for the words they want you to use for a response.

That's what we do here. We're never overly effusive, nor do we admit guilt when we respond on your behalf.

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Online Reputation Management for Healthcare Providers

How Doctors Can Respond to Patients on Social

If comments are positive, brands can say “thank you,� ask customers to place those views on their sites and elevate customers to brand ambassadors.

Customer service requests are routine, for many brands. One of our concierge medicine clients even requested a prescription refill through Twitter one day. The doctor was not pleased, and called the patient promptly to handle the matter.

But the doctor didn't see the tweet. Instead, our monitors notified her immediately. She responded to the patient in under 10 minutes. The patient was impressed and has since referred 3 new patients to the practice who pay membership fees of $1800 a year for such premium service. The doctor finds our 50¢/hour charge a bargain to win that kind of business and know we have her back.

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