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Why (and how) you should encourage your patients’ search for health information on the Web
69% of Americans look for health information on the Internet. Don’t discourage your patients from this: Instead, empower them to identify reliable...
HOW TO GET STARTED
There are four major social media programs to consider: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogging. We suggest that ObGyns who are ready to develop a social media presence begin with blogging, the focus of this article. We will cover Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in Part 2 of this series.
Blogging is the easiest way to enter the world of social media. It’s free, can be accomplished reasonably quickly, and allows you to communicate with existing patients and attract new patients to your practice.
What is a blog? A blog is a Web site that is maintained with regular entries (posts) that invite comments from readers. Blogging allows feedback from people who visit your site and offers you the opportunity to respond to their comments. This creates a dialogue between you, your existing patients, and potential patients that is hard to achieve on an ordinary Web site.
The only expense for a blog is the cost of your time. There are several sites that will host your blog:
- WordPress.com offers free traffic stats, anti-spam features, search engine optimization, and more. Its platform is used by many popular blogs, including Forbes, Flickr, and CNN.
- Blogger.com (powered by Google) offers a user-friendly interface and smooth integration with the blogger’s Google account
- Blog.com provides the same basic features as other blog-hosting platforms, including free templates, but it charges a fee to keep ads off your site
- MovableType.com is a high-end hosting platform that charges a fee for its use
- LiveJournal.com provides its basic service at no charge but, like Blog.com, charges a fee to keep ads off your site.
We prefer WordPress.com because it was recommended in The Social Media Bible. WordPress.com offers tutorials that help you create a blog, enter content, and publish your material. You can access them at http://learn.wordpress.com.
We suggest that you develop your blog by incorporating a “hook” or other enticement to capture readers’ attention, keep your message relevant to their lives, and link the blog to your Web site so readers can find solutions to their medical problems.
Social media experts agree that regular posting is the key to success, particularly in regard to blogging. Commit to posting at least weekly. Visitors are more likely to return to your blog when they can count on regular updates.
Related Article: To blog or not to blog? What's the answer for you and your practice? Jennifer Gunter, MD (August 2011)
How to tell your story
One way to start your post is by offering a startling statistic or analogy. For example, if you are writing about breast cancer, you might begin by observing that more than 1,000 women under age 40 died of the disease in 2013—or that only lung cancer causes more cancer deaths in women.
Humor is another way to engage readers. We have found that people are attracted to funny anecdotes and stories. For example, when Dr. Baum is writing about erectile dysfunction, he might tell a story about arriving at a hotel and finding only 32 cents in his pocket to tip the bellman. When he offered the young bellman a copy of his new book, Impotence: It’s Reversible, the bellman replied, “Dr. Baum, if it’s all right with you, I’d just like to have the 32 cents.” In a blog post about this exchange, Dr. Baum might explain that the article is intended to give readers a little more than 32 cents’ worth of information about erectile dysfunction. The post would carry on from there.
Another option is to relate a compelling story about a recent patient (without using her name) that describes how you identified a problem, made a diagnosis, and resolved the patient’s complaint.
At the end of each blog post, we recommend that you invite readers to submit open-ended questions and comments. This motivates them to respond and starts a dialogue between your practice and potential new patients. Also include a call to action, preferably with a link from your blog to your Web site, inviting readers to visit your site or contact your practice to become a patient.
Most comments on your blog are likely to be positive, or to consist of requests for clarification or specific information. And most blog-hosting platforms allow you to review comments before they are published to your blog site. Any unnecessarily harsh or abusive comments can simply be rejected.
Once you have created a blog and begun to post regularly, we recommend that you check traffic to the site using the built-in analytics available through most hosting platforms. The traffic stats give you information on the number of visitors you have, how long they are spending at your blog, and how many are connecting to your main Web site. You can use this valuable information to identify what is working and tweak your blog posts accordingly.
