The days when healthcare professionals could depend on word of mouth to boost their public image are well behind us. Today, the internet is used far more often for users to share their negative experiences than their positive ones. As a result, healthcare professionals must be especially vigilant about protecting their online reputation and responding to those who have left negative reviews.
Here are a few ways you can start redeeming yourself online if your reputation has taken a hit.
Search for Yourself Often
Healthcare professionals should make a habit of searching for themselves using a major search engine. You should search for yourself by name, by your practice, and by your facility to find any and all reviews that are being left about you online. Pay close attention to review sites that specialize in medical professionals because they are likely to boil down reviews into a 5-star rating system which can be unfairly skewed without much explanation.
Make Sure to Ask Your Patients for Positive Feedback
Asking for positive feedback and referrals used to be for cosmetic surgeons and service providers, but today healthcare providers of all kinds are trying to boost their ratings online. Ask your happy patients to leave positive reviews on social media, medical directory sites, and anywhere else they feel comfortable with. The more positive reviews you have, the less it will hurt if a negative one comes in. Oftentimes happy patients don’t even think to leave a review unless someone asks them directly.
Have a System for Responding to Negative Comments
Most review sites have a system for ranking you based on the timeliness of your response and your resolution rate. You should never let negative comments hang around without a response because it could look like you are ignoring the issue. Plus, if you are able to address negative comments effectively, you can occasionally save the situation, and the original poster can update their review to a higher rating once they feel satisfied. Of course, this isn’t about just putting on a show online. If someone has a legitimate complaint, it needs to be addressed in earnest to prevent another negative review in the future.
Get Social
We are living in an era where we want fast information all the time, and we want businesses to be more than just a place we go for a service. Patients want to interact with your company even when they aren’t scheduling appointments, and they are looking for you to provide them with helpful information, healthful reminders and more throughout the day. This is done by creating great content that they can share with friends and family, or encourages them to take action with their own health. The more you engage with social media, the more personable you will seem, and the easier it will be for patients to come to you.
Watch Out for Competitors
Thus, healthcare professionals do need to be aware of a dangerous trend online that involves some unscrupulous healthcare providers attacking their competitors online and this can be done by launching false review campaigns against you or your practice, steering patients away from you. So, if you believe that you are a victim of such a plot, you should seek assistance from a qualified professionals like Webs Union that can manage your reputation online to help you overcome this barrier. Depending on how long they have been campaigning against you, it may take months of coordinated planning to get back on top.
All of these are simple ways you can manage your online reputation and boost your reviews online. If you are unable to dedicate time to responding to reviews and researching your history online, it may be helpful to enlist the help of a reputation manager who can stay on top of things for you. This way you can focus on doing what you do best.