How many times have we seen doctors and healthcare professionals struggling with reputation crises? It’s something very real and it can cause damage, not only to the reputation but the business as well. Reputation management for healthcare professionals has a huge role to play when you are out there providing services in a specific domain.
Nowadays, every patient Google’s the best healthcare professionals and doctors before visiting them. So, your chance of getting better at your professional life is directly dependent on your online reputation. Patients will check reviews, some background, and try to look for credentials before selecting the right doctor. If you fail at it, you will fail everywhere.
We have been dealing with such cases a lot and in this guide, you are also going to receive real case studies that will help you how you can manage your online reputation. It can be difficult for healthcare professionals when they are dealing with a tampered or damaged reputation.
There are a few things that we must lay down first so you can understand how you can improve your online reputation yourself. After that, we will share some real case studies that will help you understand the time and effort you will have to put in to get the best results.
Best Reputation Management Strategy for Healthcare Professionals
Managing your online reputation as a doctor is going to be very difficult. The reason behind this is that you see a lot of patients every day. Even if you have a good online reputation, it can be ruined by just one patient. We have laid down some basics that will help you understand how you can stay on top by including these online reputation management practices to stay away from a bad or damaged reputation.
Fixing your online presence
Of course, you will have to start with fixing your online presence. Most people don’t focus on having a good online presence when they are starting their professional life. Make sure that you are not making such a mistake.
Having a good online presence is always going to pay off. You can start by creating a professional website. You will have to focus on your social media presence. It is important for you to differentiate between private and professional life online.
Above all, you will have to generate some positive links against your professional name so you can build something online that people can trust. Without building trust in people and patients, you can’t improve your medical practice.
Managing online reviews and ratings
We have often seen that doctors and healthcare professionals find themselves in a difficult situation when it comes to online reviews and ratings. Well, the best way to proceed is to encourage your happy patients to leave positive feedback online.
As a physician, you will have to focus on building positive reviews online so you can manage a good online reputation. In the cases of medical professionals, online ratings matter a lot. People don’t trust medical professionals with no ratings or bad ratings. Make sure that you are working hard to maintain positive ratings and reviews online.
Building a strong social media presence
Having a strong social media presence is going to be the key for you. You can’t ignore the power of social media. It is important for you to work hard and create a professional social media presence.
For healthcare professionals, doctors, and nurses, it is important to have a good LinkedIn account. Make sure to showcase your work and your credibility online so people can trust you.
Make sure to separate professional and personal social media accounts. For example, a Facebook page should be a professional page where you can talk about work and your accomplishments. You will also have to be very careful about the pictures you are posting online. It is important for you to maintain a professional look on all of your social media accounts.
Using Client’s testimonials
This is where a lot of doctors struggle. If you are getting a lot of patients, then you will have to develop a system where patients are encouraged to provide positive feedback about the experience they had.
You can always train your staff and politely ask happy patients to leave positive feedback online. Moreover, you can record video testimonials as well and share them on your social media pages. If you have received some excellent testimonials from your patients, then you should consider posting them on your professional website so you can build a strong trust level and improve your online reputation as a doctor.
Responding to your patients online
We already know that it is very difficult for doctors and all healthcare professionals to spend a lot of time online responding to their patients. However, if you are running a clinic, then you can always develop a system where your patients are getting a frequent response.
You can always ask your team to stay vigilant and respond to the patients online. People can leave mean comments and if someone is not happy with the services you have provided, then you need to tackle such a situation properly.
Make sure that you are responding to your patients online to build confidence in other patients as well. By responding to your patients’ comments online, you will be able to build and defend your reputation as well.
Focusing on Local SEO
For every healthcare professional, it is important to optimize their Google My Business Listing. Make sure that you are focusing on local SEO as well to optimize your business pages and profiles.
More than 90% of people search local business owners’ names online.
To improve your online reputation, you will have to work on local SEO as well. As you know that reputation management focuses on optimizing your search results, it is important for you to your local business page, images, location, specialty, and everything that is going to help your patients.
Efforts and time to improve online reputation for doctors
Now we are back to the real question. How much time will it take to improve my reputation? Well, it all depends on different factors. No one can give you a guaranteed time limit for this. Your online reputation repair process depends on the number of negatives, the domain authority of negative links, and how recent the events are.
There’s no easy way to tell you how much time and effort it will take to fix your damaged online reputation. That’s why we are going to share two different case studies to help you understand the process.
Note: We can’t disclose the names of these persons for obvious reasons but we are going to share the rest of the story with you.
Case Study 1
This case is from early 2020 and he was a skin specialist from Los Angeles, California, USA. There were allegations of sexual harassment from a client that ruined his reputation. His license was canceled and he was unable to do any sort of practice after that.
The Problem
In this case, the problem was a huge one. When he contacted us, he had 3 negative news articles from good authority sites. The real problem was that he was fighting this case and it. We had no idea when a new negative is going to jump into the search results and how big it can leave an impact on currently damaged reputation. 2 more negatives came in the second month of his ongoing campaign with us.
It was altogether a very difficult job because the event was very recent and there was a person who was damaging the reputation on a continuous basis. The allegations were false as he got out of that situation by the end of the year but it left a huge impact on his reputation.
The Solution
Now that you have already known the big problem with the case, we are going to share what we did and how much time it took us to repair his online reputation.
We had one edge and that was time. He joined us immediately after the incident and that gave us a chance to quickly respond to the negatives. We started with a complete strategy including building a professional website, optimizing social media, creating new online assets, Wikipedia creation. We posted videos, blogs, and guest posts to cover everything.
The negatives were coming from very high authority domains and they were very hard to beat because there were continuous updates on this case.
By the end of 2020, we were able to push all the negatives down to the third page of search results with the continuous efforts of our team. It took us almost 10 months to complete the job and fix his online reputation. If he would have joined us after 6 months of allegations, it would have taken us more than 1.5 years to resolve his matter.
Case Study 2
This person joined us in November 2020. He was a general physician from Orlando, Florida, USA, and was involved in a medical malpractice case. When he joined us, he had around 9 negative links and some of them were old.
The Problem
The problem was his ignorance of the matter. He kept ignoring it, and it cost him a lot. Though some of the negatives were old and a few of them were published recently. We had to build everything from scratch. Some of the links were coming from very high authority domains including a government website.
The Solution
There was no other solution except to build his reputation from scratch. We started with the basics including social media, a website, a blog, and multiple other things. In this case, the good news was that no one was pursuing his case anymore. So, we knew that there will be no new negatives.
We were able to push the negatives down to the 4th page of search results after the continuous working of 6 months. We were also able to do review management for him because he had multiple negative reviews that required attention.
In both cases, the first one was a very difficult case and sometimes it takes more than 1-2 years to fix reputation in such cases. But, whenever you are signing up for online reputation management, you should consider at least 6 months to improve or fix your online reputation.
Improve your online ratings today
To improve your online reputation today as a doctor, you can talk to our reputation management expert at any time. We are providing free consultation and we would like to help you with whatever you need. We can help you improve your online ratings by providing high-quality review management services and online reputation management services. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
