MedNet Technologies is proud to announce that Michael O’Neill, a member of our Information Technology team, was recently recognized as one of the “Twenty Top Techies” on Long Island by the Long Island Software and Technology Network (LISTnet).

Michael joined MedNet Technologies in December of 2005. He has an extensive background with technology including five years of service in the United States Navy as an avionics technician, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems. Michael’s role is as MedNet’s Systems Support Engineer, where he is responsible for system infrastructure and web-server support roles.

LISTnet is a networking organization that promotes software and technology development in companies across Long Island. The Twenty Top Techies is an annual distinction that honors some of the top IT technology professionals working in Long Island. Mike was nominated by his managers for his advanced knowledge of software development and programming, as well as his consistent hard work and determination. Congratulations Mike!

View the full press release

1. Additional exposure to your brand – Whether you are trying to build your personal brand or the identity of your practice, these sites present additional opportunities to reach new people and get more exposure.
2. Additional links to your website – These profiles live on the Internet and allow for you to place a link that leads directly to your website. This is a great way to drive additional traffic to your website.
3. Additional search results for your name in Google and other search engines – Search engines index these profiles and include them in search engines and can appear when people search for your name and/or practice name. ‘Owning’ many search results for your name is a great preventative measure to controlling your reputation on the web.
4. Professional networking – LinkedIn allows you to network with other professionals around the country and become more of an authority in your field by responding to questions posed in groups.
5. Great way to market to existing patients – Once you do some networking and build up a following, these profiles give you the power to keep your face in front of your patients. Each time you post a topic it shows up in their ‘Feed’ when they login to the social networking website.
6. Ability to bring in more referrals - When existing patients and others follow you on Facebook or Twitter, their followers may see this and choose to follow you as well. This can build up your following and ultimately bring in more referrals.
7. Quick and easy way to broadcast messages to your audience – Since most of the messages broadcasted on these services are vey short, it only takes a few seconds to send one out.
8. Market your blog – Facebook allows for automatic importing of your blog feed so every time you post on your blog, it goes right on to your Facebook profile and sends updates to your followers. Twitter allows you to send links in your messages which can point out to your blog posts or any other page on your website.
9. Powerful ability to search for people that discuss a certain topic in your area – Twitter has a location-based search function so you can find people, for example, who mentioned the word ‘dentist’ within a 15 mile radius of Elmont, NY. This allows you to find a locally targeted audience to attempt to build relationships with. Once they choose to ‘follow’ you, they will instantly see the messages you broadcast from that point forward.
10. Connect with people at a low cost - A large audience such as this is clearly a marketing opportunity, but the biggest benefit is the ability to connect with people at a low cost. The only true cost is the time involved, so if someone on your staff has the available time, you can invest that time into something that can increase your business.

Let Us Help Your Practice Experience These Benefits Firsthand!

MedNet is now offering a service where we will set up profiles for you on the top four social networking websites for a one time fee of $1,195. This saves you the setup time so you can quickly join the conversation and start building your networks. Get started with social networking today!

What are Social Networking Websites?

Social Networking websites are online communities where people can share interests/activities, and communicate quickly and easily. People build up connections on these sites to keep up with friends and family, network with colleagues, and also to monitor their favorite brands. Organizations use these sites to build stronger relationships with their existing clients, foster new ones, and ultimately promote their brands.

Will This Audience Be Receptive to My Medical Practice?

Today, 110 million Americans, or 60% of the online population, actively use social networks, according to a recent survey by Anderson Analytics. This is clearly a huge audience, but what’s even more exciting is how receptive they are to interaction with brands on these sites. The survey further revealed that 52% of social networkers had ‘friended’ or became a ‘fan’ of at least one brand. Twitter, in particular, gives you the ability to harness their unique power to find people interested in your services, who are also located in close proximity to your practice. Not only does this allow you to reach out to a targeted audience, their audience is even more receptive to brand interaction because many of them are ‘promoting’ something themselves. One last tidbit, 93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media (Cone, Business in Social Media Study).

The Four Most Widely Used Social Networking Websites

Facebook - Not only is it the most visited social networking site, Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other top site on the web!

• Features: Users have the ability to share photos, videos, links, articles, and short status updates
• Monthly Users: 122 million
• User Profile: Predominantly 18-54 with highest growth in the 35-55+ group

Twitter - Fastest growing site with an amazing 1,448% year over year growth in monthly unique visitors!

• Features: Revolves around 140 character ‘micro-blogs’ called Tweets. Everything Tweeted is public and highly searchable, which makes it easy to connect with people who share interests and/or are potential clients.
• Monthly Users: 23 Million
• User Profile: Users are more likely to be entrepreneurial

LinkedIn – This site is all about business with over 43 million members.

• Features: Users have the ability to create a ‘living’ CV, network with other professionals, send out status updates, join industry groups, and respond to questions to build up their authority in their field. Used primarily for business, networking, job searching, and recruiting.
• Monthly Users: 12.5 Million
• User Profile: Professionals with the highest average income per user of any social networking site.

MySpace – The only site on the list with declining growth; it still has a very large user base, but is quickly fading.

• Features: Users have the ability to share photos, videos, links, articles, short status updates, and send out bulletins
• Monthly Users: 61 Million
• User Profile: Young audience, low income bracket

Social Networking Is Here to Stay

It’s important to realize that Social Networking is here to stay. These sites have been around for over five years and their reach continues to grow at considerable rates month after month. To hit this point closer to home, more and more of your existing and potential patients are using these sites. It’s time for you to meet them in these online communities and take your relationship to another level.

Let Us Help Get Your Practice Started!

MedNet is now offering a service where we will set up profiles for you on the top four social networking websites for a one time fee of $1,195. This saves you the setup time so you can quickly join the conversation and start building your networks. Get started with social networking today!

What to have on your website:

Priority:
Make sure that your website is designed with the priorities of your practice in mind. These priorities should be a key focus of your design and accentuated to be easily viewed by your audience.

Compartmentalize:
Different ideas and components should be separated on your site with boxes, colors or lines for different elements of your practice. There needs to be a clear distinction between the differing ideas you are attempting to express in your website.

“Call to action”:
This is a clear directive given by you to encourage your audience to take immediate action. It is often displayed as an icon or form, photo gallery or blog. Instead of having a link that says “contact us”, you can entice viewers with something more proactive, such as “Click here for a free consultation.” By doing so, you are inviting the viewer to contact you immediately so that they can get started at their earliest convenience, thereby helping to speed the process of building up your clientele. Providing perks, such as free consultations, can often help viewers decide to pursue your practice.

Highlights:
Areas on your website that are most important to your practice should be spotlighted. In determining the priorities of your practice, the most important aspects should be highlighted so that the viewer knows what services your practice provides.

Design:
If your practice is in medicine, try to build a website that is clean and crisp with bright colors. Use secondary colors to show areas that can be clicked on. If the design appears too cluttered and messy, it may send the wrong message about your practice to potential clients.

These components should be avoided since they may be deemed as a turn off by your specific audience:

Music:
People have their own opinions as to the type of music that they find enjoyable. For some, listening to music when they view a website can be considered annoying. People may also research your practice while they are at work where it may be an inappropriate time to listen to music. Music can be an effective feature on movie websites, since the soundtrack is often what makes a film so spectacular but for practice websites, information is key.

Splash Page/Enter Site:
Years ago this was a popular style used for most websites. Now, it is not only an extra click of the mouse, but lacks the links that search engines love. You only have a limited time to grab your visitors and bring them into your site. The goal, in designing your site, is to make sure that what your visitors came to the site for is on the first page. Eliminating the splash page help keep viewers captivated by what your site has to offer for a longer period of time.

Different web technologies and design styles have come and gone over the course of time; some proving to be timeless and others leaving the scene as quickly as they arrived. It is important to recognize that the styles that are no longer considered ideal were perhaps not used appropriately by practices and businesses, thus turning off their respective audiences.

In order to maintain a functional and current website, you should balance classic design techniques with the latest website technology. Your visitor should be able to navigate your website with ease and be conveniently guided to the priorities and defining characteristics of your practice. By highlighting these components, viewers are more likely to contact you to schedule an appointment or seek out additional information. Remembering these simple tips and suggestions, to improve the overall appearance, functionality and presentation of your website will help keep your site current and refreshed for your general audience of web viewers.

Eventually, web sites began to give more focus to attracting visitors and getting these visitors to take action.  With a lack of detailed tracking, these marketing efforts were difficult to measure and adjust.  The booming market in search advertising helped fuel the creation of modern analytics software which gave web sites the ability to segment their audience and truly evaluate their marketing campaigns.  This not only gave advertisers a level of tracking unavailable in any other form of advertising, it also furthered the science of creating web sites by giving designers a better understanding of how to build sites for maximum effectiveness.

The future of the web will focus highly on action-oriented web sites which are tested and adjusted, over time, to maximize performance.  Software is already available that allows for sophisticated methods of testing different designs, layouts, and text, ultimately determining what makes a website more effective. 

We’re not at a stage where it is practical or cost effective for small businesses to conduct this level of testing and analysis, but clearly a lot has changed in how sites are created today based on what the past has taught us. By taking a fresh look at your old web site and defining a better strategy, determining the needs of your target market, and meeting those needs with strong calls to action, the finished product will be a site design which is better oriented toward achieving your goals.

Defining a strategy: What do you want your visitors to do?
If you’re currently thinking about a redesign, now would be a good time to take a fresh look at your existing web site and how it relates to your practice.  Before even thinking about colors, layout, and content, you need to determine what you want your web site to do.  What is the overall goal of your web site and what action(s) do you want visitors to take when they arrive? 

If you have an insurance based practice then you may want to inform and educate existing patients. You may also want to encourage them to download patient history forms.  For a marketing oriented practice, you most likely want to drive potential patients to contact you via telephone or a contact form. Determining the end result of what you want visitors to do will help ensure that your site focuses on directing people toward that action.

What are the needs of your target market?
Obviously the visitors to your web site have medical needs which direct them to research a procedure/treatment. What information do they need to explore before taking that next step in contacting you?

Examples:

• Education on procedures & treatments
• Comfort with your experience/credentials
• Examples of your work (for cosmetic practices)
• Testimonials
• Financial Information (insurances accepted, available financing, discount programs)
• Contact Information

The priority of these items can vary depending upon the target market, but potential patients will clearly want to seek out this information before contacting you.  In most cases, the critical needs to fulfill revolve around demonstrating what makes you and your practice appealing, credible, and personal.  By understanding these needs you can funnel your visitors into taking action.

Getting your visitors to take action
One part of the battle is getting people to come to your web site; the next part is getting them to take action.  This is where you need to spell out what makes you different (unique selling proposition). Visitors to your site will most likely shop around and visit the sites of other practices.  You need to show them what makes your practice special, whether it’s a unique approach to treatments, exceptional credentials, impeccable work, or special offers and unique financing arrangements.

If the goal of your web site is for potential patients to contact you, a special offer or promotion is a sure way of getting more people to take that step, especially if the offer has a timeframe that inspires people to ‘act now’.  Even basic steps,  like making your contact information more visible, can have a dramatic effect on the amount of contact you receive.  Your phone number should be large and visible and repeated multiple times throughout each page of your site.  The links to your contact form should stand out from the rest, and even better, you should have a small contact form on every page of your site.  In most cases, the majority of people land on an interior page of the site, not the homepage, so consider that as well when placing a promotion or making a decision regarding the design of your site.

Ultimately, you have to find what’s right for your practice and your market; there is no one size fits all solution.  The web is a living thing in a constant state of evolution and needs to be treated as such. Updating your site, on a regular basis, not only helps you keep up with these changing times, it can also have a dramatic effect on the new business it generates.

Below are some ways you can use a blog as a marketing vehicle for your practice. You can use some or all of these ideas to help build your own blogging strategy. Over time you will begin to discover the value of having a blog associated with your web site.

Establish yourself as an authority
Posting informative articles and opinion pieces can further enhance your professional credibility. For those visitor’s, who don’t know about your practice, part of your web site goals should be convincing them that you have a thorough knowledge of your field. A blog can be used to supplement a basic bio or curriculum vitae by showcasing your knowledge and expertise. Making these articles timely shows that you are keeping up-to-date with the latest innovations in your field and that you have an opinion and insight beyond what is reported in a news broadcast or headline.

Keep potential patients informed about what is happening in your practice
Highlighting new equipment, new staff and new treatments, as an example, shows visitors that your practice is current, evolving and fresh. Spotlighting events related to you and your practice can help to establish a personal connection with the visitor and boost their perception of your image before meeting you.

Help patients relate to procedures/treatments
Before and after galleries have become common place on the web sites of many medical and dental practices. For certain specialties, patients expect to see these photos and use them not only to judge the quality of your work but also as a way of relating to the past patients you have. Blogs can be used to highlight cases with photos along with an actual story of the patient that describes them, what procedure they had, why they chose to have the procedure and the outcome. These more detailed cases can further help potential patients relate to you, your practice, and the work you perform.

Highlight philanthropic work
Many doctors will often work with charities that care for people that are less fortunate. Some of our clients have travelled great distances to other countries in order to help with certain relief efforts and medical causes. Rather than simply mentioning this somewhere on your web site, where people may or may not notice it, these charitable activities can be further addressed on your blog.

You can post a simple article, complete with photos, that helps tell the story. You also have the option of posting an elaborate diary, complete with periodic posts, which truly describe your experience.

Not only does this show potential patients that you give back to the community, but it makes for interesting reading.

Entice potential patients to take action
There’s nothing like a special offer to get people to take action. A blog is a great vehicle for publishing these incentives on your web site. You or a member of your staff have the ability to log in at any time and make updates to keep special offers fresh and timely relative to events, seasons and holidays. You can detail reward programs for patient referrals, along with mentioning patients who have benefited from these programs. If offers and incentives don’t apply to your practice, be creative and think of other ways you can inspire people to come to your office. For example, if you are a family doctor writing an article about the flu season ties in with the benefits of getting a flu shot. The end of the article can then have a link to your contact form with a call to action "Book your flu shot appointment today!". There are ways to market any type of specialty, with some creativity and brainstorming you can uncover strategies that apply to your practice.

Make Your Web Site ‘One With Your Blog’
All MedNet blogs are designed to integrate into the design of your web site. This ensures that your blog has the same look and feel as the rest of your web site thereby preventing your potential patient from being confused when they enter the blog. With a little creativity you can further integrate your blog into your web site.

By making categories within your blog, you can incorporate these categories within the main navigation of your site. For example, rather than having a standard link to your blog which reads ‘Blog’, you can have a link that says ‘Monthly Specials’. This can link to the monthly specials category within your blog. When visitors click the "Monthly Specials" link, they will be brought to all of the current monthly special postings in your blog.

Integrating the blog into your web site allows you to have multiple sections in your site that are updated, by you, with timely and fresh information. Putting a link within the main navigation of your site highlights the content and informs potential patients it exists and allows them to travel to it directly. Otherwise, someone would have to go to your blog first to even know that there were monthly specials within it.

Enhance the visibility of your web site
Arguably the biggest benefit of adding a blog to your web site is in regard to search engine optimization (SEO). Over time, blogs will build up the total size of your site because each time you post an article to your blog it creates an additional page on your site. Not only does this help your site, as a whole, become more ‘authoritative’ to Google, the additional content gives you new opportunities to be found for a variety of searches - ultimately driving people to the main areas of your web site.

Maximize the SEO benefit of your blog by doing the following:

• Posting Frequently - More is better! Every time you post to your
  blog, you are creating an additional page on your site. The more pages you have out there indexed by Google, the better chance you have for potential patients finding your site.
• Lengthy postings - You should try to make your posts several paragraphs long rather than short one paragraph. This gives individual pages a good amount of content for search engines to index.
• Add content with keywords - Mention the procedure and/or keyword
  along with the market you are targeting (i.e. Manhattan) several times within your post. You can also mention variations of the procedure and location within the post (abdominoplasty vs. tummy tuck or New York City vs. Manhattan). An even better strategy would be to create separate posts to focus on these variations so they are more specifically focused and targeted.
• Title your posting - The title of the blog post is the most
  important element of your posting and should contain the subject
  (keyword) the post is focused on as well as the location. This element will not only dictate the heading of the article, but also the name of the page and the title of the page.
• Naming your categories - Articles should be posted in appropriate
  categories by selecting or adding them when you create your blog posts. These categories should be keyword-rich as well because they are included in the URL and will ultimately help your blog’s SEO.
  If you follow these guidelines your blog will definitely improve the visibility of your site over time.

Find what works best for your practice
You know your practice best and have the capability to develop a successful blogging strategy that works for you. For many doctors, their time is limited so it’s important to use that time wisely.

Having a plan in place is a good step toward doing just that, and part of that plan should include how and when these articles will be written. You may decide to be the sole author or choose to have your staff post them and submit to you for approval. Whether you commit an hour a month or several hours a day, your web site and your practice will benefit over time.

Blog’s give you an opportunity to write content that is unique to you and your practice. While some people are uncomfortable with self promotion, your blog gives you an occasion to interact with your visitors while promoting who you are and what you do.

Today blog’s are being used for all sorts of purposes. You have companies that use blogs to communicate and interact with customers and other stake holders. Newspapers incorporate blogs to their main website to offer a new channel for their writers. Individuals also created blogs to share with the world their expertise on specific topics. And so on.

How do you get people to read your blog?

One of the ways to attract readers to your blog is to title your postings so that you can get their attention and draw them in to your blog. Take into consideration the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), when you are writing in your blog, so that you can bring in traffic not only to your blog but to your site. A prime example is the December 10th blog entry for sbplasticsurgeon.com entitled “Botox Safety”. Dr. Lowenstein has placed tags such as Botox, Plastic Surgery, Plastic Surgery in Santa Barbara on his blog thereby boosting his SEO presence.

Where Did Blogs Come From?
The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990’s. Who the very first blogger was is actually unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.

Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?
Just as having an animated image was once cool, blogging has become the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Businesses struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.

Blogs & Your Business
You need to determine how a blog will benefit your practice.  Establish a schedule to keep your blog current and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your practice that you may want to showcase by letting you direct the content and having your readers guide you.

The Future of Blogs
While trendy, "blogging" is the wave of the future. Whether it’s a fad, or proves to be a new way to communicate with existing and potential customers it deserves a serious look at the very least.

What are the differences between the blogs we create for our clients and external blog companies?

• Look and feel – you can customize an external blogs to a certain extent.  MedNet’s blogs are integrated seamlessly into your site so that it follows the same design as the rest of your site. |
• Domain – the external blog company domain is specific to their hosting.  This is a means to direct visitor’s to their site with your blog as an afterthought.
  For example, the domain you would establish with them would be: http://externalcompanydomain.blogspot.com/
  The blog you have with MedNet would be:
  http://yourdomainname.com/blog
• Limitations of external blog –There is no real method of tracking the traffic to your blog or a means of submitting your blog to search engines.  Remember, with the blog hosted on their site, your would really be tracking the traffic to their main site.

  MedNet can track the activity to your blog in the same way the traffic is monitored to the rest of your site.  MedNet can install a plugin to the blog so that will automatically notify Google to visit your site each time you post to it.

• SEO – a blog that has been established on your main site, will give your site more credence with Google.  Each post you create adds a page to your site.  An external blog that sits outside of your MedNet site loses the benefit of all the new content you are posting.

• Blog Setup - $495
• Monthly Fee - $25

Contact our MedNet-Representative at 1-877-MEDNETT [1-877-633-6388] for more details

Most widget and plug in installations are easy to install yet other additions may require specifications and permission levels in order to perform or manage the installation. Other plug in technology requires a permission change from the usual setup.

MedNet may need to change the permission settings, in order to allow installation, to those practices that want to expand their widget and plug in technology. Blogs support five different permission settings, which in turn grant different capabilities.

These permission settings are as follows:

• Administrator –allows access to all the administration features
• Editor – able to publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other posts
• Author - publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor - writes and manages their own posts but not able to publish posts
• Subscriber – reads, comments and receives news letters

For standard bloggers the editor is the role that most Doctors need to assume so they may manage their blog. This position allows Doctors to manage their blog without compromising the installation of their blog.

The editor role will need to be changed to that of an administrator for those practices, with professional bloggers, who want to alter the default widget and plugin technology that exists on their blog.

Professional bloggers, working as an administrator, can potentially introduce risks that most practices would want to avoid. These risks may include accidental file deletion, possible corruption during a plug in installation, and destruction of the blog template. Please note that some widget and plug in technology requires familiarity with PHP, HTML, and CSS coding.

Make the most of your website

By now you know your web site is a tool with many purposes. It’s a way to generate business by attracting new patients; it can help reduce overhead and lessen the burden on your administrative staff, and is a living resume that details your accomplishments and credentials. However, your site can also be a tool for keeping patients informed and involved in your practice.

How can you effectively do this? First and foremost, you need to make your site a resource so patients want to come back. Post informative articles in your blog with timely information that is of interest to your patients, list special offers that change on a regular basis, and keep patients informed of news that they should be aware of.

Your web site should be a center point of all of your marketing opportunities. Keep this in mind so your site not only communicates with potential patients, but also meets the needs of your existing patients.

Build up your referral network

Everyone has heard of sites like Facebook, LinkedIN, and Myspace but many assume they can’t benefit their practice. Realistically, these sites can be great ways to not only network with your existing patients, but also to gain new ones by getting your face in front of their friends and colleagues. Most practices rely heavily on referrals. By taking advantage of these tools you can kick that part of your practice into high gear.

Here are some tips on how doctors are finding success with these sites:

• Focus your energy on one site – you need to put work into these ‘virtual relationships’ the same way you do in real life, so focus your limited time on one site. Choose the site that you feel best fits your practice or the site you know many of your patients are on.
• Keep people informed about what is happening in your practice – new service offerings, changes in staff. New equipment can also be a reason to communicate with your network and make yourself visible.
• Communicate your specials, putting balance in your communication – Special offers, patient appreciation days, and events can be great ways to entice people to pay you a visit, but fight off the temptation to bombard your network with pitch after pitch. Make sure these are sandwiched between helpful information that makes you appear as both an authority and as a resource. Having trouble coming up with an appropriate offer? Look at your competitor’s web sites, print ads, and paid search ads to see what they are doing. At the very least you will see what they are promoting, and this is a great way of coming up with offers that are not only appropriate but competitive.
• Post photos/news that personalizes you, but are not personal – Use your judgment in posting personal information about yourself. It’s nice to let people know you are a real person with a photo of you hitting the slopes, but you may want to avoid posting photos of you attending a friend’s birthday party.
• Take advantage of the different widgets that are offered – Facebook allows you to build specific pages for your practice, its related events and important dates. You can post videos on your pages, create special forums, and have your blog postings inserted into your profile using RSS feeds.

Use email to communicate with existing patients

Email Marketing is one of the most affordable and effective means of communicating with your patients. Additionally, it gives you the opportunity to easily target and track your campaigns at a high level in order to maximize results.

Here are some tips on how to make the most of this marketing medium:

• Make sure you gather email addresses – This would seem obvious, but you need to make collecting email addresses a priority throughout your practice. Whether it’s through electronic forms on your web site, paper forms within your office, or other means of collecting data, building up a patient database is a valuable asset that needs to be taken advantage of.
• Segment your audience – Having these email addresses in a database along with other information can allow you to segment people into multiple groups. The groups can be as broad as existing patients and potential patients to as narrow as age groups, gender, treatment history, treatment interests, and/or a combination of the above. These segments help you avoid sending announcements to people they don’t pertain to, and more importantly, the exercise of creating them can give you a better idea of who your patients really are.
• Know your audience, and tailor your message to them – whether you’re announcing a patient appreciation special, a new service, or just sending a general newsletter you need to entice people to go to your web site for more information. The more tailored your emails are to your audience, the more likely they are to take action and show interest in what you have to say and what you have to offer.
• Measure the results – As with everything else web related, there are endless opportunities to test and track results. From step one you can conduct subject line testing to maximize open rates. You can then track how many people click over to your site and what they do when they get there. This information can be used to improve future campaigns and further customize the emails and the site to your audience ultimately helping you achieve your goals.

MedNet offers an email marketing service but there are other companies out there that allow you to manage the process yourself. Constant Contact is a service that has gained a lot of popularity in this arena. They allow you to manage your list, send emails using predefined templates, and track the results. Be sure when your are using these services that you are portraying a professional image consistent with the rest of your branding. As with any do-it-yourself project, it’s also important to track your own time to ensure you are not spending more money by doing it yourself than you would by having hired a professional. If you don’t have the time or expertise to handle this on your own, contact your MedNet account representative for more information on our email marketing services.

Make the most of what you already have, especially in this economy

Now more than ever, it is important to not only look for new patients, but also to make the most of your existing patient database. Make sure you not only stay in front of them, but more importantly give them a reason to come back and pay your practice a visit.

MedNet has a few solutions that we believe will keep your website vibrant and visible to your patients.

Here are some helpful suggestions:

• Have you used all the pages on your website?
  When you first developed your website you may have not completed all the pages you intended to. Perhaps you were waiting for staff photos to be taken or you just were not sure what you wanted to put on that page. Did you know that more pages on your website will enhance the search engine optimization (SEO) for your site? If you are unsure of the amount of pages you have in use, please contact your MedNet representative to obtain a page count. If you are undecided about what you want to add to those available pages, your MedNet representative will be able to provide you with suggestions. Providing your visitors with content that is easy to read and informative will expose them to the newer services you provide.
• Does your website reflect the proper services that you currently offer??
  Have you recently received certification for a procedure that you had not performed when your website was first developed? Have you replaced one laser machine with another? Did you eliminate a procedure that you no longer perform? Let us know. We can make that adjustment rather quickly to your web site.
• Are your online patient forms properly updated?
  While you may have changed your forms at your front desk you should keep them updated online. When there is a change in your office remember to change your site. You can send them to us electronically so that we can replace your old forms with your new forms on your site.
• Has your curriculum vitae changed?
  Have you recently received certification for a new procedure? Written a new article for a publication? Are you now a member of a society that you were not a member of when your site was created? Why not share your achievements with your patients? By updating your site with new credentials you are presenting an updated view of yourself not only to existing patients but to your potential new patients. It will demonstrate to your visitors that you are current in your field and have successfully completed the training to prove it.
• Do you have photos of before and after images that are old?
  While your results may be stellar, your photos have been on your site, in the same spot, since your site was published. Change them up! Photography equipment has improved dramatically in the past several years and the image quality of your photos improves too. By replacing those older photos, especially those that were taken on slides or polaroids, with your newer images your site does not become stale and your patients can see your most recent outcomes.
• Are the stock photos on your site the same ones you had when your site was published?
  Allow us change them. Just let us know which ones you want us to replace and we will be more than happy to do so.

Other options you may want to consider, which do have a minimal cost but are still cost efficient choices, are the addition of a blog to your site, starting an email newsletter campaign or including search engine optimization (SEO) in your site.