Why Is It Important to Have a Reputation Management Policy for Medical Practices?

For those in the medical field, it's not an exaggeration to say that your reputation is everything, especially in today's world. It takes years to build a good reputation — and a single mistake to ruin it. 

Why is Reputation Management Important for Physicians?

Why is online reputation management important for physicians and other healthcare professionals?

It's because this specific industry relies on referrals and public perception to get people to trust their services. Having a positive reputation also helps doctors earn the respect of their professional peers and the medical community. 

Why Is It Important to Have a Reputation Management Policy?

By implementing a policy specific to managing your online reputation, you have a proper framework to follow to handle issues without consulting top-level management for decisions. 

Implementing an Effective Online Reputation Management for Physicians

You can protect the image of your medical practice with an online reputation management strategy. Understand that the bulk of reputation management is polishing the brand name and mitigating negativity.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about developing such a policy:

1. Set up reputation monitoring to keep track of who's talking about your brand and where, and where your online reputation stands at the moment. While you can comb through social media and blogs manually, you can also use monitoring tools like Google Alerts and Raven Tools. While you may want to monitor all that's being said about your brand, it may not be viable or practical. Prioritize the scope and audiences that matter to your practice the most.

2. Plan who is responsible for responding to specific issues. For example, a social media intern can handle one bad review, but you'll want to have a senior executive for a statement in response to a media frenzy. It's also crucial to respond to these issues promptly.

3. Diving into a more granular level, it's important to know what the search engine results pages look like when your brand is searched. Take action if the results are filled with bad online reviews, social media rants, and old negative media reports. Call on digital marketing professionals to improve your SEO and content creation, for example, to move new, fresh, positive content higher up on the results page. 

4. When you find good reviews and content, be proactive and engage with any positive mentions. Answering questions, responding to shout-outs, or complimenting positive reviews from patients — little things like this can go a long way. 

Your reputation is our priority. 

The reliance on positive public perception is one of the primary answers to the question, "why is it important to have a reputation management policy in place for medical practices?" Maintaining a positive public image offline and digitally is a huge responsibility that can be difficult to look after when you have your hands full focusing on your practice.

At MD Logica, we can devise a tailored strategy and reputation management policy to protect your image and, in turn, grow your medical practice. Let's talk today.