Are we going about this all wrong?
Here at Blue Ridge Orthopaedic & Spine Center, we use both print and online advertising. Through admittedly archaic tracking practices, we are finding out where our new patients out of one specific office are coming from. It’s overwhelmingly word-of-mouth. While that’s awesome, because we must be doing something right, it means that we are probably not reaching as many outside of the three closest zip codes as we could for patients.
About 10% of our new patients over the last 5 months have found us via an internet search. Not awful, considering there is a large area out here with sub-par internet access, but that fight is for another time. We still need to get a better online presence.
In the “Social Media Update” by the PewResearchCenter, it showed that older users, over 65, were using Facebook. This was honestly a surprise to me and I’m still not totally believing it. Our patient base is mostly older, and they don’t seem to be in total sync with the mobile world that the younger generation is in. However, that’s not to say they aren’t. It’s certainly time to make sure they are counted in the online advertising bit.
“What You Think You Know About the Web is Wrong” was eye opening. We currently use Facebook to post our blog posts, lectures, and general news on. We also place a link to our newsletter and while it’s good info, I do not think this is enough. We don’t get a lot of interaction or a ton of likes, sheesh, feels like high school here, I want them to like me! It seems though, that while my post may seem introverted, it’s actually getting the job done as more people are actually reading it then just sharing it. Seems odd to me and hard to see the end result, but I assume that understanding will come in time.
The textbook itself has some great points and insight and I’m really eager to not be thought of as the t-shirt department! Although I do design a mean t-shirt. I think the biggest thing that stood out was that we need to sell our story, who we are, why we do what we do. Through that, we will begin to get the patients since they will start to feel a connection with us. I love this idea and it seems so simple, but it’s very hard when the rest of the company isn’t always on board. With the growth of social media, we have so many ways to do this, but you have to be prepared for instant feedback, good and bad, and I think that scares a lot of the higher-ups. “The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on teh media,” says Scott. This is so true. We have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Medium and other various outlets to get our story out there and we need to utilize it correctly.
I found all the readings to be valuable and while some had some points I’d heard before, quite a few were new and surprising.
