Social Media tips fo the Eye Care Professional, Internet Marketing for the Vision Care Community.

It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.

Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.

While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.

Here’s how to get started.

Step 1: See Where You Stand

Before you can manage your online reputation, you have to assess it. Type your names in search engines. Set up search alerts for your name (Google recently made this easier to do from the Google dashboard through a new “Me on the Web” tool).

If you find something unflattering, ask yourself:

• Did I post it? If, for instance, photos from your Flickr account that you’d rather keep private are showing up in search results for your name, you can simply delete the photos or adjust your privacy settings.
  After you’ve removed the offensive content, you can use Google’s URL removal tool to stop it from appearing as a cached copy or snippet in search results. If you do nothing, the content will still eventually drop from Google’s index — it will just take a bit longer to disappear.
• Is it personal information that could be used in a crime? If someone posts your social security number, bank account number, credit card number or an image of your handwritten signature, Google will makeefforts to remove it from search results. It will also contact the site’s hosting company to request that the page be taken down.
• Is it posted on a high-traffic news site? Competing for search results with a popular news site is difficult. ButPatrick Ambron, the cofounder of a personal online reputation management service called Brand-Yourself, says that all hope is not lost. “Google usually only likes to rank one result per domain name per page,” he says. “So if you could get another result on the same domain name like Huffington Post that was better optimized for your name, you could theoretically knock the bad article off.” One way to do this is to create a profile on that news site using your full name. Use as many links as possible, and link to the profile from all of your other web properties.

If you can’t answer “yes” to either of these questions, your best bet for reducing the visibility of negative content is to compete for top search results using positive content.

If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”

In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.

Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook andTwitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.


Step 2: Post Positive Content

“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”

In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.

Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook andTwitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.

Step 3. Create an Identity Hub

One secret to pushing your positive online presence further up in search results is to make a hub that links to all of your content. Ambron recommends these tips for pushing your hub to the top of search results for your name.

• Claim your domain name. Including the search term (in this case, your name) in the URL of your web page tells search engines what the page is about.
• Mention yourself. You’re trying to tell search spiders, “This page is about me!” A good way to do that is to use your name a lot. Use your name in tabs and headers.
• Link to your content. “[Google] considers each link to your site a vote for the site,” Ambron says. “Google has gotten pretty smart, so where those links come from is very important. The more reputable links are better votes. A vote from CNN is better than some site you made that you just linked to yourself.”
  Remember all of those social media profiles that you created in step two? They’re attached to reputable sources like Facebook and Twitter, which makes their “votes” count as much more reputable than a page you just created.
  Sign up for as many of them as possible (use one of these sites to see what is available), and then link them all to your hub.
• Post often. Search engines like fresh content. One easy way to create it is to post your social media feeds to your blog.

• Step 4. Consider Automating the Process

  
  
  There are several services that will help you with your quest for a pristine online reputation for a small fee.Brand-Yourself, for instance, keeps track of your reputation on a dashboard and helps you improve it by helping you raise existing positive content or helping you create new positive content. Vizibility allows users to pre-select the information they want displayed in “search results” from a special button or URL that can be added to online profiles, websites, resumes, email signatures and business cards.
  
  
  This article was reposted form Mashable. http://mashable.com/2011/06/27/manage-online-reputation-seo/
  
  
  
  

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Getting over the Facebook hump! - Social Media Marketing - Optomerty, Vision Care, Eye Care

It's a great feeling when that facebook page you have been working on so hard on suddenly takes on a life of it's own. You've worked so hard setting up the apps, uploading the perfect pics, recruiting fans and blasting out posts and now people are starting to interact. Interaction is the key to a successful facebook page. Without it no one else reads your perfectly worded posts, no one sees your pretty pictures and worst of all no one shares your page with anyone else.

So how does one create a page that encourages social interaction? You can do it yourself if you have the time or you could hire a professional like SocialEyes. SocialEyes has been working with Eye Care Professionals for over 20 years now and they know how to create Social Media Gold! The Eye Care industry is a tough place to market yourself in but SocialEyes invented Social Media Marketing for the Vision Care Community!

We create an environment for your patients to interact in. Our Doctors now have hundreds of fans asking to buy contacts, find them special eye glass frames, leave them excellent reviews and comment on our interesting posts. These interactions create fans and these fans translate into happy patients who generate revenue.

Please stay tuned for more on getting over the facebook hump. It is late and I need my beauty rest :)

Facebook for Optometrists, Eye Care Professionals, Health Care Folks, you name it, it works!

It's late, I am down my basement working on the computer and I am reminiscing my day. It was rainy, a tad bit chilly and it was the day before the world was supposedly going to end. It’s funny, the woman at the Doctor’s office told me her brother-in-law was having and end of the world party! Do you know how she knew about this party? You guessed it, facebook! Do you know what’s even funnier? She doesn’t even own a facebook account. She found out about it from her sister who planned the whole thing and invited everyone via facebook. The moral of the story is that even when you think you can live without facebook, you can’t. So why should Eye Care Professionals think they can? Well to be fair some actually do and many more are coming to the realization that it is eminent just like the end of the world. This is where SocialEyes comes in. As a company we transform an Eye Care Professional’s sometimes lack luster marketing campaign into Social Media Gold! We set up all their social media platforms, we build their fan base, we market to their fans and the ECP reaps the financial rewards. Ok we do alright too. For instance, I took a practice and more than doubled their fans in a week. Why is this so important. Because where else do you have the attention of your target market up to five times a day? You guessed it. Social Media! You know what else is great as you are building this social media presence, it is improving your search engine ranking and visibility and it is reaching your community as well. Just google Social Media Vision Care. My blog comes up number 2 in the whole world. How come it comes up before my actual website? Because blogspot is owned by google and the robots seem to like pages that are associated with the search engine giant. Anyway it’s late and I need to hang out with my children tomorrow. Goodnight and don’t let the facebook bite!

Social Media benefits for Eye Care professionals. Your patients vision.

Our communities have been redefined over the decades. Cavemen gathering around their first fire, Pilgrims settling the first colonies, 50's soda pop shops, 90's internet cafe's and now Social Media Communities. That's right we rarely even pick up the phone anymore. I was out today visiting a prospective client. I asked her are you on facebook. She replied. How do you think I stay in touch with my mother? 

The question you must ask yourself is are you socially connected and if not why aren't you? . For instance, Facebook estimates it has more than 500 million active users. Adults "friend" their kids, parents, coworkers, poker buddies and friends from high school, among others. They become "fans" of businesses, clubs and grassroots initiatives. No longer a mystery, social media sites are the places to be.

The average age of a social networker is 37 years old,  for a suburban family practice, this is your target patient age range.

Those optometrists who have begun to use social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are finding that social media is not just a fun add-on to the marketing strategy. It really can produce results.

Social media is a new way of looking at marketing. It requires a kind of day-to-day authenticity that differs from more traditional forms of marketing, where customers do not post opinions of your business — both good and bad — in real time.

The one question I always hear is, well where and how do I start? Social Media Marketing can often seem overwhelming and it may be a good idea to let a professional help you. SocialEyes LLC is a great place to get started. They are professional, effective and affordable.

No matter what route you take to becoming socially connected just make sure you start the journey.


Thanks


Michael Muller
mike@eyesocialeyes.com