How to Build an Online Presence For Doctors (The Career Rx Podcast Episode #2)
Have you thought about your online presence and how it relates to your career success? This is one of those underappreciated but super powerful strategies to boost your career, and it really isn’t hard. I promise.
In this episode of The Career Rx podcast, we’re talking about the fastest way to create a stellar online presence for yourself professionally.
You may not give online search results the thought and attention they deserve, but make no mistake – your online presence is really critical to your career as a physician and your overall business success. Why is your digital presence so important, you ask?
Because anytime you want to apply for a job, collaborate with a partner or sell a product, people will be Googling you. And, people will be searching for your name even when you aren’t actively seeking new opportunities.
No matter what you do professionally, people are going to be checking you out online.
It’s part of how they decide whether to offer you that next opportunity to advance your career or grow your business. This could be recruiting you for a job or leadership role. It might be booking you to speak if you’re working on growing your physician speaking business or visibility as a thought leader.
If you’ve got a physician side gig, it might be purchasing something from you, or hiring you as a physician coach or consultant. In a traditional practice, if might simply be growing your patient base.
Whatever it is, you’ve got to have a great online footprint that people can see right away and understand what you’re all about.
In This Episode of The Career Rx You’ll Learn:
- How to build and improve your online presence
- How to do an online presence audit for doctors in 5 steps
- Making the right changes across various platforms to improve your online search results
- New ideas for content creation
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TRANSCRIPT AND SHOW NOTES
How To Build a Stellar Online Presence For Doctors
Hey there. In the show today we are going to be talking about the fastest way to create a stellar online presence for yourself professionally.
For most people, if you Google yourself, you don’t find very much.
For physicians, it’s even worse because you find a lot of websites that really don’t have anything to do with you or they don’t have to do with the kinds of things that you want to put forward. Very often they are empty or outdated physician rating review websites.
And this is definitely not a portfolio of your best work, even if you have glowing reviews from your patients.
So, when you’re thinking about advancing your career and your professional stature, you want to use the internet to show your highlight reel, right?
You want to make sure that anyone who is searching for you can easily find out what you’re all about; what kinds of things you aspire to do, what kind of credentials you have and what kinds of things you’ve done in the past that you really bring to the table.
This podcast episode can help you make that a reality. You can work on this today, even if you don’t have a website or you don’t have a lot of things set up online.
It’s quick and easy. I’ve got a very simple framework and easy resources to get you started.
How To Build An Online Presence
1. Conduct an Audit of Your Online Presence (AKA Digital Footprint)
The first thing you’re going to do in order to establish your stellar online presence is to conduct a personal audit of yourself online. There are a few steps to this personal online audit.
It’s very simple, but you’ve got to do it correctly in order to get the best information that’s actionable.
Pay careful attention to these steps…
Step #1. Set Up Incognito Mode
Use a computer that you can put in incognito mode and clear all the browsing and cookies. Even better if you can use someone else’s computer or a public computer.
You do this because you don’t want your search to be biased from your own prior searches. That’s pretty important because you want to see what other people see about you. Clear the history even if you’re using a computer that’s not yours, for the same reason – to get the least biased results.
Step #2. Use Google To Search (not Yahoo, Bing, etc)
At the time of this recording, Google has more than two-thirds of the market share in terms of people who are loyal searchers. Therefore the Google data is the most important data set for you in order to really begin creating that stellar online presence.
Step #3. Conduct Your Search
Think about your name and what are people most likely to be typing in when they’re searching for you.
For many of you listening to this podcast – physicians or other healthcare clinicians – you may want to include your degree. You may want to conduct your search like this…
- First name, last name and degree
- Consider including your city or state
- Maybe include your employer’s name
You’ll want to consider adding anything that you think is especially relevant to how people would likely be searching for you, especially if you have a very common name. What would someone else type into the search bar to learn about you?
Try searching a few different ways. Try it with your middle name, especially if your middle name is also your maiden name or something along those lines to be sure that people can find you. You’re going to want to add some of those qualifiers. If you have a more unique name, then it may not be necessary.
This is the point of the audit – to determine what’s out there right now… and what you can take action on.
Got it? All right.
Related: SEO 101: Search Engine Optimization For Healthcare Professionals
Step #4. Record the Search Results
You now want to evaluate each of the search results and categorize them.
Put your results into 2 categories.
- Search results you control
- Search results you do not control
What do I mean by this? If it is your own social media profile or your own website, you obviously have control over it.
Or it is a website that’s related to an organization where you have an affiliation or some kind of business relationship, then you probably have some influence even if you can’t go in there and change it yourself.
Then there are other third party websites, for example, those physician rating websites that are auto-populated public information types of websites. These are hit or miss.
Some sites allow you to claim your own profile and update your information. While others are hands-off and there’s nothing you can do unless you see something that’s overtly incorrect.
Then there may be a way to contact whoever maintains that site and see if you can get the information updated.
Step #5. Categorize
You now want to evaluate each of the search results and categorize them.
You want to put your results into 2 categories.
- Search results you control
- Search results you do not control
What do I mean by this? If it is your own social media profile or your own website, you obviously have control over it.
Or it is a website that’s related to an organization where you have an affiliation or some kind of business relationship, then you probably have some influence even if you can’t go in there and change it yourself.
Then there are other third party websites, for example, those physician rating websites that are auto-populated public information types of websites. These are hit or miss.
Some sites allow you to claim your own profile and update your information. While others are hands-off and there’s nothing you can do unless you see something that’s overtly incorrect. Then there may be a way to contact whoever maintains that site and see if you can get the information updated.
You want to put your results into 2 categories:
- Search results you control
- Search results you do not control
2. Update the Sites You Control To Showcase Your Professional Brand
You’ll want to make updates and changes to the sites you influence or have control over.
Go into all the sites you control and update them with some branding language. We’re going to get into branding more on another episode, but for now here are some great resources to get you started:
- Personal Branding for Physicians: What, Why & How To Get it Right
- Show Up and Be Seen: A Guide To Professional Visibility
- Professional Branding 101 (Free eBook)
Update Your Headshot
Make sure you have a nice professional and current photograph on sites that have a placement for your photo. Also, make sure you use the same photo across all platforms so people recognize you.
Standardize Your Name Across Platforms
If your name is written in different ways across various sites/platforms I recommend standardizing it so it’s the same everywhere.
Update Your Elevator Pitch
Create some branding language for a quick elevator pitch.
You want to have something that explains:
- Who you are
- Your credentials
- What you do professionally
- Your specialized skillset
- Potentially your future aspirations?
- What are you hoping to do?
Make it brief and to the point. It’s not everything you’ve ever done, but it’s a bio that should have some consistency across all of the different platforms you are present on.
The bio length (available characters) is different on various platforms, so you may not be able to do a simple cut and paste. You want to work out consistent communications that you can put across all the platforms that you control.
Related: 4 Huge Mistakes Doctors Make on Social Media
3. Request Changes To Sites You May Be Able To Influence
Find Out Who Controls These Websites
Then as you look at some of the sites that you may have influence over, but you aren’t really sure, it’s time to find out who controls these websites, so you can contact them and ask for revisions.
For example, you want to mention you have different professional interests or accomplishments since that bio was originally published and you’d like to send them an update.
And if they say yes, then ask them a couple of other questions:
- Is there a character length?
- Is there a specific format that they require?
- Can you include website links, photographs or anything else that you think might be a good asset?
You will most likely only be asking for one change so you want to ensure you have all the necessary information.
The webmaster or site owner will likely be willing to update your information, but they probably have some formatting restrictions and if they don’t, you’re going to want to take advantage of that to make sure that yours is great and stands out.
Are you a doctor looking to build a stellar online presence? Follow these steps to get started... #medtwitter #womeninmedicine Share on X
4. Websites You Can’t Control or Influence: What Should You Do?
There will also be websites you identify that you don’t have any control over and because you don’t have any control over them, the best thing that you can do is push them to the back.
How do you push these search results further back?
- By choosing new target websites that can fill in the first few pages of Google search results.
- You can also write a guest post for another related website or blog
- You can even build your own website, which today is so, so easy. That’ll be a subject for another episode. If you don’t already have your own website I recommend adding this to your to-do list.
- You can set up an online presence on social media platforms that you may not be using or even websites forums.
What are some examples of these platforms?
LinkedIn:
I know a lot of physicians don’t like LinkedIn. We aren’t using LinkedIn very much, but you really should.
LinkedIn has a very high authority with Google. As you know, it’s considered an enormous website that has many users and is of high quality. Also, having a LinkedIn profile is thought to be one of the best resources to find out about professionals and for professionals to connect with each other.
So, when you’re thinking about how you show up when someone is searching for you online as a professional, LinkedIn is not only an important place to be, but it’s a place that Google will find important.
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile right now, you aren’t using it, or you just haven’t looked at it in a decade, now’s a great time to go in there, activate it, spruce it up, make sure it’s public and make sure it’s searchable.
Make sure to connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
Doximity:
I also recommend you update your Doximity profile.
5. Additional Online Presence With Content Creation
If you are thinking about getting some additional visibility for your thought leadership, then you’re going to want to be doing some kind of content creation.
This could include:
- Writing blog posts
- Creating video
- Podcast
- Infographics
Whatever it is, you’ll want to promote this content onto guest forums and social media, even if you already have a really popular website.
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Having an online presence is the key to getting ahead more quickly and with a much broader reach than you would have with people directly.
Guest Posting
A strong guest posting strategy is to find websites that already have a high ranking (domain authority).
It is, after all, easier to get yourself published on another website and show up higher in search results, then it will be for you to start your website from scratch.
I recommend you do build a website, but that’s part of the long game plan and right now we’re talking about the fastest to stellar online presence.
So look for those social platforms that you may not be using right now and claim your profiles on them, set them up.
SlideShare
Another great opportunity is SlideShare, which is now owned by LinkedIn. SlideShare is a repository for you to upload PowerPoints and slide decks from presentations that you’ve given.
What’s the Benefit of SlideShare?
If it isn’t obvious, the benefit is professional visibility.
People see your SlideShare, they see your expertise and potentially (if you maintained it in this way), a calendar/bibliography of all the places that you have presented.
Yes, this is a lot of work to create and a lot of people don’t use SlideShare this way, but you can give it a try and upload a few presentations, plus create a bio.
Build a Stellar Online Presence for Doctors: Conclusion
If you deploy the above professional branding strategy across the multiple online platforms mentioned you’ll find that in a couple of weeks to months you will start to see the updates in your search results.
You will have a consistent brand voice showing your honest, authentic and professional results across Google that will put you in a favorable light.
People will know:
- What you’re all about
- What your unique value and skills are
- The kinds of opportunities you would be receptive to
- How to find you based on your expertise, which is really important as that’s how you get those next-level leadership professional opportunities.
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Thanks for joining me on this episode of The Career Rx.
Please be sure to subscribe and leave me a review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or whatever podcast player you’re using to listen today. Also, be sure to send me your questions so that I can answer them and give you a shout out on a future episode.
Bye for now,
Marjorie
Related Digital Marketing Articles & Resources:
- Should Doctors Use Social Media Professionally?
- 5 Tips to Minimize Risk For Physicians on Social Media
- Build a Brand Without a Website
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