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Friday, May 13, 2011

Social Media for Physicians IV

I am continuing my literary masterpiece from Parts I-III on Social Media for Physicians.

Let’s say you have invested some time and money into a social media presence. Now you have your Facebook, Twitter and/or email sites operating.  It has been several months and you have followed 1000 other tweeters but the number of followers is 5.  Humbled by this statistic you realize this is not going to be an easy expedition to become the next Paris Hilton or Charlie Sheen of the social media medical circle.  After all medical things just don’t have the same Shock and Awe value as Charlie Sheen’s tour of “Winning”, nor Paris Hilton’s vapid face and torso in a million dollar chic dress. 

   

Marketing experts will tell us that we have about five seconds to grab attention with our web site, Facebook landing page, or Tweet before clicking on to the next site. So you need sophisticated analytics of your ‘metrics”.

Who are your users?  Five? that shouldn’t take more than a #2 pencil and a yellow legal pad, or perhaps in this instance a progress note sheet of which you have many stored somewhere since you haven’t used one since your last ‘crash’ of your EMR.

Perhaps a more sophisticated way exists for you to waste a little more of your most precious resource (dwindling reimbursements)..

Along comes another entrepreneur, selling analytics for social media users.

I write about some of these in my other blog, NEXT.IND.in . This is unabashedly an attempt to ‘market’ my other blog (3 followers), and yes it is outsourced, unlike the cataract surgery I do (or at least used to do).I may have few admitted users, but they are glued to my posts, or they have become  catatonic reading my meanderings. I have been advised to draw in my audience by interaction and meaningful discourse just  as we do in face-to-face interactions with colleagues (if they still admit to knowing me.) and/or patients (customers?). So if you can, find those 5 users and RT(rewet) or  reply to them and ‘Like” their Facebook page. (If it’s Becky or Hot lips and they really want to meet someone like you because your FB page or tweet fascinate them, don’t bother to answer them. Even I get a lot of those, and you can block them. However even their tweets and likes will boost your ratings on “Klout” a free online analytics web site 

Buddy Media-Spinback offers a possible high priced solution to analyze your social media investment to maximize your ROI. After all your EMR may pay for itself in five years, so why take the chance that social media will be another ‘failed whale’ in your portfolio of foolish investments

“For only one dollar !

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