An Interview with Dr. Alan Glazier, O.D. & Emarketing Specialist

At the beginning of the month, we published a post about the Seeing is Believing Optometric Emarketing Virtual Conference, which takes place January 30-31, 2013. We were very intrigued by this concept, so we contacted the creator of the event, Dr. Alan Glazier, to learn more.

On top of being the owner and founder of Shady Grove Eye and Vision in Rockville, MD, Dr. Glazier is a thought leader in emarketing for the eye care industry and author of the book Searchial Marketing. He was kind enough to speak with us for a few minutes to give us a better idea of what the conference is and the process behind its development:

NVG: How did the idea for the conference come about?

Dr. Glazier: Having a conference on emarketing was my idea. I’ve been involved in the emarketing industry for a while now as a professional blogger and as a writer–I wrote a book on it. I’ve also been heavily involved as a lecturer. I thought there was enough of an interest in it to have a conference just on that topic and maybe even some internet and office connectivity stuff that kind of ties into it indirectly, like hooking up peripheral hardware within the office, and EHR/EMR stuff.

In speaking to Daniel Rostenne of EyeCarePro, he thought it was a great idea and suggested that perhaps we should make it virtual, which was an interesting idea. Virtual conferencing had been tried before once in the industry by the Expos. That was a few years back—things have changed, technology has gotten better, and we started looking into it. We really wanted to do something very different and novel. It occurred to us that this was probably the way to stay because by using this platform, we’ll be practicing what we preach.

NVG: What are some of the challenges you’ve run into in planning a unique event like this?

So far we’ve had incredible luck, in that we haven’t really run into any significant challenges. We were able to find the right software for us, we were able to attract a very high level advisory board—the Mount Rushmore of optometric marketing in business advisors. They were very excited about it right away and ever since then, anyone we’ve talked to about it has pretty much been on board with either getting involved as a lecturer, a sponsor, or helping out.

I also believe from the response we’ve seen in publicizing it out there, there’s a lot of excitement about it. For people in this day and age, traveling to conferences is not only time consuming, it takes away time with the family, and it’s expensive, even to the point of being cost prohibitive for a lot of people. I think it presents a nice option to be able to sit around their home, their living room, or their desk, to attend conferences when they want to or listen to recorded conferences later, and interact with vendors without having to get on the telephone with them.

It’s all very compelling to people, and as a result I don’t think we’ve come across any significant challenges yet, but not to say they won’t happen.

NVG: Can you walk us through a typical attendee’s experience at the event?

On the day of the conference there’s a simple registration and a reasonable fee for attending—much less than a typical conference. The software enables you to literally enter the conference and attend the sessions that you want to attend. Some of the sessions will be live, some of them will be recorded. The recorded ones will have the presenter live, answering questions through a text message-like system.

Attendees will be able to enter the exhibit hall through a virtual reality-type environment where they’ll actually navigate with their mouse through visual icons. The conference doors will open up and they’ll approach a booth. Inside the booth, there will be reps from the companies in video form speaking to them. They’ll be able to ask questions and interact with live people manning the booths. It’s very similar to how you would imagine a Second Life-type situation where you are able to move through a virtual reality-type environment.

NVG: Why do you think this conference is important and why should ODs attend?

The tradition methods of marketing are bearing less and less fruit. I believe it’s important for the marketing side of this conference, but I want to emphasize that this conference has more depth than just emarketing—it’s a connectivity and emarketing conference.

We want to expose eye doctors to how important it is have a presence online, whether it’s through social media marketing or search engine optimization. We want to teach them the ability to have different ways of interacting with patients and drawing them towards their business.

It just so happens that traditional marketing is getting less and less popular and more and more people are using search engines and social media to find the information they’re looking for. It’s just a continuation of what I’ve been saying for a while in my lectures—that I’ve eliminating all traditional marketing from my practice. I used search engine optimization and followed up two years later with social media to draw people into my business, saving tons of money and having a much greater effect.

Doctors can be doing this while maintaining professionalism and increasing their reach. That’s really the goal of the conference from a marketing standpoint. From a connectivity standpoint, there’s a lot of questions out there with the changes in the healthcare laws and the meaningful use applications. There will be lectures on how to implement meaningful use and to get your peripheral testing devices to feed into your electronic records, and information on EHRs.

NVG: How do you hope this conference will move the industry forward?

I’ve thought about following this up with a Seeing is Believing clinical track maybe six or eight months out, seeing how this conference goes. I definitely think that this is an option that people will slowly accept, and as it gains acceptance, hopefully the state boards will start to accept credits for things like this more willingly. Some state boards currently do accept credit from things like this and some of them are on the fence, qualifying this as internet education, and some of them just won’t accept it at all. I’d like to see a greater acceptance of this form of education by state boards for continuing education.

NVG: What do you think is the benefit of online marketing and social media for the optometry industry in particular?

Nowadays, if you don’t have an online presence, to many of your potential patients, you don’t exist. 8.5 out of 10 people search for their healthcare provider in Google. If you don’t have a presence there, you’re in trouble because not as many people are finding you.

If you’re out there and involved and engaged, Google actually gives you points and adds value to your links and elevates them so people can find you. It’s almost not even a question of whether or not people want to do this—it’s almost like you have to do it now.

NVG: Is there any other information you think people should know about the conference?

We’re excited to welcome Neil Gailmard, Angel Alvarez, Gary Gerber, and Nathan Bonilla-Warford to our planning board. All of these gentlemen bring a tremendous amount of industry experience and are recognized thought leaders. Their decision to participate on our board is in and of itself a huge statement to how important this is and how forward thinking it is. I think that should draw a lot of attention to the event.

Contact Noble Vision Group

Social Media in the Eye Care Industry: OptometryStudents.com

OptometryStudents.com was created in 2009 by SUNY optometry student, Matthew Geller. Three years later, the website has grown dramatically to include a core leadership team comprised of several students who all have a common goal: to allow students to become more involved and passionate about optometry and to help move the profession forward.

The website has recently undergone a massive re-design. With the new version, any student can log on, create a profile, and immediately start posting content to the website. With the ability to create profiles and a unique identity, students can better identify themselves and their own special interests while becoming part of a larger community.

The Mission

The goal of the Optometrystudents.com is to give students the power to move optometry in a positive direction and to draw attention to the major developments and challenges that impact our profession. We believe that students create the future of optometry and we have worked hard to provide students with a home to voice their opinions. Whether they are passionate about a certain clinical subject or just want to post their opinion on an event, with the new OS, students can write, post and publish their optometry passions.

How it Works

The new OS is based on a user-centric system; that means everything is focused on the individual student. Now, if you log on to read an article you will know immediately who wrote it and where they stand in the profession of optometry.

Leader boards are a big feature of the new site. We rank content, schools and writers using our “recommend” button. This allows us to see which schools are writing the most articles, which articles are most popular and which students are publishing the most articles.

The Benefits

Lastly, we want students to understand that posting on OS is a great way to get recognized in our small profession and to make connections with practicing ODs and other optometry students! Students should really get involved in their profession and build their professional skills.

Being involved is an amazing way to achieve this. Anyone can join the OptometryStudents.com team. We will hold monthly conference calls and webinars that will allow students to stay involved with the development of the website and to really have an impact on our profession.

Getting the Word Out

OS has utilized various forms of social media in order to market itself to all pre-optometry and current optometry students throughout the country. By utlizing Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other traditional forms of marketing like word of mouth, Optometrystudents.com has been able to really strengthen its numbers and user base.

Youtube has proven to be a useful aid in marketing Optometrystudents.com through monthly video interviews with influential figures in the profession. Facebook and Twitter have allowed OS to host and promote various contests, communicate exciting news, and alert our user base of new website advances. Combined with monthly email blasts and newsletters, Optometrystudents.com has really made the best use of social media to grow as a community and an incredible resource.

Word of mouth certainly cannot be discounted, as Optometrystudents.com has benefited greatly from optometric institutions and organizations like the AOA and AOSA, promoting and educating our professional community on the great utility and impact OS can truly have on pre-optometry and optometry students everywhere.

Social media is a great way to promote your online brand, but really it goes hand in hand with content. Optometrystudents.com is the leader of the pack when it comes to content about life in optometry school. We strive very hard to bring value based content because at the end of the day our goal is to get students more involved in their profession.

Make sure you check out the website to see the valuable and unique articles that optometry students are posting about their wonderful profession.

There is no question that marketing in general has drastically changed since the dawn of the Web 2.0 era less than a decade ago, and medical practice marketing is no exception.

Patient communication is no longer as simple as a phone call or a postcard for upcoming appointments. Practices now have to be aware of several forms of communication, patient engagement, feedback, search engine rankings, and more. Given the fragmented nature of maintaining online presences through multiple social networks, implementing a strong communications strategy can be difficult and time consuming for small practices.

On our trip to Chicago for the ASCRS Annual Meeting last weekend, we had the chance to speak to the people at Demandforce, a marketing company that addresses these issues by helping medical practices streamline their online communications.

The company has officially teamed up with Facebook and acquired Timely.is to offer a complete online communications dashboard specifically tailored for a number of industries, including optometric and ophthalmic practices.

Demandforce’s software places email, text messaging, online reviews, SEO tools, and all of your social media outlets into one streamlined program. The software makes it easy for your practice to automatically send out appointment reminders, thank you notes, or promotions via text, email or social media.

Demandforce also collects certified reviews of your practice from various sites and sends them to Facebook and Google in order to provide a high level of visibility. The reviews are also posted on a business profile page created by Demandforce, which is then distributed to dozens of search engines and directories across the web.

While these features are great communication tools, the company rep explained that a large aspect of what sets Demandforce’s software apart is its ability to foster online patient engagement. Online referral features allow patients to refer their friends to your practice. A tracking component lets you see which of your patients referred their friends so you can reward them with discounts or giveaways. Follow-up communication also encourages patient engagement through automated post-visit surveys so you can identify where your practice is doing well and where it could use improvement.

Moving forward, it seems that most practices will need to adopt this kind of all-encompassing communications strategy. As online patient engagement becomes commonplace at medical practices, it will be interesting to see how Demandforce and other similar companies further develop their software and adapt to changing forms of communication.

Contact Noble Vision Group

LinkedIn for Healthcare Professionals

As more and more physicians and healthcare organizations jump onboard the social media bandwagon, LinkedIn is a social network that has been somewhat overlooked by healthcare professionals until recently.

LinkedIn is one of the original social networks—launched in 2003, it predates its social media brethren, but hasn’t seen the same kind of rapid growth. While the number of users on Facebook and Twitter has skyrocketed to the hundreds of millions over a few short years, LinkedIn’s user base has seen steady growth since 2003, reaching over 150 million worldwide users as of February, 2012.

Healthcare professionals have often shied away from LinkedIn when building their online presences, as many are under the impression that the site is only for those seeking new employment. In fact, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian provides a slew of reasons why doctors don’t use LinkedIn on his blog, 33 Charts.

However, as doctors look further into LinkedIn’s capabilities and explore newer features, they are beginning to see that the social platform isn’t just for job seekers. The number of healthcare professionals on LinkedIn grew by 17 percent from 2009 to 2011 with numbers still on the rise.

If Twitter is a crowded party and Facebook is a lively get-together, LinkedIn is the refreshments table at the largest professional networking event in the world. Regardless of whether or not you are looking for a job, it’s the perfect place to showcase your skill sets and accomplishments and collaborate with other like-minded professionals.

Your LinkedIn profile can also serve as a gateway to your online presence, providing a visually clean platform to show people what you’re about. If they want to find out more, you can provide links to your website or other social media profiles.

If you want to collaborate with other doctors, you can join any number of LinkedIn’s groups or start one of your own. These groups range from topics as broad as “Eye Care Professionals,” to topics as narrow as “Ophthalmology Revenue Consultants and Coders.” On group pages, you can stay up to date with your profession by asking poll questions, messaging other professionals, and sharing links.

To market your practice or healthcare organization, you can make a company page outlining your business’ goals and services. You can even post job openings if you have a position to fill.

If you want to take your marketing efforts even further, you can utilize LinkedIn’s pay-per-click advertising services, which allows you to set your own budget for highly targeted ads.

LinkedIn’s Pinterest page has several great infographics illustrating how LinkedIn is used, who is using it, and how you can take advantage of the platform.

Check out our LinkedIn page and follow us for news and updates.

The infographic below shows how LinkedIn stacks up against other popular networks in the healthcare arena.

The Portland Digital Marketing Conference

Last Monday we attended the fourth annual Portland Digital Marketing Conference, featuring some of the brightest and most creative thinkers in the industry. It’s important for those of us involved in e-marketing (whether that means working for a large firm or running social media for a small business), to avoid becoming complacent. Something new is happening in online marketing every day, so it’s important that we continue to learn and understand where the industry is going and adjust our marketing efforts accordingly.

If you have a medical practice or any other small business and you’re just getting into the e-marketing game, all the platforms and available tools can be overwhelming. Even if you’ve been at it for a while and feel like you’ve got it under control, it can still get pretty confusing at times.

Regardless of how far along you are in your digital marketing efforts or what problems you have run into, here are a few key tips we took away from the Portland Digital Marketing Conference that will help you maintain a focused online strategy:

Take the time to do it right.

Although many social networks are casual in nature, you shouldn’t take a casual approach to your overall digital strategy. Don’t just assign an intern to send out a few Tweets a day. Make sure whoever is in charge of your social media is someone who is truly invested in the image of your business and can adequately reflect the values and personality you want your business to portray.

Take some time to draft a social media policy that provides guidelines as to how your business should be represented online, both in terms of your marketing efforts and your employees’ personal accounts. Establish rules regarding what should be disclosed online and what shouldn’t, how to respond to negative comments, how your business identifies itself, what legal issues to be aware of, and any other necessary guidelines. Some companies even have separate policies for each social network as well as policies for personal accounts, work accounts, and commenting on social media channels. You can see examples of social media policies from some of the country’s largest companies here.

Don’t spread your online presence too thin.

If you’re a small company just starting to get into social media, do some research and pick one social channel that will benefit your business the most. If you don’t have a lot of manpower to put towards social networking, you don’t want to start out by trying to develop networks on multiple channels at once. Pick one platform and devote the time that it takes to build a strong network. In most cases, network growth will be relatively slow. Test out what works and what doesn’t. Once you’ve begun to develop a significant network on one channel, you can begin branching out and testing the waters of other social media platforms.

Keep in mind that your digital strategy is, in many ways, just another form of customer service.

The most successful marketers are the ones who become a part of the lives of their customers. Your digital strategy shouldn’t just be a way to generate leads, but a way to make sure your customers are receiving the best service you can provide. If someone mentions your company through a social channel, negatively or positively, do your best to respond with a personal message—you do not want to ignore someone or take too long to respond and risk appearing as a faceless company. If you’re a small business without a lot of time to devote to this, any one of these popular tools makes it easy to monitor your online mentions. Set aside 30 minutes to an hour a day to see who is talking about your business and try to respond in a timely manner.

Remember that e-marketing is part science and part art.

While you should always be testing and  measuring your Key Performance Indicators (KPI), you can’t lose sight of the human element involved. Every business is unique and there are multiple ways to build your network and engage your audience. A large part of social media marketing is getting a feel for each platform through trial and error and seeing how your audience responds.

We hope this post could provide you with some guidance on your journey into new media, so get creative and  keep at it.

Contact Noble Vision Group 

QR Code Infographic

As part of our continued coverage of QR codes, we couldn’t help but drop this infographic on you. In an earlier post we told you about the creative ways marketers are using QR codes for the holiday season and we’ve previously covered some fun QR code facts. This infographic, created by Top SEO Liverpool, profiles who is using the mobile codes and how they are being used.

A Very QR Code Christmas

With the holiday season just around the corner, it’s about that time when companies start rolling out their yule tide marketing efforts, and this year’s are sure to be more mobile-oriented than ever. As QR code usage in the US is on the rise (a 4,589% increase from 2010 to 2011), eMarketer predicts that 1 out of 5 smartphone users 18 and over will use a QR code in their holiday shopping this year.

So what are companies doing to capitalize on the QR code craze?

JC Penny announced yesterday an innovative QR code campaign to incorporate mobile devices into holiday gift giving. An individualized QR code “Santa Tag” sticker will be given to shoppers with every gift purchased. Shoppers can scan the QR code to record a message and then slap the sticker onto their gift. When the recipient opens the gift, they can scan the code to hear your personalized message and share it with their friends.

If farting elves isn’t your thing, just get your loved ones some Starbucks gift cards so they can purchase a drink and play around with Starbucks’ new holiday augmented reality app. While this festive marketing campaign doesn’t utilize QR codes, it still adds a fun and interactive element to drinking coffee. Just download the app to your smartphone, point its camera at one of Starbucks’ seasonal cups or various other Starbucks merchandise, and the cartoon characters on the products come to life on your screen.

To learn more about QR code marketing for your medical practice, check out The Pulse, our comprehensive social media marketing newsletter.

Contact Noble Vision Group

Up & Coming Eyewear: The Story of Shwood

At Noble Vision Group we’re always on the lookout for innovative new companies and products in the eye care industry. It just so happens that Shwood, one of the most promising new eyewear manufacturers in the country, is located right here in our home state of Oregon.

In October, Shwood won Dell’s Americas Favorite Small Business contest, earning the company $75,000 in Dell equipment and a 6-episode web series.

History:

In case you missed the news, last month Facebook altered its “wall post” policy as it applied to pharmaceutical companies. Prior to August 15, pharma companies had complete control over what was posted to their walls and by whom,  many opting to disable commenting altogether. That privilege was revoked  when the powers-that-be at Facebook deemed it a requirement that pharma companies open their walls to public commenting.

Now, one month after the controversial change was enacted,  what effects and consequences have pharma companies seen?

In the weeks following the policy change announcement several companies took their Facebook pages down, and it was speculated that other companies would soon abandon the popular social network as well.

As it turns out, the policy change wasn’t the end of Pharma-booking. About a week after enactment, a blogger on WCG World created a spreadsheet detailing 62 different Facebook pages run by pharma companies.

It turns out that only 10 of them deactivated their pages, while others are testing out new approaches.

Novartis, for example, took down all of its content and posted a message stating that it is redesigning its Facebook page to align with the new polices. Others, like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, are allowing public comments, but ask that users adhere to their commenting policy, reserving the right to delete any comment they deem necessary.

One clear challenge posed to drug companies is that the policy change complicates their ability to abide by the FDA’s “fair balance” rule, which requires claims about a medical product to be balanced with additional information on the product’s side effects and appropriate usage.

Who is held accountable if a Facebook user references a specific drug or offers medical advice on a company page without providing content that satisfies the “fair balance” requirements? As many of you know, the FDA has yet to issue a set of guidelines regarding the social media activities of pharma companies, which makes some of them hesitant to fully delve into those waters.

The wide appeal of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is that they provide a forum for open dialogue. For marketing purposes, it allows companies to interact with their customers and obtain honest feedback on their product.

But, when pharma companies need to skirt around legal issues and users have to obey strict policies in order to comment publicly, what value does social media add to these brands?

How do you think these companies, who have long been viewed as faceless corporations, can adapt to our culture of connectivity and personalization?

Will there eventually be a place for Big Pharma in the world of social media or are they just hopping on the bandwagon? Let us know what you think.

Contact Noble Vision Group

Welcome to The Pulse, an e-newsletter that finds the convergence between digital communication and the eye care industry and rounds it up into a monthly “How To” style FYI.

Clearly you’ve already found the Noble Vision Group blog, a laid-back mélange of insider opinion, news updates, and blogs from industry experts. Its function is to serve you as place where information can be deposited, cultivated, and released.

Conceptually, The Pulse manifested from that same philosophy, but takes it one step further. With a focus on news from other industries, mainly technology and digital communication, The Pulse presents real-life examples, case studies, and ideas for keeping up with e-marketing and outreach.

The best part? It is specifically tailored for eye care people, by eye care people.

That said, check out the first installment of The Pulse: where the E and Eye industries meet.

The Pulse

Get Creative with Foursquare. Win some Hot Sauce?

July 28, 2011 - No matter what field you are in, it’s imperative that your business stays up-to-date with the latest trends in technology, communication, and e-marketing. Our reliance on mobile devices is directly proportional to the speed in which e-commerce, mobile connectivity, and virtual communication adapt and change.

In industries like optometry and ophthalmology, where business is driven by hands-on, face-to-face interaction between doctors and patients, the way to incorporate these new tools is into your business model is not always obvious. Medical practices must get creative…and they have.

If you’re looking for a way to increase interaction with patients at your medical practice and incorporate an online presence, take a look at what Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warford is doing at his optometric clinic in Tampa, FL. The doc has become somewhat of a local celebrity for his creative use of Foursquare.

Foursquare promotions are typically seen at bars, restaurants, or retail locations, but Dr. Bonilla-Warford has cleverly made the location-based service work for his practice. As a reward for “check ins” at his practice, the doctor offers a surprising giveaway–locally made hot sauce. While Dr. Bonilla-Warford occasionally offers more pertinent rewards like discounts on glasses, it is the off-the-wall nature of his hot sauce giveaways that have gotten people talking.

The doctor pushes his promotions through blog posts and email campaigns, and since many people have Foursquare connected to their

Facebook and Twitter accounts, his practice has garnered a sizable word-of-mouth buzz.

For those of you who think social networking and the eye care industry don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, to you we say, “Au contraire!”

With a little creativity you can use social applications like Foursquare to reach your customers on new levels, reinforce your brand, and add elements of interactivity (and fun!) to your practice. With any luck, you’ll reach optometric celebrity status, like Dr. Bonilla-Warford.

Foursquare Math:

10+ Million  Worldwide Users

3+ Million Check-Ins Per Day

500,000+ Merchant Platform Users (Businesses)