Physical Therapy Reputation Marketing Archives

Physical Therapy Ratings & Reviews – Don’t Ignore Good Reviews – Do This Instead

I want to share something with you that I see so many physical therapy practices failing to do – respond to good reviews.

Many business owners falsely assume that a good review means their job is done, and leave these reviews unanswered. Huge mistake!

People who’ve taken time out of their day to leave feedback are the ones most likely to return to your business. Responding to every review increases the likelihood of a return customer because it makes them feel cared for. Not to mention, it’s an opportunity to show off your customer service skills to prospective patients.

Here are 3 steps to effectively respond to a good review:

Thank the Reviewer for their Time

Everyone’s time is valuable. That’s why you should open by acknowledging how thoughtful it was for the person to take time out of their day to share their feedback. This is an excellent way to show appreciation and make the patient feel like a valued customer.

Respond to Any Specifics Shared by the Reviewer

If the reviewer shares specifics about how you or an employee helped them, be sure to reference this in your response (but keep HIPAA/PHI in mind).

This demonstrates that you’ve truly listened and digested their feedback. Plus, it’s an excellent opportunity to boast about how great your team and service is!

Finish with a Small Call-to-Action

A small call-to-action or invite to return is an excellent way to end your response. You don’t want to come across as ‘sales-y’ so make it feel as natural as possible.

It can be as simple as an invite for another appointment. For example, “We cannot wait to see you again. Be sure to get in touch with [receptionist name] at [phone number] when you’re ready for your next [service]!”

This is Why You Should Make a Habit Out of Responding to Good Reviews

Responding to positive reviews is such a simple way to make your patients feel valued and cared for. Remember, they do not owe you a review. That’s why it’s so important for you to acknowledge their feedback and show appreciation.

By doing so, it increases customer loyalty as they are much more likely to return to a practice that they feel connected to.

How Will This Help Your PT Practice?

It costs nearly 7 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one. If you’re not taking time to practice simple retention techniques like this, your marketing costs will be a whole lot higher than they need to be.

By responding to your customer reviews, you will encourage current customers to continue doing business with you.

As an added bonus, responding to positive reviews will attract new patients as well. We had this experience reported to us several times – i.e. a response to a review was reported by a new patient. A business that only responds to negative reviews runs the risk of leaving a poor first impression.

By showing appreciation to everyone, you can easily demonstrate your commitment to excellent service for all. Making you much more appealing to prospects as they decide who to do business with.

Need Help Building Your Reputation?

You can reach David Straight, DPT, co-owner by setting up an appointment – just click here. We have a large number of clients that have well over 100 Google reviews. We can help you achieve this goal as well.

Physical Therapy Ratings & Reviews – E-rehab 2022 Update

If you follow our blog, you know that we are huge fans of reputation marketing for physical therapy private practices. It’s one of the few ways small practices can differentiate themselves and compete with the large corporations and hospitals.

Sometimes practices, and in this case E-rehab.com, are victims of fraudulent reviews though. Below is a case study from a recent experience of ours and some thoughts on how you can turn lemons into lemonade 😊 .

Rarely is a Business or PT Practice Immune to Fake Reviews and Spam Bots

Recently, we were the target of a fraudulent, negative review from someone by the name of Javelle Avant. If you’d like to read my previous post on the value of negative reviews, click here.

Here’s the rating and review:

Readers See Through Fake Reviews

One look at this review and you can tell it has no merit, but why would I say this? Well, let’s break down a rating and review into its components…all the different parts that consumers assess when judging the value of a rating and review.

There’s the rating – a 1-star rating, as it stands on its own, gives a reader a negative first impression. However, the negative rating is an opportunity for the reader to gather a different perspective from someone that may have had a bad experience. How do they do this? They read the text of the review.

The Review – The review is the written feedback provided by the consumer. In our case, this one says, “Don’t know anything”. Does this really provide any information that would help a prospect make a better buying decision? I would contend that the feedback of this review is no help at all…which isn’t surprising because it’s fake/fraud.

What You Should Do First

The first thing you want to do is report the review to Google. Don’t get your hopes up though, Google rarely takes down negative reviews. There’s no reason you can’t report it a second or third time either and choose a different reason. In my experience, Google will not respond.

To report a negative review, go to the negative review, click on the 3 dots to the right of the reviewers name and click Report Review.

Next, you want to choose why you are reporting the negative review to Google. In my experience, there isn’t one that’s better than another.

After you report the review, Google should get back to you within three business days. Again, unless it’s an obvious, egregious violation of their terms and conditions, they are unlikely to remove it. If you’d like to learn more about their review policies, you can click here.

Next, There’s The Opportunity to Respond and Educate

Here’s a quick video on how to respond to Google Reviews:

One of the best things you can do to combat a negative review is the following:

Take it seriously – a quick look at your Google Business Profile Insights demonstrates that your Google business listing (where positive & negative reviews are displayed) is seen hundreds if not thousands of times per month. For this reason, it’s important to respond to negative as well as positive reviews.

Sleep on it so emotions play a lesser role in your response – it’s normal for hardworking small business owners to emotionally react when they get a negative review ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS FAKE! When we received this negative review, my partner and a team member immediately asked, “Do you know who wrote this negative review?”

Respond professionally – in most cases, people that write negative reviews aren’t going to change their mind. The people that are going to read this review and your response, are prospects that want to do business with you. That being the case, you need to respond and keep it professional.

Offer to make things right – since you can never be certain that a negative review is from a real person (perhaps under a pseudonym/false identity) or it is a spam bot, you need to offer to make things right. If it is a real person, there is a chance that they will take you up on the offer. Add your name and phone number to the review if you want to make it easier for the person to contact you. In my experience and working with hundreds of other practices that get physical therapy reviews, they almost never will call you.

Use it to educate others and show other readers that you care about what customers think…if it’s a legitimate review – as I mentioned above, and in my previous post about negative reviews, you might choose to reply and educate others that are reading that reply.

This is how I replied to our negative review:

When a Negative Review Makes You Sour – Make Lemons Out of Lemonade

It’s a fact that sooner or later you are going to get a negative review. I feel for PT practice owners that work so hard to provide great care only to experience a fraudulent review.

Take a day to let the frustration wane, then report that negative review to Google and follow the advice above, and respond to it through your Google Business Provide

It’s what I had to do and you might have to do it in the future as well.

Need Help with Physical Therapy Marketing?

Call (800) 468-5161 or Click here to book a time on my calendar

Thanks for reading – David Straight, DPT, Co-owner, Marketing Consultant

Physical Therapy Marketing in 2021 – Does Your Community Know About You?

In this post I want to share five brief interviews I did with members of my local North San Diego community. The answers were a bit surprising.

TL;DR We interviewed four men and one woman in our local community and as you will notice, physical therapy was never mentioned by any of them. So, the obvious question is: Are you marketing your practice enough to your community?

Here’s the recording:

David Straight · Interview With Community Members About PT

Here’s the transcript of the interviews:

Interviewer:
“Thank you for participating. The first question I have is, uh, if you had neck or back pain, who would you go seek medical care?”

Participant #1 Answer:
“Well, it depends on the type, just stiffness or sciatica. I have chronic low stiffness, so I go to the chiropractor.”

Interviewer:
“Okay. And how about if you had shoulder knee problems? Who would you go see for that?”

Participant #1 Answer:
“Um, probably an orthopedist.”

Interviewer:
“And have you ever had physical therapy before?

Participant #1 Answer:
Uh, yes I have.

Participant #2

Interviewer:
My first question for you is if you had neck or low back pain, who would you go see?

Participant #2 Answer
“Chiropractor”

Interviewer:
“If you had a shoulder or knee pain, who would you go?”

Participant #2 Answer
“Either a masseuse or an acupuncturists.”

Interviewer:
“My last question is, uh, have you ever been to physical therapy before?”

Participant #1 Answer:
“Uhhh, no.”

Participant #3

Interviewer:
“My first question is if you had neck or back pain, who would you go see?”

Participant #3 Answer:
“Neck or back pain? Uh, either a chiropractor I go to, or my local doctor.”

Interviewer:
“How about shoulder and knee pain?”

Participant #3 Answer:
“Shoulder and knee pain. Um, uh, it’s shoulder pain. I’ve had before I went to both, I got like treatment at a chiropractor and I also went to my local doctor for that electrical stuff.”

Interviewer:
“Have you ever been to a physical therapist before as therapists?”

Participant #3 Answer:
“No, my sister is actually going to school for that…”

Participant #4

Interviewer:
“My first question is if you had neck or back pain, who would you go see?”

Participant #4 Answer:
“Uh, I would probably say a chiropractor.”

Interviewer:
“How about shoulder and knee pain?”

Participant #4 Answer:
“I would once again, probably say a chiropractor.”

Interviewer:
“Have you ever been to a physical therapist before as therapists?”

Participant #4 Answer:
“Yes”

Participant #5

Interviewer:
“My first question is if you had neck or back pain, who would you go see?”

Participant #5 Answer:
“I would see my general practitioning physician.”

Interviewer:
“How about shoulder and knee pain?”

Participant #5 Answer:
“Also my regular physician.”

Interviewer:
“Have you ever been to a physical therapist before as therapists?”

Participant #5 Answer:
“No, I have not.”

What did you think of their answers. Surprised at all?

If you need help getting your PT Online Marketing Right, give us a call at (760) 585-9097 or click here to request an appointment on my calendar.

Physical Therapy Ratings and Reviews – Negative Reviews Aren’t So Bad

Here are some thoughts about negative physical therapy ratings and reviews, why they aren’t so bad, how and why you should respond to them, as well as positive reviews too.

Before I get into it, you should know that an occasional negative review is actually beneficial. Don’t believe it? Check this study out (available as a PDF from a Google search).

Disclaimer, we aren’t HIPAA experts or attorneys. For legal questions, please consult with a compliance company such as bcmscomp.com or your own attorney.

HIPAA and Responding to Physical Therapy Ratings and Reviews

A cursory Google search with various search terms related to HIPAA and responding to reviews resulted in the following conclusions:

If a patient has already revealed his or her personal health information in his or her online review Doesn’t this authorize a provider to acknowledge that the person is a patient? After all, this individual has already admitted this in the review. The answer is “no.” Per HIPAA regulations, regardless of what a patient says in his or her review, you are NOT authorized to release any private health information in your response. According to Deven McGraw, the deputy director of health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR). https://www.reputationdefender.com/blog/doctors/online-reviews-and-hipaa-what-you-need-to-know-about-responding-to-patient-reviews
Numerous responses to Google, Yelp, and Facebook ratings and reviews include Protected Health Information.
There seems to be no legal precedent that we could find related to litigation, fines, or complaints regarding a response from a physical therapy practice to a positive or negative review.
There are legal cases surrounding physicians’, chiropractors’, and dentists’ responses to negative reviews.
In a 2016 ProPublica post, Yelp gave ProPublica access to their ratings and reviews for study and the authors noted: “We identified more than 3,500 one-star reviews (the lowest) in which patients mention privacy or HIPAA. In dozens of instances, responses to complaints about medical care turned into disputes over patient privacy.”
HIPAA Journal made no reference to fines related to responses to negative online reviews in this post.
Common sense suggests that you shouldn’t discuss the patient’s case at all in a public venue such as ratings and review sites.
Responding to positive reviews in such a way that it acknowledges that the review was a patient, while apparently a HIPAA violation, hasn’t resulted in any negative consequences for providers.
Most patients write positive reviews so, you won’t be responding to many negative patient reviews. Reference
Best practices are to respond to reviews with generic language and a focus on office policies, e.g. thank the reviewer but don’t acknowledge they were are patient.

Background – Physical Therapy Ratings & Reviews on Your Website vs. Online Directories

I define online reviews [when I say reviews, I am implying both a star rating and text review] as those posted to directory sites, such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook to name a few. Our data, from over 1700 PT websites, indicates that Google is the first place that most prospective patients see you online; therefore, online reviews at Google matter the most and you should have a system to capture them. Like many other systems, E-rehab has a great system (we have many clients with over 100 Google reviews) that either directs patients to the proper place to write a review on Google My Business or to write a review for their website.

I speak to many practice owners that are so focused on Google, Yelp, and Facebook reviews that they forget that the second most common way prospective patients get to your website is by directly going to it…in other words, they type your web address/URL into their browser. For this exact reason, you want to make sure that you have reviews on your home page, not only Google, Yelp, and Facebook.

Jay Baer, marketing and customer service expert, articulates this well in his post:

But there’s a second type of review that is just as important: first-party reviews. These are the reviews that are on YOUR website. They’ve been common on e-commerce websites for years, but are now popping up on retail, restaurant, and professional services sites.

You’re going to see more and more first-party reviews because they help convince customers late in the funnel, by ratifying their decision to make your enterprise the finalist for their purchase.

Bad Reviews Aren’t So Bad but You Must Collect Reviews from All of Your Clients

In a study by reevoo.com (that’s worth the download), they noted that bad reviews are helpful to consumers in the following ways:

Consumers want complete information
We all know that no product or service is completely perfect. Consumers want to know the few negatives so they can weigh them up against all the good points and make a fully informed decision.

Consumers don’t always agree on ‘bad’ points
A bad point to one purchaser is often irrelevant to another – and can even be an advantage. One guest could hate a hotel because there were ‘too many’ children but, to someone planning a family holiday, that’s an advantage.

Consumers don’t look at reviews in isolation
The mere presence of bad reviews isn’t enough to put most consumers off: it’s the ratio of good to bad that matters. A few bad reviews carry much less weight with readers when they appear alongside dozens or hundreds of good reviews.

Consumers notice when there are no bad reviews
Shoppers are suspicious when the reviews don’t include any complaints. They won’t assume your product or service is just that good – they’ll assume it’s so bad you have to censor customer feedback.

If you read the ebook, you’ll notice that it is primarily about products, not services, or specifically physical therapists. Nevertheless, their conclusions on how consumers utilize review information is likely to apply to the PT private practice space. At the very least, it should give practice owners better perspective on the value of reviews to consumers and alleviate some of the anxiety when you receive a bad review.

But, you don’t want to just sweep a bad review under the carpet. You need to take action.

Responding to Negative and Positive Physical Therapy Ratings & Reviews is Important

It’s important to respond to reviews because as much as anything, you are writing the response for other people that will be reading the reviews.

According to Software Advice’s 2019 updated survey, patients would like providers to respond to reviews. However, do so with care.

Below are tips, that when followed, may keep the patient coming back and prevent prospects that have examined your reviews from choosing another practice instead of yours.

1) Respond fast – 51.7% of consumers expect businesses to respond to their negative review within seven days. The quicker the response, the better. Patients that see you respond quickly to their issue helps them to understand that you are a customer-service oriented practice. By delaying a response, you risk never getting any business from not only that customer, but future patrons as well. Prospects who read these reviews and see you respond in a genuine, caring way are very likely to still choose you because they see you are actively involved with making sure your patients’ concerns are addressed.

Case Study: in 2018, I helped several clients respond to negative physical therapy ratings and reviews. Two clients that I helped said that a patient read the response and chose their practice. Not to say that I have some magic formula to respond, it was more about being polite and timely.

2) When you respond, don’t be defensive or argumentative – First, thank them for letting you know there was an issue. Then, offer your sincere apology that it even happened at all. Tell them that this is not typical of your company and that you are giving this issue your utmost attention. If possible ask them to contact you so you can resolve it as quickly as possible. How you resolve the issue is up to you.

Some patients just want to be heard. Others will try to extort money from you, or in other words, will tell you they are going to write a negative review if you don’t forgive their copay or co-insurance. Responding to them by letting them know that you went through a rigorous process of sharing your financial policies with them and verifying insurance before they came in (assuming you did of course) and what their responsibility was is often a good way to handle these.

Don’t be Afraid to Share Your Side – While some physical therapists would prefer not to defend themselves fearing ongoing negative dialogue, other experts argue that you should tell the story as it went down. Neil Patel SEO expert and blogger extraordinaire, states in this post:

Don’t be afraid to tell your side of the story…Bad reviews are not always your fault. But when a number of things add up to a negative customer experience, your business might suffer. If somebody were to falsely accuse you of a crime, you would do anything in your power to prove your innocence. When a review is simply untrue, you might need to do the same. Sometimes, you need to share your side of what really happened.

I happen to agree with this. Too many consumers write negative reviews about health care without thinking. Some have the crazy notion that insurance is going to cover everything (and fail to read the financial fine print on PT intake forms). Setting the record straight can sometimes lead to the patient removing the review. This was an experience I had with a client in Brooklyn. She wrote a negative review, we responded properly, and she removed it.

If indeed you do take a position of defending yourself, make sure you don’t violate HIPAA regulations. You might choose to say something like this in response to a negative review: “Thank you for your review. We take all reviews very seriously both positive and negative. Because of HIPAA regulations, we cannot discuss patient cases publicly. However, we make every effort to avoid situations like the one you are suggesting, given our policies…x, y, z. That said, patient satisfaction is our highest priority and we are absolutely willing to discuss this matter. Please contact the owner at (XXX) XXX-XXXX.” By responding in this way, you are articulating to other readers that your reputation and the care of your patients is important, you have policies surrounding care complaints, and you would like to address the given negative review in a legal and private manner. Readers are likely to respect an organization that responds in this manner.

3) Ask Them to Update Their Review – If you were able to successfully resolve an issue offline, ask the patient to return to the directory site and update their review! Don’t try to post yourself stating that the issue was resolved. It is best coming from the patient. They may not update their response, but it does no harm to at least ask and may go a long way to, once again, increase your reputation online!

Still others are just unhappy people and that’s okay. As I indicated earlier, having a few bad reviews isn’t a bad thing. In fact, when it comes to purchasing many goods and services, maximum purchases occur from vendors when their online reputation is less than five stars. I haven’t seen that play out in the rehabilitation profession but if you have a very large volume of reviews, >100, it could be an advantage.

4) Responding to Reviews is a Differentiator – in a large data study by reviewtrackers.com (worth the read), they indicated that 63% of consumers never hear back after they post a negative review. In a cursory inspection of 50 different physical therapy practices, we too noticed that neither positive or negative reviews received responses from PT practices most of the time.

5) Responding to Positive Reviews is an SEO Factor – Finally, why bother to respond to positive reviews? Google confirms that it helps with local search rankings.

In a statement released by Google on a Google My Business support page titled Improve your local ranking on Google, they stated:

…businesses should “interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business.” This statement is then followed by “high-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.”

Just like you should have a process to capture ratings and reviews, responding to reviews is another positive ranking SEO factor you can control that will help…and of course we highly encourage this.

[IMPORTANT: The best defense to physical therapy negative reviews is to get your patients to proactively review you. Having 60+ positive reviews drives business. It gets patients that are comparison shopping or are sitting on the fence, off the fence and increases the likelihood that they will call you.]

If you don’t proactively capture the customer sentiment from almost all of your patients and just passively let unhappy patients post negative reviews, that may be all that is present. If you do capture the reviews from all of your patients, you get a balanced picture of the customer experience as noted in pie charts.

Reference: https://blog.reevoo.com/ebook-bad-reviews-good-business/

Again from the Reevoo ebook, they sum it up well:

Proactively reaching out to invite all customers to review gives happy ones the little nudge they need to get reviewing. By collecting reviews from a whole spectrum of customers, the bad reviews are properly diluted by the crowd of satisfied purchasers.

A Good Infographic from Software Advice Describes What You Should and Shouldn’t Do

Reference: https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/how-patients-use-online-reviews/

In Summary – When it comes to Physical Therapy Ratings and Reviews, Know the HIPAA Regulations, Don’t Ignore Reviews, Embrace Them, Respond To Them, and Understand There’s Value in Good and Bad Reviews

Replying to negative reviews shows those reading that you are proactive and concerned about things that are important to your patients. This can serve to improve your online reputation. But ignoring these issues is the same as turning your back on them, something that could give your practice a black eye and may even turn consumers away..

I hope you are finding this information useful to your practice. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to give us a call at (800) 468-5161 or send an email to dave@e-rehab.com .

Why an In-Depth Understanding of Your Patients Is the Only Marketing Strategy You Need

Successful marketing is about more than tracking analytics, building a social following and getting traffic on websites.

Ultimately, successful marketing is about knowing your patients. No matter how great your marketing efforts are, it doesn’t matter if you can’t connect with the audience.

So, if you want to be truly successful, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your patients.

What is a Patient-Centric Marketing Approach?

Patient-centric marketing uses personalization to deliver services, messages, and content to the patient that provides them with the answers they need. This applies not only to marketing but also to your entire organization.

Putting your patients first can improve your relationship with them and retain more patients over time since they feel valued.

With patient-centric marketing, you stop telling your patients what they need, which comes across as unappealing and untrustworthy. Instead of pushing services and aggressively asking for the therapy appointment, with patient-centric marketing, you craft your messaging, content and services around addressing their needs first.

Ultimately, if a patient knows they have other options and feel undervalued by the clinic’s lack of attention, they’ll move on.

The Value of Knowing Your Patients

More and more businesses are taking advantage of the power of blogging and content marketing, meaning that the internet is flooded with content everywhere you turn. As a result, patients no longer need to waste time on low-quality content that doesn’t serve their needs.

If you want to stand out among this crowd, you need to create unique content that’s relevant to the needs of the target audience. When you can create content that fits their needs, you develop trust and value with your practice. This makes patients more loyal to your practice and its services.

Having loyal patients who return to your clinic when therapy is needed offers many benefits to your physical therapy practice, not only in revenue but in positive brand reputation and word-of-mouth recommendations.

In fact, repeat patients are 65 percent more likely to convert over new prospects. This means reduced marketing costs and more new patients for you. Loyal patients are also more likely to support your efforts to generate new business since they want to share their experiences with their family and friends. This boosts your trust with new patients and gets you more cash revenue.

So, when you stop guessing at your customers’ wants and needs and start paying attention to the feedback they give you, you get both long-term patient relationships and increased profits.

How to Get an In-Depth Understanding of Your Patients

Developing these relationships and this understanding of your patients takes time, however. Your patients’ needs may change over time, and you need to change with them.

Here’s how:

Build Your Patient Personas

A patient persona is a guide to the audience you’re trying to attract to your business. A patient persona describes one ideal patient or client in detail, giving you insights about their behaviors, demographics, background and other unique identifiers.

A truly in-depth buyer persona goes beyond this knowledge, however. It dives much deeper into understanding the patient’s life and the challenges they face. What are their problems? What influences their decisions?

The key to all of this is not to guess, of course. When you create buyer personas, you can’t just create a patient. It needs to be based on the loyal patient base you have.

If you’re trying to reach a different audience, you can even create multiple personas to target new patients, while also keeping your loyal patients happy.

Keep in mind that these may change over time as well, so you should watch how they evolve and continually find new ways to reach them.

Listen on Social Media

Many people are comfortable displaying much of their lives on social media. This can provide you with valuable insights about them and how they feel about your business.

If you only pay attention to posts and comments that relate to your business, however, you’ll miss out on insights from them about what they need from a product or service. To get a real understanding of the target audience and what they expect from your business, you need to go beyond the mentions.

Social listening tools can be helpful for this. Mention is one of the best tools to monitor your brand anywhere. It gives you insights about who’s posting about your business, where they’re located and what influence they have. From there, you can do a little more research into these potential patients to learn more about them.

You should also work to connect with your audience when they come to you. With the availability of therapists online, most patients expect quick responses when they inquire online. Be sure to pay attention to questions, comments, and feedback to you about your business, so you can get an idea of the problems your audience is experiencing.

Use Surveys

If you’re not getting the answers you need from social listening, don’t be afraid to ask your patients directly. Surveys provide you with opinions and insights that you may not have otherwise, and they’re easy for patients to participate in.

Keep in mind a few things, such as:

Keep your survey short and simple.
Humanize your message to let them know that their feedback has a purpose.
If your survey is a multi-page form, use a progress bar to let patients know how long they have to complete the survey.

Ultimately, the idea behind the survey is to keep it as quick and painless as possible for participants.

Pay Attention to Visited Content

Whether it’s videos, blog posts, infographics or images, patients engage with a variety of content throughout the day. To understand what they want and need, you need to pay attention to the type of content they visit.

The best way to learn more about popular content is with Google Analytics. This will show you popular content and the patterns that may arise, as well as the type of content that works better for your audience.

Don’t forget to check out your competitor’s social media pages to see what posts get a lot of attention as well. Using this information, you can create more content that’s aligned with what’s working for your competitor.

Look for Lost Conversions

In addition to learning about current patients, you can learn a wealth of information from the leads that don’t convert. This process is a little more involved, but it can provide you with valuable insights.

First, let’s look at the patient’s journey:

A patient is aware of a problem (usually some form of joint, muscle, and/or nerve pain)
A patient considers the options to solve that problem (often this starts at Google, then may progress to asking a family member, friend, doctor, or coming back directly to you)
A patient decides what solution to try (often based on their insurance coverage, the geographic location of a practice, and/or a practice’s ratings and reviews).

If you find that you lose patients in the consideration phase, you may be not doing enough marketing/advertising/or sales to let your community know that you exist. Of course, not every patient coming in contact with your clinic will make an appointment, but it’s still important to find leaks in the sales funnel.

With this in mind, you want to create content for each stage of the patient’s journey, so you can address any concerns they may have along the way.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to marketing, don’t assume you understand the patient better than they know themselves. Instead of telling your patients what they need, focus on providing them with information and solutions that address their needs, so you can create a loyal following that grows your business.

Why Patient Trust Is Vital to Your Practice

With increasing access to information on the internet, patient expectations are higher than they’ve ever been, and the competition is fierce. Patient trust has always been important for the success and growth of your physical therapy clinic, but this new environment makes it absolutely vital.

Once you gain patient trust, it increases the likelihood they will consistently choose your practice over another. It also gives you a little leeway if problems arise in the future. No matter what may happen, earning the trust of your patients ensures your practice can survive.

Arguably, the “caring” in health care, seems to have declined over the last decade.

So, what is patient trust and how is it earned? This isn’t a new concept, but it’s an area in which some practices fail. The transparency that leads to trust is more than including standard marketing and communications about why your practice is better than the rest — you have to “truly care” about your patients and their problems.

What Is Patient Trust and Why Is It Important?

Generally, patient trust happens when you have a deep understanding of your patients’ needs and a valid solution to their problems. You provide them with relevant information and personalized care that caters to their unique needs, rather than just touting the benefits of choosing your practice.

Ultimately, this trust is about putting the patient first in your marketing content and your services.

The reason trust is more important now than it’s ever been is a direct result of the variety of treatment options available to patients today. Patients no longer need to choose between only one or two clinics. They have options and virtually limitless access to reviews & testimonials that can give them an idea of what you have to offer.

Because of this, practice owners need to look beyond the competitive pricing, features, and benefits, and direct their attention more toward the history and legacy. Patients have become empowered and skeptical, so they’re looking for the whole package — one that will not only give them reliable solutions to their pain, but also a physical therapy practice with patient services they can count on now and in the future. Ideally, your services will address their dysfunction, disability, and functional limitations; but in the event your services don’t completely alleviate their problems, patients still want to have an exceptional experience.

In my personal experience, patients often care as much about the customer service, communication, and convenience as they do the outcomes of the treatment. In other words, they don’t expect miracles, just a sincere attempt by the physical therapy practice to rehabilitate them.

How Is Patient Trust Created?

As we know, the idea of building consumer trust isn’t new, but it is difficult to achieve. Just making promises about your practice is no longer enough, since patients are looking for actions that back-up your claims. This has a big influence on loyalty as well since patients are more likely to return to the practice that gave them the experience and results they wanted the first time around.

Authenticity is key. Authenticity is the one thing that transcends industries, generations, and cultures since it’s the universal thing that all patients are looking for. It’s about being transparent and giving patients what they expect, both in developing the patient/therapist relationship and delivering on their expectations of meeting personal health goals and finding a solution to their existing condition.

Of course, authenticity and transparency are useless for the pure sake of it. You need to be able to translate this into the right verbiage, demonstrating an in-depth understanding of your patients’ needs and expectations, so you can provide them with relevant, valuable solutions. Superlatives, false claims, half-truths and other marketing hype that can’t be verified, instantly read as false, credibility killers. Focus on positive information of substance and value to your patient.

Also, if you’re falling below expectations in some way, it’s vital to learn from it and find ways to improve. While it may be difficult to accurately measure the value and performance in terms of patient trust, you can set standards for your physical therapy practice to ensure that each aspect of your patient’s experience is accounted for and completed. This not only makes your trust tangible for your audience, but it also keeps your business living up to the image of excellence you’re sharing with your community.

Why Is Patient Trust Hard to Earn?

There are many reasons trust can be hard to earn, but skeptical and savvy patients are the main reason. More and more false claims, scams, data breaches and misuse of data are dominating the headlines. It’s becoming more difficult for consumers to immediately trust a business and be open to trying the little known practice of physical therapy.

Fortunately, this issue is easy to combat if you’re truly putting the patient first. A physical therapy practice must be clear about its purpose and values, as well as being transparent with policy and procedures. Perception is everything, and a clinic that offers the truth is more likely to have good impressions with potential patients.

There’s been a shift in power between the practice owner and the consumer. In the past, the physicians and physical therapy practice owners had the power and patients had to accept what was given. Now, patients have a broad outlook and understand more about what physical therapy should and should not be, so they’re less forgiving of missteps. Patients want a practice that shows loyalty and demonstrates shared values, so an effective strategy would be to align your practice’s values with the information you’d gladly offer to the public.

In addition, transparency is often forced upon the physical therapy practice, since patients can “find dirt on the practice” if they look hard enough. More than ever, questionable ethics and lack of sincerity are a major risk. It’s so easy for them now to be published on social media and to be found by potential patients, leaving a practice looking disingenuous and sleazy. Of course, this is worse than having no trust at all.

Handling Breaches of Trust

As hard as it is to earn the trust of your patients in the first place, it’s even harder to get it back following a breach. That’s why developing deep trust with your patient base in the first place, is the only way to bounce back and survive the fallout.

Physical therapy groups that offer a positive patient experience that meets or exceeds their expectations and delivers benefits that resonate with the patient is so important. An overall culture that demonstrates a willingness to learn from mistakes is paramount. Gone are the days of media spin, since the best way to approach a mistake in the current climate is by owning up to shortcomings and showing a determination to move forward.

ADVANCED TIP: while most practice owners understand the importance of capturing online ratings and reviews, still very few do it. Moreover, responding to negative reviews is a great example of owning up to legitimate mistakes that happen in the practice.

If handled properly, a small mistake or breach of trust can even provide an opportunity for growth. A physical therapy practice that gracefully addresses a mistake and has an effective plan to recover can gain some positive exposure.

Conclusion

While the patient’s trust may sound like a swift strategy or “silver bullet” for new leads and business growth, it’s anything but. Trust is difficult to earn and keep and is far more than just a marketing strategy.

The authenticity and transparency necessary to garner real patient trust come from honest communications, a solid practice culture, and treating the patient as you would want to be treated, rather than just lip service on your physical therapy website or marketing materials.

Though it’s clear that consumers want a relationship built on trust with their physical therapist, their general trust of small businesses isn’t high. This can be an area of opportunity for new or developing clinics, or physical therapy groups looking to revamp their image and surge ahead of competitors. Whether we like it or not, the power is with the consumer, so it’s more important than ever to put their needs first for business success.

Increase Visibility and Perform Market Research via Physical Therapy Social Media Marketing

It appears to be more useful on a personal level but physical therapy social media marketing can help greatly in increasing the visibility of your business. By promoting interaction with your patients, it can also help you to perform market research.

The Aura of Authenticity About Facebook “Likes”

Since Facebook is largely an informal space, people feel free to comment on it, either positively or negatively. And a positive Facebook comment counts for a lot more than an advertisement, because those who read it know that there was no coercion involved. If someone “likes” a post, it’s generally because they genuinely like it, and not because they were paid to say so. So there’s an aura of genuineness and authenticity about physical therapy references you might get via Facebook or Twitter.

Celebrity Endorsements vs. Reviews from Friends

The skeptics among us might point out that celebrities are often paid to endorse products or services online. This is true but most of us are more likely to be swayed by what our Facebook friends tell us rather than what a celebrity might say. This is because there are many similarities between us and our friends. We perceive them as being at the same or only a slightly different level of attractiveness, economic class and intellectual understanding. We pay more attention to their “likes” because they’re like us!

Coming up with a Social Media Marketing Plan

If you’re unconvinced about the role of social media marketing companies, keep in mind that you can come up with a social media marketing plan, as suggested by this Hootsuite article. Depending on your business objectives, your social media marketing plan may include an evaluation of what your current social media accounts are doing for you, the creation of new accounts, the development of accounts you already have and the addition of new, relevant content. Checking out what your competitors are up to can also help you to figure out where your business is going and how social media can help you to get there.

Interacting with Prospects via Social Media

Social media helps you to stay in touch with your audience. It’s an interactive space from which you can learn what your patient prospects are looking for. For example, if you put up an update regarding a new type of physical therapy you’re offering, it’s possible that you’ll get a number of positive or negative comments with regard to it. Depending on what your patients are saying, you can decide whether you want to make any changes to your service.

Staying Alert to Figure Out The Tipping Point

If you stay alert on social media, you can also figure out which way the wind is blowing, before it actually gets there. In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about Hush Puppies, a type of shoe that had slowly been declining in popularity. The makers of Hush Puppies had almost decided to stop producing them when there was a sudden upswing in their sales. Although the middle-aged, conservative demographic had stopped wearing them, they had suddenly become popular with hipsters.

Using Social Media for Market Research of “Niche” Services

What happened with Hush Puppies came as a surprise to many people. But this is the kind of change that soon becomes noticeable via comments or likes on social media. Although a number of people might feel the same way about a certain product or service, there might be undiscovered market segments/audiences that feel differently. If it’s possible for your niche service to start appealing to a new demographic, social media is a great way to find this out first. In this sense, social media is not just a marketing platform to increase sales; it’s also a great place to perform a bit of market research and change direction if need be.

Experiment with the marketing of niche services – sports performance, vestibular rehab, women’s health, tmj treatment, and more. Run an ad, point the viewers to a page on your website about that niche service, give them something of value (this is called a lead magnet or a trust trigger product) in exchange for their name and email address, and see what happens.

Why Physical Therapy Reputation Management Matters

physical therapy reputation management

Business owners have always known that excellent customer service is an integral part of running a successful business. Physical therapy is no exception, as satisfied patients spread the word of their positive experience and are largely responsible for helping a practice grow. Disgruntled patients, on the other hand, likely won’t return to your practice and may even tell other people that they weren’t pleased with their treatment. This underlines the importance of physical therapy reputation management, which must be a major focus of your strategy if you want your practice to continue thriving.

Patients May Critique Both Patient Care and Customer Service

These days, with just about everything being on the Internet, your online reputation is priceless. The [pullquote2 textColor=”#000000″]Managing what’s being said about your physical therapy practice may be the most essential marketing you can do[/pullquote2] reputation you develop is largely based on what’s been said about your practice on review sites, and there is currently an abundance of these types of sites that patients can use to speak their minds. This is why managing what’s being said about your physical therapy practice may be the most essential marketing you can do.

If you break it down, there are actually two processes of your practice that your patients can review on social media. The most common area they may comment on is their actual patient care, which is the hands-on treatment that he or she receives from a physical therapist. But they may also take note of and review your customer service and the way they are treated by your receptionist, billing department and other support staff. When you take stock of your online reputation, look at each of the comments and categorize them into customer service-related comments and patient care-related comments, so you can address their feedback with the appropriate members of your practice.

Addressing Pain in Physical Therapy Reputation Management

There are some aspects of physical therapy reputation management that can be a little tricky. Physical therapy sometimes involves pain for the patient. [pullquote2 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]If you are receiving online feedback from patients expressing frustration about this aspect of their treatment, you may want to try to be a little more compassionate and offer clearer explanations to your patients. [/pullquote2]It often involves pushing patients slightly past their levels of comfort to help them improve their strength and regain critical physical skills to improve their quality of life after an injury or painful condition. If you are receiving online feedback from patients expressing frustration about this aspect of their treatment, you may want to try to be a little more compassionate and offer clearer explanations to your patients. This will allow you to maintain the same treatment regimen with your patients, but broadens their understanding and minimizes their complaints. In many cases, complaints about physical therapy “hurting” or being “too aggressive” are really a failure in communication and not a failure in therapy.

Responding to comments as they are posted online and making sure you have a much higher percentage of positive ratings than negative ratings are crucial first steps. However, how can you focus on providing the excellent customer service your patients need if you’re spending all your time on your physical therapy reputation marketing? Can you develop internal processes to improve patient care if you are constantly monitoring your reviews online? It can be a bit of an endless cycle that leaves you spread too thin to grow your practice effectively, and you may need some additional help with these efforts.

[colored_box bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#de2022″]We would love to help you out by doing what we do best, so that you can continue providing the best customer service and patient care possible to all of your patients, which will help ensure they post glowing reviews about your practice online. Please contact us to find out how we can help your practice thrive in the age of social media. In addition to helping you with physical therapy reputation marketing, we can optimize your mobile website, send out newsletters for your practice, and handle all your marketing needs both on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as search engine based marketing on sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo.[/colored_box]

Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists: 3 Top Tips

reputation marketing for physical therapists

In the field of medicine, your reputation is everything. Getting just one bad online review can have negatively impact your business in major ways. The worst part is, you may never know the business that you actually lost, since no one is going to tell you about it. This highlights why reputation marketing for physical therapists should be an essential component of your online strategy.

You need to be proactive when it comes to managing your reputation in the online space. If you’re not, competitors and the inevitable disgruntled patient will otherwise control the entire narrative of your practice online. With that, we bring you these three top tips for reputation marketing for physical therapists.

Use Negative Keywords When Marketing Online

Having a good keyword strategy is a necessity. However, this keyword strategy must include a way to limit your exposure to people who do not need your services. This saves your practice a great deal of money and ensures your patient base trusts you more through the door.

The negative keyword keeps your ads from showing up in places you would rather not be. If you start out with a happier patient base, you risk less problems down the road. However, no medical practice truthfully has the time to keep up with the ever-changing world of keywords. One of the best investments of resources in medicine is outsourcing at least the initial research of the proper keywords to target.

Aggregate All Citations

It’s difficult to have a complete grasp of what people are saying about you online. With a seemingly-endless number of review sites—Yelp, Google and Foursquare, to name a few—it’s possible for people to talk about your practice without you ever knowing it, since you may not even know that the page exists. In addition, there are many niche-oriented deep web pages that dedicate themselves to reviewing medical practices that you may not know about.

Fortunately, with the right software or the right partner, you don’t have to know about every comment that people make about you. You can focus on your current patients while the algorithm scours the Internet automatically for all citations or mentions of your practice across the entire Internet. This information comes to you delivered neatly for analysis.

[pullquote1 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Once you know who is saying what, you can fix immediate problems[/pullquote1] Once you know who is saying what, you can fix immediate problems. When you trace back comments to their source, you also figure out where people comment on you most frequently across the Internet. With this information, you can make a real decision about whether to monitor that space more frequently. This allows you to better control the narrative about your practice.

The number one advantage to aggregating citations is pointing out trends. It’s much easier to see problems in your practice when you have information from multiple sources in one place.

Build Positive Links Consistently

The major search engines pay attention to pages with dynamic content. They also associate pages with similar citations to each other. In short, if the underlying message associated with your practice is negative, Google will raise the profile of all websites with negative information about you. If the consensus is that your practice provides good service and effective treatment, Google will raise those sites.

Aside from providing good service, you also tip the odds in your favor through consistent link building. Crowdsourcing articles related to your practice or putting up a few video marketing examples is a great way to advertise your practice directly and build links for the search engines.

We Can Help with Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists

[info_box]Please feel free to contact us with any question about your presence on the Internet. We pride ourselves in offering a wide variety of services that encompass the entire spectrum of what you need to succeed online. We guide your company in search engine marketing, email newsletters, websites and responsive websites, video marketing, social media marketing and reputation marketing.[/info_box]

Reputation Management for Physical Therapy: Important Tips to Implement Today

reputation management for physical therapy

Maintaining a good reputation is important for any business, but it’s particularly important for anyone in the healthcare industry. To keep your private practice at the top, it’s critical to focus on reputation management for physical therapy right now.

Don’t Wait for a Problem before Taking Action

Physical therapists often focus on the importance of prevention, and this very same concept should apply to your reputation. This is why you shouldn’t wait until your physical therapy practice has a bad reputation before you do something about it. By being proactive now, you can help ensure that people find good things about your practice when they search your name.

Hiring a good reputation management firm, such as E-Rehab, can be a great approach to tackling this issue. However, there are also some steps that you can take on your own to help boost and maintain your practice’s reputation. Below are some useful tips that will help your practice earn a reputation that reflects its high quality.

Post Your Own Positive Content

To improve your online reputation, it’s helpful to first think about how your practice will appear to a prospective patient. With this in mind, try to address the following:

First of all, if you want people to find positive things when they enter your practice’s name into their favorite search engine, then you have to ensure that these positive things exist. This means that you should be creating online content that relates to your practice.
For example, if you haven’t already started a blog, you should definitely consider doing so. A blog can help with your search engine optimization, show the world your expertise, and it can be the first thing people find when searching for content related to your practice.
You should also build social media profiles on all of the big social media sites, including some that you might not have thought about using in your industry, such as Pinterest.
Lastly, it’s helpful to build profiles of yourself and your practice on physical therapy-related websites, upload informative videos to YouTube and build a profile on all of the local review sites.

Don’t Ignore Negative Content

It’s easy to ignore negative reviews and posts from others, but doing so can actually be quite harmful for your practice. [pullquote4 bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#46c0e9″]Regardless of whether someone’s post is true or not, those who see may often change their opinion regarding your practice. This can obviously pose a problem and cause potential patients to go to your competitors for treatment instead of you.[/pullquote4]Regardless of whether someone’s post is true or not, those who see may often change their opinion regarding your practice. This can obviously pose a problem and cause potential patients to go to your competitors for treatment instead of you.

If you make an effort to communicate with the person who has complained, however, in most cases you can improve the situation. If you address the negative comment, the person who posted the negative review might be willing to delete it or amend it. Even if they don’t take either of these actions, those who see this communication will at least know that you and your practice made an effort to respond to a problem or concern that a patient had.

Gather Testimonials and Reviews

Over time, have probably had quite a high number of patients that were satisfied with the treatment they received at your practice. So, why not use their satisfaction to your advantage?

The best way to do this is to gather testimonials from satisfied patients and post them on your website
You should also encourage your patients to post their feedback on the major local review sites and directly on your website
If people who are seeking physical therapy see that your previous patients are happy with the care that you have provided, then they might be more likely to give you a call for their physical therapy needs

Don’t Overlook Your Reputation Management for Physical Therapy

As you can probably see, reputation management for physical therapy isn’t necessarily easy, and it may require a lot of work. But if you look at the big picture, you’ll see that building and maintaining a strong online reputation is critical if you want your physical therapy practice to be successful.

[info_box]Along with tackling some of these steps yourself, it’s a good idea to work with a reputation management firm that understands your practice and wants to make it a success. To find out more about reputation management for physical therapy, as well as search engine optimization and marketing, contact us at E-Rehab today.[/info_box]

Physical Therapy Reputation Management Made Simple

physical therapy reputation management

For many private practices, physical therapy reputation management may seem like a vague process. Physical therapists specialize in knowing their patients, dealing with injuries and building back strength, but when it comes to creating a proactive plan for a healthy reputation, you may not know where to start. If this sounds familiar to you, the following short primer will show you how a reputation management firm like E-Rehab can help your physical therapy practice establish authority in a digital age.

Physical Therapy Reputation Management: What it is and is not

In the most basic sense, [highlight3 textColor=”#000000″]physical therapy reputation management is creating content that matches your goals and standards so that patients know what they are getting from you.[/highlight3] If your practice specializes in spinal rehab, but your marketing information makes it sound like you’re the best place to go for arm injuries, this can create a disconnect with visitors. In this case, patients expect one thing and get another. This can lead to your patients writing negative reviews about your practice on various review sites (Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.), which will in turn hurt your reputation, even though you’re an expert at spinal care.

Reputation management seeks to establish in people’s minds what you do and don’t do well, so they know what to expect. It does not seek to create false reviews, attempt to get poor reviews taken down (this doesn’t include patently false, libelous reviews), or otherwise take pushy actions to establish your reputation.

Walk the Talk

[highlight3 textColor=”#000000″]The most important part of physical therapy reputation management is that you have information out for people to access: newsletters to subscribers, blogs to the public, and targeted marketing to the right patients and referring physicians. [/highlight3] This information must match what people actually experience from your practice.

With proper information designed and marketed to the right audience, your business reputation will increase consistent with your desired goals and specialties. Walking the talk is the foundation for all other aspects of reputation management. With it, patients will give you great reviews and build your reputation with minimal effort on your part. Without it, your patients will feel confused and let down because they did not receive the service they expected.

Marketing Materials

In physical therapy reputation management, the next essential step after establishing a clear connection between your actions and your message is creating the right marketing materials. [highlight3]From your brand to your planned content, your marketing material needs to reflect your business in both quality and content.[/highlight3]

Much of physical therapy happens at a level people cannot see, so at first they will judge you less by the results of your actions and more by the materials they see. Your marketing material therefore needs to be designed in such a way that it catches the eye of potential patients and referring physicians and displays that you do what you advertise.

Promotional Design

Much of the marketing in physical therapy is specialized and therefore needs to be done by specialists. For example, if you offer therapy that helps address the symptoms of insomnia and narcolepsy, you do not want your advertising materials for it to be bright yellow, orange or green. When marketers want to communicate sleep-oriented products, they create a dark blue color scheme to communicate peaceful sleep. This is one of the many tricks-of-the trade which marketers use to communicate to the public beyond just word. Style matters, and it pays to have experts in style design your marketing materials.

[highlight2 textColor=”#000000″]Simply put, reputation management is producing the right materials to let patients know what your practice offers and the core values you hold as a physical therapist. This is accomplished by using modern marketing and networking materials and techniques with a goal to educate your audience and establish your authority in the physical therapy field.[/highlight2] [squeeze_box4]If this all sounds overwhelming and you feel that you need some extra assistance with your physical therapy reputation management, have no fear: we can help. At E-Rehab, we specialize in all aspects of online marketing strategies that can help your reputation improve and your practice prosper. Contact us today to find out how we can help you develop an online reputation that reflects the quality of your business.[/squeeze_box4]

Why You Need a Blog to Improve Your Physical Therapy Reputation Marketing

Are you struggling to create a successful physical therapy reputation marketing approach? If so, you should strongly consider writing blogs if you’re not already doing so. Although blogs are often treated like an afterthought by many businesses, they can be a powerful tool for boosting the reputation of your physical therapy practice.

Why You Should Blog to Improve Your Physical Therapy Reputation Marketing

Business owners often neglect the importance of a blog when it comes to reputation marketing, but that is a huge mistake: [highlight4]blogs are actually one of the most effective ways to spread your brand and reach a potential audience.[/highlight4]

This is even true of a physical therapist like you: a well-written, fun, and informative blog can provide your patients with information about common physical problems, easy self-fixes, unique personal stories, and treatment angles they would have never considered otherwise.

Build Your Authority

By way of illustration, marketing expert Steve Olenski of Forbes magazine delved deeply into the world of blog-based marketing and found that it offered a unique approach to the following: content strategy; demographic marketing, and authority building.

The latter point is especially important: if you come across like a true expert on physical therapy (by offering well-researched and engaging blog content), your reputation will grow by leaps and bounds.[blockquote align=”center”]Blogging also offers a unique way for your patients to interact with you via the comment section found in most high-quality blogs. Here, they can praise your blog content and your services, which will create a positive feedback loop that will continually enhance your reputation for years to come.[/blockquote]

Even if they come to your blog to complain, you can still turn that into an advantage by directly addressing their concerns and soothe their fears by offering a free examination. You will come away looking humble and willing to fix your mistakes: a major reputation boost.

Researching Blog Topics

Consistently updating a worthwhile blog requires finding topics you want to write about. That’s actually much trickier than it seems, especially as a physical therapy expert, since you already have an extremely extensive understanding of the subject matter. On the other hand, the audience of your website doesn’t have this same understanding, and figuring out what they’d like to learn about can be a struggle.

In this circumstance, it’s best to step back and think about an industry or service which you know little about, such as auto repair, and consider what confuses you about it. Then, you should brainstorm similar topics for your blog, such as:

Common injuries or painful conditions
Relevant treatments used to address these issues
Other techniques and services you may use during treatment
How long each treatment session takes, and how many sessions may be needed for certain injuries

Next, try to center each of your blogs around these ideas, such as ACL tear rehabilitation, to create a plethora of possible blog topics. If you get stuck trying to find a good topic, use a tool like Google AdWords to pinpoint commonly searched keywords that are relevant to physical therapy.

For example, keywords and phrases like “torn ACL” and “did I break my ankle?” commonly show up in Google searches. Pitch your blog around these keywords, adding a unique twist, such as “home remedies for a broken toe,” and you have a potential blog topic.

Always Utilize a Reputable “Author” for All Content

Creating a blog without a reputable author is one of the biggest ways you can destroy the effectiveness of your physical therapy reputation marketing. Don’t farm it out to just anyone: either write the blog yourself, find a skilled intern willing to do it for some extra cash, or find reputable physical therapists willing to occasionally guest blog for you.

Focusing your blog on truly informative and knowledgeable writers creates a sense of “author authority” that will make your blog stand out in an over-saturated market. People will immediately trust what you have to say and, as a result, your blog—and your reputation—will grow exponentially.

[squeeze_box5]By now, it should be apparent that you simply can’t avoid setting up a blog for your physical therapy practice. The boost to your reputation will be too immense for you to ignore. However, if you’re still struggling to set up a good blog or come up with a great reputation marketing strategy, please don’t hesitate to contact us at E-Rehab right away. Our physical therapy reputation marketing experts will help fine-tune your marketing approach, help you design an eye-catching and memorable blog, and get you on the road to success. After that, the hard work of keeping up with your blog should be a heck of a lot easier.[/squeeze_box5]