Part 1: What is your reputation online and what can you do that will burn it to the ground?

As a physician or clinic, managing your reputation online can be a tricky task. Online review sites like Rate MD, blogs and social sites like Twitter and Facebook give patients a much louder voice and longer reach than they used to have. Worse, a couple of individuals who really don't like you can have a disproportionately large voice since - unlike your generally happy patients - they're the ones who are really motivated to talk about you. 

There are ways that you can manage and control your reputation successfully, and then there are the most common responses that do much more harm than good. By way of example, here's is an example of exactly what you don't want to do and why people do it anyway.

Case study: IMD Lasers In Toronto

A few months ago, IMD Lasers in Toronto was named in an online discussion thread on Medical Spa MD with patients calling it a "horror" and saying it should be shut down... Not what you want people to be saying but, as those who are literate in the ways of the internet know, to be expected at some point if you're treating hundreds or thousands of patients a year. The problem wasn't really that IMD had some harsh comments posted about them, it was that they were unprepared, unrealistic, and unprofessional in their response to...