Blogging for Doctors (healthcare and medical practices and offices of all sizes)
Posted by Aryeh.Landowne on Jul 21, 2009
When I was thinking about what to write for this post, I was thinking that I should title it “Doctor’s Blog,” which made me laugh because my staff and I were joking around about the rivalry between Star Trek and Star Wars and William Shatner and well… He used to end each show with “Captain’s Log.” And really - so should you. (But as you can see I went with the blogging for doctors which also makes me laugh because it sounds like “bowling for doctors.”)
As a doctor you are either seeing patients or treating patients. You are consulting with them. You are meeting with them, evaluating their aches and pains and hopefully just seeing them for “well” visits. I know from my own experience with doctors over the past years when I have been relatively “well,” that I get asked the usual questions regarding breathing, exercise, activity, stress etc. etc. Then they look in the ear, nose and throat, take my blood pressure and I am on my way.
What I described above is NOT what you should be writing about. I guarantee you the worst and most boring blog if you stick to the above formula. What you need to do is talk about the special cases. Describe the person - obviously with professional courtesy and confidentiality in mind. Tell your audience whether they are male or female, age and issue. Obviously, whatever your specialty - orthodontist, dentist, plastic surgeon, podiatrist, dermatologist, eye doctor, lasik etc… you will want to customize your blog to whatever is the ailment or situation of the day. How crooked this guys teeth are or how bad this woman’s eyesight is. Then you should share with the audience what evaluation you are giving, solution and procedure. Blog about preparation (Lasik candidates have to put eye drops in their eyes and drinks lots of fluids). And then what recovery will be like and what to expect.
I will never forget when my brother in law (who is a dentist in Larchmont, NY -www.21stCenturyDentist.com Dr. Joel Levy) told me about a patient who is a good guy, came in after eating a burger with EXTRA ONIONS! He laughed about it, I remembered and that could’ve been a great blog piece.
So if you are a doctor or know someone that is, and you or they would like a free consultation or some advice on how to blog. Just let me know. Email me, call me at 212-993-5828 or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. Next week we will get into a new topic and series regarding Vlogging or video logs - creating videos for your practice or business.
Getting Down to Business at Breakfast Time - SG’s Next Networking Event Coming up on July 23rd
Posted by Lila Corby on Jul 6, 2009
The Business Networking Breakfast held by SalemGlobal is an increasingly popular event where business professionals throughout the tri-state area are provided with the opportunity to connect with each other in a way that will allow their businesses to expand and achieve economic growth. These breakfasts occur twice each month, and they continue on due to the events popularity and success. Check out what these breakfasts are all about by viewing the video below, which was filmed at our most recent business networking breakfast.
SalemGlobal’s next Business Networking Event is coming up in just a little over two weeks, on Thursday, July 23rd. Do something productive this summer by attending this event and meeting people that will help your business to reach new heights. Due to the popularity of this event, you must RSVP no later than 3:00 pm on July 22nd at www.BreakfastNetworking.com in order to guarantee yourself a seat (and a bagel).
Mixing Business with Breakfast - SG’s Next Networking Event Approaching on July 2nd
Posted by Lila Corby on Jun 22, 2009
SalemGlobal’s Business Networking Breakfasts’ are a bimonthly event that allows business professionals in the new york metropolitan area to meet people that will allow them to accelerate as well as expand their businesses. Numerous people have attended this event in the past, and more and more people seem to keep coming due to the events success. Check out what this breakfast is all about in the video below.
SalemGlobal’s next breakfast is quickly approaching, in a little over a week from now, on July 2nd. Start your summer off right by meeting people that allow you to get ahead and gain success for your business. Due to the popularity of this event, you must RSVP at www.BreakfastNetworking.com no later than 3:00 pm on July 1st in order to guarantee yourself a seat.
The PPC Bottom Line
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Mar 24, 2009
Nowadays, the temptation for any business to undertake a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, however expensive, is very, very strong. And why not? Google and a handful of other powerful search engines have gradually risen to near omnipresence in the online world. It seems like every day more and more people are throwing hundreds, sometimes thousands of their hard-earned dollars into the search engine fire pit, stoking the flame. If everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t you?
The problem here, of course, is that the logic of the crowd is often just as fallible as the logic of the individual. Make no mistake, our purpose here is not to discourage pay-per-click campaigns. Au contraire, we’re all for it. What we want to warn you against is, with no foundation in search engine marketing (SEM), simply throwing your money away as kindling to the great PPC blaze. The truth is that, for many people, this fire gives out light, but no heat.
The number PPC campaigners should be most concerned with is their ROI, i.e. their return on investment. This seems to make sense intuitively, but you’d be surprised to discover how many people give precedence to such factors as unique clicks and page impressions. These factors are indeed important, but they don’t make you money. The ROI, in turn, is dependent on translating your PPC ads into conversions — into new leads and new sales. Roughly defined, a “conversion” is any action that results in a successful sale or in the generation of a new lead. Thus, PPC campaigns are not run for the sake of advertising, they’re run for the sake of increasing your conversions. This is business 101: if you’re spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a PPC campaign, but that campaign is barely returning enough money to cover its own cost, let alone to show a profit, then that campaign is not right for you. Don’t succumb to the PPC hype or to the peer-pressure; look at your conversions, and make your decisions accordingly.
SalemGlobal Becomes ConstantContact Business Partner
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Jan 13, 2009
SalemGlobal recently became a ConstantContact Business Partner, which makes it that much easier for us to run all kinds of e-mail and survey campaigns, from large corporate newsletters that reach thousands of contacts to targeted e-mail messages intended for a smaller, local audience. As a ConstantContact Business Partner, we can take care of almost any facet of the e-mail campaign — we can write content, design your newsletter, and send it off to the right people. All you have to do, really, is give us the final thumbs up! If you’d like to contact us about managing an e-mail campaign, please visit our ConstantContact Partner page:
http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=salemglobal
Let us help you spread the word about your business in all the right channels.
New Year, Old, Reliable Resolution
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Jan 6, 2009
Now that it’s 2009, a lot of people are feeling motivated to follow through on certain resolutions that seemed to slip through the crack during the past year — this is the time to shed those few pounds, lose a bad habit or two, pick up a hobby that just a few days ago seemed too complicated and time consuming. It’s 2009, it’s a fresh start, and SalemGlobal is all for it.
Our goal and resolution is to optimize your 2009. Contact us to request a detailed media kit, which will explain in more depth our abilities to generate online leads, utilize interactive PR tools, produce and distribute videos, and manage PPC campaigns. Our first Breakfast Networking event of the new year is also just a few weeks away, on January 22nd. This is a great opportunity to make professional contacts in the New York area. (The food’s pretty good, too!) Visit www.breakfastnetworking.com to learn more about the event and to register.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Lessons from the Radio
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Dec 16, 2008
It’s no secret that terrestrial radio has been watching its numbers decline for quite a while. The iPod, satellite radio, and a growing array of alternative entertainment consoles have been jamming the radio waves, drawing current and potential fans away from an already depleted pool of users. But as Valerie Block’s recent article in Crain’s New York Business demonstrates, radio stations need not fear an impending crash; on the contrary, perched atop the globe-spanning wings of the Internet, well-managed radio stations can expect to reach more ears than they’ve ever reached before. CBS Radio is a good case in point: while its terrestrial branch continues to wallow, CBS Radio on the Internet reached 2.2 million people in September, and it expects to add an additional 1 million listeners in February when its Internet player is embedded in some of Yahoo’s high-traffic channels.
Strong programming still counts toward success, online or off, as does revenue from radio ads, which at this point does not stack up in Internet radio’s favor — in the first nine months of the year, Internet radio brought in only a fraction of terrestrial’s $12.6 billion. But the world’s changing, and Ms. Block rightly points out that by the time Internet players are inserted into cars, terrestrial radio might not even be around to sulk about it.
Businesses both small and large can learn from the example of radio stations that are gradually moving their operations online. The Internet can offer almost limitless space to grow. Optimizing a personal or business website is an important first step toward harvesting the potential of the web, though how you do your optimizing counts, too.
Don’t Forget the Third Leg of SEO — User Behavior
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Dec 3, 2008
Speak to a typical SEO specialist, one who spends a good portion of his or her day trying to make sense of the topsy-turvy world of search engine ranking algorithms, and you’re bound at one point or another to hear him or her sermonize at great length about two things: the enormous and undeniable importance of links and the enormous and undeniable importance of content. Understanding these two elements is crucial to moving up the search engine rankings; think of them as, if you will, the Fantastic Duo of SEO.
Now, the specialist would be 100% right in emphasizing these two elements. Search engines do consider the number and importance of links between pages, the age of those links, how frequently those links are gained or lost, how many of those links are broken, and where those links are originally found. It’s also true that search engines examine the content that appears on web pages, how a website’s words are formatted through HTML, whether these words are spelled correctly and placed into grammatically correct sentences, and whether these words and the sentences they form are ever changed and updated. No argument there.
But as you can expect, content and links are only part of a much bigger and more complicated picture. In a recent interview with Search Marketing Standard Magazine, Bill Slawski, Director of Internet Marketing for Key Relevance, Inc., and author of the search-related patent blog, seobythesea.com, points out that there’s a third aspect SEO enthusiasts must pay close attention to — user-behavior-based signals. Really, “USB signals” (our own affectionate acronym) is just a slick way of saying user-website interaction, or even less fancily, user experience and use of a website. This covers the bookmarking and tagging of pages, the amount of time users spend on respective pages, how far down they scroll, user rate of subscription to RSS feeds, and of course, assigned rankings and ratings of pages that offer goods and services.
The point here is that SEO goes beyond careful selection of keywords and endless purchasing of links. A truly optimized site does indeed have substantial content and links, but it is also presentable and user-friendly, encouraging repeated and extended use. So when the SEO specialist finally wraps up his or her spiel and urges you to spend all your time and money maximizing content and links, remember that you’ve been told only about 2/3 of the story.
Experiences from the NY Xpo for Business 2008
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Nov 21, 2008
We had a blast at last Wednesday’s New York Xpo for Business. The people! The energy! The free swag! SalemGlobal’s booth kept busy from morning to the late afternoon with people who were eager to learn more about marketing and optimizing their websites. So many business cards, so little time….
Raphi’s seminar was a terrific success. A full house turned out to listen to him speak about how to “Make More Money this Year with Online Marketing.” His seminar was so successful, in fact, that he was bombarded with requests to make his PowerPoint slideshow available online, which he is, of course, happy to do. Just click here to redirect to the SalemGlobal homepage, where you can download the presentation as a pdf. You can also watch the video below and listen to Raphi dish some wisdom on SEO and optimizing your website.
Finally, congratulations are in order as well: they go out to Frank Manus of www.naa.cc; Valerie Mahoney of Live Your Life Travel; Gavin Sloane of Geneva Worldwide; Matthew Kiger of WCBS Radio; Ashraf Ezzeldin of the Egyptian General Consulate; and Valerie Delaportas of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. These are the lucky winners of the numerous raffles SalemGlobal held throughout the day. Enjoy your brand new 512 mb memory sticks — you earned it!
Reshaping Manhattan Retail
Posted by Edan Shertzer on Nov 17, 2008
An interesting account minted from Catherine Isobe at Jonathan Bernstein Associates:
“As the financial services sector implodes, Manhattan retail may soon be facing Bank Branch Blight, according to Jeff Bernstein over at Urban Digs.
“The Chase/WaMu deal and Citigroup’s purchase of Wachovia could lead to 40-60 branch closings in NYC, and will press retail rents downward, unfortunately for landlords. Commercial real estate brokers will do more deals on these newly available storefronts, but how will this shift affect commercial landlords and tenants?
“A resurgence in retail (I mean stores with pedestrian appeal, not mega-chains like CVS), albeit at lower rents per square foot, could drive a recovery in the Manhattan economy, especially as we draw increasing tourist dollars from overseas shoppers. More and varied retail will also help keep New York City office space more desirable than space in the over-homogenized suburbs.
“Did we really need ATMs on every corner of Midtown in the first place?”