By Aaron West

By now you should be familiar with why blogging for business is important.  As mentioned in previous posts, it helps drive traffic to your website, keeps the Google Spiders crawling, helps you to listen and interact with your community and more.  Hand in hand with blogging for business is the understanding of why internal linking is important.

To briefly summarize Hubspot’s Brian Whalley’s excellent article, internal links are vitally important for SEO because they are like “voting” for your site and letting the search engines know about your vote.  Not only does internal linking help site rank, it also helps site visitors navigate your website better, helps keep visitors on the site once they arrive, and further reinforces your expertise on various topics.

For more information on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), feel free to contact me at awest@pointsgroupllc.com

By Jenna Rocca

So, you started your company’s initial social media efforts, created your Facebook fan page, and started working on maximizing your fan page, but you noticed—you aren’t getting a lot of “likes”.  Unfortunately for majority of companies, you will not see results overnight.  This process happens gradually through various marketing efforts.

You may have seen marketing agencies and other companies advertise they can help you gain hundreds or even thousands of fans in just days.  Beware! The majority of these “fans” provide little to no interaction on your fan page and can drive away your current fanbase.  I do not advocate buying fans (especially for smaller companies) for the following reasons:

Quantity Vs. Quality:

As mentioned in past posts, the main purpose of Facebook and social media is to engage, communicate and listen to what your consumers have to say.  That being said, why would you want a ton of fans that don’t do any of these? Initially visiting a page with a ton of “likes” may make your company seem credible, but if there is no wall activity, it may seem odd.  So, I recommend to put your marketing efforts towards growing a fan base of quality fans who enjoy your product or service and will give you genuine feedback and interaction—even if it longer, it is more beneficial in the end.

Loyal Fans:

Your existing fans may be turned off when they notice a sudden increase in fans on your site or may be suspicious if they see 498 fans with little to no posts and/or comments on your page. This many lead them to second-guess their fan-ship to your page and their interaction.  It may also make your company appear desperate.

“Real” Fans

Most Facebook fan selling websites are middlemen companies that send your fan orders to companies outside of the U.S who use hacker/spam techniques to produce your fans.  Even though these Facebook profiles are “real”, majority of these profile names are constructed oddly with stock profile images.  Also, none of these fan-selling sites ever guarantee 100% real and/or targeted fans. Many of these sites also will “de-fan” or “un-like” your page after a certain time period.

Grow An Organic Fan-dom

All in all, as stated in the “quantity vs. quality” section, I find the organic fans are the most valuable to your Facebook fan page and company.  Before you consider buying fans, think twice about your company’s reputation and/or social media presence that you have worked hard to develop positively thus far.

If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts on this, please send me an E-mail: jrocca@pointsgroupllc.com.

By Thomas Hofstetter

You simply cannot market your healthcare practice/business if you do not know to whom you are marketing it. Your practice has a catch basin (geographic location where your patients live and work) and target groups that you must define in order to get the most out of the money you spend on marketing and growth initiatives. I’ve divided this topic into two parts, since there are various aspects that you should know.

The catch basin:

Often physicians struggle to define the area where their patients live and work due to outliers; patients who come from afar but do not often visit your practice. When I ask a new client how big their catch basin is, I am often told that it is quite large. I usually hear answers like: “We have patients coming all the way from xyz, which is 50 miles away.” or “Last month, I had a patient that flew in from California.” This may be true, but what is the percentage of patients that come from so far?  5%? 2%? 1%? Less than 1%?

These outlier patients do not constitute the majority of your patient base. Yes, you may have patients that come from afar, but that doesn’t mean that they should be a measure for how big your true catch basin is.

If you want to have a truly effective marketing and growth strategy, you need to understand your catch basin. Over the years, we at Points Group developed a methodology to divide a catch basin into areas that are most meaningful for the development of your marketing strategies. It is best to look at the catch basin in concentric circles around a practice/hospital location and divide it in four areas.

1. Core: The core area of your catch basin should constitute approximately 50%+ of your patient base. This area is the immediate community that you are part of, where you have a number of deeply rooted relationships.

2. Opportunity: The opportunity area should constitute maybe 20%-30% of your catch basin. This is where you have the opportunity for true expansion and growth. In this area you have to compete in the core catch basin of your competition, which means it is more difficult for you to draw in new patients and it becomes more expensive to convert patients.

3. Extended: The extended catch basin might constitute 10%-15% of your patient base. This is still a significant enough portion of your patient base to deserve your attention. However, it is more difficult for you to compete in the extended area because other practices are more entrenched in these communities and you have to create effective marketing strategies that produce a ROI.

4. Fringe: The fringe area includes the patients in all other areas and shouldn’t really be a major part of your marketing activities.

So what marketing strategies should you develop for the different areas of your catch basin? Simply put, it depends on many factors. Your practice is influenced by: community, your specialty, the demographics of your area, and proximity to your competition. However, there are a few best practices and strategic objectives that you should always implement for each area in your catch basin.

Core

• Focus 30-50% of your marketing dollars in this area
• Have an intimate relationship with your community
• Be a “must know” practice/healthcare provider – you should be a household name
• Align yourself with your referral base and build strong referral patterns
• Identify businesses in your core and establish a relationship

Opportunity

• Focus 30-40% of your marketing dollars in this area
• Define long-term goals to establish relationships with other organizations
• Create a plan to increase your referral base
• Focus more on general marketing campaigns to reach a wide audience

Extended

• Spend only 5-10% of your marketing dollars in this area
• Be focused on marketing on high-value and differentiating services
• Try to find opportunities that don’t cost a lot but will increase your visibility
• Look for opportunities to establish another location in this area

Fringe

• Don’t spend any significant money for marketing and growth related initiatives

In summary, it is important to understand your catch basin. A short cut to this ultimately results in wasteful spending of marketing dollars. This is a basic and fundamental building block of a rock-solid growth strategy and marketing plans.

If you have questions regarding catch basin analysis or are interested in doing one for your business, feel free to reach out to me at thofstetter@pointsgroupllc.com.

By Thomas Hofstetter

According to a Gardner Research report from June 2011, “by 2015, over 50% of the apps sold and/or pointed to will be web apps, not platform specific native apps”.  That is a trend that will also have its effect on mobile apps and mobile websites.

Before I get into the details, let me first explain the difference between mobile apps and mobile websites. Both are accessed via mobile devices (e.g. Smartphones, iPads, tablets). A mobile website is similar to a regular website with the difference that it is optimized to be viewed on mobile devices. Examples for well known mobile websites are: read.amazon.com, mobile.Twitter.com, m.google.com or m.facebook.com.

On the other side, mobile apps are applications downloaded and installed on the mobile device and were specifically developed for that type of mobile device.

As you may well know, the app market exploded over the past few years, which was a natural consequence of the increased sales of mobile devices. This was also fueled by the fact that a lot of the mobile devices needed WiFi for an internet connection.  If you wanted to get a feature regardless of an internet connection your only choice was a mobile app.  Does that mean apps all the way? Not really.

What are the pros of a mobile website vs. a mobile app?

• Platform and device independence: The mobile site is immediately available and accessible for all mobile devices, regardless of the operating system, hardware or phone manufacturer.
• Cost of development: Due to the usability across platforms and systems, the development cost is usually much lower.
• Real-time: Since the user is always connected to the system, updates and access to data and software updates are always happening in real-time without the need to download the app or again or manually update.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): mobile websites can be optimized for Search Engines and increase the ability to be found via user searches.
• Sharing: Since mobile websites are in the public domain, they can be shared with anybody easily.
• Mobile App look & feel: Increasingly you can find mobile websites that have the look and feel of a native app (e.g. m.google.com), but are in reality a mobile website.  So if you desire the “app look and feel”, you don’t have to miss out.

Despite all these benefits, there are still reasons why it might make sense to develop an app for mobile devices:

• Games: This app category is the most obvious and is usually less dependent on a real-time connection to the internet.
• No connection required: If you require functionality 100% of time, regardless of a internet connection (e.g. on planes etc.) an app is the better way to go.
• Data Storage: If you need to store data locally on your device for processing purposes.
• Device specific features: If you need to maximize the utilization of device specific features (e.g. camera or processing power).

Conclusion

Mobile apps and mobile websites both have their advantages and they will both continue to grow in usage. However, the percentage of mobile websites vs. mobile apps will grow over the next few years drastically. If you have only a limited amount of dollars to invest and are not certain which way to go, I would advise you to invest in mobile websites, since you are more flexible and your reach is bigger.

If you want to get an idea what it would take to create a mobile website for your current company website or need advice on which way to go, feel free to send me an email at thofstetter@pointsgroupllc.com

By Aaron West

Google doesn’t understand you

In an article from Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff, Google Fellow and SVP Amit Singhal admitted that with regards to questions such as “the 10 deepest lakes in the U.S,” Google’s search algorithm means that “We cross our fingers and hope someone on the web has written about these things or topics.”  The results that appear are based on the keywords in the phrase and sites with significant authority on those words.

Google wants to transform words into entities

Instead of simply relying on keywords and phrases, Google wants to use artificial intelligence to  transform words into meaningful entities with related attributes.  Google hopes to one day be able to not only understand the lake question but to know a lake is a body of water and tell you the depth, surface areas, temperatures and even salinities for each lake.  According to Singhal, Google is “building a huge, in-house understanding of what an entity is and a repository of what entities are in the world and what should you know about those entities.”

What does this mean for the future of search?

We’re already beginning to see glimpses of the future of search in Apple’s Siri software, through which users can ask a direct, natural language question and be provided directly with an answer through the information accessible via phone.  Google is also starting to shift, with a search for “Monet” now yielding “Artwork Searches for Claude Monet” along with the standard results.  Put simply, Google’s algorithm is beginning to understand that Monet is a painter, and in turn yield results surrounding his works as an artist.  However, Singhal was quick to state that “judging the knowledge graph’s power on this would be like judging an artist on work he did as a 12- or 24-month-old… We’re building the ‘hadron collider.’ What particles will come out of it, I can’t predict right now.”

Whatever the result, Google’s ever-changing search algorithm is always a incredibly fascinating subject, especially with the effects on Search Engine Optimization and marketing as a whole.  Whether it be Siri or the hadron collider of search, the future is now!

For further help or insight on SEO and online marketing, feel free to contact me at awest@pointsgroupllc.com

By Jenna Rocca

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a virtual bulletin/pin board that enables you to share and organize images/links found on the web. Once shared, these links become “pins” that you can post on your personalized “boards”. You can explore different categories such as home décor, Do-it-Yourself (DIY), food, wedding, etc. You can browse other user’s boards and follow specific people’s pins to then be “repinned” or “liked”.

Pinterest’s popularity has grown rapidly, especially within the past few months, reaching 7.51 million unique visitors in December 2011 alone. With this growth, it is impossible to ignore. So how can you use this social site to benefit your business?

Like many other social sites in their infancy, Pinterest has yet to have branded pins or branded pages for businesses. So until this function is enabled, here are some tips on using Pinterest for your initial marketing efforts.

Make Sure Pinterest is Relevant for Your Business

First things first is to making sure Pinterest is a relevant social outlet for your business. Because it is bookmarked through images, if your company’s product or service isn’t very visual it may be difficult to tie or link directly back to your brand. In my opinion, for the time being, Pinterest is ideal for retail companies. However, I highly encourage trial and error and creative ways of “pinning” for “less visual” companies.

Interaction is Huge

One of the most powerful aspects of Pinterest is its ability to link your product image directly back to your website. So, definitely post and link your product(s) to share, but remember to “re-pin”, “like” and comment on other users as well. Interaction is a huge aspect to social media and want to be sure to use Pinterest correctly to gain loyal followers and credibility. This will result in more re-pins, likes, visits to your site, and if managed wisely, profit.

“Listen” For a Pin Drop

A great social media feature is the ability to “listen” to your consumers. When you post a product, along with re-pins and likes, the comment ability can enable you to truly listen to your consumers on your specific products.

By Aaron West

In past posts, we’ve been over the “listening” aspect of blogging and blogging for SEO.  This week we’ll be going over seven common mistakes made when blogging for business.

1.  Overly Lengthy Posts

Oftentimes bloggers fall into the simple trap of putting too much content in one post.  The simple fact is, in general people do not want to read.  If you can convey your point without being too wordy, the more likely it is that people will actually read what you’ve written.  This goes hand in hand with the next common mistake:

2.  Assuming People Will Read Your Post

Despite what our egos may tell us, not everyone that opens a blog post will read it in it’s entirety.  More likely than not, readers will simply skim through posts for applicable content.  If they can’t find what they’re looking for with a quick scan, many will not take the time to continue.  For that reason, it’s important to bullet your content, keep it succinct, and get to the point.  Which brings us to our next miscue:

3.  Using Long Paragraphs

Opening a blog and seeing paragraphs that take up nearly half a page is discouraging to a reader.  Break up your paragraphs and use headers to help your audience navigate to the content they care about most.  Posts should be easily scannable, allowing readers to quickly find what they’re looking for.

4.  Trying to Sell

One of the biggest turnoffs for a reader is to have a product stuffed down their throat, especially in a blog.  Fight the urge to push your goods and services, and instead provide useful information that encourages your audience to keep checking for new content.  People tend to ignore sellers until they’ve built credibility and gained trust.  Do this by providing information service and referencing other, trusted sources.

5.  Writing for Rocket Scientists

Yes, you have an expansive vocabulary.  No, it’s not necessary to show it off at every opportunity.  Using too much “Ph.D” language is a surefire way to lose your readers.  In addition, using too much “industry language” or acronyms without properly explaining them is a trap to always avoid.

6.  Repackaging Information

“There is nothing new under the sun.”  We all recycle information we’ve taken from other sources.  It’s OK to take inspiration from elsewhere, but people come to your blog for unique insight.  You must make the topic your own in some way. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, but adding your own unique touch to a subject is what will make a reader choose your blog over the next.

7.  No Pretty Pictures

Not every blog post needs a picture.  However, a strong supporting picture can help a reader extract key messages at a glance, and further reinforce the point you’re attempting to convey.  Pictures really do often carry more weight than words, so make sure to use that to your benefit!

Keep in mind, that these are not the end-all be-all for blogging greatness.  However, If you can eliminate these mistakes, and incorporate the elements discussed in previous iterations of “Blogging About Blogging” you’re well on your way to a successful business blog!

Stay tuned to the Points Group Blog for further additions to Blogging About Blogging and more.  For further help or insight on blogging for business, feel free to contact me at awest@pointsgroupllc.com

By Gloria Averbuch

There’s ingredients for a lively discussion on http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/ on a topic that’s relevant to all of us—both those in the medical community and the public they serve. That is the pros and cons of email correspondence between doctor and patient. I’ve included an excerpt of the pros and cons below from the blog, and now I’ll add another “wrinkle”to the discussion—one any marketer (or anyone for that matter) should consider: the quality of email writing.

It is difficult enough for those of us who write for a living to be able to effectively communicate through email. For example, “nuance” is so crucial, yet often unconsidered. This is especially important when it comes to a physician/patient relationship. It is worrisome what can be misconstrued or cause concern through email, or what can be misunderstood in terms of simple directions.

YES: It builds trust, says Dr. Kvedar. Among the points to consider…

•  Healthcare professionals are behind the curve, perhaps the last to adopt email to communicate with the people they serve.
• Patients are disadvantaged because email could help improve the quality of care.
• Concerns about privacy are overblown and can easily be resolved.
• Robust, clear and frequent communications [between provider and patient] builds a trusting, caring relationship with prospectively better outcomes.
• It’s good for business via improved office efficiency and patient retention.

NO: You miss too much, says Dr. Bierstock.

• Online communications eliminate the ability to interpret [silent] signals and diminish quality of care. The risk of misunderstanding is real.
• Beyond basic [administrative] matters, such as appointment scheduling, it is no way to practice medicine.
• The concept of relationship building that results in better care is too much of a generalization.
• Liability is a real concern. There is no shortage of attorneys willing to take on a case no matter how ludicrous the claim.
• Privacy issues are not easily dismissed. There’s no guarantee that messages will remain private.

AND don’t miss the back and forth range of reader comments. Some examples…

“It is silly to think that less communication is better because some email communication might not be perfect. This assumes that face-to-face communication is all that accurate to begin with, and its not.”

“I have had an e-mail, phone and fax-based medical practice for about nine years. [It] is far more efficient… and I can accept more patients and lower their costs with these efficiencies.”

“We’ve all heard stories of the guy who went in with in ear ache and ended up with a vasectomy. So much for doctors reading patient reactions!”

While there may be no “right answer” to this inquiry, if email correspondence is to become a part of a medical practice, we seriously need to consider adding a communication and basic writing course to medical school studies.

By Gloria Averbuch

Anyone with any interest or dealings with Social Media has gotten swept up in the IPO efforts of Facebook. It’s expected these efforts will generate $5 to $10 billion, and that the company’s value will perhaps rise to as much as $100 billion. In fact, the IPO is expected to be one of the largest in U.S. history.

What does that mean for the rest of us? At the very least, it is a study in how we confront economic and business change, as well as what we can expect as both personal and business users of Social Media such as Facebook.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commandments for a Digital Age,” said the more money Facebook takes on, the more like money it will become. In other words, when a social media company is a social media upstart, it’s motives are vastly different  than when it’s responsible for acting in the best interest of its shareholder — a requirement for being a publicly traded company.

And, Rushkoff points out, that could mean some changes for Facebook users. Because profits for Facebook don’t directly come from users — but rather from advertisers and social marketing firms — to maximize profits, Facebook will have to look for ways to improve that are in the best interest of advertisers and marketers.

This is the power of the economy, plain and simple. And this despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s noble comments, expressed in his letter that accompanied the IPO:

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Yes, as Zuckerberg points out, Facebook boils down this: “Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small — with the relationship between two people.”  But it has become so much more enormous than this.

He and his company are now enmeshed and integrated into the world of economic reality. This is neither good nor bad; it is simply a function of the way the world works.

The best in business (and in life!) are governed by our “core values.” And in an ideal world, these core values do not change—despite what our business and the economy have in store for us.

Let’s hope that Mark Zuckerberg proves to be the same “master of the mainstream” as he has been a revolutionary in communications.