Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Best Apps in Healthcare

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In the fact pace of today’s world, it can be easy to get distracted and forget what your body needs to stay healthy. Thankfully, the same device that can act as big a source of our daily distraction can also be used to maintain our personal health. If you have a smartphone, there are many handy healthcare apps available for you to download. The following apps are some of the best out there that can help to promote a healthier lifestyle.

NEJM This Week is a free, regularly-updated app that features many prominent studies and articles from a trusted source – the New England Journal of Medicine. The app also includes weekly audio summaries and videos on some key medical procedures. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date in the healthcare field and to keep yourself educated on a wide variety of topics.
If you find yourself or a loved one in a state of medical emergency, you’ll be glad to have the Pocket First Aid & CPR app. This app can be a real lifesaver, with an easy-to-use emergency guide that has information on CPR, AED, First Aid basics and more. All of the content in the app comes from the American Heart Association, including many videos and high-resolution illustrations.

Another great app in the field of healthcare is called Symple. This app allows you to keep track of your medical symptoms, as well as keeping daily notes or photos. The information it captures can be very helpful in allowing you to better manage and report the symptoms of a disease or condition to your doctor.

If you ever find yourself in need of reliable information about certain medications, simply look to the Drugs.com app. With this app, you can track what medication you’re taking and receive important information about them. As the leading online drug resource, Drugs.com is there for all of your medication-based needs.

When it comes to exercises such as running or cycling, it can be hard to stay motivated. Thankfully, the Garmin Fit app is here to help. This handy app allows you to keep track of how far and how long you’ve been running. In addition, the app will tell you how many calories you’ve burned and will save a record of your running history. This feature allows you to look back at where and when you’ve run recently. Garmin Fit is a great way to stay motivated, so get out there and give it your all!

Friday, September 12, 2014

What you may not know about healthcare marketing and social media

Building reputation and good-standing of any brand can be a difficult challenge. When it comes to healthcare marketing and social media, professionals try their best to communicate with patients, listen to feedback, engage patients to stay involved and consider other incentives, while also creating a better reputation and trust of clients. It is all about building trust and creating meaningful relationships. Here are a few things you may not know about the marketing of healthcare.

According to a study from 2013, about 62% of emails were opened on mobile devices. In fact, checking emails on mobile devices is the top mobile activity among smartphone and tablet users. Advertising and promotion through email is always a proactive approach when reaching the largest audience.

Images and visual stimulation are processed in our brains 60,000 times faster than an original text. Visual instructions related to your brand, whether is be for brand identity, reinforcing ideas or improving medication adherence, visual marketing is the way to go. It is responsible for about 90% of the information transmitted to our brains; let’s not make it go to waste.

The majority of health-care consumers include that of the elderly, but what may shock you is that the fastest growing demographic on Twitter is actually grandparents! Now there is another powerful tool to reach the larger target market. It looks like social media is here to stay.

Digital coupons from the internet have been a huge hit as well. Since 2014, more than 50% of internet users (102.5 million people in the U.S.) have redeemed online coupons. This is a strategy that can be used for retail clinics, pharma companies and other service providers for cost-friendly benefits for clients.

When it comes to final purchase decisions, social media influences about 93% of shoppers. This leads to previous patients leaving reviews which can be the greatest success for the outcome. About 90% of consumers admit that they trust peer recommendations and would be more likely to choose an option based on what they have read.

Healthcare marketing is taking off with so many opportunities through social media. It is a platform that continues to grow and is statistically proven to be a success for businesses. Explore the world of technology, it will always be there for you.

Hashtags Can Help Your Digital Marketing Plan

The word “hashtag” was only recently added to the dictionary yet it has played a major role in the digital world since the creation of the wildly popular social media outlets Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Hashtags are metadata that allow people to search and find related information on social networking sites. If you are on social media, odds are you encounter many hashtags everyday. This component of social media holds the power to drive traffic to a particular website just as search engine optimization, or SEO, helps to increase organic exposure in the search engine result pages (SERP’s).

The comparisons being made between search engine optimization and hashtag engine optimization have people excited about the digital marketing possibilities of hashtags. Hashtag engine optimization focuses on finding trending hashtags, creating relative content around them, using the hashtags effectively to get a wider exposure in social media channels and bringing heavy traffic into a website or landing page. HEO is still a very new marketing strategy, which means that your company can be a pioneer in this marketing concept.

Hashtag engine optimization has already been shown to generate more immediate results than other digital marketing strategies. If your company posts blogs or other important information to its website then you can guide traffic to that information through the use of hashtags on Twitter or Instagram.
While many experts agree that hashtag engine optimization has the potential to be a highly effective digital marketing strategy it is not the easiest tactic to implement. You must devote a lot of time to creating the right hashtags for your company. The most effective hashtags deal with the present and the popular and therefore can generate a high volume of interest rapidly. However, trending hashtags fade quickly so it is important to continually monitor your company’s hashtags in order to maximize HEO’s effectiveness.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Physical Therapy and the Use of Push and Pull Advertising

Advertising is an art in itself and when colliding with successful businesses there are things to know, avoid and remember. The difference between push and pull advertising is one of them. There are ways to get around the madness and use the right form of advertising when it comes to promoting your practice.
Push advertising basically involves forcing information about your practice to the audience in a way that is obvious and in their face. This traditional, yet not so successful way of advertising, is often used in much larger companies. Coca-Cola, Walmart and Sears are examples of companies that have the energy and resources to engage in push advertising or otherwise called, brand advertising. In small, physical therapy practices, this freedom is limited because the measurement of success is much smaller than that of a large company. Push advertising for your practice would include advertising in a local newspaper and telling patients or about your practice and its features. In return, you would hope that your audience will be interested in what you have to offer and visit you for physical therapy. However, this form of advertising does not work for most patients.
Since push advertising is not the best way to go here, let’s talk about the benefits of pull advertising. This involves the encouragement of your audience to take initiative and find out more about your practice and what it can offer them. This may include coupons or other special offers that would get them interested and generate more calls or visits to your practice. This form of advertising generates high quality, compliant patients who are likely to refer their friends and family.
Incentives that would be appealing to potential clients would be an invite to attend a low back pain seminar, a coupon for a free massage, a complimentary evaluation, or a referral form for your patients to write down contact information of their family and friends, and in return, receive a $20 Starbucks gift card. This creates better communication and trust between clients because they are being welcomed in a way that is comforting and promising.
The most important difference between push and pull advertising is the quality of your patients. In push advertising, you are throwing your information out there in hopes that clients will be interested and contact you. With pull advertising, you are putting useful energy and resources together for clients that have already shown interest in your practice. The secret for successful marketing in this case, is to focus on pre-qualifying potential clients while avoiding an audience that would unlikely seek and benefit from your service. Dedicating your time, communication and resources to the right clients will make your practice more successful when it comes to gaining loyal patients and referring their family and friends.

Hashtags Can Help Your Digital Marketing Plan

The word “hashtag” was only recently added to the dictionary yet it has played a major role in the digital world since the creation of the wildly popular social media outlets Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Hashtags are metadata that allow people to search and find related information on social networking sites. If you are on social media, odds are you encounter many hashtags everyday. This component of social media holds the power to drive traffic to a particular website just as search engine optimization, or SEO, helps to increase organic exposure in the search engine result pages (SERP’s).
The comparisons being made between search engine optimization and hashtag engine optimization have people excited about the digital marketing possibilities of hashtags. Hashtag engine optimization focuses on finding trending hashtags, creating relative content around them, using the hashtags effectively to get a wider exposure in social media channels and bringing heavy traffic into a website or landing page. HEO is still a very new marketing strategy, which means that your company can be a pioneer in this marketing concept.
Hashtag engine optimization has already been shown to generate more immediate results than other digital marketing strategies. If your company posts blogs or other important information to its website then you can guide traffic to that information through the use of hashtags on Twitter or Instagram.
While many experts agree that hashtag engine optimization has the potential to be a highly effective digital marketing strategy it is not the easiest tactic to implement. You must devote a lot of time to creating the right hashtags for your company. The most effective hashtags deal with the present and the popular and therefore can generate a high volume of interest rapidly. However, trending hashtags fade quickly so it is important to continually monitor your company’s hashtags in order to maximize HEO’s effectiveness.