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Bio Dr. Sridhar serves as Retina Specialist Magazine’s Social Media Ambassador. He’s an associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Miami. DISCLOSURE: Dr. Sridhar is a consultant to Alcon, DORC, Genentech/Roche and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. |
We’re fully into the swing of things in 2024. Spring brings warmer temperatures, melting ice, blooming flowers and, yes, the prospect of spring cleaning. While for many, spring cleaning is confined to the home, for social media-savvy ophthalmologists, it’s a great opportunity to focus on sprucing up those digital profiles. Here are your top five action items for “spring cleaning” your social media and online profiles:
• Update your LinkedIn professional details: Retinal specialists hoping to leverage their social media presence into consulting, speaking and/or clinical opportunities should have a well-maintained LinkedIn account. Blow the cobwebs off your account and make sure it still makes sense. While your educational background may not have changed, your professional photo should be recent, well-illuminated, and reflective of your professional persona (i.e., save the Hawaiian shirt photo for your personal Facebook account). Non-medical employers, such as industry partners, will be interested in your skills, so include any prior speaking or consulting experience in the description that appears at the top of your page. Check your inbox for messages and connection invitations and try to maximize those to enhance your network. Lastly, check out your profile both on a computer and a mobile device to make sure you’re happy with the appearance (it’ll be slightly different between platforms).
• Be searchable: The American Society of Retinal Specialists has a public database available to both patients and doctors (“Find a Retina Specialist”) where one can search for retina doctors based on geographic location/zip code. This is a good time to make sure you have a profile and, if you do, verify that your contact details are up-to-date so that referring doctors and patients can find you.
• Reviews, reviews, reviews: More and more patients rely on online reviews to decide whether to see a provider. Check out the major publicly available review websites to see what feedback is out there. I would recommend checking your practice/institutional website, healthgrades.com, vitals.com and Google reviews. Any less than stellar reviews should be noted and addressed appropriately (typically by a designated representative at your practice/institution). Note the websites with the highest volume of reviews and aim to direct your 2024 patients to leave reviews there to improve your search engine optimization. Speaking of search engines …
• “Google me”: Or rather, google yourself. Check out the top hits for both websites and images and make sure they jibe with your ideal professional public image. Photos from your college fraternity or sorority parties probably could be removed with an email or two to the right people. The same goes for Instagram photos tagging you on vacation in casual wear. Preventing your personal Facebook and Instagram media from being publicly searchable comes down to our last point, which is that …
• Privacy matters: Privacy settings for popular social media applications are constantly changing. On Facebook, this is a perfect time to log in to your account and toggle what is available and visible to the public, friends of friends, or just to friends. Most of these apps allow you to see your profile from the standpoint of a random searcher; check it out and make sure you would be happy if a patient or potential professional contact happened to see that same view.
With these five social media “spring cleaning” action items, you’re now well-prepared for 2024 and beyond. Now, time to do the hard part: actual spring cleaning. Good luck! RS
