Enjoyed the #HCSM discussion on Twitter

Tonight, the #HCSM (Healthcare Communications and Social Media) conversation on Twitter revolved around the use of social media (SM) and search engine optimization (SEO). When I speak with physicians, I find that so many of them really don't understand SM or SEO. That's probably why many of them still continue to practice medicine without a professional website for their practice. What they fail to recognize is that more consumers are looking for health care providers on the Internet. Therefore, if you don't have a strong online presence, you may be losing potential patients to other providers in your area.

Here are my social media tips for physicians:

• Blogs can be used to attract new patients to your practice.
• Social media can be used to help you develop relationships with surrounding providers.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to your practice website.
• Patients are looking for providers on the Internet, so you must have a strong online presence.
• Many sophisticated patients are drawn to health care providers who are current on the use of digital social media.

Thinking about using social media? Start a blog, create a fan page on Facebook, and use Twitter.

Search engine keywords for MedicineandTechnology.com

A significant percentage of my visitors come to my site through search engines like Google and Yahoo. Bing is still relatively new, so I don't have much data on that yet. What are people typing to end up here? Here's the list of the top keywords:

• free emr
• medicine and technology
• technology in medicine
• radon levels
• hp battery recall joe kim
• epocrates "blackberry storm"
• medtronic pacemaker
• technology and medicine
• non clinical physician jobs
• which is quieter: dell latitude xt2 or lenovo thinkpad x200
• jobs for doctors without residency
• ckd-epi
• samsca
• swallow syncope
• dr. joseph kim
• medicine and technology blog
• blackberry storm medical applications
• ckd-epi equation
• e-prescribing
• jobs for mds without residency
• lenovo x200 vs dell xt2
• medicine technology
• non clinical careers for physicians
• q1 ultra windows 7
• uloric gout medicine
• handbook of medical informatics

I think this list represents content covered in all 4 of my blogs:
• Medicine and Technology

• Non-Clinical Jobs and Opportunities
• Medical Smartphones
• Mobile Health Computing

Over the last 30 days (the month of June), search engine traffic represented roughly 24% of my site traffic. Before that (the month of May), it represented 17% of visitors.

Google "CCHIT Certified EHR"

If you type "CCHIT Certified EHR" into Google, then my site comes up as the #2 result! (you can guess who comes up as #1). On average, visits to this site from search engines represents 17-18% of my traffic. I'm not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert, but I think it's great that Google thinks that my site is relevant to the keywords "CCHIT Certified EHR"

• CCHIT (Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology)
• EHR (Electronic Health Record)

To see the current list of CCHIT Certified 08 Ambulatory EHRs, click here.