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Broaden your professional network through LinkedIn
While not necessarily a space in which to attract patients, you can display your credentials and connect with other potential business interests.
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At a recent social gathering of optometrists, I noticed that LinkedIn seems to be an enigma for most ODs. I understand why many would not be inclined to use LinkedIn.
Arguments against optometrists using LinkedIn may include:
- Optometrists provide a local service, and it would be an exception for patients to travel long distances for an appointment.
- Optometrists are static in their positions, often staying in the same contractual relationship for numerous years.
- Optometrists, for the most part, have similar skills and perform similar services in parallel situations. In other words, we all prescribe eyeglasses and pretty much ask: “Which is better, one or two?”
However, I do not want to imply that having a LinkedIn profile is of no use to optometrists. On the contrary, spending time in creating or updating your LinkedIn profile is extremely important to any optometrist.
Define your brand
In this day and age, everyone has a “digital footprint,” and physicians should be concerned about their reputation and any information that appears when a search is performed for your name or services. If you think of yourself as a brand, in LinkedIn you are able to define your brand. LinkedIn is one of the websites that allows you to control parts of your digital footprint and your brand.
LinkedIn provides a site where distant friends, physicians, colleagues and other members of your community have a place to go to learn a bit about you. Although LinkedIn is not that place where prospective patients will come and look for their eye care, it is a place to park your credentials and your CV.
Agustin L.
Gonzalez
Times are definitely changing, and health care is changing even faster. Optometrists now have different practice environments. With the aging population, specialties such as low vision, dry eye clinics and scleral lens clinics are starting to flourish, exhibiting the ever-changing optometric models of care. Having a site where you can showcase your particular academic expertise and experience makes sense. LinkedIn allows you to present your unique skill sets and what you have accomplished.
It is true that LinkedIn is not a factor in how patients would choose their doctors, but consider the fact that you can display all of your credentials on one web page where patients can take a look at you and your achievements. LinkedIn could potentially be a site to house recommendations from successful patients or even recommendations from comanaging doctors. You could link your website to your LinkedIn profile to give patients a better idea of who you are.
Relationships and interactions occur differently in LinkedIn when compared to other social media vehicles. Some LinkedIn users look to have as many connections as possible, but unlike followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook, I look at it as a modern-day business card holder. I use it as a place to collect and monitor business and professional relationships I have developed or seek to develop further.
It is important to be able to single people out in your network and justify in what manner and how you have engaged or collaborated with them. The intention is not to randomly connect with people. It is important to have connections that are meaningful and with people with whom you have worked, met at a conference, served with on a panel or connected with in the social space.
LinkedIn endorsements
LinkedIn “endorsements” may seem impressive at first but are of little to no value to serious LinkedIn users such as recruiters and potential employers. Unlike Facebook, your LinkedIn profile is up for scrutiny among the professional community, and your career experience can be easily verified.
The LinkedIn user can actually edit the endorsements to make his or her profile even more valuable, but few people do. The wise LinkedIn user would proactively edit the endorsements he or she values and delete those that do not match his or her expertise.
Remember that social media vehicles are a tool, and in LinkedIn you are placing your professional foot forward. LinkedIn also provides a great way to keep tabs on your professional acquaintances’ career moves.
I am a huge LinkedIn fan and I believe there are ways that every doctor can benefit from its growing popularity. Give it a try and connect with me in LinkedIn.