Can Private Doctors Compete with Hospitals in Healthcare Marketing?

If you're a doctor with your own private medical practice, I'm sure you're aware how how hard it is to set money aside for your virtual healthcare marketing. However hard it may be though, you have to realize that online advertising will increase your bottom line in the long run and will probably lead to immediate clientele and exposure. that's great, but not only will this make your business more profitable, but it can actually help you to keep up with some of the bigger competition in your area. This might sound surprising, but the fact of the matter is that being a so called "small fish in a big pond" gives you edge in online media, especially in medical social media. If you do a quick Google search for 'medical themed blog' or 'doctor blog', you'll see right away that the top rankers aren't medical universities or even well-known hospitals. KevinMD and Dr Grumpy In The House are just physicians like yourself who have made a point of putting their effort and resources into growing their online clout- and they've succeeded. Over the last decade, the trend is that bigger organizations are always on the trailing edge of online healthcare marketing and medical social media. They are so weighed down by their large, unwieldy bureaucracies that by the time a major hospital finalizes its social media strategy, it’s often already outdated and the next big thing in social media is already in full swing. (Pinterest, anyone?) If you own a small, private practice, you need to make this fact work in your favor! You have the power to make all the decisions about advertising for your practice and you have a great deal of agility and flexibility, so use it! Start your online campaign now, design your first doctor blog, and hop on Twitter. Or, better yet, hire an SEO firm for doctors to do all the dirty work for you.