Greetings!
 2011 was another fantastic year for VNN and both Dr. Jim and I are very proud to be associated with every one of you. We are looking forward to a very busy 2012!To start off our year, don't miss our upcoming webinar next Wednesday afternoon. We are very lucky to have Mr. Robert Smither of LeftLane Technologies available to speak with us about Reputation Management. If you have been following Dr. Jim's columns these last 8 weeks, you know that this is a VERY important topic! See more details about the webinar below.Most importantly...enjoy your weekend with family and friends, stay safe and have a WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!!
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| Animals, Veterinarians and VNN Members in the News This Week | As expected, the week between Christmas and New Year's is pretty quiet when it comes to animal health news. Sure, there are still some stories about holiday pet safety, but overall, things are pretty calm. We will have to see what the New Year brings!!
 On some happy notes, several long lost pets were reunited with their owners over this last month, including a cat who traveled 2000 miles and a Canadian dog whose trek was almost as long! Combine these stories along with some discussion on microchips and our New Year's resolutions for pets and you will have a great pitch for your media contacts!
The concern over foreign chicken jerky treats for dogs has also made headlines again. MSNBC reports that the FDA has had more than 350 reported cases of illness associated with these treats. Messaging on this topic is available at MyVNN.com.
 Here's a "what if" story for you...the Arizona Humane Society is in serious damage control mode after euthanizing a young cat. Things have become so serious that they hired a publicist and have locked down their Facebook page. Now...imagine that this happened at your hospital...how would YOU and your team handle this situation? Are you prepared for any kind of onslaught in your social media network?
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Protecting Your Online Reputation or "Reputation Management"...Moving Negative Reviews "Down".
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 James P. Humphries, BS, DVM, CVJ
Veterinary News Network
www.MyVNN.com
American Society of Veterinary Journalists
www.ASVJ.org
If the initial steps of taking ownership of your review accounts, along with attaching owner comments and working to get negative reviews removed did not prove successful, then the final step would be to move the negative reviews down within the search engine results for your hospital name. This step requires using existing or new websites and blogs to move higher in the search engine results and eventually moving above the negative review website.
This step will be easy or involved, depending on how competitive the keywords integrated into your hospital name. For example of your hospital name is unique such as "Sebastian Veterinary Clinic" then it will be easy to fill up the first couple pages of search engine results for your unique name. If your name is more generic like "Veterinary Specialists" this means the keywords in your name appear in more searches on the internet. This will require a lot more resources and time to get you ranked higher. Most of us have pretty specific names so the process should be easier.
Here is how you move your blog or websites up in the search engine results and at the same time move the negative results down:
1. Use Existing Websites / Blogs / Social Media
a. If you have other existing websites or blog sites that you are in control of then reconfigure these websites to populate your hospital name and keywords within as many pages of content as possible. (as we are just now opening www.VetNewsOnLine.com as a new resource for VNN members, this can be used for this very purpose).
b. Here are some of the locations on your website to incorporate your company name:
* Meta Tags (Keywords, Description)
* Page Title
* Heading Tag (H1)
* 2-3 times within the paragraphs of content
* Alternative attribution of image tags
* Title tag / anchor text of links directing to these pages
c. Use social media and directory type websites to your advantage! Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, City Search can all help your work in creating positive key word power. Make sure that these sites are active and are completely filled in with your company info and correct company name. Having the site filled in with all available options and having many reviews to these sites will move them up the search engine ranks for your hospital name. Also make sure you keep your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts updated with your hospital name and keep them active several times a week.
2. Developing New Websites / Blogs / Social Media
a. When building new websites or blogs one of the advantages you have is with the choosing of a domain name. Make sure you integrate your hospital name keyword into the domain name you purchase. Also a good rule of thumb is to register some of these domain names under different accounts because search engines can determine if multiple domain names are registered to the same account.
b. With new sites, be sure to incorporate all the keywords as you create pages and content.
c. Make sure you generate new social media accounts and then integrate them for that new "keyword rich" site.
3. Confirm Sites are Indexed
a. In most cases search engines pickup on new sites pretty fast. To test if your site is indexed, here is a quick search you can perform: Go to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, then type in the word "site:" without the quotes. Now add your domain without the www. For example; on Google type in; Site:myvnn.com and see the results. The results will show you how many pages of content Google has indexed from your website.
b. You should create an account with Google and Bing (Yahoo results is now integrated with Bing) within their webmaster tools. This account will allow you to request to be indexed and also provides a lot more info to track how well you are doing with those search engines.
Google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/
Bing/Yahoo - http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
4. Continual Site Content
Once you have structured existing and new websites or blogs with your hospital keywords and have confirmed that your website and content pages are properly being indexed by major search engines, then the next step is to keep your sites and blogs filled with new content. At least add 3 pages of new content every week is the ideal way to keep you in the high rankings. This is one of the main uses of both new and archived VNN content!
For keywords that are very competitive work with a web development company to create a series of database driven pages that would allow for a data matrix. This concept allows for you to start out with 1000's of pages of content in which your hospital name dynamically integrated into each of these pages without having to come up with 1000's of pages of content on your own.
Removing or pushing down negative reviews does require some work. Most of the steps be performed by anyone and you do not need a lot of technical background. They are more tedious than complex and it just takes some time and weekly dedication to keep moving up the ranks of the search engines. But this work will pay off in high rankings and power over negative reviews.
If you are in need of a professional reputation management company that has experience in providing solutions to tackle these negative reviews, I recommend Rob Smither at LeftLane Technologies. He will be our Webinar guest on January 4th, an excellent time to hear him speak, ask questions and move forward with polishing your online reputation.
LeftLane Technologies
121 S. Tejon St., Ste 1107
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
719-433-7740
Main Contact: Rob Smither
rsmither@leftlanetech.net
Till next time...
Dr.Jim@MyVNN.com
719-495-2100
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Sincerely,
 Thomas Dock, CVJ
Managing Editor
tomdock@MyVNN.com
719-445-7065
Dr. Jim Humphries
President/News Director
dr.jim@MyVNN.com
719-495-2100
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VNN MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS
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I am very proud to report that our membership renewal process is going extremely well. Thanks to everyone who has 1) renewed their VNN membership already and 2) for finding the few bugs in the process. I appreciate everyone's patience and your support!
To see when your anniversary date is, or to renew, simply login to MyVNN.com and click the My Profile tab. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see Membership Information with your renewal date and, if your renewal is within 45 days of being due, links for credit card or check payments.
I am also sending out reminders about 45 days ahead of time to help keep you updated.
If you have any questions about your VNN membership, please feel free to contact either Dr. Jim or me with your thoughts or concerns. | |
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Our Next VNN Webinar!
|  | In the last two months, we have had some very informative webinars on social media. If you missed either or both of them, you can find links to the videos on our Media Training page.
Our next topic, though, will be one that EVERYONE needs to see! How do you protect your online reputation?
With the ease of technology and the pervasiveness of social sites, it is now easy than ever for an angry or upset client to reach out and tell people. Whereas we were all taught that one upset person tells 20 people about their experience at your business, those same people might now be able to reach hundreds or even thousands of interested listeners. AND..once posted, bad reviews have the potential to stay there forever!
If you have been following Dr. Jim's columns recently, you know that this is a topic that interests us greatly. We are happy to announce that on Wednesday, Jan 4th at 2:00 PM EST, we have invited Mr. Rob Smither of Leftlane Technologies to spend some time teaching you how to deal with negative reviews online. This webinar promises to be powerful and helpful.
Click here to register for this important webinar!
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Customer Service Is the New Marketing!
|  | It may sound a little bizarre, but when it comes to reaching out to find new clients and keep our existing ones, you might be better off treating your customers as if they were newspaper reporters! This interesting statement leads off an article in Forbes this week that has a lot of good ideas.
Overall, we are all very tired of dealing with any sort of advertising or marketing. We see it on TV and online, here it on our radio as we drive to work and generally are impacted by advertisements for a large majority of our day. Is it any wonder that we have become disenchanted with all of it?
The American Marketing Association has stated that 90% of consumers trust peer reviews and 70% trust reviews that they find online. As we have stated for three years now, word of mouth marketing is still the most powerful method of attracting new clients and keeping your existing ones happy.
The article gives three points of advice: First, think long term reputation over short term profits. Second, find your top clients and make them feel special. Finally, make yourself (or someone on your team) available. The good news in this is that most of you already know how to do all of this! Your media training helps you understand that every client who walks into your practice now has the potential to be a force for good or a force arrayed against you in the online communities. If you are doing your social networks correctly, you already meeting some of the goals the Forbes article outlines. By being engaged, interesting and interactive through your social media sites, you are earning a social media audience that will help promote you, your hospital and your expertise! Don't forget that both Dr. Jim and I can help you with this sort of transition from lots of paid marketing to a focus on powerful word of mouth marketing. All you need to do is give us a call! |
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