Online Audiology Marketing Strategy, Claiming Google Authorship

  By Geoffrey Cooling | June 12, 2013 - 9:44 pm |
2 Comments

Claiming Google Authorship as part of your online audiology marketing strategy

By Geoffrey Cooling

Online audiology marketing strategyGoogle has actually made the system of claiming your authorship easier than it originally was. Initially it was quite a technical exercise with adding mark-up to webpage headers etc. Although you can still go down this route, there are easier ways. Initially you need a Google+ profile, if you have a gmail account it is as simple as setting up a Google+ profile from there. If not, you will need to first get a gmail account and then set up your Google+ account.

Your Google+ account is the anchor of authorship, it is the profile that becomes your author profile. I feel that claiming your authorship and using it will be a central part of your online audiology marketing strategy into the future. But how do you do it?

If you have an e-mail address on the same domain as your blog, it is as simple as going to this page https://plus.google.com/authorship and signing up. It will take you through a few steps verifying the e-mail address and then it will be as simple as ensuring you have a byline on all your content. However, in order to have your content on any other website you will need to add that site to your profile in the contributor to section. You will then need to add a html markup to your content, or indeed ask the webmaster or controller of the site to add it for you. My personal markup is By https://plus.google.com/100410169393907495854?rel=author””>Geoffrey Cooling</a> . You can see it just under the lead header on this page, it just shows as By Geoffrey Cooling. Thinking of changing it to The Fat Lad, probably suits my sense of humour better.

Your mark up would be similar with the number after google.com being your profile number and obviously the name would be different, I claim the fat lad.Both ways are detailed at

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986&expand=option2

Below is a clear explanation of the process.

Option 2: Set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile

  1. Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this: 
      <a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>

    Replace [profile_url] with the your Google+ profile URL, like this:

      <a href="https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202?
   rel=author">Google</a>

    Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.

  2. Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.
    1. Edit the Contributor To section.
    2. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
    3. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
    4. Click Save.
  3. To see what author data Google can extract from your page, use the structured data testing tool.

If you follow the contributor route, it is important that the markup is placed on each page, just remember to include it as your byline on each post. There are also various plugins that will automate the process for differing content management systems like Drupal, WordPress or Joomla. They will only work on self-hosted blogs, if you are blogging on blogger, it is as simple as connecting your blog to your Google+ profile in your settings. On WordPress.com, I think you can add your Google+ profile in your settings, but to be safe I would also add the markup.

 

Adding the markup needs to be done in the text section of your editor not in the plain view, usually what I do is write and format the post in plain view. Then I switch to text view and insert the markup befor I publish. I keep the markup along with other handy pieces of code on a notepad document I have saved to my desktop. Notepad is on every microsoft computer, it is a simple plain text editor. If anyone needs further assistance with this or is having issues with setting it up, give me a shout.

 

The only thing is for me to help or set it up for you, you will have to give me temporary access to your Google+ profile. Not always a comfortable thing to do.

 

Regards

 

Geoff 

Chrysanth WebStory WebStory: A super blog editor for bloggers
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Online Audiology Marketing Strategy, Update On Google Authorship

  By Geoffrey Cooling | June 11, 2013 - 9:36 pm |
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Google Authorship, Google+ and good content will need to be the core of your online audiology marketing strategy

By Geoffrey Cooling

Online Audiology Marketing strategy

In a recent post I discussed Google+ and Google Authorship, basically navel gazing on the probabilities of importance in the future and exploring the benefits now. Shortly after Matt Cutts, a member of the Google team, released a video. In the video Matt Cutts implies pretty directly that using the rel=author data can help Google understand the authority and credibility of the individual who posted a piece of content.

Here is a summary of what he said:

 I’m pretty excited about the ideas behind authorship. Basically if you can move from an anonymous web to a web where you have some notion of identity. And maybe even reputation of individual author. Then web spam, you kind of get the benefits for free. It’s harder for the spammers to hide over here and in some anonymous corner…

If Danny Sullivan writes something on a on a forum or something like that I’d like to know about that even if the forum itself doesn’t have that much PageRank or something along those lines so… so I do expect us to continue exploring that. We might be able to help improve search quality… and I think will continue to look at it to see how to use rel=author in ways that can improve search experience.

And here is the video itself

It seems apparent that in the future, Google Authorship and Google+ by extension is going to become an important if not imperative element of your online audiology marketing strategy. Authorship though will only help you rank if in fact you are producing content that you can claim authorship of.

It leads me to a question I posed to another marketing guy, is it important to have a website with a blog attached, or maybe its a blog with a website attached? One way or the other, I believe the future of online audiology marketing is three channel at the very least.

Your website

Your Blog or content

and

Google+ coupled with Google Authorship

Regards

Geoff

Chrysanth WebStory WebStory: A super blog editor for bloggers
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On-line Marketing Strategy For Audiologists, Audiology Practices Magazine

  By Geoffrey Cooling | June 5, 2013 - 7:28 pm |
1 Comment

Consolidated strategy and the channels used for Audiology Practices

By Geoffrey Cooling

I recently was asked to undertake an article pertaining to on-line marketing strategy for Audiology Practices, the  official publication of The Academy of Doctors of Audiology. I was greatly honoured and happy to do so. I have embedded the article here and for any members of the Academy they can read it here: http://www.audiologypractices.org/online-marketing-strategy-for-audiologists

If you are on mobile and can not see the embed follow this link:

http://www.slideshare.net/geoffcool/online-marketing-strategy-for-audiologists

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Practice Differentiation Through Service, Tinnitus Therapy

  By Geoffrey Cooling | June 3, 2013 - 12:44 pm |
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Service offerings driving Practice differentiation

By Geoffrey Cooling

Tinnitus TherapyThe world of audiology is changing, technological and treatment advances combined with competitive changes are moving rapidly. In essence these are changes that we can neither change nor control. It all leads to increased pressure, particularly on independent hearing healthcare practices. if indeed independent hearing healthcare practices are to survive, they need to consider strategies for real differentiation. They also need to consider changes to their business model.

Part of those changes or differentiation must involve service offering differentiation. You need to consider what service offerings that you can supply that will differentiate you from others. But as part of this thinking you also need to consider how to offer them as part of a changed business model. Your time is money and your business needs to survive, hence you need to consider how much to charge for such services.

One such service that is increasingly in vogue, is tinnitus therapy. Tinnitus therapy is a comprehensive service offering, up to now it has been a very specialist offering. The introduction of the Widex Zen Therapy Protocols has made the offering of tinnitus therapy services an easier option for Practices. I have heard the protocols described as tinnitus therapy in a box. In essence WZT is a set of multi disciplinary tools that can be used in tinnitus therapy. One of these tools is of course Widex Zen tones. The key though is that it is just one of the tools.

WZT is a combination of elements of TRT, CBT, counseling and sound therapy. That sound therapy may well be based purely on amplification, but it will often involve Widex Zen tones. There is now a plethora of evidence for the efficacy of Zen and its impact in tinnitus therapy. Widex in essence has built a service offering around Zen and brought it to market. Many independent hearing healthcare practices and hearing healthcare professionals are wary of tinnitus therapy. Unsure whether they have the skills or indeed the time to offer such services as an offering.

If you in fact offer rehabilitation as part of your hearing aid sales you are probably more skilled than you think. The skills that you bring to rehabilitation are similar to the skills needed for tinnitus therapy. The rest is acquired knowledge. The key to the ability to offer tinnitus therapy is education. That education will give you the confidence to offer the service to prospective customers. The offering of tinnitus therapy has many advantages commercially. It will bring new people to your practice, it will consolidate your authority. It will broaden your service offering and differentiate you, but it is not something you can do lightly.

What do you need to do to move forward with this type of service offering? You need to look at several things;

Education levels: You and your staff need the training to offer the service.

Referral network: Tinnitus therapy needs to be a multi disciplinary approach. You can not help every Patient with tinnitus. You need to know when to refer and who to refer to. Before you offer the service, you need to put that referral network in place.

Therapy Protocol: You should outline what your therapy protocol will be. What the Patient journey will look like and how it will work. You must also understand that that protocol is not rigid, differing Patients need different therapy schedules, differing treatment plans.

Offering strategy: You need to consider how this offering will be deployed. How it will be advertised, how it will fit into your Practice, who will be involved in the service, what the work flow will look like and most importantly, how will you charge?

There is a lot to consider if you wish to move forward with the strategy. Charging is one thing that needs to be deeply considered. What are you going to charge for the initial assessment and for follow up visits? If the therapy plan involves sound therapy through amplification and or Zen. How will you charge for that? Will you un-bundle pricing or will you offer combined pricing?

I have talked to many people in relation to pricing on tinnitus therapy sessions. They tend to just pick a price, a charge that is based on what sounds right or what they think their Patients will pay. You need to go deeper than that when setting a price. In order to set a price on your time you need to calculate what an hour of your time truly costs. In order to do that you need to calculate costs of overheads per practitioner per hour. You then need to add a profit margin to that cost in order that your business is profitable. Because that is why we are here, to run profitable businesses. As idealistic as you are, in order to help people suffering from auditory problems you need to be profitable.

Service offering differentiation will help you thrive into the future, but only if you deploy it properly.

Regards

Geoff

Chrysanth WebStory WebStory: A super blog editor for bloggers
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