To appreciate the power of online reviews, you can begin by trying to put yourself in the shoes of a new patient and ask whether online reviews would matter to them. The online reputation of your medical or dental practice matters to them, and they matter to you. Today’s patients are far better informed, more expressive and have much better communication tools at their disposal.

It is not easy to convince them through traditional means of advertising and marketing any longer. They would rather prefer to learn about you through your online reputation, reviews and testimonials and opinions of other patients. Online reviews are an incredibly effective tool in today’s world to establish credibility for your healthcare practice brand.

The first step you can take to achieve a favorable online reputation and reviews is to ensure that your medical or dental practice gets listed on various prominent review, rating and social websites. You need to develop a professionally significant Google+ profile, a LinkedIn profile and a Facebook business page. These online profiles will make it easier for the search engines to highlight your healthcare practice profile whenever a local potential patient is searching for a doctor in your area of expertise.

Once you are on the radar of the review, rating and social sites, you can make some additional proactive efforts to gain positive reviews. Whenever you have an appropriate opportunity to ask for an online review or feedback, make full use of it. You may include on your practice website the link to a prominent review site that features you. This will encourage visitors to your site to provide reviews about you on that review website.

If you find unfair or misinformed negative reviews about your practice on a site, you can deal with professionally and constructively. You may inform your version to the site manager, or post a public response on that site to ensure that readers receive a balanced picture.