Using Social Media Tools to Enhance Networking to Benefit Your Practice

We take a look in this edition at how eyecare professionals can take advantage of the social networking features and capabilities of everyday business tools to enhance their own networking and build new ways to connect with patients.

Dr. Alan Glazier, CLICK contributor, talks about how his daily use of Microsoft Outlook has changed via his use of "Social Connector" features.

Take a spin through the easy-to-access CLICK Archive located under the CLICK button at VisionMonday.com, which features dozens of Cool Tools, Sites to See and other resources for building your web image and your office's connection to patients. Have you tried something new on your website or launched a successful social media campaign? Tell us about it and we'll consider it for an upcoming feature in CLICK.

—The Editors

Using the Web to Garner Constructive Patient Feedback

Highland Park, Ill.—focalCenter's new website, www.focalCenter.com, is an information platform for eyecareScore–focalCenter's innovative and standardized feedback solution for eyecare, eyewear and managed care providers.

focalCenter is an eyecare feedback company, providing solutions to measure, understand and improve the eyecare experience for patients and the bottom line for businesses.

Eyecare professionals who visit the site can get a comprehensive understanding of the rationale of EyecareScore and its relevance to their business and robustness of this tool for eyecare stakeholders.

"Our site offers background on the need for feedback measurement and is a site for eyecare stakeholders to learn about best practices in patient experience metrics," says Ron Krefman, OD, FAAO, founder and CEO of focalCenter. "As a web based solution, the site automates and simplifies the process for subscribing to the feedback tools and benchmarking built into eyecareScore, and serves as the host for administering feedback and reporting portal for viewing and analyzing patient experience results," adds Krefman.

Viewers can learn about the main features of eyecareScore with a series of screen shots and short videos to help become acquainted with the application, its functionality, and ease of use. There are calculators to determine the Return On Investment (ROI), and the margin of error a user can expect by subscribing to eyecareScore.

A free trial is offered allowing users to click for access to the dashboard reports and benchmarks. In upholding focalCenter’s mission to deliver the best feedback solutions, the new website will also ultimately serve as a basis for learning insights on best practices for feedback management.

Using E-mail 'Social Discovery' Tools

By Alan Glazier OD, FAAO

ROCKVILLE, MD.—One of my favorite tools is Social Connector for Microsoft Outlook (OSC). Currently linked to Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live Messenger, Viadeo and Xing, the social connector can be used to find information about the people you are communicating with in Outlook. I call it "social discovery."

When someone e-mails me and I desire more information about them, I can go to the bottom of the e-mail, click my mouse and see a list of their most recent social interactions. Having their LinkedIn available directly from the e-mail is incredibly useful; I can learn about their business and their connections without having to open LinkedIn and search. I can discover more about them through their Facebook interactions as well, from who our mutual connections are to what subjects they are conversant around.

The Outlook Social Connector (OSC) is an excellent tool to grow your social/business networks. By clicking the '+' symbol underneath a person's picture, you can send a request to be their colleague on any of the networks you are connected to. The OSC also automatically synchronizes your colleagues from each of your connected networks and saves them as contacts in Outlook. This allows you to easily send messages, call, or synchronize contacts just as you would any other Outlook contact.

As you read your e-mail messages, glance down at the new People Pane to see the picture, name, and title of the sender. A rich, aggregated collection of information about the sender is included. To pull up data via the connector, you find an e-mail in Outlook, as shown here.

Put your cursor arrow on the line that you see the orange arrow pointing to in the previous image, click, hold and drag up and you'll see the senders social profile information, the last few e-mails they've sent you and other information you see here.

The OSC presents useful information including:

• Communication history. Your mailbox is searched and the recent messages you've exchanged with that person appear. Can't remember the last time you e-mailed this person? A quick look at the OSC reveals the last time you received an e-mail from them, and one click opens up the message.
• Meetings. When is the next scheduled meeting with this person? The OSC shows upcoming appointments that include you and the message sender.
• Attachments. Can't find the attachment that the person is referring to in a message? With the OSC you can quickly review attachments that you and the sender have exchanged. One-click access quickly opens the attachment or you can see the message that it is attached to.
• Activity feeds. Stay on top of activities involving your colleagues and friends in real time. The OSC connects to business and consumer social networks.
• Know who you're meeting with. Use the OSC's Gallery View to see all of the people you'll be interacting with in an upcoming meeting:

• One click on any of those pictures puts you into the single-person view, providing easy access to their activities and communication history. You can easily switch in and out of Gallery View by clicking on the little double-arrow icon in the upper-right corner of the People Pane.

I will frequently scan the sender of an e-mail using the connector to learn more about them before responding. Imagine e-mailing me in an introductory e-mail and receiving a response where I mention our mutual connections of interest, talk about an event I learn we will be attending together and throw out other information that helps us get to know each other better and learn more about each other instantly. It is a great relationship building tool; the knowledge I gain from the connector adds value to our new relationship and gives us something to talk about beyond the subject of the e-mail. Some amazing coincidences have occurred via my social connector and the things I have been able to learn about my business contacts have been invaluable.

Alan N. Glazier, OD, FAAO is the founder/CEO of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care in Rockville, Md. A search and social optimization consultant, he is now a regular contributor to CLICK and also writes a regular blog for SightNation.com. Glazier is at aglazier@youreyesite.com and his regular posts can be found via his Twitter handle: @EyeInfo, his blog: eyeinfo.wordpress.com and his website: YourEyeSite.com. Author: Searchial Marketing: How Social Media Drives Search Optimization in Web 3.0.

OWA Webinar:
Search (And Ye Shall Be Found)

Do you know if your website can be found in search engines and for what? Are you making simple mistakes that have a negative effect on your online visibility? If you want to get your website in front of your potential customers, you can't ignore SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). Daniel Feldman of dba Designs & Communications is conducting a two-part webinar on behalf of the Optical Women's Association (OWA), part of the group's Professional Optical Women's Workship Series. Part One, an hour-long webinar to be held May 2 at 12:00 p.m. ET will explore SEO and SEM fundamentals to give attendees the necessary knowledge-base in order to develop and implement a well-rounded website optimization strategy. There is no charge for OWA members and the fee is $35 for non-members, though advance registration is required here. All you need to participate is a telephone and Internet connection. Registration information, along with the webinar dial-in and web address, will be provided via e-mail after you complete your registration form.

Primary Eyecare Network Internet Webinar Series

Primary Eyecare Network (PEN), the practice development division of ABB CONCISE, has announced a new webinar series, "The Road to Optometric Internet Marketing," as a lead–up to the group's annual conference, PIO 2012 (Preserving Independent Optometry) in August. Debbie Oseguera, Director of Operations for PEN said, "We have had many requests for this type of information so we designed the webinar series to dovetail and complement our PIO program this year."
The webinar series consists of five monthly webinars that will bring a wide array of speakers from both inside and outside the industry. Michael Porat, COO of EyeCarePro, the educational underwriter of the webinar series says, "Working closely with so many practices on all things related to the internet provides us with a unique insight into both the practice's themselves and the latest technologies available. Our partnership with PEN and ABB CONCISE is an ideal fit." Added EyeCarePro's CEO, Daniel Rostenne, "Our concept is to give away $1 million in product vouchers by the end of the series. We have great relationships and partnerships with our voucher sponsors and we are bringing everyone together to educate and facilitate every practice's entrance into internet marketing." Register for the series or one of the webinars here. Pre-registration is required. You do not need to be a PEN member to participate in either the webinar series or the PIO conference. To learn more about PIO or to register, click here.

Nudge-mail

Whether it's following up a good lead, remembering a birthday or keeping track of tasks, Nudge-mail acts as a handy 'reminder' tool which doesn't require any special software or downloads. Described as an Inbox "un-clutterer" Nudge-mail has thousands of users and the site recently integrated with Google's much-used Google Calendar. Users of Nudge-mail on Google Calendar get an easy way to see all their reminders in one place, schedule-able up to the minute, hour, date or year.

Dropbox

You'll never have to e-mail yourself a file again if you sign up for Dropbox, a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. You can bring photos, files, presentations and videos anywhere–to computers, phones and the Dropbox website. Users get 2GB of Dropbox storage free with subscriptions up to 100GB available. Files are always secure and the service works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Dropbox enables you to have your files whether or not you have an internet connection. You can invite friends, family, business colleagues to a folder. You can create photo galleries viewable by anyone you choose and can send a link to any file in your Dropbox folder.

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