Scott Barton 00:00:00 I think it can be overwhelming building a personal brand. What I would say is pick one platform and build there. Once you have enough success there that you feel like it's valuable, if you want to move on to the next platform, you can.

Austin Luttrell 00:00:24 Welcome to Off the Chart: A Business of Medicine podcast featuring lively and informative conversations with health care experts, opinion leaders and practicing physicians about the challenges facing doctors and medical practices. My name is Austin Littrell, I'm the assistant editor of Medical Economics, and I'd like to thank you for joining us today. In today's episode, we're diving into the world of personal branding for physicians. Medical economics managing editor Todd Shryock is joined by Scott Bartnick, co-founder and CEO of Otter Public Relations. They're talking about why a strong personal brand matters in today's digital health care marketplace. From online reviews and reputation management to social media strategy and storytelling. Barton shares practical steps that physicians can take to stand out, build patient trust, and grow their practices without sacrificing professional credibility. Scott, thank you again for joining us.

Austin Luttrell 00:01:07 And now let's get into the episode.

Todd Schrock 00:01:15 I'm here with Scott Bartnick, a co-founder and CEO of Otter Public Relations, talking about personal branding. So, Scott, why is personal branding important for doctors today?

Scott Barton 00:01:27 Hey, Todd. Personal branding is so critical as we continue to see reviews and honestly, just our presence change how clients come in and make their shopping decisions. So things like simple reviews, building trust, communicating who you are is critical when you want to bring in, especially a younger generation of people, because there's more opportunity for them to search and research, even there ever has been.

Multiple Speakers 00:01:53 So how would you define.

Todd Schrock 00:01:55 A strong personal brand for a physician? What does it actually look like?

Scott Barton 00:02:02 Yes. So a strong personal brand honestly starts with reviews. It's building a simple presence of being good at what you say you're doing. So even better than word of mouth there is. My father actually owned the psychologist, and he has a small practice and a lot of his business outside of word of mouth, which used to be much bigger, comes in from just people googling, and they want a specific thing and they want in a specific region.

Scott Barton 00:02:25 So I know the way I shop is I'm looking for someone with good reviews who's close by, and if it's really important to me, I will start asking for referrals. But usually with doctors it's geo located, so there's not a lot of options, so they just need to be better than anyone in ten miles from them, which is a huge advantage compared to people that need to make national personal brands.

Multiple Speakers 00:02:45 So what are the first steps.

Todd Schrock 00:02:47 That doctors should take in starting to build their personal brand?

Scott Barton 00:02:52 Yeah, that's a great question. So I mean, the first thing is making sure that you're doing a good job. And I think that comes to those reviews. And as people come in that will help you build that personal brand and focus on that bedside manner and relationship. You don't really have to think PR you don't have to think about news, radio, TV. Those things come as you master the basis, which is just giving your clients a good experience. The next step of that, after you master kind of just having a good process and even making sure you're waiting time is low enough because you see bad reviews from that.

Scott Barton 00:03:21 Then you focus on building that review funnel. So having people come in and have to have a good experience, even if just an automatic text asking how did we do? Can you leave us a review focused on that specific doctor? From there is really where you can start amplifying your brand by focusing on social media and SEO and PR interviews like this one to really build your presence. So that way people are not only just going in a region, but now they're traveling for you. And that's what we see is a lot of those doctors that we help build personal brands like Doctor Ben Beckman. He has over 500 reviews, and people will travel significantly farther than that ten mile radius that I said to work specifically with that person. And same thing with my father's practice is typically you'd see someone travel only x amount of distance, but for him, people will drive 3 or 4 hours because he has a strong enough brand that they're willing to go work with someone that they know can get the job done.

Multiple Speakers 00:04:14 So how can.

Todd Schrock 00:04:15 Physicians differentiate themselves while still maintaining professional credibility and trust? I mean, you don't want to sound like, you know, the car dealers on, you know, on TV yelling and, you know, doing crazy stuff. So how do you do that while still appearing professional?

Scott Barton 00:04:31 Yeah, that's a great question. So that is one of the hesitations a lot of medical professionals have, especially around social media, is they're worried about turning off people saying something silly and getting canceled. And that is a real fear. And it does happen. I've seen it happen to doctors. however, most of the time if you're building that personal brand and you're being true to yourself and having a true identity, there will be a few people that don't want to work with you. But there are a lot of people that will, like I said, travel and want to work with you, so it depends on where you position yourself. But if you think about medical professionals that work with athletes, medical professionals that work with CEOs and executives, you can position yourself to be that leader and to work with your avatar of who you want to.

Scott Barton 00:05:13 The advantage of that is you're getting clientele that you actually want and the clientele that's willing to pay your rates. And so I think that's how you get out of that insurance game, too, is instead of having to deal with insurance or charging X amount, you can charge for the exact same thing because you have a better brand and you're known to do a really good job. You can charge ten x and that works with any business.

Multiple Speakers 00:05:34 So how important is it.

Todd Schrock 00:05:36 Digital presence, whether it's a website, a blog or social media for building your brand?

Scott Barton 00:05:42 Yeah. So just in general, it's always critical. I have obviously all social media, YouTube, Instagram. I have a personal website that's not really active, but people can still find me and it will direct them to where I want them to go. I think that a lot of doctors should start doing that, especially a lot of times if they don't own the practice, it's usually the practice has reviews, but also the doctor has reviews. And even if they own the practice, usually the practice itself will still have reviews and individual doctors.

Scott Barton 00:06:09 If you think of it like doc, doc, and even Google, there's usually the specific doctors named that will also receive reviews, almost as if that doctor is a product. And so building that personal brand and owning as much of those keywords is really critical. It's not only for building and growing, but it's also for a little bit of defense. Because if you get one negative experience, it could be as simple as, you know, I had to wait five minutes extra in the waiting room and I was really upset. Has really nothing to do with the doctor, but that can, if you only have 1 or 2 break like reviews, and you don't really have a strong brand that can severely damage your trust because people just see, you know, a 50% star rating and they don't see anything else. And they're like, okay, next doctor. And I know that's how I shop, especially if I haven't been referred or found that doctor, because if I maybe referred, then I'd look deeper and say, okay, there's, you know, it's there's two reviews.

Scott Barton 00:06:57 One of them just because they waited too long. So I'm I'm willing to deal with that. So that's part of the advantage of it's building that remote of online reputation management that will build kind of help your brand stay up longer.

Todd Schrock 00:07:11 What platforms or content types was video writing, podcasts, etc. tend to work best for physicians trying to expand their visibility?

Scott Barton 00:07:20 Yeah, so it really depends on what you're looking for, whether it's new clientele, whether it's just personal branding, whether it's authority. each one is handled differently if it's just new clientele. That's honestly the simplest. It's having a clean website with a way for someone to book account, like book with an online calendar, maybe pay it online, good reviews and then Google kind of keyword optimization SEO do you want to rank? So Google ads, things like that is really where you want to play if it's really just revenue driving. However, if you're trying to build that true brand, that's where social media and things really start to play a role. And as you build up this bigger fish net of your business, you're going to kind of start being.

Scott Barton 00:08:02 That's how you see yourself being booked out months in advance. It's it's just what level do you want to get to. And so it's all kind of related to the effort you're putting in.

Todd Schrock 00:08:11 Helping positions engage with their audience in a way that strengthens their brand.

Scott Barton 00:08:17 Yeah, I think storytelling through social media is the easiest way to engage at a mass level. And videos don't have to be they don't have to go viral. They don't have to be over complicated. Just grab your phone and tell a story. Walk through a scenario. Maybe as a physician you're having a personal injury or depending on what, where you're in. You have a health journey that you're suffering with, or you're maybe your family that they're willing to share. you can start telling these stories. obviously there's HIPAA requirements to make sure that you're you're following that, but you can start sharing information to educate people. And the goal a lot of times with business is not to get millions of views. It's to have something that kind of helps you rank a little bit on Google and things like that.

Scott Barton 00:09:00 But then when someone finds you, they can learn more about your identity. So even if you're posting one video a month, but you're being honest and organic and just kind of being real, people get an idea of who they're going to talk to ahead of time, which helps them make a decision whether they want to go work with you, especially if they have maybe. I mean, once you're sick, there's really no other thing that matters. So if they have a major problem, it gives them a little extra trust to work with you.

Multiple Speakers 00:09:28 Say, Keith, that's all well and good, but what if someone is looking for more clinical information?

Multiple Speakers 00:09:33 Oh, then they want to check out our sister site, Patient Care Online. Com the leading clinical resource for primary care physicians. Again that's patient care online. Com.

Todd Schrock 00:09:47 So what are some common mistakes doctors make when trying to grow their brand.

Scott Barton 00:09:53 I think trying to maybe be too much into the trends and try to go viral. I don't think that that's necessary.

Scott Barton 00:10:02 Obviously, for certain doctors, it definitely can be. One of our clients is LA by Mike. It's not medical, but he's a lawyer, but he doesn't practice law. So a lot of his material is really engaging, really storytelling. But he's become a professional social media personality. He's more of a celebrity and he takes his referrals and refers them out. So that's what he wants to focus on. And he's really, really good at it. And so he enjoyed that more than practicing law. And I'm sure he still does some things on the back end, but it he gets to be a little bit more silly because he's not worried about trial being a trial attorney. He's not worried about that being used against him. And I would say the same thing with a doctor is if you really want to be more of someone who's referring you out and getting millions of leads, which for most practices is completely unnecessary and also wouldn't work if someone's in California, you really just need to focus on getting that that true identity, helping Explain pain points.

Scott Barton 00:10:57 I know for personal trainers or physical therapists, walking through different injuries, I there's a couple I have some injuries that in the past where I would just Google and find a physical therapist and they had really good content and I would go see them, but they weren't local. So I would say that that does help them dramatically in their local region, because obviously they're probably considered one of the leaders in the space. And so that content is great for everyone and it's very professional. They're just walking how to solve a specific injury or how to at least mitigate that. And so I think as a doctor you can do the same thing. one of the things I struggle with is acid reflux. And so a medical professional, or maybe even a nutritionist could walk through holistic ways to help solve that without giving medical advice, and that would really be helpful.

Todd Schrock 00:11:42 Is there an example you can share with a physician who has successfully built a personal brand, and how it benefited their practice, or the impact they were having?

Scott Barton 00:11:51 Yeah.

Scott Barton 00:11:51 So the name I used earlier, Doctor Ben Fleischman, he the pain management doctor in New York, and he graduated med school in residency. He finished probably about a year and a half ago, and he already has 505 star reviews on Google, and it's pretty incredible. And I googled him. He does a couple of podcasts. He's done a couple of interviews, but most of it is just about building really good, client relations. And I actually gave him a call before I did this interview because I wanted to ask what he was doing specifically on the review side, because that's pretty impressive for anyone. And he said they all they do as an SME's after their treatment asking for the peer review. And he's focused on a really good client experience. And that comes from front of office to to back up office to billing. And so you need all of that because it's not there. Their experience is not just with that doctor. If they see a doctor and they love the doctor, but then they get billed what they weren't expecting, that leads to bad reviews.

Scott Barton 00:12:48 If again, I use the example of waiting too long in the waiting room, the staff when they walk in is rude. That all affects the perception of that doctor. So it's really important. But the advantage is and what we've seen is typically as people start getting really good reviews, people come in with a pre-positioned disposition to trust that doctor. So you're building that reputation of being good. So they come in saying, this doctor is great. So even if you have some quirks as a bedside manner, they're like, no, but this doctor like is awesome. So like let me just trust him. Versus if you have a whole bunch of bad reviews, they're going to come in with the exact opposite. They're going to come in saying, oh, I already not sure about this, doctor. I don't trust them. Maybe they're just gonna push meds on me. So that's where that brand and review really come in. They also help you dramatically grow your business.

Todd Schrock 00:13:35 How can a strong personal brand help a doctor extend their influence beyond the clinic, such as through speaking, media appearances or advocacy?

Scott Barton 00:13:44 Yeah, so a lot of the medical professionals that I've worked with in the past do personal branding.

Scott Barton 00:13:50 So they'll speak at medical events, they'll be on stage. They'll they'll work with other Businesses. A lot of the I like work with entrepreneurs, so typically the clients that we see have an entrepreneurial side in them, and really they're just finding ways to give back. Obviously, part of it is in the intent to grow their practice. I worked with a holistic medicine facility, and they were really focused on building their own cadence of kind of they would do blood work. They would see what nutrition you were missing, and then they would walk you through this plan to improve your health. And so there's so many different ways to build that brand and trust with just unique angles. But they brought in a lot of web traffic. So they ended up building out a supplement business from that, brand. And I actually consulted with them on the supplement side, I believe it was MD selective or something like that. But, they made a multi-million dollar supplement brand based on the protocols they were building for people who were suffering.

Scott Barton 00:14:50 And so it wasn't just the people they were seeing, but they were able to make it a national brand and kind of build clientele and other doctors that were following this protocol nationally who would subscribe and order their products and sell their products to their clients through the protocols they made. So they they did a lot more than what, just a doctor. What they do is they they built a brand and a protocol that people trust and follow. And I did it for a while. I had a pretty big impact on my life, and a lot of it was just really clean supplements and kind of lab work to make sure that you're, you're actually taking supplements that are making the impact to your life.

Todd Schrock 00:15:26 The things you mentioned earlier that I wanted to come back to, you mentioned, like getting a negative review. Should a doctor engage with that reviewer, like how should they handle a negative review?

Scott Barton 00:15:41 Yeah. So we do a lot with online patient management. And part of what you want to do with a review is the first thing that I do is try to figure out what happened and can we solve that.

Scott Barton 00:15:51 And it could be as simple as the wait time was too long. Then maybe the stack is the person to call very politely and they say, hey, I'm so sorry about the wait time. Like I saw a review. Obviously that's your opinion. You're more than welcome to leave it. We would love to comp X, Y, and Z, or we'd like to do this thing or you know, that visit whatever. If you're paying insurance, maybe 100 bucks we've actually already refunded. And I'm not sure what you're allowed to do in the medical space. I just this is more what we do with our clients is we take care of them. And so what we try to do is we don't ask them to then go change that review. Our hope is by taking care of them. They will change that review because they'll say, okay, they did this. But then, you know, they the company went ahead and made it correct. And you see that same thing with like Amazon reviews and things like that.

Scott Barton 00:16:32 A lot of times the company will obviously take a refund, but they'll give a credit. They'll give a $50 store credit. All these things go really far away to the consumer. So you just have to figure out what you can do as a business to implement that. Now the next thing is we try to do removal. So if we're not able to have a kind of normal conversation and solve the issue with the customer, we then look at terms of service for that platform, and we go ahead and say, okay. Based on, you know, terms of service, this is actually out of terms of service. A lot of times it's by naming a staff member by name, as simple as, you know, saying baron was X, Y and Z, and I really did not like that person X whatever. You're not supposed to do that on Google because Google's towards businesses and so you can really easily get those reviews removed. But when you do that, the thing that we coach on is if we help people get reviews removed or say, you need to now go solve this problem in your practice, otherwise it's just going to happen again.

Scott Barton 00:17:27 And so that's the critical thing. And that's how you build that long term brand. Because even if you are able to get something removed, your the word of mouth is still going to take off, especially if you're local. If you're a doctor and you have that ten mile radius.

Multiple Speakers 00:17:47 Hey there, Keith Reynolds here. And welcome to the P2 Management Minute. In just 60s, we deliver proven real world tactics you can plug into your practice today, whether that means speeding up check in, lifting staff morale, or nudging patient satisfaction north. No theory, no fluff, just the kind of guidance that fits between appointments and moves the needle before lunch. But the best ideas don't all come from our newsroom. They come from you got a clever workflow hack, an employee engagement win, or a lesson learned the hard way. I want to feature it. Shoot me an email at Kay reynolds@lifesciences.com with your topic, a quick outline, or even a smartphone clip. We'll handle the rest and get your insights in front of your peers nationwide.

Multiple Speakers 00:18:27 Let's make every minute count together. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next P2 management minute.

Todd Schrock 00:18:36 Should you actually respond under their review with some sort of apology, or should you just do a direct outreach?

Scott Barton 00:18:44 Yeah, so we typically don't at first if we aren't able to do the first couple steps. so either resolve it with the customer or get it removed. We'll wait about 60 days and then we'll respond. there's for some reason the algorithms don't necessarily like they won't remove necessarily if you've left a comment, which I don't exactly know why, but we've just found that. And that's the feedback we've gotten from kind of people we've worked with in the past, is you want to wait. The other thing is you can respond right away. So it's good to respond in some way. so you do want to respond eventually. Typically, like I said, we give it that 60 day window where we're trying to get it removed first and then we respond to that way. People are seeing that we're actively resolving it.

Scott Barton 00:19:28 And sometimes if we'll just put what we did to resolve it. So sorry for your experience. basically based on this, we did comp there, that person's X, Y, and Z. and we offer them a free service next time. And so for different practices that can be really easy. and very powerful because people will even then. I bought a product in the past on Amazon where it had mixed reviews, but I saw that if they didn't like the product view, they would take it back 100% and they give you a $50 credit. And so I was like, that's completely risk free. As a matter of fact, if I don't like it, I will end up making money. And I had to believe in the product and I liked it. So it was just what we're trying to do is reduce the risk of getting the outcome that we want. And that's in medical or any business as well.

Todd Schrock 00:20:11 What are your thoughts on like sometimes you'll see a a negative review and you see a very nice response under it.

Todd Schrock 00:20:20 You know, we're so sorry you had this experience. We're trying to resolve this. But then as you go down the reviews, you see exactly the same response word for word to every, you know, negative review. It almost looks like it's more automated than, than personal. Is that something to avoid?

Scott Barton 00:20:40 Yes. So you don't want to automate with AI? It's actually really easy. There's tools that will sit in and automate your review responses. I don't personally recommend that because you're already unless you're getting thousands and thousands of reviews and it's just unmanageable. And most of them are good and you get a few negative ones. If you are have 50 reviews and every once in a while you get a negative review. That should be a really custom response. It should say what the business should share, what they've done to resolve it, in my opinion, or if they can get in touch with that person in that message, say, we're so sorry we weren't able to find that your client records. We would love to resolve this with you.

Scott Barton 00:21:15 Please reach out to, you know, help at X company and we will make sure to get you a full refund and do X, Y, and Z. So those things go a long way as especially as a consumer. And most of the time consumers usually read the one star reviews, which I typically don't. I look for the three star reviews because that's usually where people are giving honest opinions. I think one star is they something triggered them in a way, and they're just their predisposition to be very negative. that's not really where I see true experiences. It's usually those 2 to 3, sometimes even four, where you're getting more details about what actually happened. I usually avoid the ones and the to fives.

Todd Schrock 00:21:54 Is there anything else you think doctors should know about boosting their personal brand that we haven't discussed?

Scott Barton 00:22:01 Yeah, I think it can be overwhelming building a personal brand. What I would say is pick one platform and build there to the point where it's starting to bring in business credibility, trust, authority, whatever metric you're looking for.

Scott Barton 00:22:13 Once you have enough success there that you feel like it's valuable, if you want to move on to the next platform, you can. So what I would recommend starting with is, like I said, reviews pick one platform, whether that's Google, doc, Dot or it's something different, and start building that presence and building those reviews. So that way you can have trust. And then once maybe as a doctor, you probably only need 1520 reviews that are five star reviews to start having that traction. And then from there, if you're like, okay, now I'm starting to get some traction. People are coming to my business from Google. Maybe at that point you would either skip review platforms to think something like doc, or you would start building that personal brand. But I would definitely start with reviews and just that credibility behind my name.

Todd Schrock 00:22:57 Very good. Scott, thanks for joining me.

Scott Barton 00:22:59 Yeah, it was a pleasure being here. Thank you.

Austin Luttrell 00:23:14 Once again, that was a conversation between Medical Economics managing editor Todd Shryock and Scott Bartnick, co-founder and CEO of Otter PR.

Austin Luttrell 00:23:21 My name is Austin Littrell and on behalf of the whole medical economics and physicians practice teams, I'd like to thank you for listening to the show and ask that you please subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. Be sure to check back on Monday and Thursday mornings for the latest conversations with experts sharing strategies, stories, and solutions for your practice. You can find us by searching off the chart wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like the best stories that Medical Economics and Physicians Practice published, delivered straight to your email six days of the week, subscribe to our newsletters at MedicalEconomics.com and PhysiciansPractice.com. Off the chart: A Business of Medicine podcast is executive produced by Chris Mazzolini and Keith Reynolds and produced by Austin Littrell. Medical Economics, Physicians Practice and Patient Care Online are all members of the MJH Life Sciences family. Thank you.