Monitoring and managing your community hospital’s online reputation is extremely important and must be done to protect your brand.

Gone are the days of you leading all the conversations about your hospital. The consumer is king, and boy are they talking! Whether or not your community hospital is currently participating in social media or not (hopefully you are), people are talking about your hospital online — for better or worse.

Healthcare marketing blogger, Josh McColough, gave four great ways to monitor your hospital’s online reputation in his post, 4 Ways to Monitor Your Hospital’s Online Reputation:

1. Use Google Alerts to maintain awareness of references to your hospital on the web.

2. Be proactive and timely in responding to negative feedback on your hospital’s Facebook page or other social media sites. Be personal in your responses. Feel free to respond again, just to close the negative feedback loop.

3. Track what’s being said about your hospital on social media sites by using SocialMention.com.

4. Take it all in stride. Hospitals are lightning rods for criticism. The Internet provides an endless array of forums where consumers can vent. Consider the number of daily interactions your hospital has with consumers, think about the positives and focus on engaging your online users.

Read Josh McColough’s entire article, Our Hospital Has An Online Reputation?

Being proactive and diligent in monitoring the conversations taking place about your hospital gives you a stronger sense of control to better protect your brand, gives you the opportunity to address both positive and negative feedback and will give you insights into the thoughts of your consumers.

So, when it comes to protecting your hospital’s reputation online, maintaining constant awareness is a must!