4 Reasons Every Medical Professional Needs to Be on Google+

There are many social networking sites out there. Many healthcare professionals are already promoting their practices on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Why should you use another social media platform like Google+?

Google+ is actually a very important social networking site for healthcare professionals. Here are some reasons that you will need to consider using the site.

Establish Credibility for Your Practice

Google+ is a great way to improve credibility with future patients. Many patients state that they evaluate the online presence of healthcare professionals to see how trustworthy they seem. Google+ is one of the sites that they look at. Your Google+ business profile is also one of the first things that will show up when somebody searches for your business.

You can also use your Google+ posts to help boost your reputation. You can use Google+ to verify authorship of any posts that you write and share them with your readers. This will help customers see you for the distinguished medical professional that you are.

Doctors that have a well thought-out  Google+ strategy will be able to brand themselves more effectively. Kevin Pho, a medical internist that writes for USA Today, said that the content that you put on Google+ will significantly impact your reputation with patients.

High Level of Interactivity

Last month, Shareaholic released its first report on the level of engagement of users on various social media platforms. The result showed that Google+ users were more engaged than users on every other social network except YouTube.

According to Shareaholic’s data, the average Google+ user spent over 188 seconds on a site after clicking a link from the social networking site, which was approximately 50% longer than the average time on site for both Facebook and Twitter. Many marketers also reported that they received more comments and shares on their Google+ profile than Facebook and most other social networking sites.

Site Projected to Be More Popular than Facebook

The user base at Google+ grew sluggishly in the first couple of years. However, the site’s traffic appears to be finally picking up. Many experts feel that the site will continue to grow in the coming years.

SearchMetric analyzed trends in social sharing between Facebook and Google+. According to their data, Google+ will be more popular than Facebook by 2016.

Increase Reach on Google

Organic SEO is one of the best ways to generate relevant leads that are likely to convert. Google+ is also a great way to boost your SEO rankings.

Sites that use Google+ tend to rank higher in the search engines, so you should consider setting up a profile on it. It is a good idea to make sure that your profile is well optimized and updated frequently.