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What Does Your Presence Online 'Say' About Your Practice?
Eye care professionals across the country are re-thinking the image of their practice via their websites and discovering new ways to
engage with patients (and prospective patients!) via social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. Clearly, it’s never been more important
to reconsider your presence online. What does your site say about you?
CLICK, Vision Monday's e-newsletter, continues to be an essential resource in its twice-monthly briefings to ECPs about web technology
and Internet developments.
Past articles, featuring specific examples, programs and tips that you can use today, are available in our
CLICK Archive.
So, too, are dozens of Cool Tools and important Sites to See which offer content and resource ideas for your sites and your social
media activities. The easy-to-access Archives are located under the
CLICK button at
www.visionmonday.com.
Have you tried something new on your website or launched a special social media campaign?
Tell us about it and we'll consider it for an upcoming feature in CLICK.
—The Editors
E-Marketer Provides Insights to 'Digital Touchpoints'
E-Marketer, a great resource about trends in the online world, recently posted a report which provides many interesting insights into how
brands, retailers (and health care professionals) need to be mindful of targeting consumers before they shop, once they’re in-store and after
they’ve been there in order to secure customer loyalty in today’s digital media world.
The report, called
“Shopper Marketing Insight: Embracing Digital Touchpoints,” shows that as digital media and technology have grown
more pervasive in consumers’ lives, they play an increasingly significant role in decision-making at each phase of the shopping process.
“Consumers’ daily interactions with digital media, technology and content have dramatically altered the shopping experience,” said Tobi
Elkin, eMarketer writer/analyst and author of the new report. “Retailers and consumer products brands must rethink and refine shopper marketing
initiatives and incorporate digital elements throughout the shopping process.”
In the pre-shop phase, that means providing cash-strapped and time-starved consumers with tools and resources to get the best deals and make the
shopping experience as easy and convenient as possible. US shoppers are already using a variety of digital shopping tools, according to research from
the In-Store Marketing Institute, which brands and retailers should leverage by tailoring communications according to specific consumer need states
and shopper demographics.
While in-store digital technologies and media will play a significant role, mobile is the linchpin for next-generation shopper marketing.
Location-based check-ins and in-store mobile are starting to become significant for both retailers and brand marketers. And in the post-shop
phase brands and retailers should find creative ways to encourage shoppers to share their stories on social media. “Since there are more
points along the path to purchase than ever, retailers and brand marketers must continuously iterate and experiment with persuasion tactics and
engagement strategies online, offline, in-store and via mobile,” said Elkin.
The full report is available for purchase at
e-Marketer’s
site.
But even the top-line and summaries provide much food for thought for pro-active marketers in the eyewear and vision care arenas.
Need Info to Post? AllAboutVision.com Launches Eye Health News Feed for Facebook Pages
SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Educating patients about eye health topics just got easier with a newly launched news feed from
AllAboutVision.com. Eye care practitioners can
use the feed to automatically post breaking eye care news to their Facebook page.
 Each
week the news feed will feature two or three patient-friendly news items on eye health topics as they are added to
AllAboutVision.com, a leading provider of online patient education. The feed will not include any product news, and each item will link
to the full story on the site. Practices with Facebook pages can set up automatic wall postings from the feed through Facebook
applications.
“Using AllAboutVision.com's educational posts helps keep our Facebook page up to date and informative,” says Burt Dubow,
OD, FAAO, a private practitioner in St. Cloud, Minn., and AllAboutVision.com Editorial Board member. “And it lets us concentrate on
creating posts that are specific to our practice.”
Said Ron Walker, AAV publisher, “This is one of the tools we’re implementing to help eye care practitioners in their efforts to
educate patients.” Detailed instructions are available for adding the Eye Health News Feed to a Facebook page, or an
AllAboutVision.com staff member can add the feed at no cost to the practice. For details, and to see a feed-enabled example Facebook
page,
click here.
Online since 2000, AllAboutVision.com is an independent resource providing consumers with hundreds of pages of trustworthy,
up-to-date information on vision correction and eye health. The site recorded a record over 12 million unique visitors in 2010,
as measured by Google Analytics. The site is a National Silver Sponsor of Optometry Giving Sight, and is certified by the Health on the
Net Foundation.
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This is a new book that offers very pragmatic advice for how to handle the opportunities – and, sometimes, the problems – that can emerge
for your business via social media. “Every customer is a potential reporter, and every employee is a potential spokesperson,”
write the authors, who also note, “Business has changed more in the past three years than in the prior 30. But it’s not a threat, it’s an
opportunity.“ The NOW Revolution is described as a book that doesn’t show you how to “do” social media. Instead, it
outlines how you can retool your organization to capitalize on real-time business issues.
Why do onions make you cry? What’s the allure of blue eyes? These and other serious and not-so-serious information points are part of the
clever and interesting material posted at Mental_Floss, described as the place “Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix.” A magazine,
newsletter and website, Mental_Floss also described as “an intelligent read, but not too intelligent,” with puzzles, quizzes, special how-to
features about science, culture, nature and more including “Daily Flossings” such as Ultimate Brain Challenge and the Morning
Cup Of Links.
Giorgio Armani Frames for Life
Following the launch of the print campaign and the interactive
online project, the Giorgio Armani eyewear collection is now the subject of a new
traveling street
initiative: Frames of Your Life. Last fall, in Milan, Paris, London and Berlin, four young and cool photographers and trendsetters captured
images of people on the streets who, just for a moment, become lead players for, and interpreters of, Giorgio Armani eyewear-style in
front of the camera. The result is a digital photography book presenting Giorgio Armani eyewear as seen through the lenses of these
international bloggers and photographers - a showcase of the street looks they found the most stylish and representative of the
Giorgio Armani aesthetic. Consumers can vote for their favorite shot and share it on Facebook.
Connect2Hire
Local Eye Site, the recruitment specialist
for the eye care profession, features
Connect2Hire which is a proprietary technology that allows LES customers to
query the LES database of email "opt-in" ECP job-seekers (almost 12,000 of them now). The query allows the recruiting organization to focus
their search on professionals with the types of experience, training and certifications they are looking for in a candidate. After
conducting the database search, the job-poster may send one group email that automatically attaches the copy from their job posting, plus
an introductory note. In less than five minutes, a job poster can send one email to thousands of job seekers that have the criteria
they are looking for in a candidate.
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