Facebook Finally Files for IPO
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In case you missed it earlier this week, Facebook has finally filed for their initial public offering. The company filed to raise $5B (as in billion-with-a-B) but optimistically hopes to raise as much as $10B when it IPOs in the next few months. This would dwarf the largest Internet-IPO of all time, which was the $1.9B Google raised in 2004. And, it would give the 7-year old company a value of as much as $100B. (Not bad for the 27-year old son of a dentist!)
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Facebook Timeline Imminent
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Facebook announced plans to impose a mandatory upgrade to their new timeline theme to all users within the “next few weeks.” So, by the end of February, your profile will be updated to timeline whether you want it or not. The timeline theme has been available to users since late last year, but it has been an optional upgrade – until now.
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Google+ 90M Patients
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Google recently announced to investors in their quarterly earnings call that they had reached over 90M users on their Facebook-competitor, Google+. They went on to announce that Google+ users “are very engaged with [Google] products – over 60% of them engage daily.” But wait, before you do the math that would lead you believe there are 54M people a day using Google+, note that they stated this number with regard to their products.
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Search+ Your Patients
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We reported last month on how Google had begun including Google+ pages in their search results. This week, they took it a giant leap further with the introduction of something they call “Search, plus Your World.”
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2012 Resolutions for Your Practice
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The new year is officially here and with it come plenty of predictions & resolutions. We’ve become a big fan over the years of Dr. Larry Emmott and his blog on technology and we love his delightfully witty post on what (not) to predict for 2012. Having spent the past few years as change-agents in the healthcare space, we recognize these anti-predictions are all too often true. Still, our tireless optimism and careful insight recognizes that more doctors do see the light every year when it comes to using the web to grow their practices. So, here are 5 simple resolutions to get your practice on track for a great 2012…
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Google+ +625k New Users a Day.
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Something interesting is happening in social networking. We all know Facebook is the king of the social networks. It has over 800M users and, when it makes it’s initial public offering in 2012, will likely be the largest IPO since Google. But, don’t count that old-fashioned search-engine out just yet…
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Facebook Timeline Deadlines
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Facebook let developers take a look at their new ‘Timeline‘ layout earlier this year. Timeline presents your pictures and activities on Facebook as chronological story in order to present a more complete picture than simple, immediate updates. Now that over a million users have declared themselves “developers” in order to check it out early, Facebook has finally launched Timeline to the public this month. Right now it’s still opt-in, meaning your profile will remain unchanged until you select the option to update your profile to Timeline. That will, however, not always be the case as Facebook will begin automatically updating users’ profiles in 2012.
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Google+ Your Practice
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Google finally started allowing doctors to setup Google+ Pages for their practices this week. While many businesses were denied the ability to utilize Google+, some doctors were already utilizing a Google+ profile since they could set it up under their own name (which is often used as their practice name). But, now that business-specific features have been launched, there’s a lot more you can do for your practice with Google+.
Facebook Upgrades Your Security
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Facebook announced new security features for their 800M+ users this past week. As part of last month’s National Cybersecurity Awareness campaign, they shared that they stop around 600k unauthorized logins every day. Since many people now use their profile as sort of online passport, the need for enhanced security has become increasingly important. Naturally, since Facebook wants to ensure that their users don’t have to worry about having their accounts hacked, they’re releasing a couple new features over the next few weeks.
Facebook and Your Golden Rewards…
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In between the pithy comments from one of our favorite comedians & the seemingly endless supply of champagne, ‘The Social Network’ film based on the rise of Facebook managed to score no less than 4 awards at last evening’s Golden Globe Awards. With all the press (Hollywood Foreign, and otherwise), we’d have thought that Facebook would be a foregone conclusion for any practice by now. But, we’re still always a bit amazed that this isn’t always the case…
For example, we spent this past week sharing some insight with doctors at a marketing conference in the middle of the American heartland. We were glad to see that a number of doctors had already setup a Facebook page for their practice. Still, a majority of the doctors were noticeably frightened at the idea of using Facebook for their practice. We dug a bit deeper to find out why, and what we found was just a case of most doctors not being aware of how Facebook really works. So, let’s dispel the 2 most common misconceptions that had doctors scared to use Facebook.
“I don’t want my patients seeing everything about my personal life.”
You can configure Facebook to keep everything private if you’d like – down to making your personal profile invisible to all of your patients. Then, you can setup a public-facing fan page with only the most professional of content. Don’t believe us? Anybody who can find & send a friend request to the profile of a ‘Doc Haves’ gets a free month of DoctorBase service.
“I don’t have time to manage & post status updates 5x a day.”
You’re completely right, your time should be spent helping patients. That’s why it’s important to understand that you don’t even need to have a Facebook page (much less update it all day long) to get new patient referrals from Facebook. Through a tool called Facebook Connect, a site like DoctorBase can enable your patients to do all the work for you by referring their friends & family through their own Facebook profiles. Genuine word-of-mouth referrals without lifting a finger or even visiting Facebook.com yourself!
Don’t worry – Facebook isn’t the privacy headache or time-suck that many believe it to be. Rather, it’s an incredibly powerful tool to grow your referrals with ease.
Want to also reach patients on the Google? We’re extending our offer of setting up an advertising campaign (with some of Google’s own money) for your practice until the end of the month. Find out how at:
http://doctor.doctorbase.com/adwords-holiday
Facebook Tops Computer and Big Screens…
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If you hadn’t already heard the news, Facebook is a pretty big deal. So big, in fact, that a sensationalized movie about Facebook, The Social Network, came in #1 at the box office over the weekend by bringing in around $23M from movie-goers.
While the box office revenues are yet another testament to the power of Facebook, this number is still dwarfed by the actual company’s $12B valuation; which is further minimalized by the secondary market trading of private stock which puts their street valuation at closer to $30B.
Still, many doctors are still in doubt about whether Facebook is just a fad; and whether utilizing Facebook for you practice is worth the time and energy. What’s really interesting is that we’ve encountered this same hesitancy before. It’s uncanny how around 10 years ago, doctors were telling us that their marketing budget would keep going to the Yellow Pages because nobody was convinced that the Google was going to amount to much. Hopefully, we’ve all learned from the past so that we don’t end up repeating? Get on Facebook now, while you’re still ahead of the curve and can leverage it for your practice.
Have questions about Facebook? Trying to figure out how to use Social Networking? Want to learn more about making Facebook work for your practice?
Get educated – join us for a free webinar this Thursday at 12p PDT by RSVPing here:
http://www.DoctorBase.com/webinars
