A positive reputation is the backbone of a chiropractic practice – so what happens when a negative review or a viral news piece throws everything out of alignment? Nothing but a bad online image, poor patient acquisition, negative public perception, poor digital visibility, and more. In today’s digital landscape, a chiropractic business cannot grow without a strong online reputation. Reputation management for chiropractors is a crucial marketing strategy to stand out in the competitive healthcare industry.
Building a noteworthy reputation in the digital world is not just about receiving glowing reviews and achieving higher online ratings. It’s about promoting the excellent chiropractic care services they provide and building their patients’ trust and confidence.
The fact is – if your chiropractic practice is not properly visible online with a noteworthy reputation, you may lose a significant number of potential patients.
If you want to avoid that, explore the 10 best reputation management strategies tailored for chiropractors to strengthen your digital presence and build patient trust.Get ready to learn the secrets to achieving a stellar online reputation and witness your chiropractic practice thrive.
What Is Reputation Management for Chiropractors?
It is a strategic process to build, monitor, protect, and maintain a positive online reputation of a chiropractic practice. A professional can achieve their potential patients’ trust and transform them into loyal paying clients through effective reputation management.
From review collection and social media presence management to showcasing the positive aspects of a chiropractic practice, it covers every reputational requirement and beyond.
And the best part of it is that you can control what your prospective patients can see about your chiropractic practice when they search for it online.
Why is Chiropractic Reputation Management Crucial?
Digital reputation management for chiropractic professionals is no longer an option, especially in today’s digital world. It has become a necessity for professionals to maintain a strong position in the industry,
Think about it this way: Without a good online reputation, your chiropractic practice will be more likely to be invisible to your prospects. If there is a rising demand for your services, you can’t afford to take the risk of losing that many of your potential clients.
Effective reputation management will help your practice stand out in a booming industry and build a strong online patient base. Let’s have a look at why it is crucial for chiropractors.
- Serves as a Social Proof
The process requires you to collect reviews from your satisfied patients that you can promote across online channels. These positive user-generated contents will serve as social proof and encourage more patient acquisition as compared to personal recommendations.
- Showcases Professionalism
When you provide accurate business information through your online listings, it will significantly boost your chiropractic practice’s search engine ranking and patients’ trust in your expertise. Similarly, publishing high-quality content as a strategy of reputation management will position you as an expert in this field, reflecting your quality of care and professionalism.
- Boosts Local SEO
Do you offer chiropractic care services in a specific locality? If yes, proactive reputation management can boost your practice’s online rankings for relevant local search queries. Search engines like Google tend to rank fresh and relevant content higher in their local search results and increase the online visibility of the sources. You can drive exceptional foot traffic to your clinic if you implement impactful SEO reputation management strategies.
- Improves Online Presence and Visibility
Every reputation management effort will elevate your practice’s online presence and increase its visibility. A higher volume of positive reviews will influence potential patients’ visit your website, resulting in more inquiries and bookings. You can broaden your service reach by strengthening your reputation across social media platforms.
- Enhances Patient Acquisition and Retention
Chiropractors can improve their digital image and make their practice prominently visible online. It will attract new patients actively seeking the reliable chiropractic care that you offer. When they come across your chiropractic practice with a good reputation on the internet, they will be more likely to choose your service. Effective strategies also require you to respond to online reviews, through which you can ensure patient loyalty and engagement.
10 Best Strategies for Online Reputation Management Chiropractors Must Implement
Getting started with reputation management for chiropractors is not as easy as you think. You need to audit your practice’s current reputation to understand where it stands online.
A thorough audit of your practice’s reputation will help you know –
- Is it perceived positively by the online users?
- What has impressed the target audience the most about your chiropractic services?
- Is your chiropractic practice perceived negatively? If so, then why?
- What are the areas for improvement in your chiropractic services?
How to do it?
Search for your name on Google > check your profile on review sites > track the social media business page of your practice > track the negative reviews or social media comments
Now that you’ve completed auditing your online reputation, it’s time to implement the top 10 strategies to manage, protect, and maintain it for the long run.
Strategy 1: Deliver Exceptional Patient Care
The first and foremost strategy is to deliver exceptional care services for your potential and existing patients.
Why? This is the only factor that can ensure you receive a good number of positive reviews from your satisfied patients. This is something in your control! You can expand your team of chiropractic professionals and organize meaningful training sessions for them. Additionally, you can create a team for patient support to resolve queries and concerns.
Here are some factors to remember:
- You should focus on delivering the best quality chiropractic treatment services and offer personalized attention to every patient under your supervision.
- Ensure your patients receive a positive treatment experience from your clinic.
- Maintain the consistency in providing premium quality chiropractic care. It’s not just about the initial days until you achieve a good reputation!
- You must ensure that the appointment scheduling process is convenient for your patients.
Strategy 2: Create and Manage Your Online Business Listings
Visibility is everything for a chiropractic practice.
And for this, claiming a business listing on online directories is a must. Your business listings on Google, Yelp, and Facebook will be the first place where your potential patients will know more about your chiropractic practice and interact with your services.
Pro Tip: If you run a chiropractic clinic, it’s essential to claim a Google Business Profile. A 2024 Forbes report has revealed that Google holds a strong position as the most visited search engine with an impressive 85.1 billion visitors. It will help you make your chiropractic expertise reach numerous potential patients.
Let’s know about the top 3 major online directories where your chiropractic clinic must have an active profile.
- Google Business Profile (GBP)
Your GBP profile plays the role of your practice’s front door, which will provide an overview of your business and offerings to the online users. If you incorporate accurate and updated information into your GBP profile, it will even ensure your practice stands out in online searches for chiropractic queries.
In your GBP profile, you need to ensure that you add your business’s –
- Name of your clinic/practice
- Phone number
- Address
- Website URL
- Business hours
- Services it offers
- Photos and business descriptions
- Google posts to offer updates about events, discounts, or promotions
Follow the steps to create your chiropractic business’s GBP account.
Visit the official GBP site business.google.com > search for your chiropractic practice in the search bar > select your practice > click on ‘Own the business’ > select the option to confirm > select a verification method to complete your profile > follow the instructions to verify your profile through email ID, phone call, video recording, or letter.
- Facebook Business Page
You need to log in to Facebook with the email ID you generally use for your chiropractic practice. Fill out the sections of your business profile and incorporate a compelling description, business hours, and contact details.
If you enable reviews on your Facebook business page, your patients and followers will be able to share their experience of receiving chiropractic care from your clinic.
What to do with the business page? You can regularly share updates, photos, and videos related to your practice on your profile across social media platforms. Having a well-optimized business page on Facebook can help your practice reach a wide audience.
- Yelp Business Page
This platform publishes crowd-sourced reviews about various businesses. Here, customers can share their feedback about different businesses and services, while consumers can discover and connect to businesses of all sizes.
Just like any other review site, you need to add the crucial details about your chiropractic business to complete and verify your Yelp profile. Yelp allows you to advertise your services through the Yelp Ads feature and promote offers through the Yelp Deals feature.
Here are some steps to create your Yelp profile.
Visit the official site of www.yelp.com/signup > enter your business name and location to find your chiropractic business > select the ‘Claim This Business’ button at the bottom right of the page > enter your email ID and create a password to create a new profile if you don’t have an existing one > follow instructions and verify your profile through email or phone call > add your business photos and service information to complete the process
Strategy 3: Manage Your Online Reviews
According to Becker’s Clinical Leadership, nearly 75% of patients highly rely on online reviews when searching for a new doctor.
The above-mentioned sites are for receiving reviews from your satisfied patients. But the case is not like – all your patients will happily share their reviews even if you don’t ask them to do so. You’ve to ask them to leave positive reviews post-treatment and respond to every review you receive.
Managing online reviews is a huge part of online reputation management for chiropractors. This is a complete process! Let’s have a clear understanding of it.
- Collect More Reviews from Satisfied Patients
Yes, you’ve to collect reviews!
Without a nudge, even the most satisfied patients may not share their reviews. Thus, you have to ask for it. Here are some strategies to collect reviews from your satisfied patients.
- Send review requests – You need to send review requests to your existing patients who’ve just received a treatment service from your clinic.
- Add the link – We suggest that you provide a link to your preferred review site or QR code via email.
- Use Facebook – You can also leverage your Facebook page to ask your patients for their feedback. The more you ask for reviews, the more reviews you will receive from your patients! A Press Ganey report claimed that 84% of respondents are not likely to consider a doctor who is rated less than four stars online.
- Add website CTA buttons – Don’t forget to add a call-to-action button on your official chiropractic website, such as ‘submit a review’ or ‘leave feedback’ to encourage your existing patients to share their reviews.
- Display review request signs at the office – You can place review request signs in your office to invite the satisfied patients to leave reviews.
- Effectively Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews
How you respond to a review plays a huge role here.
It shows how you value your patients’ opinions. However, it’s a time-consuming task, especially for those who have to handle a large chiropractic clinic. Chiropractic professionals can seek personalized online review management services to handle their patient feedback like an expert.
If you want to manage your reviews on your own, here are some tips and tricks to handle positive and negative reviews.
For Positive Reviews:
- You can set up alerts for receiving new reviews, so that you can promptly respond to them.
- You must thank the reviewer for taking their valuable time to share their feedback.
- Someone mentioned certain good things about your chiropractic service? Don’t forget to include those specific points in your reply to showcase how mindfully you’ve read the review.
- Respond professionally to the reviews, but avoid disclosing personal patient information.
For Negative Reviews:
- Though it’s a negative review, you must thank the patient for sharing their experience.
- No matter whether the concern seems valid to you or not, you should acknowledge that the reviewer has experienced an inconvenience. You must express your regret as well.
- You can address your concerns in a professional and respectful tone.
- Offering a suitable resolution is the key to turning a negative review into an opportunity to win the patient’s trust back. Explain to them the action you’ve planned to take to resolve the issue.
- Things got out of your hand? Try to schedule an offline discussion with the patient via a phone call or email. You can also consider having an in-person conversation.
- Automate Review Requests
Sometimes, asking for reviews from patients every time they recieve any treatment service from your chiropractic clinic can be an uncomfortable task.
It’s the main reason why chiropractors send the review requests once or twice a year, resulting in poor review volume.
We’ve a solution for that!
You can proactively send review requests to your patients by automating the process. It will help you compete with your competitor chiropractic practices that have a noteworthy number of reviews across their review profiles.
How to do it? You can develop an in-house CRM (customer relationship management) system with a feature to automatically send review requests to the patients who’ve recently received chiropractic care services from your practice. You can set a time to schedule those requests (e.g., after 24 hours of completing the treatment process or after one week for the follow-up email).
What benefits can you expect? Automating the process will ensure a consistent flow of genuine reviews on popular review sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. A good number of positive reviews about a chiropractic clinic will also improve its search engine ranking and help new patients find it online.
Prevent Fake Reviews
- Do you know that an average of 30% of online reviews are considered fake or inauthentic?
We know, the situation is alarming!
However, the fact is, You cannot prevent spam reviewers from sharing fake feedback across online channels. But you can control your responses and effectively address those reviews.
Here are some tips to deal with fake reviews.
- Firstly, you need to determine whether a specific review is fake or just negative feedback.
- Secondly, you need to respond to those reviews in a specific manner if you’ve identified that review as fake.
- Thirdly, mention that you’ve no record of the reviewer as a patient and the treatment service he/she has received.
- Fourthly, if you think that the fake review can harm your clinic’s online reputation, you can report the review or flag it as inappropriate or spam to ensure its removal.
Sample Response to a Fake Review
“Thank you for sharing your concern with us. We’re sorry to hear that our treatment services didn’t meet your expectations. However, we would like to inform you that we have no information about you as a patient in our records. We request you to contact our patient support team at (phone number) or (email ID) to discuss the issue further.”
Strategy 4: Maintain NAP Consistency and Google Search Presence of Your Practice
Another effective strategy for reputation management for chiropractors is to maintain the NAP consistency and Google Search Console.
What is NAP consistency? NAP stands for name, address, and phone number of a business. Through the online directory listings, a business must provide these crucial details to its potential patients.
According to the Search Engine Watch report, 73% of consumers lose trust in a local business due to inaccurate information on business listings. So if you don’t want to lose your potential patients, you need to maintain consistency and accuracy in your business’s NAP details.
Here’s how you can maintain your practice’s NAP details:
- Submit your NAP details in reputable local directories, like Google Business Profile, Bing, and Yelp.
- If there are any changes in the details, you must update them across all your business listings on different platforms.
- Ensure the details are factually correct. Otherwise, it may confuse search engines and negatively impact your chiropractic practice’s ranking for relevant local search queries.
Strategy 5: Enhance Your Business Presence with a Robust Website
What is the first stop for your potential patients to search for more information related to your chiropractic services?
The answer is – YOUR WEBSITE.
If your website is not user-friendly and mobile responsive, it may leave a poor first impression on your visitors. It’s just like losing a business opportunity even before offering services. An outdated website may make your visitors leave your website without exploring it.
A website is your medium to attract qualified leads for your practice. The following are some factors you must remember while designing your chiropractic website.
- List your services – The chiropractic treatment services you offer must be properly highlighted on your website in a way that visitors can easily find the information.
- Showcase your expertise – In the ‘About Us’ page, you need to showcase achievements, certifications, years of experience, and professional achievements of the chiropractic professionals in your team. It’s important to establish expertise in the industry.
- Check the navigation – Always ensure your website is mobile-responsive and user-friendly. If the navigation is not up to the mark, your visitors may find it difficult to find the information they need.
- Feature testimonials – Received positive patient testimonials? Feature them in a dedicated page on your website to provide social proof.
- Incorporate relevant keywords – Perform keyword research to find out relevant chiropractic keywords and incorporate them into your website content strategically. It will improve your website’s visibility in the search engine result pages.
- Use images and videos – Add high-quality images and videos throughout your website to make the content more engaging for visitors.
- Add a blog section – A blog page reflects the knowledge you have as a chiropractic professional. It will help you boost your site’s SEO and drive organic traffic. Try to publish informative blogs on diverse topics related to chiropractic care.
Strategy 6: Leverage Content Power to Establish Authority
There are a lot of professionals in the industry who offer premium care services. What makes your practice stand out is how well you convey your practice and your brand value!
And, it can be done through high-quality content. Premium quality content is important for establishing a chiropractic business’s authority. Through the content, you can educate your potential patients and answer their queries. You can also provide useful insights related to chiropractic care.
Types of Content You Must Prioritize
Here are some major types of content that you must prioritize for your chiropractic practice.
- Blogs: We have already talked about why you must incorporate a blog page in your website. Try to cover a range of topics, such as the importance of chiropractic care, tips to relieve back pain, how one can maintain their spine health, easy exercises at home, and the like.
- Articles: You can also publish articles on your site with images and graphs. Articles are best for illustrating information. Make the articles easily shareable!
- About Us Page: This page is essential to showcase who you are working with. In this page, you can mention the expertise, work experience, and academic achievements of the chiropractic professionals in your clinic.
- Patient Testimonials: You can attach your patient testimonials to the home page of your website. You can also create a dedicated page for featuring your patient reviews and treatment success stories.
- Infographics: Consider creating infographics to provide comprehensive information about a complex topic.
- Comprehensive eBooks: This type of content plays the role of a valuable resources that offer patients an in-depth guide on different types of chiropractic topics.
Strategy 7: Thrive in the Social Media World
Social media reputation management is crucial!
There are many social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (previously known as Twitter) where your chiropractic clinic must have a good presence and reputation.
How can you use social media? Managing a social media presence is a strategy for reputation management for chiropractors that you must implement. Social media is a platform for healthcare facilities to showcase their expertise, share patient testimonials, and highlight success stories, building a positive reputation and trust within the community.
Do you know that 41% of people reported that social media influences their choice of a specific healthcare provider, doctor, or a hospital?
A strong social media presence can either make or break a chiropractic practice’s reputation. Here are some major types of content that you should consider posting on your social media business page.
- Create Engaging Videos – We suggest you create engaging and educational videos on diverse chiropractic topics to post on your social media page. Videos are a great medium to convey complex treatment procedures in an easy-to-understand way.
- Run Paid Ads – Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to run pay-per-click ads for promoting your services; you need to pay whenever someone clicks on your ad.
- Provide Health Tips – Many people will visit your social media business page after knowing about your chiropractic practice. Posting health tips can showcase your practice as a knowledgeable chiropractic resource and boost your social media engagement.
- Share Educational Content – Patients appreciate healthcare providers who share valuable information. It assures them that they will make an informed healthcare decision if they choose your chiropractic care. You can create educational content like ‘benefits of chiropractic care’, ‘tips for maintaining a healthy spine’, or ‘easy exercises to alleviate back pain’.
- Post Behind the Scenes – People love to engage with content that is not really related to professional requirements. Chiropractors can consider sharing a glimpse into their daily operations. They can introduce their team to show a welcoming environment for your potential patients.
- Prioritize Testimonial Promotions – You can capture stories from your satisfied patients to promote the quality of care you provide. Sharing these testimonials across your social media pages will serve as social proof and foster trust with your prospects.
- Use Trending Hashtags – Incorporating relevant trending hashtags with your social media posts can broaden your post reach.
Strategy 8: Consider Paid Searches for Instant Visibility
A surprising fact for you! Businesses can generate $2 for every $1 spent on Google Ads. You can leverage paid search advertising to build a strong online presence.
It’s a strategic marketing approach where you can bid on keywords related to your chiropractic services. When your prospects search for those keywords, your ad will prominently appear in the search results. It can drive targeted traffic to your website as well.
Have you recently started a chiropractic clinic?
Leveraging paid ads is the ultimate technique for you to get immediate exposure for your chiropractic practice. On the other hand, your organic search efforts can take months to deliver your desired outcome.
And the benefits of paid advertising?
- When your ads appear at the top of the search results, they will naturally attract potential patients.
- It allows your practice to target specific demographics and geographic factors, even the time of the day your ads appear.
- You can promote your chiropractic services and acquire new patients.
Strategy 9: Build Strong Connections with Happy Patients
Have you heard about repeat businesses?
When your existing clients repeatedly hire services from your business, it refers to repeat business. A significant number of business opportunities come from existing customers. And for this, you need to create a loyal, satisfied patient base.
Building a strong connection with your existing customers can ensure patient satisfaction and repeat business.
Apart from delivering high-quality services, you can ensure the following factors to build a long-term relationship with your existing satisfied clients.
| Follow-up Communication | You can send personalized emails to follow up with your existing patients who haven’t hired any treatment services from your clinic for a long time. |
| Loyalty program | Implement a loyalty program for those patients. You can offer incentives or treatment discounts on future services. It will encourage them to seek treatment services from your clinic in the future. |
| Special offers and discounts | Offer special discounts for your existing patients to keep them returning to you. |
| Feedback promotions | Promote their reviews across your online profiles to showcase how much you value their opinion. |
| Referrals | Create a referral program for existing patients. This means they can get discounts, exclusive perks, and other facilities if they refer your chiropractic service to others. |
Strategy 10: Monitor Your Reputation Regularly
Now that you know how to build and manage your online reputation, it’s time to know how you can monitor it regularly to prevent potential reputational damage.
This is the final step to perform online reputation management for chiropractors.
Let’s have a look at how you can monitor your chiropractic practice’s reputation online.
- Monitor Social Media: You can track your brand mentions, messages, the sentiment of your followers, and comments across social media platforms. You can also track whether discussions about your clinic in online forums and communities are positive or negative.
- Track Reviews: Chiropractors also monitor the reviews your practice has received through online channels, such as GBP profile, Yelp, and other industry-specific review sites.
- Track search engine results: Search for your clinic’s name online using search engines like Google and Bing, and track the search results to see how it appears online.
- Monitor Competitors: You can monitor your market competitors to identify trends and business opportunities. It will also help you understand the ORM tactics that they are performing to get the best results.
- Track sentiment and trends: You must analyze the valuable insights collected from social media, search engines, and other online sources to track audience sentiment, identify emerging issues, and the latest trends.
- Keep documentation: Always keep your documents and findings to track progress over time.
Here are some reputation management tools you must use to monitor your practice’s digital image.
| Tools | Purpose to Use |
| Google Alerts | Can set up Google Alerts for new reviews and online mentions Alerts you whenever there is a new review or mention across online channels |
| Sprout Social | A comprehensive social media platform that you can integrate with major review sitesOffers a unified dashboard to manage and respond to reviews |
| Mention | Monitors brand mentions online and online conversations across social media channels |
| Meltwater | Offers features to monitor social media Provides social listening features to track brand mentions across online news and blogs |
| Birdeye | An AI-powered platform to create and request patient reviews Can help in monitoring reviews from a single surface |
FAQs
Ans. Yes, you can if you want to seek professional guidance from an online reputation management team with proper knowledge and expertise. However, this is not mandatory. If you don’t have a budget limitation, you can hire a reliable agency. Such agencies have a team of skilled professionals with the experience of building and protecting the online image of various businesses. Partnering with such a team will always benefit your chiropractic practice and ensure it achieves your desired online reputation.
Ans. We often avoid replying to negative reviews because of the criticism. However, negative reviews allow you to identify areas for improvement in your chiropractic services. You can promptly respond to a negative review in a personalized way. Try to understand the reviewer’s concern and offer them a suitable solution. Always remember, you can regain your patients’ trust with your response. It will showcase your commitment to deliver the best possible chiropractic services for your patients.
Ans. We suggest that you check the reason for receiving those fake reviews. Every online review platform, like Google, Yelp, and Facebook, gives you the option to report a review or flag it as spam. It just needs you to tap on the three dots in the upper-right side of that specific review and click on the ‘Report’ or ‘Flag as inappropriate’ from the drop-down menu. Choose the reason and follow the prompts to report that review for removal from the respective platform.
Ans. Yes, you can host monthly events at your chiropractic clinic to engage with more prospective patients. Apart from events, you can host webinars, workshops, live Q&A sessions, and other interactive events. Such events are the best way to initiate direct communication with your prospective and existing patients.
Ans. Yes, you can claim your local business listings if you already have an account on the specific directory. You just need to log in with your credentials or search for your chiropractic clinic’s name. Click on the ‘Own this business’ or ‘Claim this business’ button and follow the prompts. Select ‘Manage now’ and choose a method like SMS, phone call, or email to verify your business.
Conclusion
Even if you provide the best quality chiropractic services for your patients, your practice requires a strong online reputation to thrive in today’s highly competitive scenario.
The above-mentioned online reputation management strategies will help you effectively build and manage your chiropractic practice’s digital image. This strategic approach will help you attract and retain more patients, establishing your practice as a one-stop destination for people’s chiropractic needs.
However, online reputation management for chiropractors is not a one-time task and requires proper skills. Chiropractic experts can consider hiring professional services from a renowned online reputation management agency.
