6 tips for managing physician bloggers

Our hospital's medical staff falls into two categories:

One: Physicians who unplug their office phones when they want to send in a fax; when a carrier pigeon is unavailable.

Two: Physicians who live and die by their iPhones.

Among these physicians is a core group of younger docs who are dedicated to contributing to our hospital blogs. Especially our cardiovascular blog. So much so that we cartoon-ized our most popular cardiologist for his column Ask the Cardiologist.

As enthusiasm and interest in contributing to our blogs builds among our medical staff, so does the responsibility for managing them. Our marketing specialist, who manages the physician blog posts, has come up with six tips to help you help your physician bloggers:

• Invite everyone. Offer all of your physicians the opportunity to contribute. Only a few will, but all should be asked.
• Offer a brief orientation about blogging. Some physicians may be enamored with the concept of "blogging," but they may not know what a blog really is. Physicians should be prepared to answer and respond to questions from readers.
• Inspire. Send links to recent medical news articles to get them thinking about potential blog topics that are popular with consumers.
• Talk about the tone. While physicians might want to contribute to the Journal of the American Medical Association, be clear that the blog should be written for 5th graders—not medical residents
• Say 'thank you.' Always remember to share the web stats with physicians. Discuss how the stats are presented, what it means, and how they might be able to drive traffic with future posts.
• Avoid TMI. Physicians shouldn't use the blog to answer specific and personal medical questions about a patient, due to liability issues.

Do you have any tips you'd like to share?

Josh McColough is the marketing communications and PR manager at Sherman Health. You can read Josh McColough's blog here.

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