7 Reasons Why Doctors Should Blog

Blogs have emerged to be the best tool for media presence, especially for Doctors. Doctors can generate various advantages by blogging. 

International Reach

Right from your desk you can reach international audience just by blogging, may be once a week. You can blog about a case, a preventive strategy, common myths or just about yourself. Check this blog on dentistry for a sample: Discovering Dentistry.

Build Trust And Reputation

A doctor's hard work and intellectual skills remain confined to the OT, conferences and journals. By blogging about your cases you can have an online showcase for your patients. This will help build trust and enhance your reputation.

Creates Medico-Tourism Opportunity

Since the blogs have no geographical limits, they are bound to enhance your chances to get patients from abroad. Put your appointment and contact details in the sidebar along with the modes of payment. If your cases have build a sufficient trust, chances are bright that tomorrow you get an appointment call from abroad (Superbug theory is baseless). Good blogs get noticed by technorati or other blog ranking engines. A sample of good technorati authority is here.

Live Testimonials

Satisfied patients can write comments on your blog post and it will serve as testimonial for your excellent skills and services in your field. Of course you can choose which comment to display.

Roll Out Your Own Journal

Why not be an Editor and have an online journal / magazine of your own. You can do it alone or if you have a group of like minded docs you can form a great blog. Many blogging platforms allow multiple authors for the same blog e.g. blogger, posterous etc.

Lead A Social Cause

Blogs are a perfect tool for creating awareness and leading a social cause. Suppose you are a cardiologist and want to promote "healthy habits for heart" or you are  a dentist and want to lead an "anti tobacco campaign" then blogs are best. You want publish your camps, lectures, daily counseling in parks or any other activity related to your social campaign, then go blog, go!

Some Extra Earnings

Last but not the least, you can earn some cash depending on the popularity of the blog. Since doctors blogs are niche blogs, the payments are highly rewarding. Companies related to medicine and medical technology are dying to have a proper spot to display their ads. There are various ways of monetizing your blog. You can go for Pay per click, pay per thousand impression, Display ads etc.

If you tried earlier and found it difficult to get started, here is the easiest way to do it. Just read How To Create A Blog In 5 Seconds Flat ? 
If you have a blog just let me know in the comments below. If you have tried it but there was some hindrance then also write it down here. Let me try if, I may be able to help you out.

Watch Out Next Week

Why Doctors Will Find Posterous As The Easiest Blog Service ?

Now You Too Can Analyse Your Blog Traffic Like A Pro

Hit counter on a website used to fascinate me, when I first came in touch with internet in 1996. Now the things have changed. Things are way ahead of just counting hits. Today you can easily track the following through Google Analytics.

1. Amount of time visitors spend on your site / blog
2. How many pages have they viewed
3. What percentage have returned back
4. What is the percentage of new visitors
5. Which country and city do they come from
6. What is the ratio of search engine traffic
7. How many have come from your promoted links on twitter facebook etc
8. Which keywords did they search and ended up on your site / blog
9. Which keyword is responsible for greatest hit on your site
10. Which browser (FireFox, opera, Internet explorer) and which type of internet connection (broadband dsl, dialup) are they using

All this can be achieved through Google Analytics. Setting up Google Analytics code into your site is easy. Some of the techniques have been described earlier for you.

Google Analytics graph showing Number of visits, Number of pages viewed, Average pages viewed per visit, Bounce rate, Average time on site, Percent of new visits, Map of countries the visitors arrived from etc

The following posts may solve some of your problems.

• How To Add Google Analytics Code To Your Blogger Blog at Blogspot.com ?
• How To Add Google Analytics To Your Posterous Blog ?

Blogger Makes Photo Caption In Blogger Posts A Breeze

Blogger in draft introduced photo captions in blog post easy. The popbar that used to have image size and alignment options flaunts a new option, "caption". Just click it and start writing captions on the photos inserted.

What a trumpet ? Kidney blowing indeed.

This is how it appeared while inserting caption for the picture above.

How To Add Google Analytics To Your Posterous Blog ?

Adding Google Analytics to your Posterous is extremely easy.
The procedure of obtaining the code from Google Analytics is the same as that described in How To Add Google Analytics Code To Your Blogger Blog ? but the whole code need not be copied.

Obtaining Google Analytics Code
Surf your way to Google Analytics. Enter with your Google account. Fill the details into the form.
Type in or paste the URL of your blog with www . The http portion is already written there. Accept terms.
After this Google presents with the Analytics code, which is to be added to your blogger blog.
Copy only the portion that resembles this [UA-123456-1] excluding brackets.

Enter Posterous

Enter to your posterous and go to Settings tab

Scroll down at the bottom to see Google analytics box. Just add the UA-XXXX-Y code you copied from analytics and save the settings. It may take around 24 hours for the tracking to start and show up properly.

Related Posts:

1. How To Add Google Analytics Code To Your Blogger Blog ?

Universal Precaution

Before making any changes backup your blog and template. If anything goes wrong during the procedure, you will be able to get the blog back in function.

How To Add StumbleUpon Button to Your Blogger Blog

StumbleUpon button is also know as stumblet. It provides the readers an easy way to share and promote your site / blog on StumbleUpon. No doubt sharing on StumbleUpon makes a huge difference in traffic.

Get The Button

Kindly land your humble self to StumbleUpon. Scroll down smoothly to the bottom of the page. There you find a link Stumble Badges in the Tools And Services Section.

Click and scroll down again. A new link appears in the same Tools And Services section Discovery for your site.

Here lies the treasure chest containing buttons of various shapes and sizes. Grab the one that appeals you the most.

Select Blogger from the options presented at the next tab.

Copy the code provided in the code box.

Insert The Button
Open Blogger Dashoard - Layout - Edit HTML.Click on the checkbox labelled Expand Widget Templates. Search for the code data:post.body/ and replace it with the code above. Preview to see if it is working correctly. Save.

Universal Precaution

Before making any changes backup your blog and template. If anything goes wrong during the procedure, you will be able to get the blog back in function.

How To Add Google Analytics Code To Your Blogger Blog

Surf your way to Google Analytics. Enter with your Google account. Fill the details into the form.
Type in or paste the URL of your blog with www . The http portion is already written there. Accept terms.
After this Google presents with the Analytics code, which is to be added to your blogger blog.  Hit Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to copy the code.

In The Blogger

From the dashboard, Jump to Layout - Edit HTML tab. Find the phrase " /body" and paste the code just above it. Save changes in blogger. Now go to Google Analytics and save changes there as well. It will take around 24 hours for your tracking to start. Next day open the Google analytics account and click on the account link to analyze the traffic data presented to you.

How To Multiply Blogger's Blog Authors To 100X

Blogger permits 100 Authors per blog for group blogs. If you want to increase this count to 100x here is the trick to do it.

Through Email Posting
The first method is to activate the post by email. Go to Settings > Email and Mobile > Email Posting Address. Fill the name as desired. Pass this email address to you blog authors. If you want to keep a check, and review the posts before letting them get published, then check the radio button for Save emails as draft posts.

Through Posterous Autopost Feature
The second method is to try autopost from posterous. This requires some extra effort. Login to posterous and create a group blog. In the autopost feature select your blogger blog for which you want to increase the authors. Invite the extra authors to post on posterous. You have increased the authors from 100 to 100x now.

How To Backup Your Blogger Blog And Its Template On Your Hard Disk

Blogs without backup are like Airplanes without parachute. Make sure you have a back up of your blogger blog.
To keep a backup copy of you Blogger blog on your hard disk go to Settings > Basic > Import Blog. See the yellow circles in the screen-shot below. Click on import and give a meaningful name and date to the saved file. When ever you want to restore your crashed blog select the downloaded xml file and upload it.

To backup your template go to Layout > Edit HTML > Download Full Template. Save this file in similar manner. Kindly note that both the files (the blog backup file and the template backup file) are in xml format and do not have a comprehensible name. It is easy to get confused between the two so make sure you do have some marker as blog and template either in the file-name or in the folder name to identify them later.

How To Add Adsense Ads To Your Blogger Blog ?

The adsense ads can be added to blogger in two different ways. One is through  Blogger interface and the other is through Adsense interface.

Blogger Interface

Enter your blogger dashboard and choose the blog you wish to add the Adsense ads to. Select Monetize and you will automatically get three options, for sidebar and posts, only sidebar and only post. Try the option that most suits your blog. It will take some time for the ads to appear.

Adsense Interface

Login to Adsense by using a Google username /password. Got to Adsense Setup Tab > Adsense For Content. In this tab you find Ad Unit and Link Unit. For now Choose ad unit and click Continue.
This page provides you the options of choosing a size and colour. Depending on the place of the blog choose an appropriate size. Colours can be changed anytime. Just proceed. Later you will have choose an appropriate name for your ad channel and the code to be inserted will come up.
Insert this code in the HTML/ Text page element. It will take some time for the ads to appear.

How To Create A Blog In 5 Seconds Flat ?

Posterous is the quickest and easiest blogging platform. To create a blog open your email and go to compose new mail. In the subject line put the heading of your post and in the body of the message write down your content. You can also add pictures and videos if you want. Send it to post@posterous.com. Done.
You will receive back an email with the ling of your blog. Click to see your blog fully functional.

Customizing

The automatically generated URL may not be tasty enough, so if you wish to change it, go to the site posterous and change the URL according to your own taste.
You can visit my posterous blog to have an idea how it appears at drhamidraihan's posterous.