As we close the books on 2011, it’s worth taking a look back at this amazing year.

For starters, Avvo underwent some cool changes this year.  Our medical offerings really gained prominence, with tens of thousands of doctors signing up and dozens of large hospitals and clinics partnering with us.  We were asked to speak at multiple medical conferences and inked many deals to power “Top Doctor” lists based on the Avvo Rating.  Pretty cool.

We also focused our product much more on Q&A this year.  Even though Q&A is all the social media rage right now, we have been at it since 2007 and this year our Q&A forums reached 800-pound gorilla status by answering hundreds of thousands of questions for people navigating their legal and health issues.

We also launched two new blogs, Lawyernomics and Mamanomics, both intended to give some of our biggest power-users even more tools to help in their businesses and at home.

The beauty of all of this “new” stuff is that it builds upon and enhances those things that have historically made Avvo great.  The Avvo Rating; our industry-leading professional directories; Avvocating; our legal marketing webinar series; our thoughtful contributors and supporters LIKE YOU. All boats rise as Avvo learns from helping more consumers and professionals meet, communicate and work together.

So thank you everyone for helping make 2011 a great year.  Whether you advertise, answer questions, post guides, vote and comment on content, or simply have a robust Avvo profile, thank you for everything you do.  We are honored to help power your practice.  We are honored to partner with you.

May our partnership continue to prosper in 2012 and beyond.

Happy Holidays!

Mark

I usually write this time of year to remind everyone to update their Avvo Profiles because our annual Avvo Rating update goes into effect at the end of each calendar year.  Well, we’re changing this up a bit because we have heard that December is the worst time to be updating an Avvo Profile due to all of the year-end tasks that so many professionals must deal with.

Because we are here to make your lives easier, not harder (at least for those that are well-behaved), going forward we will do our annual Avvo Rating update at midnight on June 30th each year.  This will hopefully be a saner timer for everyone to focus on their Avvo Profiles and making sure they are up to date.  It will also give you more time to call and yell at us if your rating goes down. :-)

Thanks,

Mark

Reasons this email made my day:

1.  This is a retiree-aged lawyer who gets social media.  That is truly the exception.

2.  He sees value in helping people.

3.  He takes the time to say "thanks."

Emails like this make us all at Avvo feel so fortunate to do what we do.

Mark

Our sincerest condolences go out to the family of Joseph C. McDaniel.  Some of you may recall that I wrote about Joseph in August, praising his marketing approach.  Joseph passed away unexpectedly last month, and I was so sad when Jenny, his Avvo account manager, gave me the news.

Joseph was a big Avvo fan and a friend.  He reached out to me a couple of years ago saying that he loved Avvo and, since that time, we checked-in with one another periodically.  I will miss hearing from him.

I realize that all of our time is limited; but when one of the good ones hits the door, the room feels a bit emptier.

Mark

I was looking at Phoenix bankruptcy lawyer Joseph McDaniel’s Avvo profile today and I got a good chuckle from his “About Me” section.  It says:

I’m the world’s most boring man.

How boring am I? My personality is so anti-magnetic I can’t carry credit cards. I have been known to induce narcolepsy by walking through a room.

When I was a kid, I read comic books, and wished for superpowers like super-strength, super-speed, or the ability to fly.

As it turns out, my super power is exactly the correct one for my profession as an Arizona bankruptcy attorney.

Being super-boring is helpful in dealing with terrified clients; they calm down almost immediately when they are fighting to stay awake.

And being super-boring is helpful when I’m dealing with very angry creditors; they forget to be angry when they’re dropping into a soporific state, and then they can think rationally, and decide whether they want to win, or they want more money under my suggested deal. More money always wins, when a large creditor is bored enough to be economically rational.

This seemingly whimsical snippet of Joseph’s Avvo profile is really quite brilliant.  While many lawyers have probably already scoffed at it, for his *target audience* it is spot on.  It adds levity and humanity to a potential client who has already lost a lot.  It basically says, “Let’s all calm down.  I have this bankruptcy thing so wired that we can joke about it a bit.”   

While it is surely not the only way to market a bankruptcy practice, I’ll bet it is highly effective in the highly stressful bankruptcy world.  I would be curious to know if Joseph has had prospective clients mention his self-description when contacting him.

Mark

икони

Whether you are a doctor, lawyer or just have a beating heart, you must read this book.  At a minimum, it is a fascinating intersection of medicine and law and, at a maximum, it is one of the best books ever written regarding the intersection of science and humanity.

Without giving too much away, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks focuses on HeLa cells, which are arguably more fundamental to doctors than the ABC’s.  These cells originated from a tumor biopsy from Henrietta Lacks’ cervix in 1951.  Without her family’s knowledge, her cultured cells grew to infamy and ubiquity by (i) being the first human cells to sustain outside the body, and (ii) replicating at an astounding rate.  With the combination of (i) and (ii), the modern cell-production industry was born.  You might call Mrs. Lacks the mother of cellular research and its evolution into genetic research.

The book is fantastic in that it objectively explores the areas of medical ethics, patient consent, privacy, race and lawsuits relating to all of the foregoing.  The author, Rebecca Skloot, not a doctor or lawyer, weaves all this together elegantly by bringing to the forefront the Lacks family and their human struggles.  It is a book written from the “ground-up” and it does not attempt to be scientifically lofty or ethically preachy.  Ms. Skloot just lets the facts – supported by her thorough academic and personal research – speak for themselves.

As many of you know, I’m a big reader.  And, every so often, you find a book where you finish the last page, close the cover (or these days shut off the Kindle) and simply say, “Wow.”  This is one of those books.

Thank you Ms. Skloot for a responsible, thoughtful and simply beautiful book.  We know who to turn to when it is time to write Avvo’s story.  :-)

Mark

I have railed against law and medical schools for some time regarding how poorly they prepare their students for the business world.  Their curriculums are so focused on developing specialists that they graduate many students (possibly a majority) who are largely unprepared for the commercial – or shall we say “real” — world.

Now, anytime I use the word “commerce” or anything else that might relate to money, I face the visceral academic rebuttal that these are institutions of higher technical learning; and if someone wants to learn about simply making money they should have gone to business school.  And while I completely disagree with this rebuttal, it also largely misses my point.

Commerce is the social dealings between people.  It is broader than the simple buying and selling of things.  Sometimes these commercial dealings involve money, but all of the time they involve interpersonal communication.  I don’t know a single important role in commerce where interpersonal communication is not key, whether it is a doctor, lawyer, teacher, dog walker or circus barker.

So, I almost got whiplash this morning when I saw a headline on the front page of the New York Times that said, “New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test.”  I read the article very quickly, got some cereal and then read it again . . . happily smiling the whole time. 

What made me so happy?  Well, a number of medical schools are now putting applicants through role-playing interviews where they are forced to demonstrate their “people” skills – aka “interpersonal communication” skills.  Apparently they have noticed that some of their best technicians really stink when it comes to real-life doctoring.

According to the article, at least eight schools have a process as follows:

“[Candidates] stood with their backs to the doors of 26 small rooms. When a bell sounded, the applicants spun around and read a sheet of paper taped to the door that described an ethical conundrum. Two minutes later, the bell sounded again and the applicants charged into the small rooms and found an interviewer waiting. A chorus of cheerful greetings rang out, and the doors shut. The candidates had eight minutes to discuss that room’s situation. Then they moved to the next room, the next surprise conundrum and the next interviewer, who scored each applicant with a number and sometimes a brief note.”

Wow – how cool is that?  Granted, this is a tweak to the medical school application process rather than the curriculum as a whole; but it still sends a strong message to the applicants that interpersonal communication is key to their success.  And, presumably over time, whether it is driven by the schools or the socially savvy students they recruit, more and more emphasis will come to this as part of the entire medical education process.

Could this lead to medical and law schools teaching about marketing, communications, social media and other types of really important interpersonal communication?  Only time will tell; but I can’t help but be excited by the progress.

Mark

I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the attendees, speakers and sponsors that made Avvocating 2011 such a resounding success.  I so enjoyed spending time with all of the Avvo-faithful and better understanding which marketing channels are working for you and which are not.  Not surprisingly, I had many conversations relating to social media and how to make it work for the busy practitioner.  A number of themes developed, and I wanted to get some of them on paper to reinforce their importance.

Social Media is Only a Medium

In my opening remarks, I spoke a lot about looking at social media as a medium for communication and no more.  Too many people believe that, because the Internet is involved, they need to take on (if not hire . . . see the next section) an alter ego that makes them entertaining to the Internet masses.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I thought we figured this one out in high school:  The more we pretend to be someone we are not, the more we are going to look like a fool – sometimes at the most inopportune of moments.  Being genuine in social media is everything – just like in real life.

Avvocating speaker Brian Tannebaum spoke to this quite eloquently during his ethics presentation.  He offered that the Internet is ironically returning us to a simpler time where business owners speak directly to their customers and live and die by their relationships and reputations.  “Wow,” I thought, “he is so right”; and that is why you are reading this blog post and see me so active in places like Twitter and Facebook.  Maybe it is the Montanan in me, but I love being Avvo’s shopkeeper and having our customers stop in and say hello.  I love when they reach out to me to tell me why they are happy or frustrated with our products.  All of that interaction energizes me, and also helps me manage the Avvo shop so much better.

Social Media is About You

As a business owner or marketer, you should be looking for personal interactions with your customers.  It’s important to focus on the “you” in that sentence.  YOU are the key to your social media success and no one should be blogging, tweeting or friending for you – not a marketing consultant, not your paralegal, not your teenage daughter.  You.

 Video

During the conference, video came up over and over.  At Avvo, we are big believers in video, and that is why we offer video Legal Guides and allow lawyers to upload videos to the “About Me” section of their profiles.  However, some lawyers are still dumfounded by it.  They either find it excessive – maybe even vain – or just the thought of being on camera makes them want to hurl.

But here’s the reality:  People love to hire real people – it’s that human connection that is so vital to every important (and ultimately successful) relationship.  Video makes you more real because it allows prospective clients to see you in action – hear your voice, watch your body language, hear your accent, etc. 

Time

Social media should not take a lot of time.  If you want to be the most prolific blogger of the new Internet world, well then yes that could take some time.  However, if you are blogging 2-3 times a week or answering questions in a Q&A forum like Avvo’s or tweeting regularly, you are looking at a couple of hours per week at most.  If you are spending more time than that, you are probably being too much of a perfectionist (aka “a lawyer”) in your social media writings.  You could also be trying to be someone you are not because, when you write conversationally and from the heart, things just flow out.

Money

Just like spending too much time, you can spend way too much money on your social media efforts.  We are now in an age where almost every platform is free – Avvo, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc.  Take the time to experiment with free options before buying some big customized solution.  Blogging is a great example:  As we discussed at the conference, you can build your own blog – a very professional looking blog – for little time or money these days.  People will try to sell you expensive solutions up front; but you only need the customized solution if blogging works for you – i.e., it is returning more in marketing value than the time and money you are putting into it.  Figuring that out will take time and some trial and error.  Work the kinks out bf getting your wallet out. 

That’s all for now; but again thanks to everyone for their participating in Avvocating.  We hope to see you at Avvocating 2012!

Mark

You can’t swing a dead cat in these depressed economic days without hitting a reporter prophesying the End of Days for some group of professionals.  Here are three recent articles painting a very bleak picture for lawyers, doctors and nurses as we know them.  

http://www.economist.com/node/18651114?story_id=18651114&fsrc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/health/23doctor.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=doctor%20practice%20sell&st=cse

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136138374/sick-economy-means-nursing-jobs-harder-to-find

The cliff notes for these stories are often the same:  The profession was once prestigious, largely because the professionals made a lot of money.  The market has changed and now no one is making money.  Current participating professionals are now doomed, or at least destined to be really poor — possibly destitute.  

These articles then get republished in professional trade publications, everyone gets depressed, and those with the least hope in succeeding drop out of the profession.

Don’t fall for the hype.

Here’s the reality:  Empires, economies, industries, businesses and businesspeople (and even doctors and lawyers who don’t think they are businesspeople) all go through cycles.  No matter how much prognosticators like to think we have this figured out during good times, we see crash after crash.  And, no matter how much they like to tell a group of people they are screwed during rough times, we see recovery after recovery.  You only need to look at Apple, Donald Trump or something as boring as the metals industry to know that, in business, no one is ever down for the count. 

So, if you are feeling face down on the mat, here are a few quick thoughts on how to get back up again:

Use the downturn to your advantage:  If business is slow, how about investing in customers for the future.  Offer free consultations.  Author free guides and think of ways to get them in front of potential customers (maybe Avvo’s Q&A and/or our Legal and Health Guides? <wink><nudge>).  If you have the cash, think about buying assets at a discount – maybe a scanner, maybe a whole practice – from someone that did not plan so well.  Reinvest in networking – i.e., meeting people who will help you drive your business in the future.  Revisit your strategic planning, budgets and operational infrastructure.  The list really goes on and on.  While a lot of this may cut into your margins in the short term, think of it as taking the time the economy has given you to invest in larger future margins.   

Refocus on differentiation:  A recurring theme in the End of Days articles referenced above is that the struggling profession has become a commodity and, therefore, all participating professionals will fail as one.  But this could not be further from the truth.  In downturns, usually it is the bottom third of the professional class that is in trouble.  If you love what you do and are good at it, then identify “why” you are good at it (i.e., why you are not a commodity) and invest there — both in time and in marketing.

Do whatever it takes to hang in there:  In a downturn, a war of attrition emerges.  So much of surviving this war is simply getting up from the mat and committing to make it to the final round.    As I mentioned above, a large part of your profession will indeed surrender  – heading off to some faraway place like art school or retirement.  As those people leave the profession, they reduce the available supply which will serve as the first step up into the positive arc of your business cycle.   Of course, those that planned the best during good times have the best chance of surviving tough times, so when you are standing on top of the professional rock in a couple of years take the time to think through how you can best position your business for the next inevitable crash (e.g., savings, variable costs, alternate revenue sources, etc.).

Who knew that Gloria Gaynor was such a sage . . .

Mark

p.s.  For those of you who are not as familiar with the End of Days concept, here’s an explanatory MSNBC article.  As you will note, some think the end of the world is only nine days away, so maybe we are all doomed. :-)

Doctors are notorious for not taking their own “good medicine” … both when it comes to managing their own physical health (what physician hasn’t claimed that he is too busy to exercise, get enough rest and eat healthy?) but especially when it comes to taking a pulse on the efficiency of their own business operations.

Working as a practicing physician – either in independent practice or as part of a hospital or clinic employment model – keeps the typical doctor running 24/7 at top speed. Clearly, the medical field is demanding and, by nature, it needs to be highly patient service focused.  It is clearly a profession that doesn’t leave extra time for the finishing touches on the administrative and operations front.  But, as the healthcare environment becomes both increasingly complex, it is also becoming increasingly competitive.  There have been major studies in the last 20 years on this dynamic – one of the most prolific being Feldman and Sloan’s Competition Among Physicians – revolving around how a doctor’s self interest to succeed impacts price controls and other fundamental drivers of healthcare economics.  While medicine is an altruistic profession, it is still a profession and any physician who wants to be profitable must keep an eye on the “front room” as well as the operating room.

There are hundreds of thousands of doctors in the U.S. who are absolutely masterful at clinical science, but have no awareness whatsoever on how to run a business and manage their “clients” (i.e. their patients).  In years past, there was a certain amount of disdain for proactive marketing of a doctor’s personal reputation or practice.  For one thing, those who felt they had the goods when it came to delivering a high rate of medical outcomes “didn’t need to promote themselves” – word of mouth would be do the job, and patients would come knocking.  While certain elements of this old adage still ring true, the dynamics have changed. The medical field has to come – kicking and screaming – into the new world order when it comes to business, thought leadership, and managing influence.  Because the rules of the game have changed for their consumers (patients who now turn to new tools and models for gaining and evaluating information, forming alliances and managing their own personal lives), the rules must accordingly shift for physicians as well if they desire to stay relevant and accessible to these patients who typically are far more communication savvy than they are.

So, here at Avvo, we hope to serve as a symbolic Pied Piper to help offer doctors – who are overwhelmed by their work day demands – the right tools to “take the leap.”  We’d like to turn the tables and challenge – or better yet, inspire – members of our physician community to jump up on the examination table and get a check up … on their business acumen.

While there are many attributes to running a successful practice operation (billing, insurance industry relations, accounting, etc.) that fall outside of Avvo’s scope of expertise, there are many fundamentals aspects that do.  Most prominently, marketing.  Marketing is not an ugly word that needs to be automatically linked with an “excessive spend.”  Just the opposite, the best and most effective marketing can be influencer and word-of-mouth driven and initiated through tools that are FREE.  Avvo regularly counsels doctors on the importance of establishing good marketing practices relying heavily on the use of non-paid Web services and reliable offerings such as our service.

Following are some basic tips for improving your business health:

• Learn about and understand the role of social media. Tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Avvo are bigger than any social event (e.g., conference, party, etc.) you can attend in person – and you can often attend at any time of the day, wearing anything you like.  Social media websites provide a viable, daily means for physicians to drive prospective patients to their “Core Web Presence” (see below), and they help to create a dialog that builds trust and loyalty.
• Establish a Core Web Presence. A Core Web Presence is your calling card on the Web.  Your Core can be a dynamic website, blog or online directory.  In addition to the linked article above, please give us a call if you would like to learn more about building a Core Web Presence.  We offer free consultations over the phone and are happy to come talk to your group, clinic or hospital regarding this and other Web strategies.
• Become a visible leader within the healthcare community. Pursue speaking panel opportunities and conference participation in appropriate venues that offer both peer-to-peer and patient exposure.  Publish and share your breakthrough white papers.  Champion a cause relevant to your specialty field that shows your commitment to making a difference in the lives of your patients.
• Don’t shy away from a free opportunity to weigh in with the community. Avvo offers excellent ways for doctors to showcase their clinical knowledge and expertise through contributions to our Avvo HealthGuides and through participation in our online Q&A forum.   But there are many other places as well.  It all depends on your target audience.

The bottom-line:  If you don’t take the responsibility for managing your reputation proactively, someone else will manage it for you … and it might not be to your liking.  Or other more savvy physicians who understand the power and importance of wielding thought leader influence will move to center stage within clinical circles and before the local patient pool. The days of waiting for patients to line up in the hall have unfortunately passed, and doctors who ignore the obvious advantages of online and influencer marketing will simply lose the opportunity to effectively sustain and grow their practice.

So take the business check-up … you might be surprised by the test results.