FINDING A DOCTOR ON THE INTERNET

Years ago when someone needed a specialist, their GP recommended someone or they had to pull out the phone book and started making calls. Sometimes quite a few phone calls had to be made to find the right doctor, especially if the problem was uncommon- do they treat your sitution? do they take your insurance? what ages do they accept? Are they a tolerable driving distance? It was a lot of work.

Word of mouth or "buzz" is another way to find a doctor but people tend to keep their psychiatric, addiction and relationship problems private. The plastic surgeons and Botox doctors tend to benefit best by "buzz."

So here we are in the 21st century and we're still needing help finding the right doctor. Luckily we have the internet which allows the matching of doctors to patients to be a two-way process, instead of one-way, that is much faster and easier.

From the patient's point-of-view, he or she can check out the yellowpages.com, get onto the insurance company's website, or do an internet search using the name of the malady to find specialists, partnerships and groups that treat the problem.

From the doctor's side, he or she can set up a website listing what kinds of situations they specialize in as well as their location and what insurance they accept. They can also do some blog marketing and use blog advertising.

The way psychiatrists and psychologists do this is by placing ads that will pop up on blogs with content similar to their field of practice. Chances are the person reading the blog might also be looking for a doctor for a similar problem. That's one way they can find their target audience.

Manufacturers of medicine do the same thing. For example, you might see ads pop up on my blog for anti-depressants, practices that specialize in OCD, or someone selling the latest book on anxiety and phobias.

Sometimes a new practice, medicine or proceedure needs to be introduced to the world. One thing these companies can do is contact Snapbomb who then asks its members to read and learn about the subject and then write up an article to be published on the internet. These people get paid to write the articles and post them on their blogs. The pay is determined by (1) what the customer wants to pay for their blog advertising and (2) the quality of the blog site (traffic volume, quality of past articles).

I was told by my creative writing teacher in college that writing can be good for the mind, rather therapeutic, and she was right. I enjoy writing in my blogs and for Snapbomb. I'm just a newbie right now so I'm not getting rich (yet) but it's something for my wallet. If you'd like to be paid for writing click on http://www.snapbomb.com/bloggers.html?acp=7551. Just type in your contact and blog information and get started. It's therpeutic and, who knows, you just might write about something that helps you out!

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