Curmudgeons and Physician Branding: Dr. Russell Faust

What do you get when you combine a tech geek and an ENT Surgeon? Believe it or not, you get a social media and online branding expert! Get Social Health spoke with Dr. Russell Faust about his life journey that brought him to being the founder of the Windriven Group, a consortium of physicians, healthcare copywriters, and marketers with a passion for optimizing the patient experience through connection in the digital world. Our conversation was far ranging, from punch-card driven computers to robotics in surgery to building an online reputation.

To follow the conversation, you can check in at the time stamps below, or catch the whole interview. Dr. Faust has some neat projects in the works, so you’ll be hearing from him again on the Get Social Health podcast.

To follow key points in our discussion, here is a time stamp of the interview:

00:42 Introduction
01:25 How did a surgeon become an online marketing expert?
03:15 Dragging healthcare kicking & screaming…
08:00 Robotic Surgery
8:50 Is social media “too light”?
10:40 How do you find time for blogging and social media?
12:50 It’s all about the content
13:00 Patients with stacks of internet resources
15:25 Recommended content sites
16:50 What type of clients does Windriven serve?
18:00 Michael Hyatt “Platform”
19:25 Independent practices have to have an online presence to compete with hospitals and big practices
20:40 “Members of the community have a choice”
21:35 PEW Research & ePatients
22:15 “You need to be found or be gone”
22:30 What’s Plan A?
23:25 Run your practice like a business
24:00 “How many of you have a brand?”
25:00 The ill-fated “Zombie Brand”
25:30 Google Search – yourself
26:35 Brand the practice or the physician?
28:17 Tangent! Hospital content mistakes
29:05 Baseball
30:10 Bedside manner & The Curmedgeon
32:20 How to use video
33:00 How to present even the curmudgeon successfully
36:55 Social Media Tip: Fard Johnmar “It’s about people”