Maybe you're an experienced health care leader with a massive following. Maybe you're a bleeding heart socialist fed up with the Evil Capitalist Model of health care. Maybe you can't stand post-modernist political correctness, and want to see it extirpated from medicine. Maybe you've suffered in silence from some disease and don't want others to suffer the same way. Or maybe you've got the perfect solution to everything that ails health care, but are struggling to gain traction.
Forget publishing research or sitting on committees or writing books. You need a BLOG to get all those ideas and opinions out in the open if you hope to effect real change. But how? How do you go about building a coherent online platform, leveraging digital information technology and search engine optimization for maximum reach? I really don't know, to be honest. But I do know a little about what it takes to garner attention in an attention-deficient online community (and a whole lot about what it takes to alienate that same community), and will happily share my insights. For free. Because I'm a big fan of yours, whoever you are. Even if we've never met. Or never will. Or if you've bought my book and liked it. Or hated it. Because you matter.
What's Your Type?
Of course, of course, of course every blogger out there speaks with his or her own unique voice, delivering his or her own unique message (or non-message, in some cases). But the truly extraordinary doctor-bloggers out there (which God knows I'm not) write in one of the proven archetypal voices, albeit with plentiful room for creative overlap. You should pick yours before you start.
The Expert in One Thing. Maybe it's cooking spice toxicology, maybe it's the genetics of flatulence, maybe it's the optimal treatment of tennis elbow...you know a certain subject better than anyone. You're not just an authority, you're the authority.
Advantage: this is probably the quickest way to build a big audience, or at least a dedicated audience invested in your area of expertise.
Disadvantage: you'd better love your one thing, or blogging will become drudgery
The Eternal Optimist. Never mind the naysayers. Medicine is the greatest job in the history of work, and health care is awesome. But we can't rest on our laurels. We must continually strive to make things better, because we owe it to the people we work for...though you don't really call it work LOL.
Advantage: positivity is always popular, even infectious, whether or not your blog has any substance to it
Disadvantage: people will make fun of you behind your back, guaranteed
The Hard-Nosed Realist. Never mind the horseshit. Medicine is hard. Politics is hard. And life is hard as a f**king brick wall. Government and administrators have their heads up their asses, but you don't. Your pointed criticisms tell it like it is, and your message is backed up with hard, rock-solid facts, facts harder and more solid than impacted stool.
Advantage: your embittered, cynical colleagues will love your honesty
Disadvantage: nobody else will
The Futurist. Doctors and bureaucrats are too set in their ways and too glued to their calcified patterns of thinking. Technology holds the key to improving health care. If it doesn't, don't blame the technology...the users just aren't using it properly or using it enough.
Advantages: the Futurist is like the Optimist in terms of broad appeal, because tech is sexy
Disadvantages: tech might be sexy, but people fall out of love with it fast
The Company Man/Woman. Policymakers don't listen to rabble-rousers. They listen to measured, informed, connected voices that understand everyone wants the same things in health care. Moderation, attention to process, and steering rather than rocking the boat is the way to go. That's you, the respectable one.
Advantage: people love being told what they want to hear, and you will have no masalah winning over the Powers That Be by echoing their ideas
Disadvantage: the malcontents will call you a traitor, and you did hope to see things change, right?
The Social Justice Warrior. Everyone knows that health has more to do with social determinants than pharmaceuticals and surgeries. Health care is expensive and dysfunctional because of entrenched power structures...because women and visible minorities and sexually non-conforming people and their ideas have been held the f**k down for too the f**k long. Your blog ends that TODAY, smashing the glass ceilings and rewriting the rule book.
Advantage: there might be ceilings at your work, but not for your potential audience
Disadvantage: get ready for trolls
The Therapist. Whether the pain is your patient's or your own, you know that medicine is a human endeavor. Your blog is there to inspire, to heal, to elicit tears of laughter and tears of torment, and to remind us we're all in this together. Everyone's got a story, and your blog is there to tell them.
Advantages: only a hard heart turns hard at a blog with heart
Disadvantage: you must tread very, VERY carefully around privacy if the story's not yours
The Details Man/Woman. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. All the ideas in the world are worthless without careful analysis and thoughtful contingency planning. Your blog will challenge every assumption, not by any pointless spin about values (really ideology), but a rigorous review of the history, the data, and the policy plan.
Advantage: a blog like this necessarily has serious brainpower behind it
Disadvantage: most of the public does not, and might not care a whit about data and details
The Iconoclast. The rebel. The outlaw. The lone wolf. You alone know that the Conventional Wisdom is dead wrong, and you alone can foresee the future and speak the truth. You think on a level even elites are incapable of, never mind the general public.
Advantages: if the stars align, you can go from obscure opinion-maker to global sensation
Disadvantages: if the stars don't align, you can go from obscure opinion-maker to insufferably arrogant douche
Next Time: a can't-miss formula for a doctor-blogger blog post
Advantage: there might be ceilings at your work, but not for your potential audience
Disadvantage: get ready for trolls
The Therapist. Whether the pain is your patient's or your own, you know that medicine is a human endeavor. Your blog is there to inspire, to heal, to elicit tears of laughter and tears of torment, and to remind us we're all in this together. Everyone's got a story, and your blog is there to tell them.
Advantages: only a hard heart turns hard at a blog with heart
Disadvantage: you must tread very, VERY carefully around privacy if the story's not yours
The Details Man/Woman. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. All the ideas in the world are worthless without careful analysis and thoughtful contingency planning. Your blog will challenge every assumption, not by any pointless spin about values (really ideology), but a rigorous review of the history, the data, and the policy plan.
Advantage: a blog like this necessarily has serious brainpower behind it
Disadvantage: most of the public does not, and might not care a whit about data and details
The Iconoclast. The rebel. The outlaw. The lone wolf. You alone know that the Conventional Wisdom is dead wrong, and you alone can foresee the future and speak the truth. You think on a level even elites are incapable of, never mind the general public.
Advantages: if the stars align, you can go from obscure opinion-maker to global sensation
Disadvantages: if the stars don't align, you can go from obscure opinion-maker to insufferably arrogant douche
Next Time: a can't-miss formula for a doctor-blogger blog post
Ditulis
Unknown
—
Friday, June 15, 2018
—
Add Comment
—
blogging,
doctors,
health care,
politics,
professionalism,
social policy
Belum ada tanggapan untuk "So You Want To Be A Doctor-Blogger"
Post a Comment