We have gathered the best speakers on the business of optimizing your dental practice web presence and optimizing your practice.  This one day symposium will have your head swimming with new ideas.

Dr. Tom Hedge leads off with:

• Trends in marketing
• Internet demographics and why they are perfect for a dental practice
• Web site names
• Anatomy of a great web site
• Really bad web sites
• Innovative ways to stay in touch with your patients through electronic media
• The many tools available from Google
• How to get number one placement on Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
• The listing services like Dentaldocshop.com and cosmeticdentistry.com... thumbs up or down.

Corine Leech backs up Dr. Hedge with:

• Staff perspective on web site
• How she uses the web site
• The digital new patient experience

Vijay Sikka will lead off after lunch with:

• Fascinating information on how to use software to bridge the information gap between your dental practice management software and your financial management software (Quicken or Peachtree). 
• There is a lot you have been missing and you don't even know it.

Jim Higgins will present:

• Customer relationships and how to enhance them through electronic communication like automated e mail and text messages. 
• Consumers expect a new level of "one on one" communication today. 
• Learn the latest in electronic newsletters and customer service surveys.

Finally, Tim Healy and Tim Kelly:

• What makes a great web site
• How to tell if your website is a good candidate for organic search
• What to look for from your web site designers

Comments From Recent Attendees

On Friday, I attended Tom Hedge’s “Website Optimization” course in Chicago. Wow! It was a really eye-opening day for most of us in attendance. Tom spent a few hours talking about how he has optimized his website and the cases that he brings in from it. He also addressed how to increase visibility on the major search engines. Good stuff!

He had the Tims from TNT in to talk about their fantastic website design services, Bruce McKay talked about some new Smile Reminder features, and Zach Hoffman talked about bidding on Google AdWords to increase your search engine ranking. This stuff was all really cutting-edge and well worth the time. Additionally, Vijay Sikka showed off his software program that interfaces your accounting statistics with your dental management software. This looks REALLY cool and will save me several hours/month of statistical analyses that I generally do “by hand”.

It was great to see a lot of ACE/GenX and Crown Council people there – most of whom I already knew, but several new faces, as well.

I don’t know whether or not Tom plans to do this seminar again, but if he does, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in harnessing the power of the internet for the improvement of their practice.

James H. Arnold, DDS, FACE
Hornbrook Group Clinical Instructor
Website: www.smilesbyarnold.com

...I have to say that Tom put together a great mini-meeting. I brought my assistant Trish , whom I plan on putting in charge of my web-optimization. Part of her expanded duties list ,which were made clear by attending.

TNT as always shared great info. as did Smile Reminder , both of which we use. Vijay Sikkah 's program and software surprised me. He is a wonderful presenter with software we all can use. I have to admit I didn't believe that such a program would be beneficial in my office , now I NEED it.(AS Jim said , it should save time and energy ).Zach Hoffman is probably the most educated person in the business. He has deveolped a business in doing web-optimization for you.....call him if you want to position yourself without learning all this stuff !!! Tom , as alway's did not disappoint. He has become such an expert at technology and speaking , it makes me proud to know him. Seeing Dr. Stivers , Dr. Hugh Flax , Dr. Jim Arnold , Dr. Ger Alfe, Dr. Ahnquist, as well as their teams and others is an inspiration for learning from this group.Although dinner at Shaw's , and after hours were fun ! Thanks to all , especially you Tom !

Corine,

I missed you terribly…although, Tom was pretty well dressed, so it makes me wonder if perhaps YOU are the influence that drives him to wear Garanimals J

Seriously, this was a great day!  All the speakers (who’ve already been mentioned) did a fantastic job.  It’s pretty rare to sit through a course nowadays and not feel “Gee, heard that…already doing this…”  But this was not the case with Tom’s course.  I left with two pages worth of notes that were mostly a “to-do” list for me when I got back to work this week.  I’ve been pretty aggressive about my internet/website marketing and I still came away with a ton of information. 

Thanks to Tom, Tim, Tim, Vijay, Bruce and Zach for an informative and upbeat day!  (This is really saying a lot because I was pretty sleep deprived and I didn’t nod off once!) J  I told Tom he should definitely have this course again and go around the country with it.  If he’s ever in your neck of the woods…or heck, even if he’s not….go see him!  And, of course, it was great to see so many Nexters and to meet some new friends as well!

Dr. Gerilyn Alfe
Chicago Smile Spa
www.chicagosmilespa.com