Are physicians on Facebook? The answer is a resounding yes! In a 2009 survey of MDsearch physicians, 67% confessed to being regular Facebook users. Surprised? We were too. The idea of a busy physician taking time to update a status or write on someone’s wall…well, it’s hard to imagine. But when you consider that Facebook has over 400 million active users, well, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that physicians would be part of the trend.

Facebook began as a networking site for students, but now, the majority of its users (two-thirds) exceed college age. In fact, the over 35 age group is the fastest growing group of new users. Facebook is constantly evolving – the audience, the interface, the applications – and so is the way people are using it. It’s no longer simply a way for friends and family to share photos or play an online game; these activities are still happening of course, but additionally, people are using Facebook as a tool to market themselves or their businesses. They’re using it to network professionally, to organize groups, and to facilitate discussions.

Doctors Social Networking

The results of the MDsearch survey suggest that most physicians are still primarily using Facebook for personal use – connecting with friends and family. However, this too seems to be changing. A search for physicians on Facebook results in over 5,000 pages and groups – all of which indicate that physicians are starting to use Facebook to reach out to both consumers and each other.

Many physician groups on Facebook have been created by users to facilitate medical discussions and promote the sharing of health related information. A group can be open for anyone to join, or it may be set up to include members by invitation only. The purpose of an open group such as “Physicians for Human Rights” would be entirely different from a closed group like “Stanford Hospital Physicians.” One is intended to increase awareness and/or facilitate change while the other is used for communicating privately among individuals with a confirmed connection.

Support System

Physician groups can also serve to lend moral support to one another through sharing stories and experiences and offering advice. While sites like Sermo offer increased exclusivity (an extensive registration process requires verification of your state license or hospital or practice ID), Facebook has the ability to facilitate similar discussions, therefore providing the opportunity to integrate the personal and the professional on one site.

Social Media Marketing

Physicians can also use Facebook as a marketing tool. For example, a private practice physician might create a Facebook page for his or her practice. It could introduce the staff, highlight press coverage of the practice, offer general health advice, and share interesting links from around the web – all in an effort to interact with current patients and attract new ones.

Recruiting Tool

A facility’s Facebook page may also be used for recruiting purposes. A physician seeking a new position can view the page to get to know a potential employer. Likewise, employers may use Facebook to check up on potential candidates, so it’s important for physicians to control their privacy settings to limit what they want employers (and patients) to see.

Facebook has the potential to radically change the way physicians interact with both their patients and other physicians. One day a physician might reach out to a Facebook physician group for advice on a specific case, or they might follow up with a patient through a Facebook message or Facebook chat. Physicians could even connect with a future employer on Facebook. Facebook is changing the way all of us interact, but exactly what that means for physicians – and healthcare in general – remains to be seen.

Robyn Melhuish is the Communications Manager at Healthcare Job Boards. The HJB portfolio of premier job boards includes niche sites for physician jobs, therapist jobs, nursing jobs, medical sales jobs, and medical mission opportunities.

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The Internet provides a very profitable business opportunity. Even if you’re only an up and coming entrepreneur with a small business, you can compete with the big boys on the Internet. Being an online merchant allows you to reach potential customers that are usually out of range. However, before you can start raking up cash, first you need to learn how to build a ecommerce website.

You don’t need to have a degree in web programming, creating an ecommerce website can be done by just about anyone. This doesn’t mean that just anyone can succeed though. In order to be successful you have to do your homework; research and prepare for your business. Here’s a step by step guide how to build a ecommerce website:

I. Decide on a name

Before making your website, you should think of a name that is easy to remember and tells something about your business. If you want to become an online florist, you could name your website “Flowers2go.com” instead of just “Flowers.com”. The former implies that you’re in the flower delivery business, the latter is too ambiguous. It is also recommended that you create variations of your website name just in case what you have in mind is already taken or a business with a similar name pops up.

II. Secure your Domain

As soon as you come up with a name, register it with a domain name before anyone else. You will have a lot of competitors online; whoever makes it faster online can have the name. The more popular domain name suffixes used for ecommerce are .com, .org, and .net. If you find that your name has already been taken by someone, you can offer to buy it.

III. Prepare your shipping options

The final step of your preparation is to determine how you will ship your goods to buyers. You can use a drop shipping company to do the shipping for you. There are a lot of drop shipping companies you can use so check which one can cater to your needs the most. If you want to do the shipping yourself, you have to find a place where you can store your goods.

IV. Building the Website

Now that you’re done with the preparation, it’s time to create your website! If you have money to spare, you can simply hire a pro to build your website. If you’re short on cash, you can do it yourself or ask a friend who knows something about web design to help you. There are many web design programs available for free download in the Internet that guide you how to build a ecommerce website. Even if it’s your first time designing a website, it won’t be as difficult with that kind of software at your disposal.

The first thing you have to focus on when creating a website on your home page. It’s the cover of the book, the fa

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If you want to make an online portfolio you can build build a photo website with Photoshop galleries. In the past, a photographer usually has to hand out his works personally or through the mail. Thanks to the Internet, you can just send a link so people can look at your photos. There’s no risk of your portfolio getting damaged or getting lost in the mail. Adding new photos are also easier and more convenient online.

With Photoshop, you can build a photo website with Photoshop galleries easier than ever before.

• Open Photoshop. On the main menu, click the File tab, then Automate then Web Photo Gallery. After the Gallery Wizard appears, you can now select the styles of your gallery. Below the tab for the gallery style is a bar where you can enter your e-mail address. It is option so you can still go through with the process without entering your e-mail address, but it is recommended that you do so people can get in touch with you.

On the Source Images part, you will choose which photos you want to include in your gallery. To make things easier for you, you should put all the photos you want in your portfolio in one folder to make it more accessible.

• Once you’ve picked your photos, you will have to name your gallery. This can be done under Banner in the Options tab of the menu. Include your full name and other contact details as well.

• Next, you will choose the size of the images on your gallery. The smaller the size display, the faster it can be loaded. The trade off though is that the quality for some photos are reduced. Since you can’t determine whether your viewers will be using DSL or dial up, you should just stay safe in the middle.

• Before you finish, you will have to place some security measures on your portfolio. The security settings in Photoshop allow you to put watermarks on your photos to prevent people from stealing it. Intellectual theft is pretty common online, so if you want to protect your images place a watermark. You can enter text on the custom text tab.

You can either just put a symbol (a copyright symbol for example) or a more detailed text that includes your name (property of “you”) . If you have a logo, you can use it as a watermark by converting it into a font. After deciding on the watermark, place it anywhere on the image. You can also customize the size, font color and opacity of your mark.

• After securing your images, you can sit back and relax; Photoshop will do the rest of the work for you. When your gallery is done, it will appear on your default web browser. You can check your gallery and see if it satisfies your taste.

• Now that you have you gallery, you can upload it online. If you already have a website, simply put it there. If not, you can always make one. There are many web design software free for download to help you create build a photo website with Photoshop galleries. Once you’ve decided on the name of your website, register it for a domain name. Once you’ve secured your domain name, find an ISP that will host your website.

Ready To Start Your Own Internet Based Business And Make Real Money Online? For A Limited Time Only – Go To http://www.InternetBasedBusiness.com For Your FREE eBook That Reveals The Secrets To Getting Your Own Profitable Internet Business In 24 Hours Or Less!

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Everyone wants to have their own privacy, even in the World Wide Web. And while people love to share information, photos, videos and secret messages, there are times when uninvited people get to see these things. That’s why it’s ideal to know how to build a private website. Social networking, website creations and blogging sometimes expose things that we only want to share to certain people. With a private website, you get to choose who visits and who gets to view the content of your site.

1. Choose a site generator with a private option – You can now create a website for free, the one that can protect the entire site and let you control the traffic towards it. Wordpress.com or myfamily.com has these options. All you have to do is register and create your site’s name and address. You can also pay for a premium registration if you want your own URL, with no ads or other perks. This is how you avoid pop-outs, spam and other unnecessary links towards your site.

2. Use password protection – This is the most important step in learning how to build a private website. The website generator has a visibility option that says public, private and password protected. To prevent things from being misleading choose the password protected option. Make your password personal, and easy to remember; but never easy enough to be figured out by other people. Otherwise that would defeat the purpose of creating your site. In cases where a change of password is called for these web generators will also allow it, so you can assure your website privacy every now and then.

3. Fill your website with content- If you do not wish to post blogs just skip the blog options when creating the site and go immediately to the create pages option. Now you can start filling your website with texts, articles and upload videos and photos that you wish to share with a selected few. There are web gallery generators you can download in case you want you site to be extra special, say create photo slideshows to entertain your visitors.

4. Send invitation to family and friends – You can send an e-vite (invitation through email) to people you wish get to view your website and be updated every time there are new entries that they are to look out for.

5. Test your website privacy – Try visiting your website by entering it on the web browser and see if it opens your site. If it doesn’t then you’ve successfully created a very personal site. Now you can enjoy socializing online with only your own social circle.

Knowing how to build a private website is important not only to keep things to yourself, friends and family but also to prevent your pages from being hacked and vandalized. It’s also a good way to prevent your pictures from being stolen especially if they’re art pieces or your own designs. A private website will also prevent having your identity stolen or used.

Ready To Start Your Own Internet Based Business And Make Real Money Online? For A Limited Time Only – Go To http://www.InternetBasedBusiness.com For Your FREE eBook That Reveals The Secrets To Getting Your Own Profitable Internet Business In 24 Hours Or Less!

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Creating a website isn’t hard; any one can do it. You don’t need a specific degree in order to build you website. Even if you only know the very basics of HTML, creating a complete web site is still within your reach. It’s all thanks to free programs to help build a website on your computer. With these powerful tools at your disposal, you can design web pages whether it’s for business or pleasure.

There are a lot of free programs to help build a website on your computer. Since it’s all for free, you can try different programs and see which one is most helpful to you. Some more popular names when it comes to web design have trial versions available for download which usually last for 30 days. It might not be as good as the full version, but you still get quality results as long as you know how to use it.

To help you get started here are some of the few quality free programs to help build a website on your computer:

Adobe Dreamweaver 10.0/CS4

One of the most reliable names when it comes to web design is Adobe Dreamweaver. Their latest release is the Dreamweaver 10.0, commonly known as CS4. It has all the tools you need as far as web design is concerned. It comes with applications for animation, image editing, pixel editing and a lot more. Since it offers a lot, the full version is very expensive but you can download a trial version that lasts for a month. The sad thing about CS4 is that it’s too complicated. If you’re new at web design, chances are you won’t be able to fully utilize what it has to offer. However, if you have enough knowledge about the subject, then this provides a lot of assistance for your web designing needs.

Ewisoft Website Builder

Ewisoft Website Builder is one of the most user-friendly and helpful web design software for free. This software is very useful for beginners since all they have to do is to enter the text on their website and upload images. Most operations are done using drag-and-drop making web designing much easier. Ewisoft Website Builder does all the coding for you so even if you don’t know anything about HTML and CSS, you can still have amazing results with ease. You’ll also enjoy that fact that updating this software is absolutely free no matter how many updates are made. They also offer technical support in case you have any problem with your software.

PersonalWebKit 3.31

PersonalWebKit wasn’t free a few years back, now you can get it without spending a nickel. It’s very easy to use so even beginners can design quality websites using this software. It comes with several templates you can use on your websites. You can also make a lot of changes to their default templates making it completely your own. Importing image, audio and video files are easy with PersonalWebKit as well. Unlike some web design programs, PersonalWebKit was actually made for beginners. Anybody with the smallest knowledge about computers and programming are the intended users of this software.

Ready To Start Your Own Internet Based Business And Make Real Money Online? For A Limited Time Only – Go To http://www.InternetBasedBusiness.com For Your FREE eBook That Reveals The Secrets To Getting Your Own Profitable Internet Business In 24 Hours Or Less!

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