OPINION - By Dr. Andrew Wickline New York Daily News May 16, 2022 at 5:00 am Did you know that your grandma could become addicted to opioids because of a knee replacement? It’s more likely than you might think. Knee replacements — with more than 1 million performed every year — nearly always require opioids for pain control. It’s no surprise that the proportion of older adults seeking treatment for opioid abuse nearly doubled in recent years, particularly as the number of joint replacements increased drastically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon issue its 200-page 2022 best practices for prescribing opioids. Its size and complexity means few of us will actually read it. With a record number of people dying from overdose deaths in 2021, the opioid epidemic in this country demands real solutions. Orthopedic surgeons like me hold the dubious distinction of belonging to the third-highest opioid-prescribing specialty. Our goal remains to someday eliminate opioids after surgery through protocol innovation, colleague collaboration and industry partnership. Every pill surgeons order can cause substance abuse. A 10-day opioid supply carries up to a 20% risk of addiction. A 24-hour supply runs a 6% chance of addiction. By getting their wisdom teeth pulled, your teenager — consuming opioids for one day — could develop an addiction. Approximately 80% of heroin addicts first misused prescription narcotics. Yes, I realize that many people who get opioid prescriptions to counter chronic pain use them safely. I sympathize with these patients. Clamping down on their ability to get pills can seem cruel. But unfortunately, this is an ecosystem. One person’s necessary prescription can quickly become another person’s path to a debilitating addiction. Across all specialties, pharmacies fill more than 200 million opioid prescriptions annually. A recent article shows that Florida reduced postoperative total knee narcotics by 38%, from 174 oxycodone down to 108 oxycodone per patient. My published research found that 86% of total knee replacement patients needed no more than 10 pills total from the operation through 90 days. My colleague Vinod Dasa, MD, vice chairman for academic affairs at Louisiana State University’s Department of Orthopedics', performs knee replacements with zero narcotics in two-thirds of his patients. Yet despite being offered two of the lowest opioid protocols in the nation, many surgeons have not implemented similar narcotic-sparing practices. There’s a legitimate reason for their resistance. Switching from conventional protocols to a low- or no-opioid protocol takes time and effort with no financial reward. Surgeons recently faced another 9% decrease in reimbursement from Medicare on top of the inflation-adjusted 68% cut since 1992. In addition, private insurance and Medicare provide little to no additional reimbursement for non-opioid alternatives. I propose a radical solution. First, we should incentivize prescribers to achieve lower national rates and tie prescriptions to specific surgical procedures or medical diagnosis codes. Physicians will establish a national maximum number of pills per procedure or code similar to Michigan’s guidelines. Every prescription that meets the new lower threshold receives a credit of $100. Patient pain and satisfaction scores can be tracked with the medical codes and adjusted to achieve optimal pain management while markedly reducing the number of opioids on the street. Even if all 200 million prescriptions per year reached the lower target and received the $100 incentive ($20 billion), it would still leave $22.5 billion in the White House’s historic opioid epidemic budget for other priorities. This solution would also identify the reasons for narcotic consumption. In further published research, my team found that the common belief that total knee replacement leads to a high rate of addiction may not be true. Additional factors may be at play such as back pain or other recent surgeries. We need to get in the weeds to figure out who is using opioids, how they get them and why they need them. Second, after one year, we should identify and talk to outliers about why they continue overprescribing. Some providers will still find it easier to prescribe narcotics than change their protocols. They may require additional education or potentially lose their prescribing privileges. The program will also need to account for the chronically addicted and other special cases to ensure that no one is unnecessarily harmed. Third, we should require that insurance carriers and Medicare reimburse surgeons for non-opioid alternatives. Insurance companies frequently label new, promising treatments as “experimental” and refuse to cover them. Such products should qualify for pilot program status with the costs absorbed by insurance and Medicare. Multiple clinics can then conduct trials and publish results in real-world settings to verify true reduction while properly managing patient comfort. Whether it’s your Gigi, Noni or Mimi, surgeons can now fix their knee or hip with limited exposure to addictive drugs with the least discomfort possible. We can avoid the extra pills that their grandkids may pilfer and become addicted to. Surgeons don’t need 200 pages of guidelines. We need funded incentives to cover the costs of revamping surgical protocols. An ounce of prevention costs less than a pound of cure. Wickline is a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-right-way-to-curb-opioid-abuse-20220516-inudu2ata5htnkpljf3sbsg55m-story.html

Did you know you can make it easy for people to find you online when you use the right words on your website? Did you know you can make it easy for people to find you online when you use the right words on your website? You don’t even need to pay for it. Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can pay search engines like Google and Yahoo! tens of thousands of dollars to direct people to you. There is a more efficient, less expensive and more strategic alternative called organic SEO. Organic SEO means writing with words that your customers and workforce immediately understand on your website, as well as words that reflect words that you can claim. Say you’re a specialty machining and welding contractor like Leading Edge Fabricating in Montague, Mich. Start with general keywords in your industry such as “CNC mill,” “knife-making” and “waterjet.” Then move on to words specific to you and your product like “perpendicularity,” “abrasive waterjet” and even better, “atmospherically controlled welding glove box.” Google and Yahoo! direct traffic to your website when your words match those entered by the person searching for your types of products and services. Unlike paying search engines to direct mostly irrelevant traffic to you, you attract traffic that is more likely to want your business. Organic SEO strengthens your ability to focus on the customers you want and avoid those you don’t. CLICK HERE to schedule a FREE consultation with DYS Media to learn more about the benefits of making it easy for people to find you online. Hunter Haley is the Public Relations Manager for DYS Media.

Attracting talented individuals to your business starts with how they perceive your culture. Their top priority is to enjoy their work, since it is where they spend one-third of their lives. Attracting talented individuals to your business starts with how they perceive your culture. Their top priority is to enjoy their work, since it is where they spend one-third of their lives. They don’t learn the truth about you through billboards advertising $18/hour starting wages or your marketing collateral. They learn by talking with current/former employees and following those employees online to see what they post about you. "Let your reputation work to your advantage! Encourage your workforce to talk and post about the good work your business is doing. Engage them in sharing open positions, photos from company events and your latest news. They want to be proud of the company for which they work". Read more in our latest op-ed for the Grand Rapids Business Journal about how Digital Public Relations can work for you. Hunter Haley is the Public Relations Manager at DYS Media.

Your first impression on your customers and talent happens in their first online search result about you. Your first impression on your customers and talent happens in their first online search result about you. You can greatly influence your search results, starting by posting press releases to your website and distributing them to media databases. Unleash your creativity with the following tips from Emily Caroll of Drive Research on how to leverage your press releases for a significant return on your investment. Tips include ensuring that you research the journalists to whom you’re sending it for the best news media exposure. As we say in Emily’s article, “researching and engaging in the preferences of the journalists who cover your industry – before contacting them – almost never fails to produce valuable earned media.” If you like Emily’s tips, you’ll LOVE our following article on increasing the effectiveness of your press releases even more, including the best time/day to distribute them! Hunter Haley is the Public Relations Manager at DYS Media.

Among the best features of earned coverage is that it stays online perpetually because search engines like DuckDuckGo and Google consider it valuable content. Paid media disappears the moment you stop paying the bill. By Hunter Haley Do you want to improve your reputation in your industry and among your customers? It doesn’t hurt to offer incredible products and services, but they won’t do anything for your credibility if nobody knows about them. Paid advertising represents one opportunity to spread your name. You can spend as much money as you’d like to reach as many people as possible. The drawback is that consumers know that you bought the space and dictated its message, which dilutes its sincerity. Marketing through newsletters, your website and social media enables you to touch customers and talent where and when you want to, but the same asterisk applies. People know you paid directly for it. Your other opportunity to reach your specific customers and employees is to earn your reputation through public relations – or more specifically – earned media. You don’t pay newspapers or journalists to cover you. You offer a compelling story in a subject area that the journalist covers. The more closely you align your message with their interests, the more they will consider writing about you. Identify the journalists most likely to respond to you by researching the material they cover. Find their biographies on the web, read through stories they wrote and follow them on social media until you find a fit. Only then ask them whether they’re interested in your story. They will often thank you for reaching out to them and making their jobs easier. Earned media enhances your reputation because it’s written by an unbiased credible source with no stake – money or gifts – in the outcome of your business. Journalists only want genuine stories that add value to the lives of their readers. Among the best features of earned coverage is that it stays online perpetually because search engines like DuckDuckGo and Google consider it valuable content. Paid media disappears the moment you stop paying the bill. Say you pay for space on a highway billboard. The interest generated by the ad disappears when you take it down. You and your organization offer incredible products at tremendous value. You’re able to do it through the time-worn principles of following the Golden Rule and always doing the next right thing for your patrons. Start telling your customers and potential employees your authentic story and build your reputation in the process by earning your media! Hunter Haley is the Public Relations Manager at DYS Media.

People form an opinion of you within seven seconds of meeting you in person. The internet gives you 0.05. That’s not much time to make a good first impression. So why present yourself online – the world’s window into your business – as anything less than your full potential? Your digital reach is your new business card after COVID changed your market permanently. Video meetings replaced in-person gatherings. Webinars and virtual networking are the new norm. Your customers and talent form their opinion of you when they search for you online. Whether it’s your website, media placements or social media, you have 50 milliseconds to impress them. A sloppy web presence leaves an impression similar to a sloppy business card. Great writing and presentation speaks volumes about your product, services and culture. People want to work with serious people. Punch up your website so that search engines can find it by using the language you and your customers speak. Take it further by using those same words when you get your organization in the publications your market reads. Disinterested third-party authorities such as newspapers and trade magazines push you over the top in the minds of your referrals. Finally, incorporate that same language into your social media posts such as LinkedIn to further impress your customers and talent. You create your own image on the internet. You can pay your niece or a kid at church a few hundred bucks to buy a template online for you. Or, you can invest a little more into your appearance. You never get that second chance to make a good first impression. With only a fraction of a second, make it count!

Public Relations tells your ideal customers through a third party why they should trust you with their time and money. It is a discovery into the value that you offer and a connection with those who want to hear your story. DYS Media also answers Why do I need PR?, How is Public Relations different from marketing? and How Much does it Cost? Read more answers to your Most Commonly Asked Questions about Public Relations HERE.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/doubledown-to-prosper-after-covid-19/

Leaders in West Michigan admirably tend to want their work to speak for itself. The problem is that by the time their finished products become camera-ready and consumers eventually notice, the competition already has taken a considerable share of the market. Such a laissez-faire approach to business development is akin to the childhood game of telephone. You reveal a message to the person sitting next to you, who repeats it to the next person until it comes full circle. By the time the message reaches back to you, your “Have a nice day” has become “Wave at rice cakes.” It was tough enough to break through the noise two months ago; now, nonstop COVID coverage further interferes with transmission. Business leaders who are consistently one step ahead of their competition eliminate filters between messengers and receivers. They allow successful public relations programs to do the talking. Proficient bosses regularly discuss their products from concept to production to distribution in news articles, op-eds, online conferences, speaking engagements and social media. You can consistently demonstrate your capabilities and aptitude for managing change by serving as the voice and face of your organization in the news. Here’s how. First, even when you’re successful, there are folks who are even more successful. You could pull up a seat in Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams and wait until somebody shows up, but your competitors are already out hitting home runs with lesser products. They are after the same prospects, talent and investors as you. They know they need to be on the stage and in front of a microphone to represent their products and workforce, especially during tough times. Also understand that the public wants to hear from you. A recent Gallup survey found that 56% of Americans want organizations to communicate with them about how they are helping to battle the coronavirus and how it has impacted them economically. Second, traditional advertisements in print and broadcast no longer carry the weight they once did. Consumers crave honesty and transparency, which ads cannot deliver. PR enables a back-and-forth exchange with your audiences. They can ask questions and interact with you on a variety of platforms. A strong social media presence helps, but it’s not enough alone. Americans are too skeptical to buy from a company they cannot research themselves. You’ll strike gold when your name becomes synonymous with your industry. Besides, anyone can buy advertising. You must earn PR. Finally, commit yourself to your public, employees and boardroom. The rate of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs reached an all-time high prior to the COVID outbreak. It’s not that those folks don’t like their jobs. They don’t like their bosses or work environment or company culture. PR enables you to inspire prospective hires to work with you. Great leaders project their vision, their ability to quickly pivot when times turn strange and the competency to achieve goals. Now that certain industries have been allowed to resume at reduced capacity in recent days, it is critical to focus on communications with employees, consumers and the community. What can employees expect when they come back? They will need to know whether to wear masks, to prepare for anti-social distancing or whether they need to sign legal documents to return. How about your customers? They should be aware of new offerings, the ability to schedule virtual meetings, whether they can expect you to personally visit their premises to fix problems and any precautions you’re taking. Finally, what does the community need to know about you? Did you pivot your production to personal protective equipment? How about new platforms with which to interact such as Zoom or GoToMeeting? Any innovations to announce after the government frees people from their homes? Those locked indoors want to know what you’re doing now. Don’t sit silently while you commit good deeds and hard work only to wait for your market to return to you. Because it won’t. PR is not a replacement for great products or exceptional service. It can, however, amplify your successful record. So by all means, allow your work to speak for itself. But know that it only matters when people hear it. Dave Yonkman is president of the West Michigan public relations firm DYS Media and former Capitol Hill communications director.

https://www.prdaily.com/5-essentials-for-creating-a-stellar-podcast/#.XDO12lxpqgQ.twitter Podcasts have come a long way since Adam Curry of MTV fame brought them mainstream more than a decade ago. Consider that 44 percent of Americans listen to podcasts, 26 percent listen to them monthly and 48 million tune in weekly. Furthermore, podcast listeners consume an average of seven different programs weekly. Some 80 percent of them consume “all” or “most” of each episode. “Since [2004], the audio platform has grown in popularity, both in terms of listeners and resulting advertising dollars,” says Kent Lewis, president of Anvil Media. Follow these five rules to influence your audiences with the hottest platform for content marketing right now. 1. Know what you’re talking about. Podcasts provide information about trends and developments in trades that benefit their audiences. They serve as a spotlight on one’s proprietary knowledge and wisdom. Regardless of how well you know a subject, however, continue to thoroughly research it and reach out to those with more knowledge than you. Most importantly, strategize the format of the show. “You can’t just wing this,” Charles Cunningham with Sparkloft Media says. “Yes, your podcast can be a simple conversation to focus on a particular topic, but ensure that your talking points are laid out and that your discussion has a point to make.” Also, allow guests to talk; that’s why you’re having them on your podcast. Your followers are eager to hear from them. Guests do you a big favor by appearing on your show, taking time from busy schedules. Be gracious. Send a handwritten thank you card and help them out in future promotions if you are in a capacity to do so. 2. Be consistent. Leave no room for variation in your production schedule. Announce that you release new installments every Tuesday at 7:00pm ET or ask listeners to check in for new content on the second Friday of every month so that they know when to return for fresh material. They might visit every so often without a calendar, but they will quickly move on if they don’t see new information consistently. With 47 percent of consumers expecting web pages to load in less than two seconds, they won’t return to your site for long. “You must be consistent,” says Hank Yuloff, who hosts The Marketing Checklist. “Pick a time and day of the week and be there. Most people do not listen live, but they must know when your new episode drops.” 3. Engage the audience. Ask questions. Take calls. Encourage listeners to participate online with surveys and comments. Ryan McCormick, host of Outer Limits of Inner Truth (OLIT), not only responds to emails from subscribers, he calls them and asks for their direct feedback. “Podcasters should let their listeners know that they are appreciated and that their ideas and suggestions are being heard,” McCormick says. “Last week, I did a program where I interviewed 10 listeners on OLIT. It was a huge success.” 4. Don’t forget to promote. Visitors won’t tune in to your program solely because it exists. The internet is too vast to expect that readers will somehow discover it ontheir own. The “build it and they will come” might have worked for Kevin Costner, but it has never worked in real like. However long it took to produce content, spend eight times more promoting it. “Make it easy for your guests to spread the word!,” adds Nicole Hernandez, host of The Daring Kind show. “When you launch an episode, always send an email to your guests with ready-made social media posts and captions. In this way, they can share their interview, and they don’t have to do anything other than copy, paste and post.” Also, consider using multiple social platforms, email marketing, online advertising, giveaways and partnering with larger brands to create a loyal following. 5. Invest in good equipment. Don’t cut corners on hardware when the initial equipment costs less than $300. Invest in simple, high-quality equipment. Otherwise, don’t expect people to take you seriously. It’s similar to using business cards with no street address. Companies appear less professional and bad audio quality conveys no =permanency. It looks shady and untrustworthy. “Like in business the three most important ingredients are location, location, location,” Tom Scarda with The Franchise Academy says. “In podcasting it’s audio quality, audio quality, audio quality. Sound came via radio way before TV. Humans will listen to something without video but will not do it the other way around. I mandate that my guests invest in a $20 or $30 headset to be on my show. If they sound poorly I will cancel the interview.” Dave Yonkman is president of the public relations firm DYS Media, former Capitol Hill communications director and former Washington correspondent for Newsmax Media.

https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/5-steps-to-follow-to-make-sure-you-get-found-in-search/ Why does the FBI offer its Witness Protection Program to informants when the feds can post their contact information on Page 2 of Google search results? In fact, they could list it anywhere after the third result and need not worry all that much! Great news for snitches, but not so much for PR hacks since 51 percent of all website traffic starts from an organic search. So, public relations pros know their content needs to appear in search results. They also know the same content is worthless if it doesn’t appear prominently. How are they supposed to navigate such tension? Learn how to optimize content for search engines. That’s how. Traditional PR practitioners consume themselves in writing, emailing and working the phones for their customers, but everyone can relax and exhale by implementing a few important SEO elements into their system. Follow these guidelines to produce only quality content Write how people talk, especially with voice searches on smart home devices like Google Home and Echo becoming more prevalent. Ensure that the work is original and concise. Don’t confuse “brevity” for “concise”—pack power and punch into the language. No $10 words. Limit headlines to seven words and sentences to a maximum of 25 words. Simplicity is not a determining factor in search engine rankings, but it helps users to easily scan content and find the keywords for which they are looking. Highlight with bolding and incorporate bullet points to break apart the copy to further identify the most important elements on a page. Don’t overdo it, though, or you’ll disrupt the flow of the page and irritate users. Make it a point to update old content regularly After regularly blogging for at least one month, PR hacks have written articles that generate organic traffic. They are now able enhance those articles and leverage their ability to obtain higher search rankings. Six months should not lapse without refurbishing dated information. The most significant secret factor heavily influencing SEO ranking is posting frequency or content updating. Google modernized its algorithms to more seriously consider how often a site posts fresh content or updates existing information. By posting more frequently on a company blog — and by updating existing pages and blog posts — Google recognizes the websites busy working on themselves and will reward them. Employ a strategy to amplify earned content People don’t find content accidentally. All earned media demands a promotional strategy that combines paid and owned platforms. A multi-channel amplification plan exponentially increases the ability of users to discover your information. Boost content with paid advertisements or promotions, ask employees to share on their social sites and blast it out on a company digital newsletter. Build links The most significant contribution to SEO for flacks are editorial links. When writing a guest blog or contributing articles to online platforms, include links to the brand’s website to significantly improve the volume of traffic. Most bloggers and online influencers accept guest posts or conduct interviews with experts. They represent terrific opportunities to enable companies to gain visibility online and provide a means of infiltrating larger target audiences. Analyze, analyze, analyze Management guru Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Drucker posits that business leaders cannot know whether or not they succeed until they define and track metrics. Tools such as Moz, Google Analytics and Alexa enable PRs to track backlinks, traffic and conversions. Focus on website analytics and content performance. Once solid measurements are in place, PR pros can adjust and optimize it for the most return on investment. Finally, Google—which dominates nearly 80 percent of the online search market—hates liars and cheaters as much as the rest of us. The internet juggernaut will penalize or remove from the equation altogether those who break its rules. Honesty and transparency are ironclad in the world of public relations and search engine optimization. There are no shortcuts. Hard work is part and parcel of delivering superior products and services again and again. When PRs regularly load sites with meaningful content that links to even more relevant content, they will succeed with Google and rank at the top of search results in no time. Dave Yonkman is president of the public relations firm DYS Media, former Capitol Hill communications director and former Washington correspondent for Newsmax Media.