The importance of a blog

In today’s online world, I now recommend that all of my medical clients seriously think about blogging.

When it comes to blogging, the more you commit to it, the greater the reward will be:

• 57% of marketers who blog monthly have acquired a patient through their blog.
• This number jumps up to 82% when they blog every day.
• 43% of people surveyed have acquired a patient through their blog this year alone.
• Over 60% of companies now publish a blog.

What exactly is blogging?

A blog is the part of your website where you can add dynamic and ever-changing content. Blogging is the act of creating content to
a blog.

It is important to note that when you are blogging for your business, your blog posts are about a particular subject matter related to your practice.

Why does my practice need a blog?

A blog can become one of the most valuable tools in your online marketing toolbox, if you do it correctly.

If a website is the hub of your online presence, a blog located on your website is its heart. A blog allows you to tell stories about your practice and provide important information, showing your patients (and potential patients) that you know what you’re talking about. A blog provides much of the search engine optimisation needed to get better placement in search engine results.

Thoughtful blogging strengthens patient relationships.

The benefits of blogging

The benefits of blogging for medical professionals include the following:

• Shows patients and prospective patients that you care.
• Makes you more approachable to patients.
• Attracts new patients and increases treatment plan acceptance.
• Educates patients about the services that you provide.
• Increases career satisfaction for your team.
• Reinforces to your team that what you provide is important.

What should you blog about?

Make your blog content interesting, engaging, thoughtful, relevant, and useful. It should have great value to your readers. Do not write content specifically for search engines at the expense of your audience and do not focus on the clinical aspects of medicine, which may be boring to many people. Talk about medicine (and non- medical topics) in very human ways.

Blog about topics that people care about. Here are some examples:

• Offers and promos – Blog about your latest offers or the services that you are trying to promote.
• News – Talk about news such as changes to your practice and your staff; any updates taking place in your medical office.
• Information and education articles – Talk about oral- health and how it affects overall health.
• Real stories and case studies – People love real stories. Whether you use your own little anecdotes or patient case studies, real stories are great.
• Children – Appeal to readers who are parents. Explain medical topics relevant to children, tweens, and teens.
• Quiz – Blogs can also be in quiz format. Use quizzes to learn about your patients.
• Top Ten – Everyone wants a quick, worthwhile read, e.g. Top Ten Whitening Systems, Top Ten Reasons People Choose Veneers, etc.
• A Secret – Give readers an inside scoop, e.g. The Secret to Lifelong Teeth Whitening, The Secret to Fresh Breath, The Secret to Keeping Teeth for Life, etc.
• Hot Topics – Most people want to look beautiful. Turn Hollywood news into fodder for your blog.

Blogging tips

• Try and blog at least once a month.
• Make your blog content rich with a minimum of three hundred words per post.
• Think about answering patients’ frequently asked questions.
• Always include an image.

Images for your blogs

Always include images in your blog posts. Successful blog posts that receive the most social shares usually also have a common characteristic. These blogs include some well-placed pictures to break up content and emphasise certain points.

Caution – Do not steal images from other websites; either use your own or purchase them from reputable stock image websites.

Repurposing your blog content 

Creating new content for your online presence can be challenging. Repurposing your blog content can help with this.

One key benefit of repurposing content (aka finding new ways to recycle or up-cycle your existing content) is the time it can save you in the content creation process. Repurposing your content breathes new life into valuable information. It takes what was old and makes it new again, offering it up to a whole new audience in an updated format. Not only is it budget friendly, it also saves time while prolonging the shelf life of your online assets.

Repurposing content has a number of benefits, such as:

• Getting an SEO boost. Multiple pieces of content around the same topic can generate additional opportunities to target a desired keyword.
• Reaching a new audience. In many cases, your original piece of content may have only made an impact with one group of customers.
• Repetition can be an essential part of reinforcing a message. Marketing’s Rule of Seven states that people need to hear your message seven times before they make a decision. Repurposing goes a long ways towards reaching this quota.
• Gaining extra authority. Publishing quality content in a variety of places on a single topic can help raise your profile in the industry and teach others to regard you as an expert.

Below are some different ways to repurpose old content. If there’s one commonality in all these, it’s this: Add value to the original. Content repurposing doesn’t just mean that you reuse an old piece of content again and again. You need to alter it to make it fresh and appealing to a new audience.

1. Create new blog posts and articles – High-quality content can spinoff more high-quality content, and the audience can benefit from both.
2. Create a presentation – Interesting statistics, meaningful quotes, and actionable advice can make for effective slides, and the resulting presentation can offer an easy-to-read recap of your original content.
3. Build an infographic – An infographic is a complete summary of the content of your blog in a visual outline. If you have a lot of data in your article, infographics are a great way to relate data or merely to break up an article into just the major talking points.
4. Create a Pinterest instructographic – This is like a mini infographic, but focused more on the how-to aspect.
5. Refresh and republish old posts – Modify old content so that it has more up-to-date information and statistics, then republish it as a new blog post.
6. Repost and re-promote to social media – You can share your previous blog on different social media channels, in different time zones, reaching new followers, and testing variations of headlines.
7. Create an eBook – Expanding your existing content into an eBook seems like a logical step in the content process. It’s amazing how many high-quality eBooks began as blog posts.
8. Convert to a podcast or video – Chances are that some of your audience prefers content they don’t have to read. In this sense, podcasts and videos could be one of the most important repurposing methods because they open up a whole new way to connect with others.