Blogs are effective when there is interaction and engagement between you and your audience. Until then, it might as well be a personal diary.
Medical Blog Strategy
Try these 5 tips.
1. Comments: Encourage readers to leave comments. Invite conversations and reactions to your posts.
2. Topics: Decide on what topics you want to blog about and develop a schedule or calendar with topics plotted out. It will get you in the habit of providing content regularly and your readers in the habit of expecting something from you.
Bare in mind that it does not have to come from you directly. Have a staff meeting and find out the interests that they have. Assign a topic or day of the week that each of your staff members can contribute to your blogs. Not every post needs to come from you. However, it would be in your best interest to view them before posting. Not everyone may be able to write as well or in the fashion that you would like to portray your medical practice.
3. Styles: There are many different types and styles of blogs including written word blogging to video blogging to photo blogging. Include multimedia in your posts like videos and images. These can get the audience’s attention which is important in today’s society of short attention spans. Medical practices lend themselves well to videos and images as you can show techniques of procedures that you perform, services that you provide and images of medical devices and staff members themselves.
4. Less is more: Make every word count. Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. However you say it, the bottom line is- time is infinite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.
5. Value: Needless to say, one of the most important aspects of a blog is to make it interesting and create valuable content. Find out what makes your content valuable to your readers and target market and then give it to them!
Make your blog posts do double duty. Once you have posted, you can populate your blogs to your social media sites. This will give you more visibility and more readership may spell more prospective patients and practice growth. In addition, the increased visibility increases your positioning as one of authority and the more people see of you, the more likely they will be to contact you for advice.
Use information from your blog to publish articles. Bylines with the articles gives more visibility not only to your patients but also to search engines which then increase your rankings.
Consider publishing a book from the compilation of your posts.
Need help? No problem! Contact Barbara Hales, M.D. for a free consultation and we can discuss your needs. Call 561-325-9664.
