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10 Quick Tips to Ensure Your Healthcare Blog Succeeds Posted by Tyson Downs on 9/22/14 4:26 AM
Blogging is a great way to expand your online presence, increase your outreach efforts, and offer added value to both current patients and prospective clientele. And regardless of the healthcare field you specialize in, an on-site blog can provide you with an opportunity to personalize the customer experience, engaging readers and endearing them to your business. But creating a successful blog requires more than simply posting content. If you want to ensure that your healthcare blog succeeds, you need to first reach the right people and then impress them with what you have to offer.
Here are some quick tips that are sure to improve success rates for blogs associated with websites for doctors and other healthcare professionals. 1.
Secure your niche Choosing generic subject matter is only going to make it more difficult for you to be heard over the white noise that is the Internet. With so many medical resources available to web surfers, locating your blog could be like finding a needle in a haystack if you don't narrow your scope and specialize. Chances are you already have some kind of healthcare niche you're passionate about, and this is where you should begin when it comes to your blog. Consequently, you can present yourself as an authority, figure out ways to target your readership, and present information that people are searching for, and perhaps no one else is providing. An example would be a dentist that specializes in dental implants. There's no doubt that blogging on a regular basis can help a dentist improve his dental SEO results.
2.
Curate topics Keeping your topics timely, engaging, informative, and entertaining is no easy feat, and over time you can definitely lose steam where topic creation is concerned. This may be especially true for doctor websites since the subject matter is limited to a particular field. But there are ways to curate topics so that you always have something to write about. For one thing, you can brainstorm and put a variety of topics on the back burner for later use. You can also stay current with developing trends or technologies in your field. And you can always ask readers for suggestions, a tactic that will help you create content you know there is demand for.
3.
Write for the layman
It's all too easy to lapse into technical lingo when discussing healthcare topics. But remember that the majority of your audience will be patients. Unless you want to alienate them or your blog is targeted at other healthcare professionals, you need to write with your readers in mind. 4.
Behave appropriately When operating online as a medical authority, you have to be careful not to overstep your bounds. For one thing, you need to be aware of how HIPAA pertains to blogging in order to protect the privacy of your patients. Discussing cases, even if you don't use patient names or other personal data, is probably best avoided. But you also need to be aware of the fact that people may take your content as gospel. And when you offer advice, you need to do so with the highest level of responsibility, knowing that readers may well use it in ways you never intended, potentially causing harm in the process.
5.
Post consistently This is imperative for any type of blog. If you want to reach readers, optimize your content, and keep people coming back for more, you cannot afford to have lapses in posting. Loyal readers may check back a few times to see if you're posting before they bail and look elsewhere for content. But most short-attention-span web surfers only have to stop in once without finding new content before they write you off.
6.
Personalize content Many business blogs are overly professional. But this can be a detriment to your healthcare practice. Your blog allows you the opportunity to be seen as more than just a business - you can put a personal face on your professional pursuit. Some measure of success here can be achieved simply by developing your writing voice and speaking to readers from a personal perspective. But you could also have others in your office post frequent blogs, creating a variety of personalities that might appeal to different types of readers.
7.
Be concise Whether you engage in print, TV, or online marketing for healthcare professionals, it is more or less understood that you have limited space and time in which to communicate your message. The same principle applies to blogging. You might think a healthcare blog offers unlimited opportunities to wax poetic about your current professional interests. But people peruse blogs because they don't have time for alternative forms of research. And they don't want to waste time on content that isn't short and to the point. Entertainment value can buy you some leeway, but not much.
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Optimize If you're not optimizing your blog with tags, keywords, and more, you're wasting a major opportunity to get found by search engines and readers alike. And considering that bringing readers to your blog could also result in new patients for your healthcare practice, you'll definitely want to put time, money, or both into optimization strategies.
9.
Make sharing easy and desirable One of the many goals of online marketing for doctors is to create campaigns that encourage sharing. And you should take the same tactic with your blog. Not every entry has to soley rely on text. For example, you can break up blocks of text by including infographics and videos. And you'll find that these encapsulated items are so much easier to share than bulky blocks of text. But you can also add buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets as a way to offer one-click opportunities for readers to like and share your content.
10.
Use metrics Tracking and analyzing data associated with how your blog is performing can only help to make it more successful over time. So if SEO for doctors is on your list of must-haves when it comes to your blog, don't drop the ball by failing to use the many metrics programs available for tracking purposes after the fact. To some extent, analysis is up to you. But when you are able to pinpoint efforts that deliver consistent results, you can hone your strategies and increase success on every front.
Topics: Blogging