Social media is great (well, most of the time). It is almost like a giant party or a never-ending conference in which we get to meet countless awesome people in specific areas of interest. Through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites you can meet new patients and even referring doctors. However, what adds to that social media management is blogging. Here is why blogging can be beneficial to your practice:
The Importance of Blogging
By sharing helpful advice through blog posts, you will position yourself and your office as experts in your industry as well as a trustworthy source for someone in your field. Blogging also helps to market your dental practice because blog posts can be shared across multiple social networks, as well as through emails. If others find your blog post to be helpful, it might get a lot more attention than you had initially imagined it would bring.
The use of blogging also helps to boost search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. I’m sure you’ve heard those three letters before and often wonder what you can do to help improve your ranking: Blog! Blog! Blog! The more blog posts you have out there, the more traffic is going to be generated and the more leads for new patients you will receive. A blog is an extension of your website, which means regularly posting once a week or more will help to keep your website up-to-date.
Blogging and SEO Tips
We all visit Google on a regular basis to search for a certain topic. If you are blogging, those posts can be optimized for SEO search terms, which, in turn, can help bring presence to your website and blog.
For starters, once you have a blog, it is important to write organic content that is tailored for the reader, not Google. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT keyword stuff your blog posts. By stuffing your blog with keywords you are not only making it harder to read for your patients, but you are also creating a warning to Google that this is spam. So, just go with the flow and write that educational content you know your patients are looking for.
Choosing Blog Topics
This can be an easy idea or not. Look to your patients for help–what are some of their common questions they seem to ask frequently in your office? Take those questions and turn them into blog posts, so they can easily have their questions answered when not in your office.
Do you have a new service or new employee? Blog about it! Share information on the new service and the new employee. By doing this you can educate your patients on an area they might never have known about before, such as sleep apnea!
Take your marketing and practice into your own hands by creating a blog. But don’t forget to update it frequently. If you don’t have time to write a blog every week, I highly recommend hiring a freelance writer–I did and it was the best decision I have made for my marketing, research and writing needs.
