How To Attract More Patients and Grow Your Medical Practice With Blogging
By Amber Turner On Jan 03, 2022 . 0 Comments
If you’re reading this, then you’ve proved that blogs are a good way to get people’s attention.
Blogging is an effective online medical marketing tool and an important part of a medical practice website. So if you are working on getting your marketing strategy sorted out, blogging is one of the best ways of educating your current patients and reaching out to potential ones.
Prospective and established patients prefer to know who you are, what you think and learn medical information directly from you. It’s a great way to start building traffic, acquiring new customers, and developing brand awareness.
When you have a website that’s updated regularly with blog posts that are high quality and on topics relevant to your audience, it can make a huge difference to how your overall website performs in the search engines.
The higher your ranking, the better chance you have of prospective patients finding you.
To accomplish that, you need to implement some proven tactics to boost your ranking in Google.
If blogging isn’t part of your healthcare marketing strategy, it’s time to make a change. Koda Digital is here to help guide the way to get valuable results and more patients in your door.
Top Position Gets More Traffic – Make Your Blog Rank Higher on Google With SEO
Let’s face it, how many of you have clicked “Next Page” when searching on Google?
If you can’t make your website visible on the first page of the relevant keyword searches, you might not get any traffic from the search engines, meaning potential patients are not visiting your website.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, remains an essential component of any successful medical marketing program.
Google works on a complicated algorithm, but the basic premise is that it’s looking for websites that continually publish fresh information that people are searching for.
If a prospective patient clicks on a result and remains on the website for longer than two minutes, that tells Google that this website is very helpful, resulting in a higher ranking.
Make sure your blog is mobile-friendly and responsive.
Find good images for your blog
Link to previous content
Add content regularly
Deciding what to blog about – Content ideas for engaging your readers
Blogs may vary in content and style, but most of them aim at educating patients, managing their illness, and providing valuable health information.
Keep readers engaged by addressing topics they can relate to. Answer questions or educate the audience on conditions and new treatments that are specific to your specialty. Showcase your knowledge and let the users get to know you as a physician.
People are interested in matters they can relate to, so focus on issues relevant to your practice.
Healthcare marketers need to target prospective and current patients with engaging content. Here are a few content ideas that will make your blog stand out from your competitors:
Frequently Asked Questions
Latest News
Discuss an Event
Trending Health Topics
National Health Months
A Focus on Your Specialty
Practical Advice
Be consistent – Planning a blog post schedule
For the average Koda Digital client, 68% of patient appointments come from people visiting their website. Effective and consistent blogs will get your healthcare website noticed by propelling your content to the top of search results.
Begin with resolve to create interesting content regularly.
To stay relevant and effective, at least one to two blogs should be published per month on your website. This is crucial because sharing content consistently will boost your search engine rankings.
Consistency is key to a successful content marketing strategy and your blogs will blossom with regular care and feeding.
Your patients want to hear from you and writing blogs consistently is a task we highly recommend you take on.
It may be a good decision to hire the Koda Digital team to assist in taking that task on by incorporating SEO terms and a strategic marketing strategy that is appropriate and popular for your specialty and your practice.
With us in your corner, you can see results in as short as three months. Much like one of the Urgent Care practices we market for who had a 3.5 to 4.5 increased Google Review rating and a 180% increase in daily visitors.
Choosing blog post formats – Put your reader first
One of the biggest reasons patients leave a website is that the content is boring or difficult to consume. Your patients are busy people, so present your blog content in a more digestible format.
Be sure to avoid thick blocks of content. This is especially problematic on mobile devices. We suggest each paragraph have 1-3 sentences so it is more user-friendly.
Make your content easier to read by keeping the font size and line spacing sufficient. You don’t want your readers to have to squint or zoom in to read the content. Truth be told, the readers won’t stay long enough to try.
If it looks too difficult to read, they’re not going to bother.
It is important to remember that you want it to be long enough to give readers the information they were looking for but not so long that you’ll lose their attention.
Improving the format of your blog posts can encourage your visitors to stay longer on your blog, read more of your content, learn more about your practice, and become your brand evangelists.
Let’s get visual – Include photos to inspire your content
By now you have probably noticed the images on this page. Our brains can process an image 60,000 times faster than text.
That doesn’t mean your text is not as important as images. Images are a supporting tool that can take your content from bland to exciting. Incorporating images in the header and throughout the text makes what you’re saying more readable and interesting.
If you’re looking for good quality free images that you can use without having to credit the owner of the image, then check out Unsplash or Pixabay.
If you’re looking to buy images then you can use a site like Shutterstock or Canva.
It is recommended to keep your content readable for mobile users.
A quick checklist for your blog images:
Choose clear, impactful images that are not too busy or complex.
Use explainer images. This will help the reader digest the information faster.
Upload images that are sized properly. The recommended image size for WordPress content is 1200 x 630px.
Make sure your images are optimized so it does not slow down your website (compressed as much as possible while still looking sharp on high-resolution). If you use WordPress to host your blog, then download the WP Smush plugin, which will automatically condense your image file sizes to ensure they’re as low as possible.
Include pictures of people. It’s especially effective if those people are you and your staff.
Spread the word – Share your blog posts after publishing
The power of social media is influence.
Social media sites that send the most traffic to medical blogs in general are:
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest
For your medical practice, it is a smart idea to not overwhelm yourself trying to keep up with multiple social media platforms. You’re welcome to decide which one fits best for your practice, however, we believe Facebook is the best social media site for medical practices to use. Trust us, your patients are on Facebook.
Sharing your blog articles will lead to more traffic to your website, making you look more credible, and getting more patients through your door.
Also, the same blog post can be shared multiple times on different platforms. Make sure you simply tailor the message to each audience and change up the descriptive text each time you share. You can give these great articles new life by continuing to promote them on social media and through other channels.
Still wondering how to write a healthcare blog? – We can help with a jumpstart
If you lack time or resources to write a compelling blog post, you should hire a marketing professional or agency who can make your blog a powerful part of your marketing efforts.
Here at Koda Digital, we have a team of content writers, editors, and marketing managers who are ready to take on this task for you.
An Orthopedic practice, who was already the most successful practice in their area, came to us with concerns that their business had hit a plateau.
With a comprehensive strategy in place, this practice had increased site visitors by 80% and new patient appointment growth of nearly 40% within 90 days.
Want similar results for your healthcare organization?
Spend your time focusing on your patients, we’ll handle the rest. Contact Koda Digital today to learn more about incorporating blogging into your healthcare marketing efforts.
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