Blogging may serve as a cornerstone of a comprehensive marketing strategy for dental practices.
At their core, blogs may provide education and solutions to consumers seeking answers and information. Similarly, part of your role as a dental professional may already include educating patients.
Consider conversations you may have with your patients, the questions they ask and the issues they may need to understand better. Effective blog content may be very similar to the information you share with your patients every day, just repurposed in a form leveraged to generate website traffic and strengthen your digital brand.
Explore the ways blogging may fit into your current marketing strategy and how to make this modern marketing tool work for your dental practice.
Patients may have a lot of choices in dental providers and even oral health strategies. Like other types of consumers, patients may begin the process of a purchase (or in this case, an appointment), with a simple online search for information. This is also referred to as a buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey is divided into three phases:
Awareness: Experiencing a problem or issue and conducting research to help better understand or identify it.
Consideration: Researching the problem or issue they’ve identified in order to learn more about possible solutions and approaches.
Decision: Researching a vendor or provider of the specific solution strategy they’ve chosen.
Consumer searches are typically problem-oriented. For dental patients, those problems may include needing a local provider, tooth pain, stained teeth, etc.
Blogs are your opportunity to provide valuable information and answers during that research when a potential patient encounters your relevant content. By doing so, you may be positioning yourself as a thought leader, improving your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and driving more traffic to your website.
Becoming a thought leader
As you accumulate published content and rise to the top of search result rankings, consumers may begin to associate your brand with whatever subjects you’re blogging about. When your content dominates a subject in the search results, by approaching the same topics from many angles, you may be seen as a thought leader, generating consumer confidence and brand recognition. All of this attention may positively affect your bottom line.
SEO
The more you blog, the better you may rank on search result pages for a number of reasons. First, blogs may provide a natural opportunity to compete for keywords relevant to your business. Google rewards the natural, relevant use of keywords in content that provides valuable information. Google also rewards your website for updated, fresh information by reindexing it, which may also result in a higher search result ranking.
Write about topics that could be useful to your current or potential patients.
Business blogs typically focus on solution-based, educational and genuinely helpful content. Think about the common dental problems or questions your patients have and how they would likely look for a solution or advice online. Then use that train of thought to guide your content, from topics to relevant keywords.
Don’t sell yourself.
The goal of blogging shouldn’t be to make the phone ring, it should be to help people. By becoming their trusted resource for information, you may be statistically more likely to get their business, when they’re ready.
Choose evergreen topics and language
The best blogs may be those that never get dated and irrelevant. Try not to choose topics so broad that you may never be able to rank for them. Instead, focus on information that will still be correct and necessary in at least a few years. That includes links. Choose citations carefully with a mind for what’s going to stick around.
Publish frequently
If you or your staff are blogging on behalf of your practice, you may not have time to blog every day. Most businesses don’t actually blog nearly that much. Typically, businesses that blog between twice per week and twice per month may net substantially more website traffic than non-blogging competitors.
About Treloar & Heisel
Treloar & Heisel is a premier insurance services provider to dental and medical professionals across the country. We assist thousands of clients from residency to practice and through retirement with a comprehensive suite of insurance services, custom-tailored advice, and a strong national network focused on delivering the highest level of service.
Treloar & Heisel and Treloar & Heisel Risk Management are divisions of Treloar & Heisel, LLC. Insurance products offered through Treloar & Heisel and Treloar & Heisel Risk Management.
Treloar & Heisel, LLC. and its divisions do not offer business consulting, marketing, or legal advice. This article is intended for general information purposes only. Please consult a professional for any issues concerning these topics.