If there’s one thing healthcare marketers need more of, it’s time. Your day is most likely taken up with monitoring campaigns, analyzing metrics of your digital marketing, adjusting strategies and, of course, meetings. But it’s a simple fact: Healthcare blogs provide significant opportunities to connect with your audience and drive conversions.
If your healthcare organization doesn’t have an active healthcare blog, with articles written by your physicians, you’re missing out. Proper healthcare blogging, with your providers’ active participation and input, takes time and effort to do well. But the results are well worth your investment. Blogging gets your organization’s name and message out to potential patients in several ways that no other digital marketing efforts can match.
Healthcare blogs tell your unique stories
Many healthcare organizations get bogged down in explaining conditions and procedures. You do want to provide context for the topics you discuss in articles. But you don’t want to be too clinical.
Consumers often start researching health-related topics at more general sources of information, such as Wikipedia or WebMD. You won’t be able to compete with the kind of web traffic these resources enjoy, nor should you try. By the time potential patients come to your health organization’s website, they’re likely interested in information that’s more specific to their needs and situations.
Find ways to set your organization and providers apart while discussing the topic at hand. Rather than a long, drawn-out explanation of what a condition is, explain the kind of care patients can expect when they see a doctor for help with that condition. Or discuss a new procedure that other providers in your market don’t yet offer. Blog articles allow for a more personal connection between the author and the reader. That means you’re helping to build a good relationship with a potential patient before they ever make that first phone call.
Blog articles also provide a venue for you to share news and information with members of the community beyond traditional press releases. If your organization hires a new physician to address a critical need for care in your area, interview the provider to find out about their specialty, practice area, particular clinical interests, etc. Then write a blog article under the physician’s byline. In the article, have the physician introduce themselves to readers, along with a call to action (CTA) that encourages readers to make an appointment.
Your healthcare blog is also a great place to showcase patient stories. Healthcare consumers often seek patient stories to learn more about their experiences and the kind of care they had while under your providers’ care. Highlighting these stories has two key benefits:
- It shows how confident your organization is in the services it provides
- It humanizes your physicians by letting them share their insights into the particular case of a patient under their care.
Healthcare blogs improve your SEO
Adding new, fresh content to your organization’s site provides more pages for search engines to index. This can improve your rankings in searches. But you don’t want to simply add a bunch of irrelevant pages for no good reason. Google and other search engines will penalize you for that.
Blogging provides a natural way to regularly add relevant pages to your website. This can benefit your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Having more high-quality, helpful indexed pages on your site is like casting a wide digital net for your potential patients. It makes it easier for them to find you when they search online.
Also, your blog allows you to capitalize on sudden surges in online interest for a particular topic that is relevant to your patients’ healthcare interests. Through a type of blog article called rapid news response (RNR), you can help your medical providers quickly share their thoughts on local, regional, or national news that may affect patients or the care your organization offers. In doing so, you can also take advantage of the short-term SEO benefits that accompany the public’s increased awareness of these issues. Some areas of healthcare news you can address through RNRs include:
- Medical issues raised by experts, politicians, celebrities, etc.
- Study results reported in news media.
- Reactions to events in popular culture related to healthcare
Healthcare blogs let you spread the word on social media
You should be posting to your organization’s chosen social media channels on a regular basis. Regular posts help maintain readers’ interest and make them more likely to engage and, eventually, convert.
Posting a new blog article gives you a natural opportunity to connect with your followers on social media. Write up several relevant posts that encourage readers to view your new article. Include a link to the page in each post. Then incorporate these into your regular social posting schedule for the next few weeks and months after the article goes live. You can also recycle those posts as needed for evergreen content — that is, content that will continue to be relevant over a long period of time or at certain times of the year, rather than only around the time of publication.
Related reading: Healthcare Social Media Content: 4 Types You Should Share With Your Audience
Take advantage of our healthcare blogging expertise
We understand how challenging it can be to find time for blogging on top of your other numerous marketing responsibilities. Our experienced healthcare-exclusive content strategists can function as an extension of your team. We can write high-quality articles under your physicians’ bylines that you can incorporate into your outreach efforts.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you start or enhance your healthcare blogging program.
