Your life is busy as a doctor. Your practice is doing well, there are continuing education requirements to keep up on—to say nothing of having a life with your family in what seems to be a precious few moments. So when a digital marketer comes to you and tells you to write more for your website, it’s understandable you might want to be dismissive.
“Do I need a blog?” you ask, picturing either the uber-angry political activist blog or the ridiculously mundane blog that posts pictures of tonight’s dinner. While your skepticism is understandable, it’s not accurate. A blog is a vital marketing tool for a medical practice and for the individual doctor.
There are 4 essential things a blog will do for you.
Benefit #1: Build awareness
The most basic element of the marketing funnel is simply making people aware of who you are. The second step in that funnel is keeping them aware of who you are. A blog does both.
An informative post written on a timely medical subject that people are searching for draws new people to your website. When they get there and see that you post 2-3 times per week, it’s an incentive to come back to the site. Studies show that 8 out of 10 people trust the information they get from blogs and it’s safe to say all of those people will be interested in medical issues at some point in their lives.
Benefit #2: Gain a competitive edge
Studies also show that only 13 percent of doctors write a blog. This leaves a wide-open field for you to step into and get a leg up on the competition. Write about the areas your practice focuses on and become an authority source. When you consistently write on similar topics, search engines pick that up and start to lend you credibility when listing their rankings. An added benefit can also be raising your profile among your peers in your chosen field.
Benefit #3: Educate your patients
You know the questions that are most commonly asked in your office. You also know the advice you most wish your patients took to heart. The blog is a chance to get those out in the open. Furthermore, it can be a time-saver. You can shorten up a conversation by referring a patient to a blog post you’ve written on a subject that might take 15 minutes to explain. Do that enough times and you’re saving enough time to, in effect, pay for the blog.
Benefit #4: Get an SEO boost
SEO rankings don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s unlikely you can rank well for the one really informative page while your site as a whole ranks poorly. Blogging is a strong signal to search engines that your site is active and being freshened up regularly. The rising tide lifts all boats and you can reasonably expect that over a period of time (6-12 months), the rest of your website pages will get an SEO boost as a ripple effect from the blog.