Finding the time to produce content for your medical office website can be challenging. Even when you do carve out some time, thinking of potential topics to discuss can be a major cause of writer’s block.
How many times do you think about that blog post you know you should write and think:
What should I write about on my blog?
We’ll give you some tips to loosen up the creative juices and make your healthcare content vibrant.
Talk about trending health topics
This has been a little more challenging in the past year—challenging in that it’s hard to differentiate yourself in the marketplace when every single healthcare provider is talking about COVID-19 and the vaccine.
Typically, there’s a broad range of trending topics and you can focus on the ones that are most relevant to your practice.
One way to produce timely content is to take a look at the national observances each month for different issues in healthcare. Some of these observances are popular and common, like Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. But there’s quite a few others that don’t get the same level of media attention.
For example, March is set aside for kidney disease, nutrition, tuberculosis and colorectal cancer. Given that you only need to write a couple blog posts a month, these topics alone will cover you for March over 2 years.
Explain common health terms
One of the disadvantages of being an expert in any field is that it’s easy to lose sight of how much knowledge there is that you take for granted. It can be completely new and fresh to the average person.
To pick an example, here’s a list of 25 common medical terms. How many of these do you think most patients would be familiar with? If you think most would be familiar, then don’t bother with a blog post. But if even half of your patients might not know the meaning, then it’s worth your time to write out a few hundred words explaining it.
Answer your FAQs
Even if your website has an FAQ page, that doesn’t mean each question doesn’t merit a blog post of its own—one that will give the issue a deeper look than what takes place on a FAQ page. You can certainly go beyond what’s on the page.
Have someone on your staff take a look at online medical forums and find out what questions are being asked. Ask everyone on your staff to come up with a list of the top 2-3 questions that people outside the office are asking them about. It’s likely a few new topics will shake out.
Lists, lists and more lists
Online readers love lists. You could write about the best ways to prevent a heart attack, or a list of “The 4 Steps You Need To Take To Prevent A Heart Attack.” Use bulleted points to separate each item and that’s it. This is a win-win—it’s great for you, because it’s relatively easy to produce and it’s great for the reader in that it’s an easy read.
So be creative. The 5 things to watch for if you have diabetes, the 3 most important medical tests to take, etc. Whatever the number and whatever the topic, make a list.