Mastering healthcare content marketing and blogs for independent practices

Ready to dive into healthcare content marketing? Blogs offer a place to demonstrate your specialty knowledge, provide helpful information to patients, and share your practice’s brand. A great blog highlights your practice's professionals, giving prospective patients confidence in their doctors and providers. They also drive traffic to your website, help establish you as an expert in your field, and boost your website’s ranking in the search engines — making them an  essential part of any healthcare marketing content strategy. Learn more about blogging for healthcare providers and how you can leverage content marketing to grow your practice.

With the rise in popularity of video content and podcasting, some think blogging is no longer a viable healthcare marketing strategy. Here are the benefits of a healthcare blog, plus 6 content examples to inspire your practice.

Content marketing is creating and promoting content that engages with prospective patients and piques interest in available products and services — without explicitly promoting the business that offers those items for sale.

Using your blog as a content marketing strategy essentially showcases your expertise and gives confidence in your pracatice to prospective patients. Your unique, compelling content completes the work for you. Build your medical reputation, and the new patients will follow.

Becoming a thought leader in your local area will designate you as a go-to person in your field of expertise, which lends itself to visibility exposure for your practice. Local experts are routinely offered opportunities to share their expertise, such as a quote in an article or a spot on the local news, expanding visibility and solidifying their reputation. 

Every time you publish a new blog post, you increase the number of your site’s indexed pages. The more indexed pages your site boasts, the more search engine-directed traffic your site receives. Plus, tailoring your content to a local audience will help when patients search for specific procedures or locations. An example of this would be someone searches for "Cleveland dentists root canal." If your local Clevleand blog details root canal procedures, you have an excellent chance of catching that prospective patient's eye. To make the most of your healthcare content marketing strategy be sure to blog regularly. Set a calendar for bi-weekly posts as a rule.

Blogging not only increases the number of indexed pages but also helps you grow a network of backlinks. Backlinks, or inbound links, are the connections made whenever a website cites your website as a source with a hyperlink, and they signal authority to search engines. 

As your web presence grows, other websites begin to cite you (and your notable medical expertise), and Google notices. The more quality backlinks to your site, the more confident Google becomes in your site.

As you grow your digital footprint and improve your search results performance, you also further solidify your status as a thought leader. A great reputation, when combined with fantastic SEO results, yields lead generation.

Part of any good content marketing strategy is understanding how to repurpose content into various mediums. You can use the information you publish via articles on your blog to create content for your social media accounts by tweaking it slightly.

Maybe you’ve written a post about the top 5 negative effects of UV exposure due to living ib Phoenix on your blog. You can then create an infographic or short video with this same information and post it to your Facebook or Instagram account. Even easier, simply reshare your article without creating any new content. 

Even doctors get writer's block. Knowing what to write about is a challenge for anyone with a blog, so consider varying your article format in order to generate inspiration. 

Engage your audience with Q&A-style articles that share valuable information or engaging stories about local people or events. Consider reaching out to other physicians, medical professionals, or disease experts to get answers to the questions you hear most often from patients. 

Share some of your medical provider expertise with patients via tutorials. For example, if you’re a dentist, consider sharing the proper way to floss and the most common mistakes you see. 

Case studies offer prospective patients social proof of your skills and ability as a medical provider. Just be sure to consult with legal counsel before writing or publishing any case studies to ensure you’ve secured proper patient permission and are not at risk for a HIPAA violation. 

News commentary is a great blog format for local healthcare marketing because it can boost your search rankings and highlight your specialized expertise. For example, a family doctor might write a blog post on local bed bug outbreaks — i.e., what’s causing them and how to avoid exposure.

Patients trust your opinion, so they want to hear your thoughts on the products they trust and use. For example, an ophthalmologist might share a review of a new brand of contact lenses or compare and contrast 2 popular brands.

Utilizing this blog format adds value because it can help patients make an informed decision on the best product for their needs.

Chances are, patients ask you many of the same questions over and over. Turn these regular queries into a series of blog posts to provide in-demand information to patients while encouraging traffic to your site.