Author: admin

Healthcare Blog, Medical Blog, Healthcare Content Agency

Top 5 Writing Tips for Your Healthcare Blog

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Developing appropriate topics to help connect your medical practice with your patients can feel like a daunting task. While you might have a few ideas for initial topics, writer’s block can frequently set in pretty quickly. To help keep your healthcare blog operational and connecting with prospective patients, follow these tips to produce meaningful healthcare content and educate your community. 

Allow Healthcare Blog Topics to Strike Anytime

You don’t always have to be working on your medical blog to suddenly be struck with the next brilliant idea that your audience might NEED to know. For that reason, it is important to keep tools nearby so you can quickly capture your ideas when creativity strikes. Several people keep notepads and pens strategically placed around their homes, cars, or office. Additionally, small pocket notebooks can be kept with you at all times so that if your next patient gives you a brilliant idea for a topic that you don’t have to run out before you forget. 

Curate Your Photo Library

Healthcare blogs have a variety of different purposes, and this idea has multiple benefits. Your online healthcare content is designed to help connect and educate your audience. One of the most significant benefits of using personal photos is building initial trust with prospective patients before they ever set foot in your practice. 

Additionally, capturing your photography helps to eliminate using stock photos but can also help to inspire some of your following blog topics. With today’s digital technology, many phones can capture excellent quality images that you can use on your website. That means that you don’t even need specialized photography skills to capture some great moments. Just a note for medical professionals, be sure that your photos don’t catch any sensitive patient information.

Identify Your Goals

While writing on just about any topic can be interesting to some people, be sure that you keep your prospective patients in mind. Instead of writing about an obscure medical practice or healthcare topic, consider ensuring that your issues are relevant to your audience. As summer nears, many doctors focus on heat-related injuries and their avoidance. These are good practices to use to make sure that your community benefits from your efforts. 

Make it Interactive for Your Patients

Being able to draw your audience into your work and allowing them to take an active role in your practice can help to increase trust and buy-in from your audience. Consider adding a fun poll question into a blog, or make sure to ask for comments in the section below. However, if you ask for comments, be sure to continue your interaction after your blog has posted. Also, as mentioned before, be sure to avoid potential questions that might expose private patient information to your audience. 

Make Your Healthcare Content Creation Strategy Personal

Coming up with a long-term healthcare content creation strategy can help you stay focused on your overall goals. You can double down on this approach by making your content personal to you. While your patients come to you for your unique expertise, it doesn’t hurt to pull back the curtain a bit and let them see into your life. Consider writing topics on “a day in the life” that covers you and your staff. You can also include short stories or blurbs about a pet, child, or your hobbies. Making efforts to allow your patients to see you as a person rather than just a doctor helps build personal rapport. 

Think About Using a Healthcare Content Agency

Of course, this approach can take some considerable time and energy. If you are a busy medical professional, coming up with a long-term strategy can feel daunting enough, but finding the time to write and execute your blog posts can be impossible. At Medical Content Solutions, our professional staff can help capture your voice and connect with your audience. We work with our clients to ensure that they get meaningful content that helps show their work positively. If you would like some additional help to get your story in front of your community, contact us today! 

social proof

The Importance of Social Proof

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As we think about our role in the world around us, we can easily identify that we are all unique individuals. However, when you take humans as a collective group, we have some patterning throughout our global society that can be decidedly predictable. While the surface of social proof looks like it may be a marketing tactic deployed to get customers to buy traditional products, social proof can also influence your patients! So let’s dive into some of the details of social proof and how you can use it to leverage your practice. 

Social Proof 101

Now that you understand that we can predict and somehow influence people’s behavior to choose certain products (or, in your case, practices) over others, let’s take the next step. Social proof is a form of marketing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re actively pursuing customers. If you’ve ever been looking for a restaurant for dinner, but drive past an empty parking lot and think, “Wow, that place is dead, they must serve terrible food.” and then continued driving? Well, that’s a negative social proof experience. However, the inverse is also true. When you see everybody flocking to a single location, you may experience a fear of missing out (FOMO)! 

While there are different scales of social proof, it is important to recognize that different marketing measures have different levels of success. Social proof can be thought of in almost the same vein as a personal recommendation — and those are more valuable than gold! 

In the online world, we can think of social proof as to your reviews across all platforms. So, just how valuable are your reviews? Let’s break it down by ranking categories from highest to lowest. 

  • If your practice targets younger individuals (18-34), then recent studies suggest that 91% of these individuals trust online social proof as much as personal recommendations.
  • 82% of people say that they value the opinion of someone close to them before they make a purchase. 
  • 70% of individuals look at online product reviews before they make a purchase. 

All of these studies suggest that the people around them play a role in any purchase that they are making. How valuable do those recommendations become when your health plays a role? 

Capitalize on Your Social Proof

Now that you have a general understanding of how social proof plays a role in your business, it’s time to figure out how to put social proof to work for your medical practice. 

Break out the Reviews

If people value others’ opinions so readily, it’s pretty apparent to see that you need to be increasing the number of people that tell others just how great your business is. Many medical practices can do this by simply asking their patients to leave them reviews in key areas. You can e-mail the link, create custom QR codes that lead to that page, or offer specialized incentives or promotions to reward your patients for leaving you high-quality reviews. 

Create a Blog

If you have a website, you’ve likely heard that you should create a blog. While you also recognize terms like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), that isn’t the primary focus of increasing your social proof via your blog. Instead, social proof is all about getting actual people (not search engines) to connect with your content. That means that your content connects with your audience and that it is easy to share. You can add buttons to quickly allow for social media sharing across a variety of different social media platforms. That includes Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other areas that your clients might use. 

Improve Your Online Presence

This means that somebody within your organization is going to have to get down into the weeds. Interacting across social media can help keep your practice at the forefront of your current and potential patient’s minds. Keep regular posts that connect with your current patient’s needs. Podiatrists may consider specialized footwear to avoid slips and falls during the winter months. No matter what your specific industry is, you can find a following on social media that directly benefits your practice. 

Finding the Time

Of course, not every practice has the staff or the expertise to optimize your online strategy. If you’re considering becoming more relevant in your community, consider collaborating with Medical Content Solutions. We have the expert staff that you need to help create health content that connects with your future patients. Call us today! 

 

medical white paper

3 Reasons to Write a Medical White Paper Today

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In the continually evolving marketing climate, it can be hard to sort through the myriad of different topics and styles you should implement. While medical white papers are frequently overlooked, this tool is a critical component to educate your audience about new services or devices. Of course, there are a few essential things that you should know before you ever put pen to paper, and we’ve grouped three of the most important reasons that you should write a medical white paper for your practice. 

#1. Keep Medical White Paper Topics Relevant

It doesn’t matter how well-written or researched your white paper is if the audience is not interested in what you’re writing. It is essential to know and understand your audience to target the specific pain points they are having. Once you know these key points, all of your statistical data will land with your audience and demonstrate precisely how you plan to help with their current issues. 

#2. Bring the Data

If you write a whitepaper full of hypothetical or theoretical numbers, your audience is more likely to be skeptical of your research’s extensive nature. While your medical white paper should not be overburdened with numbers and statistics, it is crucial to driving home key points with critical statistics. Use research or case studies that help bolster your point. Make sure that you’ve done your research and can verify the data that you’re using.

#3. Get Your White Paper in Front of Your Audience

Where you publish and post your white paper can vary greatly. You may get several different opinions on the best platforms to publish your work. However, you should keep your audience in mind.  Many practices publish their whitepapers on their websites, in emails or newsletters, or submit them to academic or healthcare-related websites. If you’ll be presenting your work at a conference, you should consider getting your white paper published in those materials. While you want to be sure people will view your work, the forum needs to be reputable as well. Various websites promote their ability to publish your whitepaper. However, they may not deliver your expected results after they collect your payment. We frequently suggest that you talk to colleagues that work in your area of expertise and listen to their suggestions and cautionary tales. 

Final Thoughts 

While medical white papers can substantially impact marketing your products and services, don’t treat the white paper as an advertisement. Medical white papers are designed as informational. While the intent is to market your product, it can’t be overshadowed by the content. Instead, make sure that you’re accurately describing the problem, your solution, and the data to support your claims. If you stick to that simple formula, you’ll help establish yourself and your brand as a credible and trusted authority.

Of course, if you’re considering writing a white paper but want to enlist the help of professionals that are well-versed in the art of creating medical content that connects with your audience, call or email us today! We are experts in helping healthcare professionals focus on supporting and healing their communities. 

niche content agency

How Your Marketing Company Can Benefit From a Niche Content Agency

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Your marketing company has finally launched. Clients are pouring in, you’re pushing services, and seeing improvement for your clients’ bottom line. You may not see it, but something is missing. In today’s world of paid advertising, the immediate rewards and leads can feel successful, but you may be overlooking a critical element to the overall strategy: a niche content agency. 

In our experience, many marketing agencies are great at what they do. They can build websites, run analytics, evaluate ROI (Return on Investment), and build case studies to show their effectiveness. However, the same people that are experts in these fields push content to the backburner. Unfortunately, content marketing can seem like a hefty up-front cost. Some agencies might feel like it can increase the initial costs and scare clients away. But if you want to build excellent long-term relationships with your client base, content is still king. 

At McDonald Content Solutions, we offer our clients (medical practices and marketing agencies) specialized content in the healthcare and medical fields. Here are some of the best reasons that you should consider working with a content agency that’s specialized in your field. 

Immediate Access to Specialized Professional Writers

Content companies aren’t just bringing on every generalized writer off the street. If your marketing agency is working in any professional field, you likely need somebody well-versed in that market. Medical writers have already developed a baseline of background knowledge in the area. Why is this important? By bringing in professionals, you get in-depth insight in less time. Instead of paying a general writer for hours of research to only have their writing fall short of your expectations, our staff delivers stellar content in a fraction of the time. 

Content Agencies Have Experience Telling Your Story

You need to distinguish your clients from their competitors, and our medical staff has first-hand knowledge about current trends in the field. By having our finger on the competition’s pulse, you gain a competitive edge by telling meaningful stories that you may otherwise miss. Additionally, professional writers can ensure that your message connects with their intended audience. 

Dollar for Dollar – Content has the Highest ROI

While paid advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) methods are wildly popular today, they don’t offer your client long-term advantages. Their best hope is to evaluate each ad campaign’s cost through trial and error to get the best return on their money. However, PPC advertising requires that your clients have to pay for every single lead they get. Additionally, this approach leaves you vulnerable to losing a client with an unexpected, poorly performing ad campaign. 

With an emphasis on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the written content is specifically designed to increase organic traffic to a website. Utilizing your expertise in converting that traffic to paying customers helps benefit your clients and your company. You can suggest that your clients can continue to see the same high level of sales while reducing their overall spend on advertising and developing a multi-pronged marketing approach. 

A Niche Content Agency Can Increase the Length of Client Relationships

Niche content agencies can work with you to help develop a reliable content calendar for your clients. Typical content calendars should plan out an approach for a minimum of six months but often span over two years. While content aims to increase organic traffic, it takes between six and eighteen months to start seeing positive results. Establishing these long-term plans with your clients can ensure that your marketing company has reliable projections about your income and ability to grow and expand. 

A Niche Content Agency is More than a Writer

A content agency is specialized in producing great content for their clients, but that doesn’t mean that we only have writers. Instead, McDonald Content Solutions works with writers, editors, and project managers. This means that you get an entire writing arm added to your agency through a single point of contact. How much value would it add to your company to be able to bring on an entirely new and professional team without having to worry about supervision, hiring, and training? Additionally, we have the entire process of producing our content down to an art. We work to ensure that we live up to our motto: Medical Content Simplified. 

Not Everyone is a Writer

While many people dabble in writing, mastering the art of writing is something that very few people can succeed in. Unfortunately, the writing market is saturated with individuals who believe they can write. At McDonald Content Solutions, we only hire writers who have demonstrated the highest level of medical writing. Once we bring them on board, they must undergo a rigorous training process. That means that you get amazing content from our team every single time. Call or email today to see how we can help your team. 

 

healthcare social media

The Advantages of Healthcare Social Media

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We all know that the world of social media is hot right now. There are dozens of options that individuals and businesses are utilizing to bolster their bottom line. . Here are some of the best reasons that you should be investing time and energy into social media. 

Healthcare Social Media Connects with Your Patients

Internet use is one of the most important ways people can connect, regardless of their intention. Additionally, social media use continues to be on the rise. With the increased use of popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others, it makes sense to go where your patients are located. 

Current estimates suggest that more than 244 million people (almost 80% of the total population) in the US use social media today, and that number is forecast to be 257 million in 2023. That means that establishing a presence today can help position your practice for future growth. 

Keep Patients Informed of Changes

Current or potential patients who subscribe to your channels or match your targeted demographics can get regular updates on your practice. You can use social media to spread your news!

Social media can be a fast means of getting out time-sensitive information. If the end of the year is coming up, you may want to remind patients that deductibles will reset. Many private practices see significant increases in their scheduled appointments when they create campaigns to inform patients that it’s time for a new vaccine or allergy shot. 

Increase Availability with Your Healthcare Social Media

Many practices are incredibly considerate of their patients’ needs and their reluctance to contact their office. By offering multiple ways to connect with your staff, you increase the odds of having somebody reach out to communicate with you. One special consideration for healthcare providers is privacy laws. Many social media platforms are not secure, and there is potential that your client’s account isn’t real. Be mindful of the topics you discuss unless you’re in a secured communication portal. 

Managing Your Social Media Presence

Creating and maintaining your social media persona can be as straightforward or complex as you’d like to make it. While there are certain tricks that professional marketers and copywriters use to improve your results, the most important thing is to start. As healthcare professionals, it is crucial to ensure that your topics remain accurate, relevant to your community, and maintain regular posts. 

If you are considering starting a healthcare social media presence on any platform, consider bringing on professionals. At McDonald Content Solutions, we specialize in quality medical content for your practice. We can design, write, and even schedule all of your posts.