healthcare blogging

Basics of Healthcare Blogging

Whether you’re a doctor, a nurse, or another type of medical professional, you have the ability to be a medical content writer. Healthcare blogging and other medical writing services are valuable to the general population. Not everyone has instant and immediate access to healthcare. It’s your job as a medical content writer to give them the information they need to make an informed decision. 

Whether you’re currently in the business of healthcare blogging or thinking about starting one, here are some things to keep in mind.

Accuracy is Crucial 

Accuracy is essential with any topic you’re writing about. It’s especially important for healthcare. Giving people false or faulty information in your healthcare blog could lead to mistrust. For that reason, you must use your own knowledge while performing research to see what other sources are saying. 

Stay in Your Lane 

The best way to ensure you’re giving out accurate information is to stay in your lane. Physical therapists, for example, should stick to topics within their scope of practice. At the bare minimum, you should always have your work reviewed by a medical professional specializing in your article’s subject. 

 

Always Write With a Target Audience in Mind 

It’s imperative that you decide who your target audience is before starting each blog. If you’re writing about conditions that mainly affect the elderly, you want to make sure your article is worded and structured so that they can understand it. 

You should write your blog so that everyone can understand it. Avoid using medical jargon or complex diagnoses unless you plan to explain them in layman’s terms. This is especially important for medical writing in clinical research. 

Hit on Keywords 

Hitting primary and secondary keywords in Google is necessary. For that reason, it might be a good idea to utilize an SEO tool or take a few classes on SEO optimization. You’ll be amazed at how many more people read your blog simply because you added the right words in the right places. 

Be Patient 

Ultimately, you’re not going to see tons of results or visitors to your healthcare blog overnight. It will take time, sometimes up to several years, for your blog to land on Google’s radar and get featured on their first page of search results. Patience and staying the course are extremely important for successful healthcare blogging. 

Contact Us 

Basics plays a significant role in turning your healthcare blog into a success. However, accuracy is the most important. Even if your blogs rank high on Google and get featured on the first page, they will be worthless if the information is wrong. You run the risk of hurting someone with erroneous information. People will also stop trusting you. As long as you write correctly about relevant information, people will start to take notice and give your blog the attention it deserves.

If you need help with your health blogging, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Medical Content Solutions. We offer free quotes, and your first blog is free!

social proof

The Importance of Social Proof

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! 

 

private practice

How Private Practice Physicians Can Use Their Blog to Reach Patients

All of your years of hard work and determination have finally paid off. You have your very own private practice, and you’re ready to serve patients. But maybe it’s not been so easy to get people into your office. The truth is, people, rely on the web to find the doctor that will become the medical provider for themselves in their family. You have to ask yourself, what does your web presence say about you?

Your Blog Matters

It may feel tedious and even overwhelming to create and manage your blog. However, a blog is helpful to your private practice for more reasons than one. Not only does it drive traffic to your site, but it is also how people can get to know you and the type of medical care that you offer. You can use your blog as a marketing tool and as a way to introduce yourself to potential patients.

Let’s go over some of the things you can do to ensure that your blog is doing the most work for your private practice.

Consistency is Key

Sometimes busy professionals get so mired down in what they should write that they miss the opportunity to write anything at all. Posting regularly and consistently will help with engagement and demonstrate to your site visitors that you’re invested in staying current. Whether you post once a week, or several times a week, the trick is to make sure you make a goal and reach it consistently.

Post Quality Content

Typos and grammatical mistakes don’t have a place on your blog. Ensure that your post’s content is of the highest quality and is relevant to your audience. Consider posting a variety of content that focuses on services you offer, tidbits of information about you and your staff, or industry news that your patients may find helpful.

Hire Someone to Help

If you can’t keep your website updated on your own, then reach out to someone who can. At Medical Content Solutions, we are dedicated to helping private practices just like yours. Reach out to us today to create a customized content plan to get your website looking its best. We look forward to working with you!