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!

Niche medical writing

Why You Should Avoid Generalist Writers for Niche Medical Content

Hiring someone to write niche medical content for your business can involve some level of risk until you get to know the person or company you hire. You must find someone who will earn your trust by delivering medical content to engage your readers with the ideas and terminology that apply to healthcare content writing. If you hire a general writer, you run the risk of getting someone who has to spend additional time researching the subject you ask them to write about, and this may strain them in meeting your deadlines, getting you both off on the wrong foot. 

Some general writers will not know how to appeal to your audience simply because they know too little about your audience and have no experience relating to them. From the general writers’ perspective, they may not have much interest in your industry and therefore find it a subject they are not good at.

Strengths of a Niche Writer

A healthcare content agency understands your audience because they have written for them in the past. They also understand the concepts and ideas behind the medical content that will educate your readers and earn their trust in you. When you hire a healthcare content agency, you can be more certain your deadlines will be met because they already know the subject matter, so that they will spend less time researching and more time perfecting the language that will capture your audience. 

A healthcare content agency knows all the ins and outs of the medical industry because they have found a personal interest in it. Over time, applying this interest has gained their in-depth knowledge about the topics your readers want to know more about. This is important because engaging the interest of your readers is the first step in selling them your product or service.

Let Us Help You With Your Niche Medical Content

You can save yourself valuable time finding the right fit for your healthcare content writing needs by contacting a healthcare content agency that already understands the unique challenges and needs of the medical industry. At Medical Content Solutions, we are passionate about healthcare content writing, so we only focus on this niche. Contact us today, and we will help you establish a better online presence that will allow your customers to know and trust your services. 

  

 

The Importance of Having a Medical Blog

As medical professionals move forward in the information age, they are relying more on technology to drive their businesses. Even healthcare providers that offer essential healthcare services to the public need to rely on digital technology that will create a noticeable online presence. Most Doctors, for example, are too busy with treating patients or keeping their facilities running to think about the importance of having a medical blog or its ongoing content. 

What A Blog Can Do for Medical Professionals

A Medical blog can help you connect with your audience, and the right healthcare content agency can help you make that connection by speaking the language that has been time-tested and proven to work. One of the first things that healthcare content marketing professionals consider is “who exactly is that audience”? Healthcare content agencies know that a common mistake among most clinicians is that they write to the people they relate to most, which is their peers. A healthcare content agency understands the language of your patients and will create healthcare content writing that catches their attention and brings them to you so that your business can thrive.

A Medical Blog Can Educate Your Audience

Healthcare content marketers are skilled at educating their audience in ways they can relate to because all good marketers know that an educated audience is more likely to choose your product or service. Most people will appreciate what they learn and will be more likely to reach out to you. 

Another benefit to educating your audience is that certain keywords can be embedded within the content, and this will improve your ranking on search engines so that people will find you when conducting a search. It is also important to keep adding new blog entries because this will further improve your ranking by letting Google know your site is still active. 

Your Blog Helps Build Trust with Your Patients

As you continue to blog and increase your online presence, you will also increase how much medical content search engines have to crawl and index. As more useful information from your blog appears on internet search results, it will show your audience that you are a trusted source. The more they know and trust you, the more your organization can grow.

Contact Us Today 

If you are looking for a healthcare content agency that can drive traffic to your organization, Medical Content Solutions has over ten years of experience specializing in medical content that delivers results. Whether you are appealing to other businesses or you are looking for a strategy to reach those who need care, let us speak for you so that you can get back to the business you specialize in while we do what we are best at.

 

Healthcare Blog, Medical Blog, Healthcare Content Agency

Top 5 Writing Tips for Your Healthcare Blog

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

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! 

 

How to Structure Your Medical Content for 2021

As we begin to put 2020 in the rearview mirror, healthcare professionals may be feeling apprehensive about transitioning their medical content for 2021. While the past year may leave us feeling a bit traumatized and in need of a (well-earned!) vacation, you may also be looking at how to adapt to the upcoming year. 

2020 changed the healthcare landscape and how people look to get information from and about their personalized care. One of the most important lessons that we take from the COVID-19 pandemic is messaging issues.  We’d like to help you regain the authoritative voice that your patients need. 

Themes for Medical Content 2021

Healthcare Spending and the Economy

One of the dominant issues that we’ll face going into 2021 is the economic landscape. While the 2008 recession was caused by housing and investment issues, the healthcare industry experienced effects, too. Looking behind the 2008 recession, the National Health Expenditure Accounts, or NHEA, showed that accounts dropped from 6.5% to 3.9% or a 2.6% drop. However, that reduction was also influenced by a 1.6% reduction in inflation. The realized percentage drop was closer to 1%. While that can affect a family’s ability to seek the same medical attention, it’s a less stark outlook than many had expected; welcome news when you view other economy sectors during the recession. Structures experienced around a 10% reduction. 

Additionally, while there was a slight reduction in healthcare spending, many offices continued to remain understaffed. This puts stress on hiring and training appropriate medical professionals. 

The 2008 recession wasn’t caused or related to health issues, and there wasn’t much of a dip in the healthcare market. Coming out of the Coronavirus pandemic, the healthcare industry is poised to have an upswing, regardless of the economic situation. Patients who have postponed regular appointments or elective procedures will be seeking to have their needs met. 

Elective Procedures

When you look at the upcoming year, there is certainly room to be optimistic. During the global pandemic, many institutions stopped offering elective procedures. However, this didn’t eliminate the need for those procedures but just postponed them. Healthcare professionals should expect an increase in the number of procedures and visits from their patients. 

Electronic Resources

COVID-19 expanded the patient’s use of telehealth services, and many healthcare practitioners found themselves having to purchase specialized equipment and software to handle this new need. Of course, following the pandemic, maintaining telehealth options has benefits for your patients. People recognize the benefits of telehealth for the following reasons:

  • Reducing travel
  • Limiting exposure to illness
  • Easing time restraints on their busy schedules. 

A study before the pandemic shows that many family physicians spend only 27% of their time with patients, and almost half (49%) of their time is spent on administrative duties! 

More than 60% of the surveyed family physicians felt that the increase in administrative duties was the biggest issue facing their practice. One of the big factors in running any medical practice is updating and maintaining your online presence. These efforts continue to chip away at already tight schedules and further reduce your ability to focus on your patient’s care. 

Strategizing for 2021

Just getting through 2020 is a major accomplishment, but you need to prepare to enter a busy year for the health industry. You should continue to utilize and promote your digital services, maintain an online presence, and invest in continued training, education, and hiring for your practice. 

If one of the main issues your healthcare practice is facing is reducing the administrative workload, consider bringing Medical Content Solutions to your team. With a fully-vetted and functioning content team, we can help create the content that your practice needs. Our skills include newsletters, email campaigns, press releases, and ebooks. Additionally, we provide content for your website, including landing pages, articles, blogs, and staff biographies. 

Our approach allows you to have a single point of contact while gaining a full staff of writers, editors, and project managers to ensure that your 2021 is the best year yet!