In this data-driven, always connected age, you can’t afford to ignore internet marketing. Having a functional website and a Facebook page is just your starting point, though. You can’t set those things up and expect them to run themselves. When someone visits your website or your social media pages, they won’t stick around, much less be convinced to contact your office for an appointment, without something showing you are the expert they need. This “something” is quality, unique content, and it is the current king of SEO and a vital part of your internet marketing.
What You’re Producing
First, what is content, anyway? It’s anything you create and either post or share on the web that attracts and helps convert people into patients for your practice. The most obvious form of content is written: the webpages, blogs, and frequently asked questions on your website. These aren’t the only kinds of content, though. Videos, pictures, infographics, books or CDs are all considered content that you can use in your marketing. These visual and audio mediums allow you to reach people who prefer to consume content in different ways.
Why It Really Matters and You Need It Now
The best thing is that quality content benefits your practice in multiple ways—both in building trust with potential patients and winning favor with Google and other search engines. Keep in mind that potential patients really don’t care about you. They are far too busy worrying about the painful issues that are bothering them and the health of their families. They don’t want to know about your experience; they want to know if you can fix their problems. The webpages, videos, books, and more that you produce allow you to demonstrate, without shouting it, that you are truly an expert who can help. This helps you build a community of people who trust what you have to say.
Just as importantly, search engines reward businesses and practices that produce high-quality information that is actually useful for people. Content plays an enormous role in your search engine optimization, or SEO. You need this to “get found” when people in your local market search online. Google and the other search engines want to pull up webpages, videos, pictures, and more, that answer the questions a searcher is asking. If you have great information about bunions or fungal nails, you are far more likely to show up when people search those topics. Quality content is also highly shareable, which gives it a better chance of reaching a wide audience on social media, also boosting your SEO.
This is a great opportunity for anyone using an informational marketing approach like the one Top Practices members use.
Producing Content that Works
A word of caution as you get started creating content, though: keeping everything unique and high-quality is an absolute must. Producing regular information to post to your website or share on social media is great, but it won’t help you much if it isn’t good—or worse, it’s plagiarized from somewhere else!
Your videos, pictures, and other types of media don’t have to be done professionally to be done well. You can use basic editing software to clean them up so they look nice. The Top Practices VMD Services team can help you with this if you’re not tech-savvy, too. Written content like webpages and blogs need to be informative so they answer people’s questions, but they should also be interesting and clear of glaring spelling or grammar errors. No one wants to read something packed with medical jargon that makes it impossible for an average person to understand. And while you don’t have to be a grammar whiz to write well, people won’t take you or what you have to say very seriously if a page is packed with spelling mistakes.
Whatever you do, avoid copying or stealing pages, pictures, or anything else from other places. This is duplicate or plagiarized content. Search engines punish this heavily. You may think that there is no way you can come up with a unique way to write about or make a video on ingrown toenails, especially when these other guys did such a good job. That is simply not true. There is always a new way to present old information, including repurposing it.
In this day and age, creating high-quality, unique content is an absolute must. It’s an integral part of marketing your practice online, and allows you to creatively reach out to potential patients. Contact us through e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (717) 725-2679 to learn more.