March 9, 2018
Online Marketing for Dentists Part 2 (Blogging & Content Marketing)
Part 1: Online Marketing for Dentists Part 1
So in this article, I will talk about content marketing and blogging in brief. What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the term ‘content marketing?’ Creating great content and marketing across all channels, and not just limiting it to your website? Well, that’s just the tip of an iceberg. Don’t think of content marketing as simply words on a page. There is a lot more to content marketing. And when it comes to content marketing and blogging for dental clinics and dentists, there are a plethora of benefits and ways to make the most of them. Let us first understand what advantages content marketing and blogging have for professionals involved in dental practices.
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Benefits of Content Marketing for Dentists
Improves Visibility
It is obvious when you create content across all the channels, and when you blog often, you create more opportunities for people find you on the Internet. Your blog posts and other content will appear on search engine result pages (SERPs) when users look for information on the dental topics you cover.
Builds Reputation
When you run a dental clinic and also provide valuable content to your online users in the form of great content, you gain reputation as a valuable resource for dental health and an expert in your profession.
Builds Relationships
When you create quality content and publish it across different channels such as social media platforms, you are more likely to get comments and queries related to dental topics. When you respond to their comments and questions, you build rapport with your audience. Building a rapport is vital to creating a loyal customer base and tapping more potential clients.
Helps Your Audiences
Talking about your existing and potential clients, creating helpful and informative content consistently answers most of their oral health-related questions. This also helps in building trust and long-term relationships with your audiences.
Complements Overall Marketing
Successful content marketing tactics can help other aspects of your marketing strategy, especially the search engine optimization of your dental practice. If optimized rightly, your content and blogs can help you improve the search rankings of your dental website.
Thus, you have enough reasons to take content creation and marketing seriously. Today, the most popular types of content are blogs and social media posts. Therefore, I will talk about these two first in this article. And if you are wondering how to commence blogging and content marketing for your dental practice, here are some fabulous tips for you.
Identify and Cater to Right Audiences
You might feel that this is an obvious step in any content marketing strategy. But I have seen a large number of businesses either forgetting or overlooking the importance of identifying their right set of audiences and tapping them in the best way. Hence, think about your audience first. Who is your reader? What does your clientele look like? Reassess the services you provide and then think who will be the right people you should be communicating with. For instance, if you provide oral health care for elderly, your target audience will be men and women above 40 or 50 years of age. But if you are an expert in pediatric dentistry, your target audience will shift to parents between the age of 25 and 35 years. Or even some young adults for that matter. Set the right demographics for your content marketing, and it will help you cater them in the best way possible with great content. Depending on the target audiences, your content and blogs will differ.
Once you have identified your audience, ask yourself how you can solve their queries? Think of the content ideas that can help your audiences. Once you get the answer to this question, you will be able to create content - whether blog, social media posts, newsletters, or anything else - that aligns with their needs and queries. With that being said, you don’t have to know everything right away. You can always create different kinds of content, do trial-and-errors, run A/B testings, and analyze the responses.
Use Content Tools
One of the best parts of content marketing is that countless free, paid and freemium tools are available that make lives easier. Right from content idea generation to scheduling the content for different platforms, you will get a long list of tools, software, and applications. Make sure you make the most of these tools. There are content marketing tools, and then there are tools that help you throughout the content marketing process and provide impeccable results. The following tools fall into the second category. Therefore, you cannot afford to miss out on these tools.
Any successful online content revolves around the most trending keywords and phrases. These trending keywords are the ones that your target audience uses the most to find answers to their queries. Keyword Tool provides you with the list of highly-searched and most trending keywords related to oral care.
MindMup is a free mind mapping online application that can help you visually organize content ideas. With the help of concept maps, charts, text, and illustrations, you can link together your ideas and see how your content marketing strategy will look like across various channels.
You no more have to switch between editor and browser for researching and writing content for your dental practice. Switching to the browser again and again can be distracting and even time-consuming. Create content in Google Docs and research using the 'Explore’ option in the bottom-right corner without leaving your document.
Content distribution is key to maximizing the reach and impact of your efforts. These two tools can be of great help for planning your editorial calendar for different platforms, all at one place. Whether you're posting to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you can queue up all your posts in advance and boost the reach of your content across these channels.
When it comes to one tool that provides endless opportunities right from content idea generation to tracking its response, HubSpot is the first name that most marketers suggest. Several HubSpot tools allow you to generate topics and keywords for your content, create emails, design call-to-actions, monitor mentions across social media channels, and analyze the impact of every content piece.
Maintain a Balance between Quality and Size
When people say aim for quality content and not the length of content, it is a major mistake. Both length or size and quality matter for any content marketing strategy to succeed. According to Curata, long-form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short-form blog posts. This is because longer posts have in-depth and detailed information that educates your readers and delivers more value to them. Not only this, I read this article on QuickSprout by Neil Patel which mentioned that content between 2,000 – 2,500 words seems to rank the highest in search engine results. Therefore, focus on creating long-form blogs. And why only limit to blogs? You can also produce longer web page content and case studies. But while creating longer pieces of content, don’t compromise on the quality (because that’s what generally happens). Make sure your blogs or web pages don’t get mundane or contain repetitive information.
Create Quality Content
You might have heard and read several times that you must create informative, unique, and engaging content to interest your readers. Understand that there’s a lot of oral health-related content on the Internet. Most of the websites and resources might provide the same knowledge that you have to share. To stand out from the tonnes of other dental websites and blogs, you need to be different from others with unique content. And in order to be different, you should use your own voice and your own opinions, and blend them with facts and information. You must share some extra information with your readers on various dental topics. Provide them with information that no other dental resource provides. As a veteran dentist, you might have in-depth information about oral health. But if you are a young practitioner, conduct researches, read several resources, and also talk to your existing clients more and more to gain extra information about different dental problems and their solutions. Use this information in your content and share it with your readers. Your content can be in any form, and not just plain, textual content. Videos, images, infographics, slides, and podcasts are some forms of content that you can keep in mind while ideating content for your dental website and social media platforms. And while creating content, use a simple language. Using heavy, dental jargons will surely backfire as your readers might not understand professional terminologies.
Promote Blogs Across Platforms
Remember that best content excels, but best-promoted content wins. Creating blogs and publishing them on your website doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your responsibilities. You can't just post a blog and hope people stumble across it. To ensure better visibility and reach of your blogs to your target audiences, you must promote the blogs across different platforms. This process of sharing and promoting your blogs on different channels and platforms is known as cross-promotion. The best way to get started with cross-promotion of your blogs is to share them on all your social media profiles. Start from Facebook and then move on to LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms. The latest updates of Whatsapp, Instagram, and Snapchat allow you to attach a URL link in your posts or “stories.” Don’t forget to utilize these channels too for sharing your dental blogs and news. Remember that people spend a lot of their time on social media channels on a daily basis. If you provide your blogs to your existing and potential clients on these social media channels, there are better opportunities for you to build an audience and engage with them. So, make it a point that whenever you publish a blog, you promote them on these platforms too.
Demonstrate your blogging expertise by promoting these posts. Most social media channels have the option of promoting particular posts. So once you share your blogs on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms, consider promoting those posts. Promoting will undoubtedly give your dental blogs some extra exposure. Sharing content on social media only reaches your followers. But when you promote the content, you not only reach it to your existing followers but also to the audiences looking for dental information.
Reuse and Repurpose Content
We all focus so much on creating quality content consistently that we forget about the other ways that can help our content marketing strategy. Reusing and repurposing older content are never considered as great options. But, reusing older content and repurposing them, whether it’s older blogs or surveys done in the past, can complement your content marketing efforts. By doing either of these, you give more value to your older content and make it available for newer audiences. Not only this, you also save time as you don’t have to brainstorm and create new content on some days. So if you have a busy schedule for the day or week, you can reuse or repurpose content in creative ways.
Talking about reusing the older posts and recreating them for newer audiences, go through all the older resources you created. Click on the older pages in the blog section of your dental website. Give it a read and see if the posts can be shared again. If yes, all that you have to do is re-publish the posts again. You can do the same with older podcasts, videos, infographics, surveys, industry news, etc. if they are relevant and worthy.
If you are wondering how you can repurpose old content, the options are plenty for you. Repurpose the textual content in different forms such as videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars, slide presentation. You can also do vice versa and convert content in the multimedia form into blog posts. Another idea that you can consider is to take inspirations from your old resources and create a series of Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. Lastly, whatever you choose to do with your older content, treat the end content as a new piece and share it on all social media platforms. And if you don’t wish to recreate the blogs and resources in any way, you can add links in your newer blog posts to the older ones. In simple words, you can hyperlink to older, relevant resources whenever you create new content.
Guest Blog on Popular Sites
One of the best ways to promote your dental clinic’s online visibility with content marketing is with the help of guest blogging on relevant and popular websites. You might want your dental website, and social media profiles to be the very center of your inbound marketing efforts. But guest blogging is still a powerful tool for lead generation and even for better SEO value. Guest blog posts can provide a whole new platform, and you can reach out to altogether newer masses. This is because when you only publish content on your own platforms, you're reaching out to the same people over and over again. But when you blog for other reputed and relevant websites, you are also catering to their audiences. You introduce yourself to a newer circle of people looking for oral health-related information. Therefore, start looking for various popular websites relevant to your dental care with high readability locally and globally. You can also take a look at the backlinks on your competitors’ websites to find out various websites where you can be a guest blogger. To find the sources of backlinks to your competitor websites, use a backlink analysis tool such as OpenLinkProfiler. You can then reach out to those website owners and inquire about a guest blogging opportunity. There are also guest blogging marketplaces such as GuestPostBro where you can post your guest blogs on various oral health topics. Once you get in touch with the authorized people and are ready to start guest blogging, choose most popular topics that most people wish to gain information about. Make sure you follow the blogging rules of the website where you publish your posts. And don’t forget to link back to your dental website. Linking to your web pages and blogs will direct the new audiences to your dental blog.
Let’s move a little away from blogging and focus on other tactics you can include in your content marketing strategy.
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Include FAQ Section
Ever thought of including the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page on your website? Or do you feel that your dental web pages and the blogs you create are enough to answer the questions of your existing as well as your potential clients? Well, they surely do. But what about the questions people have regarding your dental clinic and the services provided? To answer those questions, it is essential to have an FAQ page on your website. And just to avoid your mailbox and telephone flooding with queries, it is better to provide this page as handy information that your online visitors can refer to as and when they want. Creating an FAQ page on your dental website includes multiple aspects but can be effortlessly done if you plan properly. Find out what kind of questions most people have. For finding the questions, you can recollect the kind of questions your existing or potential customers had during their appointments or during the first time they called to inquire. These questions can be anything from general fee queries to inquiries about various dental procedures you provide. Also, consider the doubts people have before they undergo different dental or gum procedures and surgeries. Make a list of all these questions. Now, with the blend of your expertise and thorough research, answer all questions. Eliminate any grammatical errors if any. Create the FAQ page that is easy to locate on your website. And add various timely questions from time to time to this page.
Send Out Newsletters
Did you know that traditional newsletters are still considered to be an excellent tool to connect with people? Regardless of the buzz other content marketing tactics are receiving, newsletters are still considered to be impressive by the end customers. And you not only connect with your audiences by sending out newsletters, you also create a brand identity of your dental clinic. This identity may or may not be beneficial for your business immediately. It may happen that your target audience might not be looking for any oral care assistance the moment you send them the newsletters. But they might need it in the future, and your name will be the first one that will pop up in their minds if you create your identity and maintain relationships with them via regular newsletters.
Newsletters provide valuable information, tips, insights, and news to your customers in the most creative ways possible. Remember, the best newsletters with the most curated information and engaging design have higher open rates. Such emails also have fewer chances of ending up in the Spam, Junk and Bulk folders of your audience’s mailboxes. I would recommend you pick one topic for the week or month, and highlight the in-depth information on that topic. Don't forget to add a personal touch to your newsletters. People generally prefer when they feel a person is talking to them. Lastly, do not forget to add a call-to-action in your newsletters. According to the digital marketing statistics by Wordstream, emails with a single call-to-action increased 371% clicks.
Furthermore, newsletters also help in improving your SEO value. Your newsletters can links that are directed to your dental website. These links are commonly associated with the call-to-action you provide. Thus, newsletters are something that you cannot afford to miss out on in today's date.
Whether you are looking for unique ways to generate leads, tap newer clients, or simply create a buzz on the Internet about your dental practice, a content marketing strategy could be the right choice. Just make sure that you follow the tips suggested above regularly. Content marketing isn’t as tricky as it looks. All it takes is smart planning and consistent efforts.
