Ashley Buehnerkemper
Have you ever thought about starting a blog? Are you curious if it can really help your practice grow? Along with your other marketing pieces, blogging is a great way to communicate with patients (current and potential) about your practice, your services, your community activities, etc. It’s also a great way to connect with them more personally and show your passion for dermatology. And like your other marketing, blogging can help you grow your practice, attract new patients, stand out among competitors and easily connect with other social media marketing activities.
Blogging is nothing new – many dermatologists and other doctors are blogging on their site and other places. With that, you may feel it won’t be as impactful. But even so, incorporating a blog into your marketing efforts can still be an effective way to build your online presence. Here are a few reasons why:
It will help you showcase your expertise.
Starting a blog is a great place to share your dermatology knowledge, including general information or more specialized care. This will help build more credibility and trust with patients. If they can read about your expertise and experiences, they’ll be more comfortable coming to you for their care.
It will help you share your own story.
In your other marketing, it may not be as easy to share more about your practice’s story and your own journey in dermatology. Starting a blog is an ideal place to do this. Share how your practice got started, more about your team, how you got started in dermatology and other real-life stories that people can connect with. You want to humanize yourself as much as possible, so patients see you as an actual person, not just another dermatology practice. This could mean a lot when they’re choosing their care provider.
It will help educate patients.
You want your patients to be as healthy as possible, and take care of their skin the best they can. A blog will help you make that possible. In addition to sharing information in your appointments, you can share important advice and tips on your blog regularly to help them take the right steps. This is another way to connect with patients too. With this advice, they’ll see you as a caring professional who is committed to their health and well-being.
It will help you gather important information from patients.
Like some other online marketing methods, you can use your blog to collect email addresses from current and potential patients. You can setup an “enter your email to receive new post updates” approach. Then you can use those collected emails in your email marketing efforts and other digital communications. You can also ask for patient feedback on your blog, which can help you identify areas of improvement with your service.
It will help you stay competitive.
Blogging will help you create more links to your website and have more indexed pages, both which improve your SEO ranking. With many other practices getting this benefit with their blogs, you don’t want to fall behind.
It will connect with your other social media activities.
Like we mentioned before, blogging is another online marketing activity that can go hand-in-hand with what you’re doing on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You can promote your blog posts on your social media pages to create more links to your site, and ultimately drive more engagement on your social pages and your website.
All in all, blogging is a flexible, more personalized marketing tool that can help you connect with your audience in a variety of ways. You don’t have to be the most tech-savvy person either to set up a blog on your website. There are many resources out there to help you easily set this up. Or there are professionals who can help.
We’re also here to help. We’re always a phone call or click away to support your needs. Schedule a consultation with one of our practice management experts today.