How can a blog help to market your practice?
Utilizing a blog on your clinic website can be a great way to promote your business. You can use a blog for any number of marketing initiatives. We will cover the benefits of using a blog for your business and some best practices to help you get started.
Using a Blog to enhance your patient experience
Many patients probably have questions about their diagnosis, their treatment, and their Home Exercise Program.
Obviously, you cannot use a public forum to address a specific patient, but you can supplement their experience in your clinic with educational items they need to know. Imagine being the resource for your patients if they need to brush up on proper form with their HEP, or getting tips on how to keep their young baseball player from injuring their shoulder. Blogging in this manner does a few key things.
- First, you are able to add value to your practice. Not only are your patients going to get regular therapy sessions from you and your staff, but they also have a great resource to maintain their health and prevent further injury. They will appreciate the added value and the fact that their treatment doesn’t stop the second they walk out the door.
- Secondly, you are establishing your expertise in a relevant and helpful way. You patients will be thankful for you advice and, more importantly, they will trust you for rehab related issues. Building customer loyalty in important when there are so many choices for therapy related services. The idea here is to have people associate your brand directly with physical therapy.
- The final effect, and probably the most important for your business, is when your patient encounters friends or family who are in need of therapy they will recommend your practice. People love to share knowledge with their circles and they do not forget their good experiences. With the increase of Direct Access availability, word of mouth can be a huge revenue stream for your clinic.
Here are a few Best Practices to help your blog achieve the objectives above
- Post regularly – This is up to you to decide, but make a plan and stick to it.
- Know your audience – Nobody knows your patients better than you, but it is important to stay on topic and post things that interest them and correlate with your business.
- Always respond to comments – They took the time to interact with your blog, you can win them over by returning the favor.
- Use Social Media to drive traffic – Whether its Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, using a social media outlet to push your content can help you get higher visibility.
- Be creative – Have staff guest blog to introduce them to your patients, use video blogs to mix up your content, or periodically post a patient testimonial.
As long as your posts are aligned with the objectives we listed above (Add value, Establish expertise, and Engaging your readers) you can have some fun with your blog and make it your own.
We hope this post will get you started in the right direction on your clinic blog. Want more details on how to use blogging and other social media tools for your clinic? Join us for our FREE webinar on August 23rd or 25th titled “Social Media and Your Clinic: Engaging your community and adding value to your practice.” Click here for more information and to register now!
