Healthcare providers now understand the importance of digital marketing to attract new patients and for retaining existing ones. They can achieve their marketing goals by a well-defined online content marketing strategy. Industry experts define content marketing as the art of understanding exactly what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way to grow your business.
Digital consumers today have innumerable online options through which they can carry out thorough research before booking an appointment. To swim through the ocean of competition, content marketing can be used as an effective tool. Not only does it provide an opportunity for healthcare companies to outpace tough competition, it can be leveraged to create transparent communication with patients/potential patients. “Content is king” for online marketing. Although it’s important to demonstrate your expertise through the content you post, it’s equally important to customize it to patient needs. Inventing novel content ideas to connect with your patients will open up doors to more online followers and patient referrals and enhance your online reputation.
Read on for some quick and easy content creation tips to promote your practice and attract new patients:
Choose The Right Content Niche
Through good-quality interactive content materials, you can build relationships with your patients and create new ones with others who could be your future patients. You need to actively engage with your audience by replying to their questions, sharing informative posts, posting videos about various important health issues and so on. Create fresh content and regularly post it in the form of articles, messages, tips and blogs on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in emails. High-quality, easily shared content helps build loyalty along with a positive reputation, and these can be the determining factors for growth of your practice.
Tap into Trending Topics
People love to read latest trending topics and discussions. You can tap into trending topics on social media and use them as ideas for creating content pieces. Facebook is one of the most widely used platforms worldwide and is a great source for a list of trending news articles. LinkedIn gives insights about the contemporary trends in your area of specialization while Twitter has popular hashtags on its respective homepages to keep users on top of the most popular stories. Creating articles, infographics and blogs around these trending topics of user interest is a way to reach out and connect to a wider audience, which will increase your practice’s online visibility.
Educate Your Patients
As a healthcare provider, it’s your primary responsibility to create impactful physician-patient communications that inform, influence and motivate patients to make better health decisions to improve their quality of life. People love to learn new things and constantly seek information that can satisfy their hunger. Regularly post articles, messages, tips and blogs to educate your patients and schedule them to be posted on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in emails. This helps in establishing a sense of trust and credibility about your practice among all patients and other readers who can be potential patients in the future and can be the determining factors for growth of your practice.
Experiment With Different Content Types
Regardless of what social media strategy you choose, it will work only if the content is compelling. Readers want to read something new and innovative. Study your online patient behavior and analyze want they are really looking for. Develop and post content that satisfies their needs and quest for information. Don’t stick to just one type of media, and be sure to use infographics, pictures, videos, blogs and other ways to engage your audience – your patients and potential patients. Healthcare providers can position themselves as experts by providing information and frequently posting tips and general information about health, fitness, food and well-being. Irrespective of their health issues, there are a large number of people who search for these topics for achieving better health.
Today’s tech-savvy digitally empowered healthcare consumers settle for nothing less than absolutely relevant, accurate and valuable content that provides solutions to their health problems and helps them lead healthier lives. It’s crucial to embrace this change to nurture and nudge leads. Content marketing is the most effective and cost-efficient way for physicians and hospitals to market their practice to healthcare consumers.