With the Internet, expression of thoughts and opinions has become a cake-walk. Social media has become so much ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it has become impossible for businesses to strive and thrive in the competitive marketplaces without it. The scenario is no different for healthcare. Today, blogging can be channeled as a low-cost and long-term strategy to develop a positive online reputation that works synergistically with your practice website and other social media tools. Hospitals, physicians, dentists and other healthcare providers can utilize this platform as an effective online marketing tool, as well.
There is an increasing shift toward a patient-centric approach for healthcare. Digital consumers now turn to the Internet to learn about their health conditions and make their health decisions. It’s now become imperative for healthcare providers to connect and communicate with digital patients. Blogs are an excellent platform to form a connection with potential patients and existing ones.
Developing and maintaining a habit of blogging regularly, say once or twice a week, gives your practice a digital voice. People reading these blogs are more likely to develop a sense of trust and credibility for your practice if they find the information useful. Digital patients constantly search for scientific and reliable health information, and they read physician blogs because they feel they can get the knowledge straight from the horse’s mouth.
Blogs also help your practice get discovered on the social media bandwagon. Each time you write an interesting blog post, you are creating content that people can share. If the information you’ve written is a hit among readers, it can go viral on various social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. Sharing blog links will do wonders for your website ranking in search engines, which reward fresh and unique content. This implies that your website can be “crawled” or indexed more frequently, allowing your content to be found on the first pages of search engines. Talking from the SEO perspective, blogs are a boon as they are natural search engine optimizers. They contain rich keywords, links and frequently updated content, which increase traffic on your web pages.
Online visibility, positive online reputation, a stronger digital footprint, direct interactions with patients and an opportunity to attract new patients to your practice – do you need more reasons to be convinced? Start your practice blog – now!