The Five Elements Every Medical Blog Needs

Blogging has become a vital part of the medical industry’s marketing strategy, so much so that it’s rare to see a hospital, pharmaceutical company, or even a private LASIK clinic without a blog of their own. But having a blog alone isn’t going to set you apart from the thousands of other medical bloggers you’re competing with to gain rank. To maximize your blog’s potential, you’ll need the following elements.

From author bylines to social-media-ready images, incorporate these elements to give your blog the extra boost. Your marketing will be more effective, your readers will be more responsive, and your business will thrive! 

Comments Section

Many medical practices stray from including a comments section on their blog because they fear bad publicity, not complying with HIPAA policies, or both. Furthermore, comments allow spammers and self-promoters of all kinds to write in their own messages, plague your blog with unwanted links, stir up controversy, and so on. Needless to say, a comments section will never be a 100% safe element of blogging. But you can’t do away with it and here’s why.

Comments is where you rally up support for your blogs and brand, it’s where you find new patients, where you engage your users, and build a name for yourself. Without it, you’re missing out on potentially major publicity. Just keep an eye on it, respond to positive and negative feedback, and keep your cool. Monitoring your comments will keep you active in discussions and establish you as a professional authority that patients can trust. 

Author Byline

Leaving the byline out of your blog can force your articles to lose credentials and confidence. People don’t just want to read quality blog posts with solid information, they want to know their information is coming from a reputable source. A byline sets you up as the expert they need to listen to.

While your website should already have a biography with your information, credentials, and accomplishments, a small author byline at the end of each blog post will give it an extra boost. There are even several WordPress plugins you can use to link all of the articles you’ve written together and attach them to your Google Authorrank, a great way to gain a little extra SEO juice. 

Social Media Links

Blogs are meant to be shared! You want your readers buzzing so much that they’re willing to share your post to their Facebook feeds. This means reaching a wider audience and potentially nabbing a few extra patients. But if those social media links are missing, sharing your blog suddenly became a pretty inconvenient task. 

Include links to all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest and Reddit. You want your readers to have as many options as possible because people are more likely to shop (or make an appointment with a doctor) after they see a recommendation from a friend. Social media sharing might as well count as personal recommendations; so let your users share! 

Search Feature

There are plenty of ways to incorporate a search feature with your medical blog, including a search bar and an archive of all the topics you’ve previously written about. Not matter how you do it, having a database for readers to browse through is a win-win for your business and your readers. Potential patients can find more articles like the ones they’ve just read or search for blogs by topics that are interesting to them, therefore staying engaged with your website for a longer period of time. And when your users are this engaged, they are much more likely to convert.

Images

Images are crucial to a blog’s success and you simply can’t run a blog with having at least one picture per blog post. First of all, images make complicated concepts much easier to grasp, especially to the general population that didn’t go to med school. Think about how motivating “before and after” photos are rather than just reading about a diet plan itself. Having a visual supplement really gets a user’s mind into gear.

Images are also great for social media sharing. From Facebook to Pinterest, social media is becoming more centered around visual content, meaning not only are the platforms now better designed to display high-quality graphics, but people are now much more likely to click on a post with an associated image. Since our eyes are naturally drawn to pictures, you should use more to generate buzz around the web. Just be sure you own the images and that they relate to your blog post. 

Blogging isn’t entirely about the blog posts. To truly have a blog post succeed these days, you need to have the elements that can support it and promote it. Let your readers comment, see whom they’re learning from, and have an easy time searching and sharing your content. Not only can your blog succeed, but so can your business.

Pete Wise is a copywriter with 20/20 Institute. We provide LASIK services in Colorado. See what I'm posting on Facebook

3 Simple Ways Your Dealership Can Monitor Online Reviews

The success of your business now lies in the hands of your customer. Today, aside from providing their thoughts on your business through word of mouth marketing, they’re also taking to popular social media sites and online review sites to share their opinions, and these opinions can have a major impact on your business.

It’s extremely important that your dealership start monitoring online review sites like Edmunds and DealerRater to ensure that your business is successful. By monitoring online review sites, you can learn exactly how your customers feel about your dealership, and you can also use the information to learn if there are areas that need improvement.

Most dealerships ignore monitoring review sites because they feel as if it’s too time consuming, but the following are three simple ways that your dealership can start to successfully monitor online review sites.

1. Claim your business.

Each and every online review site allows you to claim your business on its respective site. Claiming your business allows you to create your own business profile as well as respond to any reviews that are left for your business. But aside from simply being able to communicate with the reviewers, claiming your business page allows you to set up review notifications via email.

Every time a new review is generated (or when a comment is left on a past review) the respective review site will send you an email notification. You can determine if you want to receive these alerts on a daily, weekly or in real-time basis too. You will then know via email when a review was left (and what it said), which will allow you to take the necessary steps to thank the customer or learn more about their experience.

2. Use a monitoring tool.

There are monitoring tools out there that are made specifically to help you manage your review sites. Review Trackers is one of those tools that can help you monitor your sites without having to do much work. Instead, Review Trackers will scour the Internet in search for specific mentions of your business and will send you an email notification whenever they find something. Like the email notifications from the respective sites, Review Trackers will also allow you to determine how often you want to receive the notifications.

One of the many benefits of Review Trackers is that you don’t have to worry about claiming your business on all the review sites out there in order to receive notifications. Instead, Review Trackers will notify you whenever your company is mentioned on any review site, even those you have yet to claim.

3. Hire a community manager.

Because the use of online review sites is so popular, it’s a good idea to designate one specific employee to monitoring your company’s online review presence. This is why you may want to consider hiring a community manager. This individual will be in charge of not only watching the reviews that come in for your business and recording them appropriately, but they will also be in charge of responding to the reviews in a timely fashion. This can help make your customers feel as if you’re actually paying attention, and it can even help to alleviate a negative review from going viral.  Plus, by giving the responsibility to a designated individual, you will ensure a steady process and keep from piling the responsibility onto the plate of your other employees.

Garrett Payne is a professional reviews tracker who enjoys blogging.  He has recently been sharing information about car dealer review tracking.

Social Media: Revolutionizing Business

Over the last 20 years, with the invention and popularization of the Internet, the traditional mediums that companies used to advertise, inform, and simply connect with their consumer base have change drastically.  In fact, the traditional organization of a business has also been revolutionized.  Now there are thousands of businesses that are run out of individual homes, forgoing the typical brick-and-mortar companies that were abundant before the Internet.  For example, my friend's neice just started her own business online at a site called etsy.com.  This brilliant idea for a website allows users to have their own “shop” wherein they are able to sell vintage and/or handmade items.  Because of this, potentially millions of stay-at-home moms, craft makers, and people with hobbies making things can actually make a profit doing the things they love to do—without leaving the house.

Social Media-Leveling the Playing Field:

Normally a business would have a marketing manager in charge of all of the advertising campaigns, launching an expensive, extensive, and very broad-reaching commercial crusade using many different mediums, resulting in a fraction of the people reached who actually respond to the ad.  For the people with “etsy” shops, all they have—and need—is social media.  With the developing of sites like MySpace, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter, and many more, market outreach and advertising have been revolutionized.  Anybody can use these sites to any extent, to either benefit and/or hurt a business.  With the smaller, personal businesses, a seller relies completely on friends and contacts to spread the word about the shop.  For larger companies, it is much different.

Marketing Revolutionized:

To the companies that used to spend millions on marketing, social media could be considered a godsend.  Although they still have to maintain traditional marketing strategies to some degree, it isn't nearly as costly.  Using Facebook, for example, setting up an account is free, and everybody who “likes” the page will get the automatic updates the merchant sends.  This narrows the outreach to current customers and exposes the business to many potential new customers when their “friends” like that page as well.  This drastically decreases the seller’s Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) because it is completely free.  A seller can pay for additional ads that will specifically target people with similar likes and interests as the general customer base.

Marketing to Public Relations:

Aside from the marketing advantage, social media allows a company to connect more deeply with its customers.  This, unfortunately can be a double-edged sword.  Social media is just that: social.  If there is any type of scandal in a business, everyone with a Facebook or Twitter account can know about it within minutes.  The lightning speed of bad news can result in a PR nightmare—just ask Domino’s Pizza.  Because of this, you will need to be extra vigilant maintaining a good relationship with your customers, which can only help.

In addition to managing public relations, Facebook gives the seller a direct line to customers, getting fast, honest feedback about products or commercial campaigns, even including them through contests and giveaways.  Take Doritos for example. The biggest TV commercial event of the year happens on Super Bowl Sunday.  Companies plan very far in advance to make sure their commercials are funny and memorable.  Doritos was running out of ideas, so they did something ingenious: had their customers come up with ideas in a contest with not just prizes, but the ultimate prize: a spot in the Super Bowl commercial lineup.  This strategy has been extremely successful, probably more so that they had ever imagined.

Every business, from a cottage industry to a large corporation, must understand that social media is here to stay.  It can be one of the greatest vehicles for mass advertising the world has ever seen, and using it properly can be a great advantage to a business.

About the Author: Rick Delgado is a freelance writer who specializes in the latest social and technology trends. He is cur