It takes a well thought-out content strategy to appeal to both patients and search engines, but how much content should you be creating, and how often should doctors blog?
In this post, we’ll lay out why content is important, how often you should blog, and what types of content you can create to easily fill up your queue. These tips will give you a better idea of how you should be incorporating content into your overall digital marketing strategy.
Why Content is Important
By now you probably know that content is good for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, as well as for patients looking for more information about your practice.
That’s why it’s important to have a content strategy in place. First, create buckets based on goals you have for your strategy. For example, do you want more:
- Website visitors?
- Visitors converting into leads?
- People physically walking into your practice?
Use these goals to start generating content ideas for each bucket. For example, website visitors would be more interested in top of the funnel (TOFU) content, getting conversions from website visitors to leads would require middle of the funnel (MOFU) content, and having people walk into your practice would most likely be precipitated by them consuming bottom of the funnel (BOFU) content. The deeper into the funnel you get, the more in-depth your content should be.
So, How Often You Should Blog?
Now that you know your goals and have content ideas for each, what should be the frequency of publication?
Ideally, posting once to three times a week is best, but for some people this is too much to commit to at the start. At the very least, post once every two weeks. The reason publishing frequently on your website is so important is because it signals to search engines that your website is relevant and publishing new, fresh pages of information for visitors on a consistent basis.
And don’t worry, not all the content creation is up to the doctor, other professionals that are a part of the practice can create content as well, like practice administrators and nurses.
What Types of Content to Create
We’ve already talked about TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content, but not all of that content has to be in the form of blog posts. Other content types that are good for these buckets are as follows:
- TOFU: How-tos, list posts, fun/lighthearted slide decks providing basic information
- MOFU: Infographics, ‘what to expect’ comic strips and other content about specific procedures
- BOFU: Whitepapers, eBooks, professional publications, in-depth procedure descriptions, etc.
It’s Time to Get Started
If you’re not blogging yet, the time to start is now! Come up with a list of goals for your content and outline a strategy ASAP, then get into the nitty gritty of content types you want to produce, topics you want to cover, and what you’ll need from whom to get it done.
Having trouble getting started? We can help.