Congratulations! You have now decided to start your blogging adventure for your medical practice. You may have decided on your own, or you were convinced by part one of my series of blogs on The Importance of Blogging for your Medical Practice. Either way, you are now ready to get started planning your content strategy.
Very often people think coming up with blog topics should be easy, but when you start putting pen to paper, you realize this is not the case. Before you start writing your first blog you should prepare your content strategy and consider the following:
How often do you want to blog?
Create a schedule when you would like to publish each blog. You want to avoid publishing 3 blogs in the beginning of the month and having a dry period the remaining three weeks. Start by setting a schedule as to when you post your blogs. You can make it the 1st and 15th of each month, this way your readers can expect when they will see your next entry.
Plan ahead and pick your topics
Many topics can be planned ahead of time. Here are a few tips on creating your topics and putting them in your content calendar.
- Awareness months: Some awareness months get a lot of national exposure. Use this opportunity to write your own perspective on some of these topics. Examples of the more publicized ones include Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), American Hearth Month (February), Arthritis Awareness (May). However, there is a day for everything. Did you know May 5th is Hand Hygiene Day? To view a list of all national health observances visit National Health Observances: 2013 at a Glance.
- Answer frequently asked questions: Do you have popular questions that you always get from patients? Or have you recently presented at a seminar and a very thought provoking question was asked? You can turn these questions into a blog topic. This is also great for Search Engine Optimization. If you are fielding these questions, there is great chance people are searching the same thing online.
- Patient stories: Patient stories are a great way for people to relate to similar experiences. If you write a story about how a patient’s vertigo was helped with vestibular rehabilitation, someone suffering from vertigo will be able to relate to another person’s story and hopefully call your practice. However, be sure to always get their permission before writing anything about them.
- Tips and advice: People like to be informed, not sold. Offer your readers helpful tips like “How to keep your back pain free while gardening” or “Proper warm-up techniques before exercising.”
Leave time to discuss current events
If you pre write your blog topics, this will allow you the time to react to current events. For example, if you are on orthopedic surgeon and a famous NFL player tears his ACL, begin your blog talking about the situation and then discuss what the injury is, how it may be treated or what the athlete could have done to avoid the injury.
Have great blog topics but no time to write them? The Points Group content team is here to help. We will help you create topics, write compelling blogs and optimize them for search engines and distribute them to other outlets so you can get the full benefit blogging has to offer.
