Nikki Berryman, Dental Practice Business and Marketing Manager, gives the lowdown on blogging for your dental practice.
The first step when it comes to blogging for your dental practice is to set up some blogging software. This comes in two flavours; free websites which will allow you to set up your blog with a few clicks of the mouse, or software which your web people will have to install on your website for you.
Creating your dental practice blog
My preference is the software which is installed on your own website. It might be slightly more complicated but the flexibility and the fact that you own it far outweigh any downsides. A great example is right here – the Practice Plan blog!
Separate from your website (easy) method: https://wordpress.com/
Installed on your own website (recommended) method: https://wordpress.org/
Adding plugins to your dental practice blog
Once your blog is installed, you will want to add some plug-ins.
‘Plug-ins’ are piece of software code that enable your blog to have ‘extra features’ such as enhanced graphic and video functionality or to add ‘share’ buttons which make it easier for your audience to share your content with their networks .
Using plug-ins is a great way of making your blog look more attractive and giving it more functionality.
You will also want to add your analytics code to your blog to see exactly how many people are reading it and how people are finding it.
Adding content to your dental practice blog
With a blog set up, the next stage is to start filling it with content! There are some simple strategies to make blogging for your dental practice pretty easy. Start by developing a strategic blogging mind-set by answering these two questions: What will potential new patients want to read about? And, what are people looking for on Google?
Let me give you an example. When looking to buy a new lens for my camera, I did a search for ‘best Canon portrait lens.’ The top result was a blog article about all the Canon portrait lenses with sample pictures and advice on where to buy. These kinds of searches are happening every day in every market place. What is an implant? Does Invisalign® last forever? Why do my gums bleed? If you can answer these kinds of questions in an authoritative manner, they will generate website enquiries.
Blogging for your dental practice and Social Media
No article on blogging would be complete without some pointers on how to integrate blogging into a Social Media strategy. Once an article has been written on your blog, it should be syndicated to as many places as possible. This simply means sharing content around multiple places, and through great use of technology this can be done automatically.
Through some simple and free plugins to WordPress, every time a post is entered it can be automatically sent to a Facebook page, tweeted to your Twitter followers or even update a LinkedIn profile. This sharing or syndication of content will rapidly increase the visibility of your blog.
So to summarise, choose a blogging platform, write authoritatively and openly, post about things that people are looking for answers about, keep writing regularly and use Social Media to spread the message. You’ll be blogging for your dental practice in no time!
—
About the author
Nikki Berryman has worked in dentistry for 20 years. She began as a trainee dental nurse in an NHS practice and spent ten years as Business Development Manager for a private implant and cosmetic practice.