What to Post: A Guide to Successful Topics for Your Dental Practice Blog

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

What to Post: A Guide to Successful Topics for Your Dental Practice Blog

A business blog has become one of the most important marketing tools to have as a small business. It can offer huge benefits to your business’ marketing from helping you be found on Google, (also known as search engine optimization) to attracting prospective patients and building a trusting relationship with your current patients.

As the CEO of marketing company PostcardMania, and a business blogger myself, I know firsthand the impact a blog can have. I have been blogging for years for my marketing company and it’s had a big effect on our online marketing efforts.

Here’s some proof. Check out these stats:

  • Companies that increase blogging from 3-5 times a month to 6-8 times a month almost double their leads (i.e. new patients interested in your practice).
  • Companies with more than 200 blog articles generate more than 5 times the leads than those with 10 or fewer.
  • The average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total number of blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50 articles.

Because each blog post becomes its own webpage, your online presence grows with each post, and this provides more chances to attract the interest of potential patients. Meanwhile, the content you put on your blog builds trust with those prospective patients and convinces them to contact you.

Knowing the importance of having a business blog is just the first step, though. You have to actually produce that great, trust-building content for it to do any good for your marketing.

The Most Valuable Blog Content is Educational and Client-Centered

For your blog to generate results for your dental practice, you need your content to attract the interest of quality prospective patients. These prospects are searching Google for things such as “Maintaining Good Dental Hygiene”, “Natural Teeth Whitening Techniques”, “Why do Gums Bleed?”, etc. Content that is focused on their needs is obviously more attractive to them because they are able to read about the topics they are already interested in. Posts that are self-promotional aren’t valuable to them, because they aren’t searching for an advertisement to read. You need to show your practice’s quality through your ability to inform them and help them with their questions about dental care.

So what should you write about? Well, allow me to make some suggestions based on proven concepts I use.

1) The “Tips” Posts: “Top 5 Dental Health Practices for a Healthy Mouth and a Beautiful Smile”

The “tips” post is a blog post that gives the reader a certain number of actionable tips they can use to improve their lives in some way. The headline above is an example of this type of post.

People want to have a nice smile. They don’t want yellow teeth, bad breath and all the other negative consequences of poor dental hygiene. They want to know what they should be doing to avoid those effects and maintain a healthy mouth. You can write a quick post about the top 5 things they should be doing, such as daily flossing, avoiding foods and drinks that stain teeth, etc. This type of post shows your expertise and gives readers actionable steps to take.

2) The “Evaluation” Post: “Professional Teeth Whitening vs. Home Remedies: The Pros and Cons”

The “evaluation” post takes two competing ideas and compares/contrasts them.

One of the most important dental issues for the average person is the whiteness of their teeth. They see dentists advertising for it. They see advertisements for home kits for teeth whitening. It can be hard for consumers to see what the difference is. You can go through the major benefits of professional whitening compared to those home kits to show them why it is worth it to leave the process to a professional. This post could discuss both sides, so it is not just advertising fluff. However, it gives you the opportunity to explain the benefits of professional whitening services. This type of post can be very persuasive content to a browsing consumer.

3) The “Explanation” Post: “Veneers and Bonding: What’s the Difference?”

The “explanation” post goes a little deeper than the posts mentioned above. In this kind of post, you want to take one concept that may be confusing to prospects and explain it in a way that a layman can understand. This type of post really boosts your credibility. For example, you could educate prospective clients about what veneers and bonding can do for them, and what kind of cases call for one over the other. Then, you can go into the benefits and drawbacks of each to give them a full picture of both procedures. Potential clients see that you are being upfront about the pros and cons of each service and trust your practice more. If they are in a position to benefit from either one, they will be more likely to call your practice than one of your competitors because of how helpful your blog post was in their decision making process.

I’ve put some other ideas together in a free report Business Blog Post Ideas for Creating Desirable Content, and these can be another resource as you brainstorm your posts and get started writing.

A business blog is an essential marketing tool in our digital culture, where more than 90% of prospective patients visit a practice’s website before they decide to call the office. It can help you attract web traffic from potential patients and build trust with them so they’ll choose your practice over your competition.

Happy blogging!

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