Last week I started a series discussing social media or internet marketing and the things I have found to be successful. In the first post I discussed clarity, figuring out who you are as a dentist and office and who your trying to market to as a potential new patient. The second post looked at creating visibility on the web by generating content. Search engine optimization is about written content over time. Loading your website up with content at the front end and then ignoring it may boost you in the search engines at first, but others will quickly replace you. The search engines want to see new content being posted consistently over time.
The first thing I suggest doing is figuring our who will be doing the writing. Many dentists pay a marketing company or service to provide content for their offices. I would prefer to see at least a portion of the content coming from the dentist and team members, but this is better than a static site. You may have members of your team who love to write, engage them in the process. Once you know who will be producing content, next is to decide how often you want to post new content and schedule it. In my life nothing happens unless it is on my schedule no matter how committed I am to making it happen. So find a way to put the time to write on the schedule, before the first patient, lunch at your desk 2 days a week, or whatever fits for you.
There are a variety of apps that can be helpful. I can write new posts on an app on my iphone and post them, so wherever creativity strikes I can take advantage of it. I also use the notes feature of my phone often, just to jot down a great topic idea. Lastly, dictation software can be very helpful, simply recite the information and let an app on your phone or computer dictate it into written form. However you get the content produced a regular schedule of new content is critical. This content can then be shared across multiple channels on the web, and become facebook and twitter postings as well as videos being uploaded onto your YouTube channel.
Great points, Dr. Brady! The idea of being able to use dictation software to help with blogging is a really good idea. Have you found dictation software that works well? If so, let me know. Also, I agree that it is really smart to have team members help with creating content. One of our clients, Cranford Dental, has done a good job of that. Recently they had a team member talk about her “alligator hunt”. It was a fun post. Here is a link in case you want to see it: ( http://mysocialpractice.com/2012/12/dental-social-media-personality-power ). Thanks for your post and contributions to helping practices understand social media marketing better. Best, — Jack