Kick off a strong brand publishing program for your medical practice by establishing a consistent voice at the start.
The marketing benefits of blogging are undeniable. It increases search engine rankings, helps generate new leads, and can send dozens of new patients your way per month. But how can simply maintaining a blog make all of these things happen? By giving your medical practice more opportunities to interact with potential patients.
Just like every conversation with another person offers a chance to strengthen and solidify a friendship, every blog post offers another touchpoint by which readers get to know your practice. The goal of a blog is to earn prospects’ trust over time until they’re ready to become patients — but doing so requires a consistent and compelling voice. Here’s how to find yours.
In healthcare, defining your voice is a different challenge than it is for brands in other verticals. Healthcare providers don’t have quite as much leeway for humor or personality — after all, the topics you’re discussing are often serious or weighty, and patients are seeking out your blog with genuine health questions and concerns in mind.
At the same time, readers should be aware that there are human physicians behind the screen — and they should come away from your blog wanting to meet your team! Imagine your blog as an extension of your bedside manner; it should be warm and sympathetic, but never unprofessional. Think carefully about when and where an injection of personality is appropriate; if you wouldn’t say it in the office, don’t say it on your blog.
One of the biggest challenges that healthcare providers face when creating a blog is finding the happy middle ground between accuracy and readability. While no potential patient wants to read an article that’s riddled with jargon, oversimplification may result in misinformation, which is the last thing any healthcare practice wants to put out on the internet.
Remember that, while your audience isn’t made up of medical professionals, it’s made up of intelligent adults. They may not be familiar with medical terminology, but they can understand anything that you explain well enough. If a medical term is absolutely necessary to a blog post, define it for your readers; if it’s not, it’s likely best to leave it out and opt for a plain English explanation instead.
It’s not uncommon for medical blogs to have multiple authors. If your practice has more than one healthcare practitioner on board, it’s a good idea for all of their voices to be heard on your blog — after all, potential patients will want to get to know the whole practice before they trust you with their health.
For that reason, there’s nothing wrong with letting each contributor’s voice shine through a bit. It may even seem strange if every author on your blog had the exact same writing style. However, it is important to have a baseline level of tonal consistency. Before your blog gets off the ground, get everyone on the same page as to how you want the overall blog to sound.
Finding the right voice for your blog doesn’t have to be difficult. If you write from the heart (with bedside manner and compliance in mind, of course), you’re bound to create a compelling, readable body of work.