There are literally tens of thousands of people searching Google every day doing their own research on the aesthetic procedures they want, like laser lipo, hair removal or cellulite treatments. There were 12,100 global monthly searches for the term “laser lipo” alone. (source: Hubspot keyword analytics) Patients, including your current patients, are actively using Google and social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp looking for reviews on you, your practice, and outcomes of the aesthetic procedures you’ve performed.
No longer are patients waiting for marketing and advertising to tell them what they need and where to find it. Today, your success depends on you placing useful, educational information about yourself, your practice, and your services in front of patients in the places where they hang out on the internet.
Too often your best patient candidates are left feeling frustrated because their search results aren’t yielding enough social proof and meaningful information to help them feel prepared to make a decision. What patients want to find is sound medical information from a doctor they can trust with their health. What they really want to find is YOU.
Blogging is one of the best ways to build trust, rapport, and credibility with your target audience. A study from HubSpot shows that business blogging leads to 55% more website visitors.
5 Reasons You Should Start Blogging Today
- Get Found on Google – Blogging is one of the best ways to get more visitors to your website. For the low, low price of a few minutes of your time each week, you can add your voice of reason and experience to all the web chatter, become a though leader in the eyes of Google, and raise your website ranking all at once! (Be sure to include a keyword strategy to optimize your ranking)
- Patients Want to Get Educational Information from Their Doctor – Concerned that your blog will look like a self-serving marketing ploy? In her book “Your Aesthetic Practice,” Catherine Maley sites that patients “were interested in hearing from their physician periodically…. They saw this more as education than as marketing when the correspondence was informative.” Provide quality educational content, and your readers will thank you!
- Patients Want to Hear from Other Patients – On his blog about social media and healthcare, Dr. Howard J. Luks sited that “80% of consumers trust the recommendation of a friend or colleague.” Can you afford to ignore a number like that? Invite your happy patients to comment on your blog and recognize them when they do. Send a note thanking them for their input, and perhaps include a gift card they can apply to try a new service… thereby inviting them to continue being a happy patient!
- Patients Want to Know You Can Help Them – Write a few articles using anecdotes of aesthetic procedures and treatments from your practice. Did your lipo procedure change someone’s life? Did a vein treatment make someone feel more confident? The goal is to help patients to see themselves in the stories. Let patients know that you understand how they feel, that many of your patients felt the same way, but that most happy with their decision to have a procedure. (Refer to HIPPA regulations; keep it anonymous and change personal information.)
- Patients Want to Know More about You and Your Practice – Did you just attend a really cool conference? Planning an event in your office? Add a new person to your team? You can write about events in the life of your practice in a way that helps patients to feel connected to you. This is good for attracting new patients, but also is a great retention tool for your current patients.
If you make blogging a weekly exercise, you can build meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your patients and at the same time, rank higher in Google search results. Increasing your rank on Google means more visitors to your website.
In the coming weeks, we will talk about how to convert those visitors into qualified leads, and then how to convert those leads into new clients.
We would love to hear how you are using social media to grow your business. What trials and tribulations, and successes can you share? Please add them, as well as any questions, in the comments section below.
