If you think blogs are just for offering parenting advice and providing recipes, you’re wrong. Blogs are instrumental in building businesses, including your dental practice. Here are just a few ways they can help you grow your practice:
- They keep your website fresh with new content — Your website needs to be updated with new content constantly. One way to do that is with monthly (or semi-monthly) blog posts. The posts shouldn’t be too technical; instead, they should focus on how the treatments you offer can benefit patients. And, sure, there are other ways to keep your content fresh, but a blog post offers other benefits that can’t be achieved by sharing a new picture.
- The fresh content helps with search engine rankings — Without fresh content, whether it’s a blog or your new headshot, the algorithms that drive search engines interpret your page as inactive. Each time you add fresh content, however, the more frequently the search engine’s web crawlers will “stop by” your site to see what’s new. While the frequency of updates is no guarantee that you you’ll rank higher in search engine results, it does increase your chances.
- Blogs allow you to establish yourself as an expert in your field — Before a patient commits to an involved procedure, such as dental implants, they want to know that you know your stuff. Blogs provide the perfect platform for sharing what you know and how your particular skill set can benefit your patients.
- They provide information that helps current and prospective patients make decisions about treatment — Even if your current patients are only seeing you for preventative care, they may be thinking about other ways that dentistry can help them. Reading a blog post that tells them you’re a Preferred Invisalign Provider may help them commit to treatment. The same goes for prospective patients; if your blog indicates that you specialize in what they’re looking for — be it sedation dentistry or bone grafting — they will be more likely to select your practice over those of your competitors.
Before you discount blogs as frivolous, remember all of the ways they can help you grow your business and even retain current patients by reminding them why they chose you in the first place. They don’t need to be complex, they don’t need to be long ( at least 300-350 words, ideally), they just need to speak to your patients.
