Content Marketing and Content Writing
People often discuss the importance of content marketing and keeping content fresh and relevant on websites. Working in the web development and digital marketing industry, we understand the importance of this.
However perhaps you don’t. When we speak of content marketing and content writing what we generally mean is:
- Taking your technical and clinical knowledge then developing that into content which is entertaining, informative and useful to your target market.
- Once we have established that the content is meeting the needs and answering the questions of readers/potential clients, we ensure the content creates positive associations to your brand and directs them to a call to action, whether it’s making a booking or reading further information.
- Ensuring the contents format and structure is visually easy to read and engaging (broken up with images, paragraphed and includes subheadings).
- We then use specific keywords and links so the content is optimised for search engines so it’s easy to find and ranks well on Google and attracts the right type of patients for your practice.s).
For a Standard Health/Medical Website How Much Content Is Required?
The answer is:
As many as it takes to help the ideal potential patient make the decision to contact your practice to make an appointment without overwhelming them.
The purpose is to remove as much fear/risk as possible in the patient’s mind through communicating in the most effective medium (whether that’s text, images or videos) with the smoothest flow to get them to take action.
How Does That Translate in Numbers?
Based on Our Experience and Calculations
There Are on Average:
We Have Always Encouraged Our Clients to Write Their Own Content
As it gives their website a more personal feel and really lets the reader get to know the clinic and the people. However writing your own content can be tricky, it is often a time consuming process and requires good writing skills.
Our experience with launching websites has always shown the longest delays are due to bottlenecks in the content writing process.
It is important to recognise whether outsourcing content writing will be more beneficial than writing it yourself.
In order to help you make your decision we have created a pro and con’s list for you.
PRO’s
More personality
Full control of content
You know the topic best
CON’s
Time consuming
Lack of content writing experience
You may be too technical when writing
If You Decide to Write Your Own Content, Here Are Some Vital Points We Have Created to Assist You
1. Know your content goals
Ask yourself, what is the objective of my content? Is it to convert readers to leads, to be informative and act as a knowledge hub or to build your clinic’s brand awareness. This will help guide your writing, assist with call to actions and help determine the types of links to include in your content.
For example, if you are trying to build your clinic’s credibility and authority; your content will include links and mention peak body associations/organisations, links to key industry influencers, images of publications you have been featured in as well as information of your qualifications. If it is to convert readers to leads; your content will have strong call to actions and aim to guide the reader to your Contact Us page.
2. Know Your Audience
For writing to be effective you need to understand your audience. Every website has a specific target audience and requires a different type and level of content. Content should be written with the end reader in mind, ensure that it attracts and retains users on a website.
Hint: Avoid technical jargon, while you may know what Anterior Teeth are or the Alveolar Bone, ask yourself how many readers would understand these terms?
3. Do your research!
You don’t want to waste your time writing irrelevant content. It is important that you do adequate research to ensure that all the information presented is accurate, current, and doesn’t contradict the clinics existing message. Good research is the foundation of good content writing.
Hint: Ask your existing patients what their main concerns are and what information they would like to know (does your whether your existing website answers their questions or achieve its objective?).
4. Define your style and tone.
Every clinic and practise has it’s own style and unique value proposition, it’s important to decide how you want your clinic to be perceived through your content. If you are a family focused clinic and want to emphasise your child friendly policy and procedures, what type of tone would you use?
If you are focused on cosmetic dentistry or sport injuries, what type of tone would you use? Also consider the personalities of the staff in your clinic, are they bright and bubbly or calm and neutral.
5. Basic SEO.
You need to ensure your content is optimized for the specific keywords that are going to increase your search ranking, bringing more visitors to your site and get you ranking higher in Google. Check your headlines and appropriate keywords. To understand what we mean read : https://2080solutions.com.au/why-playing-family-feud-will-help-your-business/
Hint: Don’t write for the sake of ranking high on search engines by focusing too much on keywords which can break the flow of the content. At the end of the day, search engines aren’t the target market, people are.
6. Time to Edit.
You can now sigh a breath of relief, the hardest part is over. While the initial draft you have written is not ready to be published, it’s about to get easier. Read over your draft, check the format, check the spelling and check the grammar. Then get a colleague, family or friend to read it. Most importantly, ask them to put on the hat of your target market and read the content from that perspective.
Hint: If you’ve read it numerous times and find yourself gazing over paragraphs, give yourself a break for a couple of days. When you come back to it refreshed, you will find editing an easier task.
If you’ve read the above advice and decide you’d prefer to outsource your content writing, we can arrange a time to meet with you to discuss your requirements. We have experience writing content for the health/medical industry and understand the governing policies and guidelines. Our initial engagement process also means we get to know our clients intimately and understand their unique value proposition, business goals, personality and target market which allows for specifically tailored content.
If you need a hand with your content or would like us to perform a quick content review, feel free to give us a call
Also, check out some of our content writing for health professionals.
Think Chiropractic, Clover Dental