When patients are fearful about the pain they just felt or symptoms they can’t explain, they instantly take to the computer.
They’ll type in their symptoms and hope that Dr. Google can help solve the problem.
When they’re your patients, you want them to know that you will always be their best source of information, even online. The best way to do that is to remember to consider your patient when you’re creating your editorial calendar.
Consider these techniques when making your healthcare blog that will ensure that when it comes to their health, your patients know that you always have their backs.
Personalize Your Approach
Health care can be intimidating and impersonal for patients. You’ve heard the story over and over again about the person who turned 50 but wouldn’t get a colonoscopy, which is the recommended age, because they were afraid, unmotivated, or just plain scared to go for what seems like an intrusive procedure even though it’s not. The same for women who are put off by having to get a mammogram.
A blog is your chance to demystify medicine and encourage your patients to do the right thing in a reassuring voice. It could save lives.
Find Patients Where They Are
Nobody opens up a phone book to look for a doctor anymore. Patients looking for doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals go to the internet and find your webpage.
If someone gives a word of mouth of recommendation for a doctor, one of their first acts is to head straight to their site to see who is in their practice and to check out the details of what’s offered. Beyond the standard biography, a regular blog with high-quality SEO creates more depth and connection with potential patients. The more you are out there in a thoughtful way, the better your results—and conversions of seekers to patients—will be.
Stick to the Facts
A blog is where you can unravel myths and bombard patients with the truth. Perhaps no field is more prone to misperceptions and wives’ tales than healthcare.
Your blog is a great place for a healthcare provider to present patients with a science-based perspective on why a procedure may or may be important or what the risks really are for certain drugs, vaccines, or medical treatments. Using freelance experts to write these blogs will free you up to serve your patients.
Establish Your Staff as the Expert
Your blog is your chance to go in-depth on topics of concern to patients.
For instance, you can establish a written record of why it’s important to go for an annual physical, or when it’s a good idea to see a dermatologist. Let this be a spot where you can exert authority in a persuasive yet comforting voice.
Patients want to know that their doctors are competent. This is particularly effective for specialists, who can talk in more detail about what they do.
Then, Establish a Bedside Manner
You’ve perfected your bedside manner with years of practice in the office, so let the blog be where you can show that you are friendly, accessible, and supportive of your patient’s concerns. What better way to show people how compassionate you are than to do it on a blog, where you can establish your own message and tone?
Use this as an opportunity to humanize yourself and connect with an audience. Sometimes, doctors are unfairly stereotyped as unapproachable and unfriendly. When you use a freelance writer or outsource your content, the writer will use your expertise as a source and help you develop your written personality.
Many doctors are so busy during their workdays that they don’t have a chance to show their personal touch. Consider your blog to be a spot where you don’t have to be wonky about medicine all the time.
Answer Your Patients’ Most Buzzing Questions
The internet needs to be fed — all the time. Consider timely topics that will be your patients’ best location to find information.
Consider a Q&A about the questions you are most asked in the office this month. By answering those in a blog, you’ll be able to help your patients that haven’t been into the office recently. Be sure to engage your followers on social media, too, to keep the conversation going in some fashion.
You can also discuss subjects that you know will be talked about regularly. In February, you can talk about heart health and in October you can discuss breast cancer awareness.
Keep the conversation flowing while letting your patients know that you are the best source of information about their health.
Show Warmth in a Podcast
If you’re really ambitious, you can produce your own podcast, which provides an excellent way to take a deep dive on a particular subject. Podcasts are conversational and can include guests (like other doctors in your practice).
Take 30 minutes to teach about the best way to calm down your newborn baby or when to have a worrisome mole checked out by a dermatologist. Utilize freelancers with experience to ask the questions so that it feels more like a conversation that a patient would want to have, but might be too scared.
Include the podcast on your website for users to download and listen to. This is also another form of content that can be blasted out on social media.
Let Your Patients Create Guest Blogs
For patients that are willing, allow them to share their own personal healthcare stories. Perhaps you have a patient that can talk about their experience with Covid-19 or another willing to chronicle a recovery from breast cancer.
These types of blogs will always require consent, but as you know your patients best find someone who wants to speak freely about a medical issue they had. Often non-writers are wary of writing their own tale, but when you utilize a freelancer, expert writers and interviewers are able to produce a story that your patients are honored to have told.
Letting patients do the talking is another great way to connect with someone who might be going through a similar experience, and ultimately comfort them and let them know they aren’t alone.