At MyAdvice, in addition to building the industry’s best medical websites and optimizing them to rank in search, we also provide content. While some clients provide all of their own content for their sites, for others we write each page. We also provide blogs that Google’s bots love to crawl and some Facebook posts.
There’s one area of content that we don’t provide, but it’s important for your patients and potential patients to see — it’s casual, inside information/behind-the-scenes content. And your patients love it.
The point of all those words
Some clients want to limit content to just a few bullet points and minimal writing. We disagree with that approach. Why? Content that your patients (and potential patients) see as valuable builds trust, establishes your practice as the expert source, and fosters deep, enduring connections.
Patients don’t simply want to know you provide a procedure; they want to know about it. Maybe not all the way down to the style of sutures, but surely the basics of what they can expect. This builds trust and establishes your practice as the go-to source for the procedures your site describes.
Blog posts also build that expert status, but blogs are just as important for search. Google’s bots are continually crawling your site and every blog is a new page and is considered to be new content. Plus, those bots find the keywords in your blogs that rank you higher when someone is searching for a certain procedure.
Behind the scenes
All of the above content is serious stuff — procedures, methods, devices, candidates, risks, complications, and the like. It’s educational and it needs to be relatively extensive.
But there’s another type of content that needs to come from the practice itself. You can call it behind-the-scenes content. Think of it as the “outtakes” for a movie, or a “behind the filming of” piece.
It can seem like a trivial exercise to generate these kinds of posts for your practice Facebook page or Instagram feed, but it has this value for your patients:
- Shows that you value your team
- Humanizes your practice
- Displays your fun side
Some practices want to keep bombarding their Facebook page with information of the doctor at this conference and quoted in this magazine piece. These posts can’t be the only content on these casual, social sites. People want to see the human side of your practice. This behind the scenes type of content lets them see your practice and its staff as friends, not simply doctors/dentists/practitioners.
Here are some types of behind the scenes content that you need to generate for your Facebook and Instagram feeds.
Personal content
Did your nurse run a marathon? Does your hygienist play violin in an Irish band on the weekends? Did someone on your staff have a birthday? Does one of your doctors juggle?
Write posts for all of that stuff. If there’s video of your violin-playing hygienist, post it and watch the views climb! Photos and videos are musts with these kinds of personal posts about your practice — they encourage interaction, and your patients frequently share them.
These kinds of posts not only provide engaging content that isn’t all about the serious side of the practice; they also show your patients that you value your team members. They may not be making the incisions or contouring the gums, but highlighting them shows you view your practice as a team endeavor. People trust practices that feel like family far more than practices that feel like a surgeon and some support staff.
Funny is good
A great way to humanize your practice is by sharing funny, goofy content. If someone on your staff just taught their dog a funny trick, that’s a great video post. A goofy Halloween costume for your front desk person? Must see. Even appropriate links to funny video clips that tie to holidays or calendar events make great posts.
New skills. New stuff.
Did your practice add a new panoramic x-ray machine? How about a new laser? Let’s see them in a post. This is a great opportunity for a quick video showing how the new equipment works.
Did a staff member receive training and earn a new certificate? Tell everyone about it. If you sent someone to a conference, share some pictures and what it was all about.
Again, this shows that you invest in your team and that your practice works as a team. Plus, it expands your practice role as the experts.
Do it yourself
At MyAdvice, we provide lots of content, but this personal/behind-the-scenes stuff needs to come from you and your staff. It’s not hard to create. We all have smart phones with cameras, making all of use videographers and photographers all the time. All you need is to think of anything that will give your practice a more casual, fun, friendly image. Once you start putting up these kinds of posts, you can watch your practice social media interaction climb.
