Blogging has evolved far beyond personal journals. Now, it’s a powerful content marketing tool that builds trust, showcases features and benefits, and adds value to your brand.
It’s time to make blogging part of your company’s healthcare marketing strategy. Here are four ways to make that effort worthwhile.
1) Know your buyer personas.
The need to understand your target market is by no means exclusive to blogging. Any healthcare marketing strategy should start with an assessment of the different persona(s) who are looking for your expertise. This can include buyers, influencers, and prospects. Know their needs, pain points, and priorities. Tailor your content to speak directly to them. Don’t be afraid to target precise segments of your audience, either. Search engines bring in people looking for very specific information who will leave if they don’t find it. Show them exactly how your expertise meets their needs!
2) Use blog content to support your healthcare marketing strategy and value proposition.
Your blog posts should not be “one and done” content. Once you have posted a series of blogs, you can repurpose them into email newsletters, white papers, webinars, and ebooks. Those other resources should lead readers along the buyer’s journey and ultimately into the sales funnel. It is beneficial to create a series of blog posts around a specific campaign or key challenge your customers experience. You can then turn that blog series into a whole ecosystem of content for your readers. Cross-promote blog posts through email and social media channels.
3) Create informative and educational blog content.
Blog posts should have substance—not fluff or clickbait. Since blog posts are typically much longer than social media posts, they provide a prime opportunity to build audience awareness and company credibility. Write blog posts that create awareness of problems your target audience may experience. Then, step in to offer your company’s solutions. Support any claims with facts that illustrate your knowledge and understanding of your customers’ needs. This positions you as credible, knowledgeable, and in-demand. Keep blog posts readable. Consider using first or second person to sound more accessible.
4) Let your blog display thought leadership and support SEO goals.
What do search engine optimization (SEO) and thought leadership have to do with each other? SEO is no longer about “tricking” an algorithm into ranking your page higher. Search engines want to help people find the best content. If you want your website to rank high in your field of expertise, you need to demonstrate thought leadership in that field. Blogs should be original content, not repurposed third-party content. However, it may be appropriate to write a blog post that summarizes newsworthy content in the context of your company’s messaging and expertise.
Pay attention to keywords in the post, meta description, page titles, and blog URL. But, maintain a realistic and approachable voice. Blog entries should not go overboard mentioning the company name, products, or location. This can sound salesy and reduce credibility. Furthermore, search engines actually penalize sites that appear to engage in “keyword stuffing.” That is, displaying irrelevant content with artificially high keyword density. Posts should be at least 500 words but could be up to 2,400 words. Let the content drive the length and format of the posts, and search ranking will take care of itself.
In short:
Blogging is a powerful way to add value to your healthcare marketing strategy. By creating informative content for your target audience, you can build credibility, awareness, and genuine need for your products and expertise.
