how to enhance your clinical value and brand through blog...

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How to Enhance your Clinical Value and Brand through Blog Writing

Alanna Pokorski, PT, DPT

Sports Physical Therapy of New York, PC

Practice Wellness Resources, LLC

Disclosure

• The purpose of this presentation is to share resources that will help to strengthen our profession

• Alanna Pokorski has no relevant financial relationships





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Social Media and Physical Therapy

• Managing outpatient for 17 years

• 11 clinics in Upstate NY

• Clinical Liaison with Sales and Marketing

• Began managing social channels in 2010 with help from experts

• Learned a lot… now we create and post own content

Why Blog?

Quality Clinical Care

Education Branding

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Musculoskeletal Experts

The Power of Social

• 16 minutes of each hour, people spend on social channels

• 65% of people own a smartphone and 62% have accessed health information on line

• 91% of people with a smartphone make a consumer choice based on information online

• Direct Access= Consumer Choice= Opportunity

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Objectives:

• Outline a blog strategy for your Physical Therapy practice

• Ways to identify trending topics to your community

• Describe how to develop an effective, relevant blog so that it increases your clinical value and search-ability

What is definition of a Blog?

• Truncation of the expression “Weblog”

• Discussion or information site published on the world wide web

• Entries or posts appear in reverse chronological order

• Comments and interaction are encouraged by the author

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Where do I put my Blog?

• Blogs should be located on your website

• Clear on homepage, then in subdomain

• Drive TRAFFIC to website

• WHY? Blog engagement is a large determining factor in SEO

• SEO= Search Engine Optimization

Website Placement of Blog

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Search Engine Optimization

• Maximize online presence to improve company’s website listing

• Several factors contribute

• Algorithm changes constantly

• Blog engagement

• Blogs increase ranking for your website listing

• Make the blog clear on your website!

Writing the Clinical Blog

• Make it simple and easy to understand.

• Not meant for a medical journal, language is PATIENT friendly

• Visualize and be helpful - pretend you are talking with a patient

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Writing a Clinical Blog

• Provide an expert point of view

• Cut out fluff words (no more than 300 words)

• Hyperlink to other sites to increase validity, example: sportsmetrics.com.

• List references

4 Structures of a Clinical Blog

1.) List Posts: 5 Statistics that explain why….

2.) How-to: Why________ matters, and how to do it.

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Structures of a Clinical Blog

3.) Insights: Gather multiple research articles/views on a certain topic

4.) Reaction Post: Provide an opinion or expert advice on a recent event or industry article,

Ex: Recent injury in sport, Opioid use for pain

Who writes the blog? • Clinicians: passionate clinical topics

Give at least 1 month of writing time

• Unless it’s a trending topic: “Famous athlete suffered a concussion last night…”

• Create a blog team for ASAP content

• Guest bloggers: those you trust

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Best Blog Writers…

• Your students.

• Socially connected and great practice

Sources of Content

• Create a Google Alert ( www.google.com/alerts)

• Local news alerts

• Moveforward.com

• Huffington Post

• ESPN.com

• Webmed.com

• Student In-services

• Recent clinical course or patient experience

http://www.google.com/alerts

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Posting the Blog

• WordPress is a great option for a quality blog

– Once live on WordPress, then you can post to other sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)

– Sprout Social is a good option to use

• Can post on several different social media sites at once, just need to copy and paste the link to the blog and select sites to post on

Posting the Blog

• Use a quality photo that speaks to topic

• 1-2 blogs per week consistently

– WordPress and Sprout Social: you can schedule several posts at once

– You can post everyday without actually having to go on everyday

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Promoting Blogs on Facebook

• Ages: 28- 42, most common

• 53% female and 47% male

• Highest traffic: midweek between 1 and 4 pm

• Thursdays and Fridays, engagement is 18% higher

Facebook Engagement

• Content with visuals get 94% more total views, and 40X more likely to be shared.

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Blog on Facebook

• Monitor trends of day/time for engagement of blogs

• Track topics that elicit engagement

• Encourage staff to share blogs on Facebook with personal message

Blog on Twitter

• 18-29 years old

• Most variety; No gender disparity

• Best posting time is Mon-Thurs between 1-3pm

• Tweets with less than 100 characters receive a 17% higher response rate

• Timing matters for breaking news

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#Hashtags

• #Hashtags should be strategically placed and written

• #Hashtags allow you to enter into ongoing conversations

• Capitalize individual words to read easier

– Group words together when appropriate, for example #PhysicalTherapy

– Limit hashtags to TWO per post

Blogs on LinkedIn

• 1 Billion active users

• Two new users join LinkedIn every second

• Users are 8X more engaged with your brand

• 3X more likely to buy your product

• 2X more likely to recommend it once they’ve connected with you

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LinkedIn

• LinkedIn is the #1 social referral source to direct traffic to your main website

• 4X more than FB and Twitter

LinkedIn Demographic

• Ages 30-49 ( 27%) and 50-64 (24%) age groups

• 38% of users have at least 1 college degree

• Men (24%) more likely to use LinkedIn than women (19%)

• Highest traffic is Monday-Friday, 7 am- 9am and 5pm-6pm

• Blogs are a recruiting tool for high quality clinicians

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Blog Best Practices

• Create Relevant Content

• Determine the best methods to publicize to improve reach

• Define/manage opportunities specific to your brand

• Schedule 1-2 Blogs per week consistently

Non-Branded Keyword Content • Readers do NOT want you to talk about your company. Don’t

“sell”

• Blog will drive traffic to website

• Blogs allow to build incoming traffic from NON-branded keywords

• Branded keywords: “Sports”, “Physical Therapy”

• Non-Branded Keywords: “ACL reconstruction”, “Football” “Teddy Bridgewater”

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Non-Branded Keywords

• Critical for driving traffic to website

• Additional Value for your Brand

• Typing in those keywords will send people to your website, and your blog

• Validates your expertise

Gather Feedback on Blogs

• Conduct a short survey

• Questions should address future topics

• Preference? ( text, audio, video, etc)

• Survey should have open end space as well… what would YOU like see?

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OK…Where do I start?

• Get a blog button visible on homepage of website

• Identify clinical passions with blog writer(s)

• Start with 1 blog per month (SHORT/SIMPLE)

• Share on your other social channels

• Should NOT be a stressor

• Grow additional frequency from there

Why Blog?

Quality Clinical Care

Education Branding

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Thank you!

Questions?

Contact Info

• Alanna Pokorski, PT, DPT

• Sports Physical Therapy of New York, PC

• Website: www.sptny.com

• Email: [email protected]

http://www.sptny.com/

mailto:[email protected]

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