Local SEO for Health Centers and Businesses with Multiple Locations

Local SEO Tips

In this blog post, we review the steps to make sure you are optimized for local searches for your business or health and wellness center with multiple physical locations.

Local SEO for Multi-Location Businesses Includes:

  1. Creating a page specific for that location rather than having every location only listed on one page
  2. Adding content specific to that location on this new location page – Claiming a Google My Business profile for each location
  3. Adding other directory listings for the locations
  4. Optimizing on-page settings such as the meta description and page title
  5. Linking to the location page from the content created by your specialists in the blog
  6. Building reviews for your locations
  7. And More!

Listen to the Podcast:

In today’s podcast and blog post, we’re going to be talking about search engine optimization for businesses and healthcare centers that have multiple locations and share the same website. So we’re going to go through some of the dos and some of the do-nots, as well as how to take this step-by-step list to the next level. So let me just pull up my notes so I don’t forget anything.

The first thing that you’re going to want to do is take a look at your website. Now, if you have one location page on your website and it lists off all of the locations there, that’s a great start. However, if you then have all of the location information such as the specialties, the directions, the hours it’s open and everything like this, all on that same page too, you’re going to need to do a little bit of refreshing in 2021. So what I want you to do is call up your web developer or whoever opens up… Excuse me, whoever manages your website, and ask them to build out a specific page on your website for every single location.

The Content on your Location Pages and URL Structure

Now, the reason why you want to do this is because you want to show Google where to send local traffic. It’s said that nearly 50% of all searches are local, so you want to make sure to have that local content and that local specific page on your website. So an example that I wanted to show you is actually Rogers Behavioral Health, and they have locations all through the United States. So here’s their website, and if you look, they have all of these locations. So a few things I wanted to show you is for them, I would potentially have this top menu also link to the main Our Locations page. And here, they have a database where you can search for the locations. They have a lot of different locations. However, you can click on any of these locations and it pulls up a page specific for that location. Now, here, if you take a look, their URL structure is how we recommend it’s set-up. All of the locations are with locations is the top page, a parent page, and then the location name. You could take this a step further and have locations/California/Los Angeles, for example, but this is a great structure to have your URLs and to set up those permalinks.

If we scroll down on this location page, you’ll see that the content between the pages (I have Minneapolis up here as well) isn’t the same on every page. So if you find yourself creating a location page for all of your locations and adding the same content to it, I want you to stop right there. Before you create the location pages, please take the time to create content that’s specific for that location. You can even talk to the managers, for example, or the specialists that you have at the location, and have them help put together the content for you.

Make sure your location page reflects that specific location

The big difference is how they list the services for that location. So Los Angeles, for example, has OCD and anxiety and depression recovery, whereas this other location has also eating disorders and trauma. Then you’ll notice they have a slideshow of that location. So this gives people peace of mind that they know where they’re going, they understand sort of what that next step is when they reach out to your center. And also you can have a video. It looks as though this one, maybe the video isn’t loading or my Internet is slow, but you could have a video for that specific center as well or location as well. Here, we also recommend having the doctors or the specialists who are at that location listed off with a link to their bio as well. So you want to give your website viewer everything that they need to know about that location listed right here on this specific page. Here, we have the hours, as well as the Google Map nested right in here as well. So these are all great things that you should include on that specific page for your business when you have those multiple locations.

Add Meta Data and Unique Content to Each Location Page

The next thing that you need to make sure of, and this one I kind of went through some of the elements for making sure that it is structured and optimized for local SEO, so having that unique content, having the headers here, listing off the directions and how to call them, all of these are great things to have for search engine optimization. But taking it a step further, we also recommend making sure that the meta description and the meta header are correct for that location too. So you want to highlight the location’s information and make that the meta description truly reflects what the specialties are of your specific locations. If you have a WordPress website, we typically use the Yoast SEO plugin, however, there are handful of other ones that do the job really well for your website on page SEO and kind of that behind the page SEO.

Create a Google My Business Page and Directory Listings

After this, the next thing that you want to do when you are optimizing your website for search engine optimization for multi-locations with your healthcare center is making sure each of them have a Google My Business page. Now, you probably have set this up, so just go and make sure that all of the settings are correct, and we’ve talked about how to do this in the past. The Google My Business page, you should have one for every single location, including your corporate location. That’s okay. However, if you have a virtual office or an office that’s just temporary, there’s no need to create a new listing for that. It’s more of a hassle to remove a listing than to just make sure that your listings that you want to be up are accurate.

Use Moz to Manage Location Citations

We often use a service like Moz Local in order to manage and optimize other directory listings that include information on your locations. So we typically do use Moz. You do have to be a little careful with the settings as it can push information to profiles that you already have created, such as your Facebook page, or you can do this manually as well. One of the benefits of Moz with it’s pushing information through is that you’re sure that the same information exists everywhere, and that’s something Google likes to see. It wants to see that you are consistently showcasing your business, that is has the same address, the same hours, the same description, the same keywords, and then Moz also can push through images and videos for your different locations as well. I believe at this point, Moz is about $125 per location, but there might be bulk-buy discounts as well.

Focus on Growing Online Reviews for Each Location

The following thing that you should do for each location is make sure that you are getting reviews for that location. So this is a process where you can either get testimonials from your clients, from your patients directly when they leave, or send a follow-up survey with a link to then leave that review afterwards. Additionally, something that you can do is sign up for a service. Social Prime, for example, has a service where they actually text patients as they are leaving their appointments to leave a review. We recommend setting this so that it leaves a review on the Google My Business profile rather than focusing on other profiles. The reason why is because first and foremost, you want to make sure that you have a consistent stream of of reviews coming into Google, and that can help boost your local online presence.

Link your Google My Business Page to the Location Page on your Website

One other thing with the Google My Business page, rather than linking back to the website as a whole, you want to make sure that you’re linking to your location pages, so you want to direct people to the page where they can find out about that location rather than to the homepage of your website. The same is true if you decide to have different Facebook accounts, for example, for each of your locations, you want to make sure that those URLs link to the specific location page on your website.

Create Internal Links from Blog Content to Location Pages

Once you have this all set up for your different locations and you have the specific page on your website, you have the directory listing set up, and you have optimized everything, you want to make sure that then you take it a step further. As we always talk about, you want to rely on your specialists in order to create content for a blog post, for example. And we recommend always testing out doing these physician or doctor interviews or specialists interviews as an easy way to get that key worded content. From here, if a specialist is at one of your locations, as you are starting the blog post and writing it and doing an introduction, link back to that location page on the website. This helps Google to see who is affiliated with what location and make sure that you have those internal links going to the location page, which will help it grow in the organic listings. Another thing that you’ll want to do is if you currently are building backlinks into your website, make sure that you’re focusing on that location page as well. So whatever the specialists search is plus the location name.

I hope that this has been helpful. Please let us know if you have any questions about how to build SEO for your healthcare center or your business that has multiple physical locations. Again, my name’s Caitlin McDonald, I’m here with the Social Speak Network. And if you’d like to schedule a consultation to talk about the search engine optimization process for your own business, please head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and click that free consultation button. We’re happy to sit down and chat with you. And of course, if you found this to be helpful, click subscribe on iTunes or Podbean, or of course, follow us on YouTube. Thanks so much and I’ll see you soon.

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6 Timeless Keyword Research Tips to Boost Your SEO Content Strategy

6 Timeless Keyword Research Tips to Boost Your SEO Content Strategy

Keyword research can be laborious. The research process often takes hours, only to find out that just a handful of the keywords are worthwhile.

Sure, it is a time-consuming process. But it isn’t something that should be taken lightly. Why? Because SEO helps make your website more visible. And when done right, it can dictate not just the traffic you get, but whether or not that traffic converts. But how can you make the most out of your SEO keyword research?

Use these timeless keyword research tips to ensure you attract qualified traffic.

Focus on long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer, highly specific phrases. These are keywords that people are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-of-purchase.  

Obviously, you’re going to draw less traffic with a long-tail keyword than you would with a more commonly used one. But since long-tail keywords are more specific, it will be easier for your site to be found by the audience for your particular niche.

With shorter keywords, competition for rankings can be fierce. Targeting longer, more specific keywords is a win-win. You get better search rankings, more qualified search traffic, and lower cost per click.

Check the on-site search queries your visitors are looking for

Sometimes, you don’t have to look too far to find what you’re looking for. The keywords you need are already in front of you. You just need to take note of them.

Some of your visitors are typing in keywords into your search bar because they are hoping that they’d find the answers they need on your website. Visitors are telling you what topics they want. Now, all you have to do is to create content around these topics.

This is the simplest, yet most underutilized technique. I want you to understand that those on-site searches are a gold mine of data just waiting to be looted.

Use Google Trends

Google Trends is one of the most powerful, yet underutilized tools for SEO. We highly suggest that you use it to your advantage.

You can use Google Trends to conduct keyword research for free. Just type in a search term in the homepage, and it will automatically give you a list of Google’s most popular keywords over the past year. In addition, Google Trends will also provide a list of relevant keywords based on your search term, along with the percentage of search volumes for each one.

This feature is powerful because it helps you identify which keywords are growing in popularity and which ones are becoming less popular over time.

Take advantage of Google suggest

Have you ever noticed that Google gives you suggestions when you enter words in the search box? You’d be surprised as to how accurate and helpful these suggestions are.

You see, Google takes note of everything we search for. It can provide you with a list of popular search topics in seconds. So next time you’re compiling a list of keywords for SEO, try using this technique. Let Google give you all the answers. Doing this will not only help you find interesting keywords, it saves you a lot of time too.

Compile a list of local keywords

While it is a good idea to rank on competitive keywords, you shouldn’t ignore the power of local keywords. This is particularly important when targeting audiences within a specific geographical area. In fact, 80% of consumers use search engines to find businesses in their area.

Focus on keywords you think your audience might use when conducting local research. Local searches may yield lower search volumes, but it’s more about driving traffic that is ready to convert. Remember, local searches tend to be from people who are looking and ready to convert.

Local keywords will not only play an integral role in optimizing your local SEO strategy but also help in driving patients to your practice.

Analyze your competitor’s winning keywords

When all else fails, emulate. If you want to take your SEO to the next level, then you’ll need to start looking at what your competitors are doing. This can work to your advantage as it can help you target consumers who are searching for these keywords. After all, the goal is to outrank your competitors, right?

To do this, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush. For SEMRush, it’s as easy as entering your competitor’s website. It’ll give you a list of keywords they are ranking for in an instant.

On top of that, SEMRush also provides the URL of sites that rank for each term. This allows you to further understand what pieces of content are working for your competition.

Final thoughts

The world of SEO has evolved significantly over the years. Google now places more emphasis on content quality than keyword density. But let’s face it. Keyword research still remains the cornerstone of any successful SEO strategy. Hence, it is important to do it well. The keywords you use will ensure that your content is relevant and easily searchable on Google. 

 

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7 Social Media Trends for 2021

7 Social Media Trends for 2021

I know that 2020 was quite the year, and we had to make a lot of changes in our digital marketing strategies, so today we’re gonna cover seven social media trends for 2021.

1. Telehealth

The first one being telehealth. Telehealth is not going away, we’re going to have to continue the awareness that your practice is offering telehealth consultations and make sure that your patients feel safe and comfortable doing that, so continuing those posts, letting them know the process, and making sure that it is user friendly for them to schedule that telehealth consultation.

2. Patient’s Journey

Number two is sharing more about the patient’s journey, getting those testimonials because again, going back to having your patient feel safe, and if they are… If it’s a telemedicine or telehealth experience, we want to make sure that you’re telling the story of what that’s going to be like, how is it going to work for them, and also recognizing when a patient starts with you and what they came in for and being able to document that journey and that process that they’ve had and allowing them to tell their story, so really pushing that with them.

This could be written testimonials are great, but if they’re willing to do a thirty second to a one-minute video recording testimonial, that is amazing. And if you are able to tie their process into your social media posts, not using names, but situations, symptoms, being able to talk about their success, that is a great way to be able to implement that into your social media posts for 2021.

3. Videos

The third thing is videos, and we talk about this all the time, videos are not going anywhere, so it’s really important to make sure that you have that video strategy for 2021. This can be a series, so you can talk about, let’s say, January you can put together maybe a weight loss series and you answer questions about weight loss, you discuss maybe an eating plan, different recipes, and you’re putting out a video every week, and these don’t have to be long videos, these can be five to 10-minute videos. Maybe a little bit longer. These can be trying out Facebook lives, YouTube lives, you can schedule a YouTube live so people can sign up for it, similar to a webinar, but then it’s a live event. Going into then more interviews, so you can interview may be one of your doctors, you can have someone interview yourself, you can interview a patient, but really figuring out how you’re going to get more videos into your social media strategy is really important.

4. Repurposed Content

Number four, re-purposing content. So we are always, always, always working on content, this is our blog post, this is old social media posts and going back through your blogs and either, one, updating old blog posts and then re-purposing them onto social media pulling… If that content’s still relevant, then pulling pieces out of that blog post and also being able to create new images. If you’re using Canva, which we’ve talked about a lot in our previous blogs, if you’re using Canva, they have really cool new features of creating your own little animated social media image, or even they have video options on there as well, so creating a new eye-grabbing image or video to go along with that re-purposed content.

5. National Observance Days

Number five, looking at your national observance days, so this is something… Look at the ones that matter to your practice, to the local ones, the smaller ones… It could still be Breast Cancer Awareness month, it could be autism awareness month. Things that mean something to you on a personal level, and align with your practice’s mindset.

6. Industry News

Number six, industry news. Continue to share industry news. This can be from different resources, we always have our clients put together a list of resources between 10 and 15 different websites that they trust, that we can monitor and be able to share that content out to their social media platforms. So making sure that you have that, what we call that approved list to be able to share industry news, and this kind of breaks down into that 80-20 rule. 80% of the time, you should always be educating your audience, sharing news, giving them something that is… That they’re gonna be able to take something away. And then 20% of the time is about you, it’s about your practice, which goes into our last one, our tip.

7. Humanize Your Brand

Number seven, humanizing your practice. Really sharing with your audience what you guys are about, what are your core values, what are your missions, who is… Who are you… Maybe you’re the practitioner, maybe you’re the marketing department, but who’s behind the scenes, how does it work? And really showing your audience, so highlighting maybe a staff member, a nurse, a doctor, a practitioner every week, having a picture of them, or maybe a quick… That could be a part of your video, a quick little, “Hi, I’m so and so, I’m so excited to be working at” blah, blah, blah, and it gives that face connection, so they feel like if they are coming into the office that they know who’s going to be there, who’s going to greet them. If they are scheduling a telehealth consultation, they know who’s going to be on the other side of that screen, and it builds that loyalty and it gives them that comfort. So I think being able to humanize that brand and really get on a personal level is going to build those connections with your patients even more.

So these are just seven different social media trends that we see for the healthcare industry. If you need help putting together your social media strategy for this year or want to discuss different topics that are going to be a good fit for your practice, please schedule your free 30-minute consultation today. Thank you

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6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube

6 Doctors You Sholuld Follow on Youtube

When people talk about social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are usually the first thing that comes to mind. A lot of healthcare professionals and organizations use these social media platforms to reach a growing number of potential patients online who are looking for medical information.

While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can undoubtedly help them achieve their goals, there is one platform that most healthcare professionals tend to forget — Youtube.

Youtube is one of the biggest social media channels in the world, with over 2 billion active monthly users. If your goal is to educate your audience and attract new patients, Youtube would be a great place to start.

If you’re still on the fence about starting your own Youtube channel, don’t fret. We listed down some of the best medical Youtube channels out there. Hopefully, you can use them as an inspiration to start your own.

Doctor Oz

https://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorOz 

Doctor Oz was one of the first healthcare professionals to create a Youtube channel back in 2006.

He has a popular daytime television personality whose show is now on its 12th season. He has also appeared as a health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show for five seasons. Being a celebrity doctor it wasn’t difficult for him to grow his channel. As of writing, he’s racked up over 1.5 million subscribers and over 230 million channel views.

Dr. Oz uploads snippets of his show on his Youtube channel. Each episode has segments on health, wellness, and medical information, including true crime stories and celebrity interviews.

Dr. Mike

https://www.youtube.com/c/DoctorMike/featured 

Dr. Mike is a board-certified Family Medicine physician. He has been rocking the social media game for a while now, with over 9 million followers across all channels. He’s the perfect example of a physician who’s leading the way on Youtube.

Dr. Mike taps into his expertise and discusses a wide range of health topics. He also offers tips on how to reduce cancer risks, improve nutrition, and how to live a better life. His videos aren’t all about health tips. He also reacts to popular medical shows and points out discrepancies. This makes him relevant to everyday users.

With his charismatic vibe and undeniable wit, it’s no wonder that Dr. Mike is now considered as a celebrity influencer.

He now has Youtube 6.5 million subscribers 450 million views since starting the channel in 2016.

Dr. Dray

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrDrayzday/featured 

Dr. Dray is a board-certified Dermatologist and skincare expert. She’s a skincare enthusiast with a passion for skin and a healthy lifestyle. Her channel is an absolute goldmine of skincare advice and educational videos.

Considering the number of skincare products available on the market, it can be difficult for the average user to decide which ones to buy. Dr. Dray makes the process so much easier, as she uses her channel to review skincare products and give product recommendations. She also talks about the ingredients, costs, benefits, and more of each product she reviews.

Dr. Dray’s channel has almost 1 million subscribers and 70 million video views.

Dr. Josh Axe

https://www.youtube.com/c/drjoshaxe/featured 

Dr. Josh Axe is a doctor of natural medicine, chiropractor physician, and clinical nutritionist. He specializes in how the right nutrition has a positive influence on people’s health.

His passion is to help people eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. If you’re looking for tips on how to cure common ailments using natural remedies, then you should definitely follow Dr. Axe.

Dr. Axe started his channel in 2010. His channel has grown since then, with roughly 2 million subscribers and 160 million channel views.

Dr. Eric Berg

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrEricBergDC/featured 

Youtube still presents a huge opportunity for you, even if you’re a specialty doctor. Let’s take Dr. Eric Berg as an example. He’s a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, The Healthy Keto Plan.

Dr. Berg uses his Youtube channel to educate his audience about keto, intermittent fasting, as well as the use of his products. He started his channel in 2006. As of writing, he has over 4 million subscribers and 230 million channel views.

Dr. Hope’s Sick Notes

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrHopeSickNotes/featured 

Dr. Ed Hope is an Emergency Medicine Doctor and a Teaching Fellow in the UK. Initially, he created videos as a learning aid.

As a teaching fellow, he wanted to help medical students make learning easier. Today, his contents are centered on educating the public while keeping them entertained. Dr. Hope’s most popular video – a look at the medical scenes in Marvel film, Dr. Strange – garnered over 6 million views.

He created his channel in 2018, and he now has over 450,000 subscribers.

6 Doctors You Sholuld Follow on Youtube

6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube

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How to find topics for articles and social media posts in 2021

Blog Topics for 2021

This blog talks about how to find content to discuss in social media as well as your blog posts as a way to increase patient engagement and to build credibility in your field, as well as how to really build that search engine optimization on your website. So there recently, just last week, there was a Google algorithm update. If you follow anybody who talks about SEO, they are talking about this update and about the volatility that a lot of industries saw especially healthcare. But I think the biggest thing that this volatility comes down to is that Google wants to show individuals the best content for whatever search they’re looking for. So Google’s algorithm updates are continually trying to weed out the websites that are following bad SEO practices, and that haven’t taken the time to update their website to make sure that it’s fulfilling all of the most recent and up-to-date SEO protocols.

I wouldn’t worry so much about this algorithm update. Another one is going to happen again. Everything that you change now might change again. So instead of focusing on the minute details, as long as you have proper SEO in the back-end structure of your website, and for that, please feel free to reach out, we can run a couple of reports for you, make sure that that is all set up correctly. But instead of really focusing on that and worrying about that, worry about the content that you’re putting out there, and that you’re putting together. So I had a great call today with a new prospect, and he runs a few websites that put out exceptional articles, interviews, information for his clients, and really his goal is to empower them to be able to make informed decisions. And that is the whole goal of his website, however, we recommend any website, any service-based website, or even product-based website, seeks to fulfill the same goal and the same mission.

This individual and I were talking about different ways that he currently is finding his blog topics, and he brought up one place that we actually haven’t really mentioned or dived into in the past. So we’ve talked about doing Google searches and we’ve talked about doing, taking notes when you are speaking with prospects or speaking with some of your clients and some of your patients about what those general questions are that they’re always asking and always looking for answers for it, but he gave a great idea to look at Facebook groups. And he said that he is a part of numerous Facebook groups within this niche part of healthcare that he is a part of, and he pays attention to the topics and the discussions and the questions that are happening there, and his assumption is if somebody or multiple people are asking the same question in multiple ways, that that information is not easily accessible on Google. It’s not easily accessible online, on the sources for information where these people are used to going. So what this individual does is he finds the expert that talks about that specific question, and he reaches out to them and does an interview on his website about that topic.

He then follows our process that we’ve talked about a lot, where you transcribe the video, do a quick edit, make sure that it does have the headers, things that increase readability such as bullet points, bold words, italics, and then he publishes it and make sure that the video is embedded of the interview as well. Then he goes ahead and shares that interview, that article on to social media, he shares it in his newsletter and post it other places online as well. And so this is just such a great strategy, and such a great way to find topics to discuss. So the first step here is diving into Facebook and finding groups that people are part of, where your target market is. So if you focus on, oh goodness, family care, for example, you might be able to find different groups that have mothers in them, or that talk about exercise for children or diets for children, maybe it’s picky eaters. And so you dive into these groups and you see what topics people are talking about, and you’re going to find at some points in time, everybody is asking the same questions. So take that as your opportunity to jump on and to answer the questions for them.

These individuals will be forever grateful that you have provided them with the information, and it helps build that know, like and trust factor if you continually do this over and over again. So let’s say there are no groups on Facebook where people are asking these questions, you can always jump on over to LinkedIn and join groups, or one of my personal favorites and one that we’ve talked about in the past, is jumping over to Quora and seeing what questions people are asking, and then also you can get some ideas for the answers by looking at the discussions of the comments back and the people answering these questions. One of the things that we enjoy seeing frequently is when you answer a question a little bit differently than anyone else has answered it, let’s say there is a common mindset about one specific procedure that you offer, a service that you offer. Maybe take a little bit different stance, as long as it’s still truthful and you’re not making any health claims or health assumptions, you can answer it, however, your training really aligns.

You don’t have to follow the mold that everybody else has had. And the reason why we do this is because that helps you set apart. And Google actually through its algorithm can recognize when people are creating new fresh content or when they’re just regurgitating what somebody else is saying. So today, I want your biggest takeaway to be that you can rely on other people and you can rely on your target market to come up with topics for you to discuss. By doing this, I believe that you will get ahead of the curve when you look at Google Trends with keywords, and that you are best positioning yourself not only to withstand future Google updates, but also to truly connect with your target market and potential clients, potential patients online. So if you have got any questions about how to best write the blog post or a process that you can put into place to make sure you are always staying ahead of these trends and finding the topics that are going to relate to your target market, please feel free to reach out. Head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com, click that free consultation button, and of course, be sure to subscribe to our channel. Thank you.

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7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

Everybody loves prizes and freebies. And when it comes to social media marketing, there is no easier way to win over your target audience and grow your following than running contests and giveaways. After all, it’s the season of giving, right?

Capitalize on the holiday season by running a contest or giveaway. When done right, it can serve as a free advertisement for your brand. This is great, especially if the nature of your contest is to encourage people to share your post, which can help you build awareness. Soon, you’ll have a very strong following.

Here are 7 holiday-themed contests and giveaways you should try to boost your social media presence.

Photo contest

Ask your followers to submit their best holiday snaps to your social media page. Put the photos together in one album and feature them on your page.

Consider adding a voting component to add a little extra buzz around your contest. Get your community involved by voting for their favorite entries. This type of contest works well in helping you grow your following. In most cases, participants would share the photo with their family and friends, and ask them to like their photos.

Video contest

Video contests are similar to photo contests, except that people are asked to submit a video instead of a photo.

During this time of the year, people inundate their social media accounts with videos. Capitalize on this and ask your followers to send in their videos. It can be videos of them singing carols or showcasing their holiday spirit. User-generated submissions like these make great content for social media.

Photo caption contest

A “caption this” prompt is a fun way to encourage followers to comment on your photo and engage with your brand.

This type of contest is great for getting feedback from your fans on how they feel about a new product, what your new slogan should be, simply to get interesting user-generated content. Don’t forget to share the winning caption to your social media accounts.

12 days of Christmas giveaway

As the title suggests, 12 days of Christmas giveaway means you’ll be giving out prizes for 12 consecutive days.

For best results, it is best to talk about your giveaway at least a week before the event. Let people know what items you’ll be giving away, how many winners there will be each day and other details. This will help build excitement and anticipation. Plus, it will give people a reason to visit your page each day.

Holiday recipe contest

Everyone is busy preparing their holiday menu by now. Help your audience fill in their menu by asking people to send in their tried-and-tested recipes.

Ask people to share recipes for their favorite holiday dishes. You can also host a family recipe showdown. Another idea would be to ask for specific recipes each week. For instance, you can ask for Christmas cookie recipes this week, and then vegetarian side dishes the following week.

Fulfill a wish contest

People tend to feel generous and thankful during the holidays. Leverage the holiday atmosphere to help those who are in need while engaging your audience.

Give your fans and followers a chance to do something nice for others. Ask them to nominate one person, who deserves to have their wish fulfilled and the reason why they chose that person.

A giveaway like this doesn’t just make you look generous, but it also makes fans feel good about themselves for nominating a friend. It’s a great way to improve your brand image, as well as gain the trust and loyalty of your audience.

Ugly sweater contest

The holiday season is the time to let loose and have fun. What better way to do this than to let people wear their favorite ugly sweater.

The ugly sweater has become a ubiquitous feature of the holiday season. Ugly sweater contests are popular during the holiday. Why not take it online with a holiday sweater contest?

To enter, participants are required to submit photos of themselves wearing Christmas or winter-themed sweater or sweatshirt. The one with the most number of votes wins.

Hosting an ugly sweater contest can help ease a little bit of holiday stress and add some fun and creativity to your social media marketing campaign.

Final thoughts

The holiday season is one of the most important times in your marketing calendar. If you’re looking to ramp up your following and grow your brand simultaneously, then you should consider running contests and giveaways.

Not only will it help drive traffic to your social media pages, but it will also help increase brand awareness. Remember, sometimes you have to give to be able to receive.

If you need help with your holiday social media marketing campaign, feel free to get in touch with us. We’ll help you make the most out of this seasonal spike in engagement.

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

 

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Family Medicine Practice7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Mental Health Practice

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Yoga Practice

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The Importance of Googling Yourself and Your practice

The Importance of Googling Yourself and Your practice


Hello everyone. Happy Wednesday. I’m excited to talk about Googling yourself today in today’s blog. If you listen to our podcast on Monday, the first two questions that we had spoken about were, why is it important to Google yourself and your practice and how do you fix the information that is out there if it’s incorrect or outdated.

This is something that people sometimes tend to overlook. You don’t realize that if you are a practice owner or if you’re a physician and you’ve been at multiple practices that your information is most likely out there on the web. It’s important to make sure that as a physician or a business owner, you know exactly what is out there and that it’s the correct information, sometimes we’ll get, our phone number will update or our address will change locations, maybe we add a service and we forget to add that to our online content. So in today’s blog, we are talking about Googling yourself, and although that seems kind of silly, it’s actually really important, and you wanna make sure that you are Googling your name, you wanna make sure you’re Googling your name with your abbreviations, you wanna make sure that you are Googling your practice name, your hospital name, wherever you are working because there’s going to be a listing for both your business and you personally.

You want to make sure that you know what is out there, and when you do find something, if a Google listing comes up, you wanna make sure it’s the correct information. So sometimes we’ve had maybe different marketing people work for us, or in the beginning, we may be set up three different Google My Business pages or three Facebook pages, and that happens, but let’s talk through how to fix that. So when you Google your practice name, most likely what will come up is on your Google search, you will have the websites that come up that list your name on them, and then usually on the right-hand side of your screen, if you’re looking at your screen, you will see most likely a Google business listing. And this could be something that you have put together. This is something that Google may have put together. And on the search side, a lot of times those are different directory listings or different websites that you are on, it could be your social media account. So you wanna go through and take inventory of each of those sites that come up that lists either your name or your practice name, and you wanna make sure those are correct.

Now, you can have, Vitals may come up, WebMD, Healthgrades, a lot of different directory listings could come up for your name and practice, so you wanna make sure that, that information is current and that you own that directory listing. So if you click on that website and it pulls up your listing for your name or your practice, there should be a button that says, “Claim this listing.” And you wanna make sure like with Healthgrades and Vitals, it’s one email per listing, so if you are the marketing director of your hospital and you have seven doctors that work there and you’re trying to do this for each of them, it needs to be their email address, so we recommend the physician’s email address with each listing because then that doctor can go there and update it whenever they need to. So you’re gonna go to claim the listing. If you’re the business owner, the same thing, claim that listing, put in your business email account, and then you will have to go back in and create the account, go in and edit the information. And with Google, if there are multiple Google listings that come up, you’ll want to see which accounts that you’ve created and edited that information, if there are accounts that other people or other companies have created, then you can either claim them, you could have them make you an admin, so you can merge pages together, so you only have one Google My Business.

Same with Facebook, depending on if you have a couple of Facebook pages out there, you may be able to just delete one if it’s an old one, or you can merge them, so just making sure you are aware of what is showing up when people are Googling you. The other tool that we use a lot is a Moz, M-O-Z.com. There is an annual fee to this, I think it’s $129 a year, but this makes sure that it keeps all of the information about you or your center current and up-to-date across all different online directories. It does not cover Vitals, WebMD, or Healthgrades. So those are ones you need to do individually, but it does help with the Google listings and other directories that are out there.

One more thing that you kinda do before the end of the year, it’s important to do this once a quarter. You don’t know, and especially if you’re being featured in a different online magazine, Googling yourself. You could also set up Google Alerts, and if you just Google Google Alerts and you put in your… You can set up an alert if you… Any time something goes online about your practicing or your name, you would get an email and you can have a weekly email, a monthly email, you can even have a daily email if you want it to, but this just allows you to say, on top of what’s going out there that has your name on it, or your practices name.

Just to make sure that, that information is current and correct and that it is all consistent amongst all different platforms. So if you have questions or you need help cleaning up your Google search and making sure everything is on the same page, please let us know, and request a free 30-minute consultation today. Be sure to follow us on iTunes.

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National Podcast Week – The importance of keeping your content up to date

National Podcast Week - The importance of keeping your content up to date

It is National Podcast Week, and in today’s podcast, we will be covering some great information!

Today the questions we will be covering are:

  • Why is it important to Google yourself and your practice?
  • How do you fix outdated or wrong information on old directories?
  • How often should you be updating your content on your website and social media sites?
  • How does each social platform work for your practice?

Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Podbean and iTunes

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Fun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

Fun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

The holiday season isn’t just important for retail businesses, it is also a great time for healthcare providers to revamp their digital marketing strategies.

Most people who have put off elective procedures are now scrambling to slip in final treatments and appointments before the year ends. Since they are typically seeking non-urgent care, they have the luxury of shopping for healthcare. By staying active on social media, you stay on top of mind.

There are many ways you can promote your practice to reach these patients in the coming weeks. Hopefully, these holiday marketing tips will help you get your gears turning and start driving results your way.

Festive social media content

Create a set of fun holiday-themed polls for your audience. Nothing sparks engagement like asking for people’s opinions about certain topics. This will help increase engagement and encourage other people to join in on the conversation as well.

Also, consider creating a series of holiday tips that would benefit your audience. If you’re an orthopedic surgeon, you can share some injury prevention tips. Remember, a lot of accidents happen over the holidays. If you’re a dentist, you can create a series of healthy teeth tips. If you’re a nutritionist, you can share some healthy holiday recipes.

Film a holiday marketing video

This is a great time to spread some holiday cheer and capture that cheer on video. You can upload your videos on Youtube, Instagram, or Facebook.

When creating video content, it is important to think about the nature of your business and the message you’d like to send off to the world. If you’re a pediatrician, you can dress up like Santa and share stories and tips with the little ones. You may also record your holiday greetings for your fans and followers. If you love decorating your office, you may also share a video of it.

Holiday email marketing

Studies suggest that email marketing is one of the most effective tools for brand awareness, retention, and new customer acquisition. Plus, it’s easy to implement and super affordable. Use this to your advantage this holiday season.

Send out a newsletter to patients to recap the year. You can make this as simple or extravagant as you want. But make sure to make it personal.

You can also share healthy tips with your email subscribers. You may offer tips on how to stay healthy through the holidays or share healthy holiday recipes. Now is also a good time to remind patients to book last-minute appointments, so they can take advantage of deductibles before the year ends.

Host a social media contest

Contests and giveaways are a great way to create buzz around your practice. With the majority of people spending more time at home, they’ll have plenty of time to play games and engage with holiday-themed contests.

For your holiday contest, you have the option to do one big giveaway or many small ones. If you wish to go with the latter, consider doing 12 days of Christmas giveaway. Post one prize over a span of 12 days. Since the contest lasts for 12 days, people will anticipate your posts, creating hype for the last days with the larger prizes.

Invite your audience to submit their New Year’s Resolutions

The end of the year is the perfect time to reflect on how the entire year went by. This is also a great opportunity to think about improving certain aspects of our lives, including our health.

As we bid goodbye to 2020, encourage your fans and followers to share their resolutions for the coming year. Hopefully, it will encourage them to improve their health habits. You, on the other hand, can use this as an inspiration for your content.

Give back to the community

There are lots of people who are facing hardships right now due to the pandemic. The holiday season is all about sharing and giving. Use your platform to highlight the act of charitable giving.

Highlight a cause your practice is involved in. If you don’t have a cause you support, consider finding one. You can talk about the charity you support on social media and let your audience know that a certain amount of proceeds from your revenue during the holiday season will go to charity.

Fun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

Fun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Health and Wellness PracticeFun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Mental Health Practice

Fun and Festive Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Family Medicine Practice

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Website Maintenance and Malware for 2021

wordpress website malware

Today we are going to be talking about website security. This includes how to keep your website up-to-date, as well as what to do if you do find that you have malware on your website. We are specifically talking about WordPress websites here, and I will be sharing my screen, so if you are listening to our podcast, please head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and check out the related blog post or over to YouTube just to watch the video. The first thing that we are going to be talking about is backups and tools to utilize for backing up and why it’s important. Then we are jumping into updating your WordPress files, removing unused themes and plugins, adding a layer of security, and finally, if you’ve been hacked, what to do.

Use GoDaddy Pro, FileZilla, or Your Hosting for WordPress Backups

The first piece of this is, whenever you are talking about updating a WordPress website, you should make sure that you have backups of some sort enabled. So this could be manually going into your hosting account, downloading a copy of the database, as well as taking a copy of everything from the file manager and storing that on your computer, or you could utilize a plugin such as BackupBuddy to take a backup, or you could signup for a backup plan through your hosting account. And this might be included in your hosting, a lot of times hosting providers have backups actually included within their hosting plans, or you can do what we do for all of our websites that we manage, where we have another layer of protection through GoDaddy Pro.

This is a tool that is through GoDaddy, and I know a lot of you listeners and a lot of our clients have chosen not to work with GoDaddy for a variety of issues. There are plenty of other hosting companies out there, and we thoroughly enjoy working with a lot of them. This tool, however, is a free tool and it allows us to easily see all of the websites that we manage in one central location and see which plugins need to be updated, themes that need to be updated, and to do the backups directly through there. So we are going to be talking about GoDaddy Pro a lot. So, let me actually just jump in and I’m going to share my screen.

GoDaddy Pro Dashboard

Here we have the GoDaddy Pro dashboard for our website, for Social Speak, and I do feel kinda bad because I did have 11 updates for our plugins and one theme that I needed to update on our website, but I already recorded this video and realized I did not have any sound turned on. [chuckle] So you’re not going to be able to see me actually update our website here, but that’s okay. We all make mistakes, right? At least it’s all up-to-date now. But directly within the GoDaddy Pro dashboard, there is this backup link here, so if you were looking to update your website head on over to GoDaddy Pro and link it up to your website, your WordPress website. Now, if you do have a GoDaddy account for your hosting, you can do daily backups for free. If you do not, then you can do monthly backups for free and then upgrade if you do need to clone your website or restore a backup or download the backup or anything like that. But typically for a small website that isn’t really being updated frequently, a monthly backup is fine, and updating the plugins and theme files monthly is fine.

Daily and Monthly Backups for WordPress

Here though, I did just want to show you that we have the option for daily backups. We have some clients who are posting multiple blog posts, or updating multiple pages, adding new resources every single day, and so for them, it’s really important to have this daily backup. For those websites, we also do recommend having a backup plan in place directly through your hosting account as well, and that’s just because sometimes if the website has completely broken, it’s easier to update directly from the source rather than from a third party tool. Those plans though, can cost, I don’t know, $5 to $15 to $25 really, depending on what service and what hosting company you are working with.

The first step, again, of making sure that your website is secure and up-to-date is adding these backups. The next step is making sure that all of your WordPress files and theme files are up-to-date. The issue here is that if something hasn’t been updated recently, it opens the doors for hackers to go in and install malware. You want to make sure you have the most up-to-date PHP, and that also causes old themes and old plugins that haven’t been updated not to be compatible anymore. So this can be bad for a lot of different things, including for search engine optimization, and user experience on your website, something might just break. So you want to make sure everything is up-to-date.

I’m going to quickly jump to another website here. This is just another website that we have here, and as you can see, there are two plugins, one theme, and then the WordPress that all need to be updated. So, I’m going to just do a safe update, takes a backup, does the update and then turn, does another snapshot, another backup with the most up-to-date files that are there. So this is kind of that easy way of doing that.

Keep WordPress Plugins and Theme Files Up To Date

Now, when I did that, you noticed that there was just one, two, two different plugins that needed to be updated. Now, if a plugin is really old or a theme is really old, it might not be supported anymore and the theme developers or plugin developers might not be updating it anymore. So a plugin that we recommend in selling on your website is this plugin condition. And so, what this will do, and I’ll zoom in on the screenshot here, is it will actually have a notice for the last time something was updated. And so, this one here, this numbers plugin, for example, was updated a year ago. So most likely this might not be as compatible with WordPress as a newer version of some sort of user enrollment management plugin. This might be a plugin that they are not keeping up with anymore.

Additionally, in this screenshot right here, you see that this plugin is not even being used. It’s not active on the website. So, as you’re going through your plugins and your themes and updating them, take note if there are any that you’re not actively using. So here, I would actually recommend selecting all of these plugins that are deactivated and deleting them. These are very clearly plugins that you are not utilizing on your website, you do not need that functionality, so get rid of them. Make sure that the website files remain clean and concise so that it removes any opportunity for the hackers to get in and for malware to get on your site.

The same thing goes with themes as well. So here, let’s see if I can jump over here, I probably can. So here we only have the Enfold Theme on this website, however, when you are installing a WordPress website, oftentimes it also installs the 2020 theme, the 2019 theme, the 2016 theme, and WordPress will install a lot of themes on that initial installation. You want to make sure that you delete all of those extra themes. So in GoDaddy Pro, again, you don’t need FTP access or anything like that, you can just go to themes, you select the theme, and then you delete it. This will keep those theme files nice and clean and remove more of a chance of malware being able to get on to your site.

Remove Unused and Risky Plugins

A lot of times we see a plugin like this one, file manager plugin. Basically, this creates an FTP connection directly through your WordPress dashboard. And so, it allows any administrative user who has access to your WordPress dashboard to have access to the actual file manager on your website. And we’ve seen that this plugin in particular, but other plugins like it, have opened the doors for hackers and for malware to be installed on your website. So we highly, highly, highly recommend that you remove this sort of plugin from your website. So, I mean, even just looking at the reviews of it, hacked, hacked, hacked, hacked. Highly unsafe, avoid, malware.

Consider a Security Package from Your Hosting Company

We actually had this problem with this plugin in particular before as well. Would be a great thing to do if you’re just building the website, but remove it immediately if you can. So if you are looking to add a layer of security and protection onto your website, we recommend registering for a website security package through your hosting account, and again, depending on what hosting plan you have, this might already be included, but GoDaddy, for example, has one where it includes a firewall, so any site visitor has to go through the firewall and then they can view the site. And so, this just allows it to make sure that no files are being adjusted by folks who shouldn’t have access to the website in the first place.

If your site has been hacked, they also have this great plan… Well, I guess all of these plans do this, but the security plan, this Express plan, basically puts your site at the top of the line to have an engineer go file by file and remove all of the malware and then keep you up-to-date on the progress. If you’re just kind of worried about it and you don’t really know that you have malware on the site, the deluxe version is a great choice, and this is kind of a reactive sort of plan. The Express plan is more of a proactive plan, where it has all the bells and whistles, and again, puts you at the top of the list.

Monitor Website for Malware with Google Search Console

You can also monitor your site through the Search Console, as well as through, on pro sites, there’s the security plan as well. And so, whenever you want to add a new thing to the site, a screen like that will come up and a monthly check is free, and then if you want to do the premium one, it costs less than a dollar a month. So, very, very worthwhile. Some hosting plans, this website, I believe, is hosted on Bluehost, but some hosting plans, such as all the ones on GoDaddy, the security check is free. So you don’t actually have to even pay for the essential plan per month, you can just add to GoDaddy Pro and activate it for free.

One thing that we have found, however, is that malware is getting more and more advanced, so you’re not necessarily going to be able to even tell that you have malware through these scans. The scans might show everything correct, but if you click a link from Facebook on a mobile phone and it’s your first time visiting the site in a month, you might be redirected to another site, for example. Or if you click from Chrome versus Safari, versus Firefox, you might experience the malware. So it’s important just to make sure that everything is staying up-to-date and as secure as possible, so that there’s less of a chance of even having to deal with malware to begin with.

This time of year is a great time to really make sure that your site is protected and as up-to-date as possible as you’re moving into 2021. We do, however, recommend for next year, going into your website at least monthly and making sure all the plugins and theme files and WordPress files are up-to-date. Again, you can utilize GoDaddy Pro as an option, as a tool, to make sure that you also have the backups running and the security monitoring going on, but you can do it manually as well.

Contact Our Team For WordPress Website Help

If you have questions about how to do website maintenance, please don’t hesitate to reach out, or if you’re looking for support and someone to help with this website maintenance, we are here for you. We have very affordable plans for a website maintenance to help you keep your site up-to-date and clean, as well as working its best so that you’re putting your best foot forward. Please head on over to the socialspeaknetwork.com, click that free consultation button and we’ll schedule a 30-minute call just to get to know you and your needs, and then we can figure out if we are a good fit for you. Of course, if this has been helpful, we’d love for you to subscribe down below and follow us on iTunes, as well as YouTube and check out our blog. Alright, thank you so much and I’ll see you next time.

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