Are you a business owner who is struggling to write compelling social media posts for your business? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Many business owners find themselves spending hours crafting posts that end up with no engagement or comments. It can be frustrating and disheartening, especially when you’re already juggling the demands of running a business.
But here’s the good news: writing compelling social media posts is a skill that can be learned and refined. In this blog post, we’ll share practical tips, strategies, and techniques to help you captivate your audience, increase engagement, and achieve tangible results.
Use your casual voice
Social media offers a fun and relaxed environment. It’s all about connecting with your audience on a personal level. People visit different social media sites in their free time to communicate with family and friends or simply for entertainment purposes. Using a friendly and conversational tone can make a world of difference in capturing their attention and keeping them engaged.
Gone are the days of stiff and boring corporate jargon. Today’s social media users crave authenticity and relatability. They want to feel like they’re interacting with a real person, not a faceless entity. By infusing your posts with a casual tone, you can create a sense of familiarity and build stronger connections with your audience.
Think about it: when you’re scrolling through your social media feed, what catches your eye? It’s likely posts that sound like they’re coming from a friend or someone you can relate to. Using a conversational tone allows you to break down barriers and establish a sense of trust and rapport with your followers.
Craft share-worthy posts
Getting as many likes, comments, or shares on your posts is a goal for a lot of business owners. After all, the more engagement the post gets, the wider the reach is. However, you can’t expect people to do that if your posts are boring and uninteresting.
Relatability is a key ingredient in crafting share-worthy posts. People love to connect with content that resonates with their own experiences, emotions, and aspirations. By understanding your target audience and tapping into their needs, desires, or pain points, you can create content that strikes a chord with them.
Make sure that the information you offer is worth passing along. Offer some valuable information. Also, think about your audience when creating social media posts. Know what their questions and concerns are and provide the answers. Remember, the goal is not just to create great content but to make it shareable. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask yourself, “Would I share this with my friends or followers?” If the answer is a resounding yes, then you’re on the right track.
Crafting share-worthy posts takes time, research, and a deep understanding of your audience, but the rewards in terms of increased reach, brand visibility, and engagement are well worth the effort.
Use images, animated images, infographics, and videos
Visual appeal is also crucial in capturing attention and encouraging sharing. Humans are highly visual beings, and eye-catching images or videos can be the driving force behind the decision to share a post. Invest in high-quality visuals that align with your brand and are visually appealing to your target audience.
A striking image or a well-crafted video thumbnail can make a significant difference in attracting attention and enticing others to share your content. In fact, one study revealed that Facebook posts with images have an increase of 104% in comments and a 53% increase in shares than the average posts. Make sure that the images are of high quality and relevant to your post.
Content-Length
The ideal length for social media posts can vary depending on the platform and the content you’re sharing. For instance, shorter posts (around 40-80 characters) tend to receive higher engagement. Concise and attention-grabbing posts can capture users’ interest quickly. However, longer posts (up to 80-120 characters) can also perform well, especially if they provide valuable or intriguing information that encourages users to read more.
For Instagram, users tend to prefer shorter, visually-driven content. Captions that are around 125 to 150 characters tend to work well since they’re easily digestible without overshadowing the visual content. However, there may be instances where longer captions are necessary for storytelling or conveying detailed information.
So try to test out longer and shorter content on each platform. Monitor engagement metrics and gather feedback from your audience to refine your approach. Strive to provide valuable, engaging content that aligns with the platform’s dynamics and your audience’s expectations.
Stay relevant
While it’s a good idea to write about things your followers are interested in, you also need to make sure that the posts are relevant to your business. Remember, people, followed you because they are interested in the products, services, and information you provide.
By crafting content that speaks directly to your audience’s pain points, challenges, or desires, you demonstrate that you genuinely understand and care about their needs. When your posts address their specific concerns or offer solutions to their problems, you position yourself as a trusted resource and valuable partner.
Asking questions on social media is a powerful way to increase engagement with your audience. Questions spark conversations, encourage interaction, and make your audience feel valued and involved. So don’t hesitate to ask questions in your social media posts and watch as engagement levels soar.
Final thoughts
Writing social media posts that captivate your audience and drive engagement doesn’t have to be a daunting task. By following the tips and strategies shared in this blog post, you can simplify the process and achieve tangible results. Remember to use a casual and conversational tone, craft share-worthy content that resonates with your audience, and leverage high-quality visuals to enhance the appeal of your posts
If you still find the task of writing social media posts frustrating or overwhelming, don’t worry. We’re here to help! Our team specializes in creating compelling content tailored to your audience and business goals. Let us handle the task of crafting engaging social media posts for you, so you can focus on more important aspects of your business.
Reach out to us today to discuss how we can take your social media presence to the next level.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tips-for-Writing-Social-Media-Posts.png12602240Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2023-05-24 10:32:202023-05-26 17:24:005 Secrets to Writing Engaging Social Media Posts for Your Business
In the early days of the internet, blogging was one of the most popular ways to share information and connect with others. Today, social media has taken over as the primary platform for online communication, and many people have questioned whether blogging is still relevant.
While it is true that social media has eclipsed blogging in terms of popularity, it is still a powerful tool that can help you reach your goals.
If you’re thinking it might be time to start blogging, but you’re not sure if it’s worth the time and effort, then we urge you to keep reading. Here are 6 blogging benefits that will change your business forever.
Boost search engine optimization
SEO is extremely important for any business operating on the web. Every time you write a blog post, more pages from your domain become indexed in search engines. This gives you another opportunity to be found by people.
Search engines don’t want to send users to abandoned websites with outdated content. By regularly publishing contents to your website, you stand a better chance of being found by your target audience.
Drive traffic to your website
Blogging is an inexpensive way to attract more potential customers and drive traffic to your website. Studies suggest that companies who blog get 67% more leads as compared to those who don’t. In order to do that, you first need to know your target audience and create contents that will be of value to them.
Position your brand as an industry leader
Blogging is especially beneficial for small businesses looking to gain credibility. Majority of people go online to because they want information. By providing fresh, valuable information in your blog posts, you can build trust and clout within your industry. Over time, people will come to you for informative, helpful content and will be seen as an industry leader.
Convert traffic into customers
Now that you have captured the attention of your target audience, you want them to keep coming back to your site. To do that, you need to provide them with fresh, interesting and informative content on a regular basis. Once you have built an audience of loyal and trusting readers, it will be a lot easier to sell to them. In fact, studies show that 67% of American buyers have made a purchase based on blog posts.
Building your personal brand
Blogs are a great way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. You can blog about anything, from your personal life to your professional journey. And unlike social media, blogs allow you to control the narrative. You can decide what information you want to share, and how you want to share it. As a result, blogs can be a powerful tool for building your personal brand. In addition, blogs can help you to connect with like-minded people and create a sense of community.
Differentiate your brand from the competition
Blogs are a powerful tool that can help businesses to differentiate their brands from the competition. This is essential in business; it’s what sets you apart from the competition and drives customers to your door. When used effectively, blogs can provide insights into your company culture, values and vision. They can also be used to share news and announcements, showcase customer testimonials, and promote special offers.
In addition, a blog can help humanize your brand, making it more relatable and approachable. By sharing the story of your brand, you can connect with potential customers on a personal level and build trust. So if you’re looking to differentiate your brand from the competition, consider starting a blog. It could just be the thing that sets you apart and helps you attract more business.
Final thoughts
A blog can be a powerful asset for your business. It can help you drive traffic to your site, position yourself as an industry leader, and convert traffic into customers. If you need help starting a business blog, we’re here to help. We’ll work with you to create content that is relevant to your target audience and helps you achieve your marketing goals. Schedule a free consultation today to get started.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Blogging-Benefits-that-Will-Change-Your-Business-Forever-3.png12602240Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2022-10-26 10:51:302022-10-19 13:17:57Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever
Decades ago, small businesses only had a few ways to market their business. They would sponsor local events, put up bill boards or print out fliers. In today’s digital era, there are several marketing opportunities out there on the web.
The internet is teeming with marketing platforms. The good news is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on marketing. You just need to know where to look.
Listed below are 6 cost-effective ways to market your local business online. Use these tips to raise awareness of your products and business.
Get social
With the ever-prevading power of social media, you can easily reach a wide audience from across the globe. This can be done with just a few clicks of a button. But in order to make the most of your social media campaign, you need to build your fan base and target audience in your specific niche.
Determine which social media platform your target audience use the most, and build a strong presence there. Be active and engage with your audience. Make meaningful conversations with your fans and followers. Provide useful and relevant information. Offer advice and support. This will help you build your reputation and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Get listed in local business sites
Before, people would look up businesses in Yellow Pages. Today, however, people will just bring out their smartphones and will find what they’re looking for in a matter of seconds. As such, it is important to have your business listed in multiple online directories. This will make it easier for potential customers to find you and increase traffic to your website.
USdirectory.com, Yellowbook, EZ Local,Yelp, and Google My Business are just some of the free listing sites your business should be on. Don’t forget to include your business name, address, phone number, email address, and website on the listing.
Have your business listed on online review sites
Local business reviews get higher rankings in search engine results. Encourage people to post authentic reviews based on their experiences with your company.
Take time to create a good listing. TripAdvisor is a great site if you’re in a travel-related field. If you’re selling services, why not list on Angie’s List? These sites give you the opportunity to reach an enormous audience of potential customers who are looking for products or services in your industry. Reading through reviews from past customers will be beneficial for consumers who are looking to make informed purchase decisions.
Create a blog
One of the best ways to promote your business online is by creating a blog. Posting high quality content on a regular basis will do wonders for your SEO efforts. Not only will it help you drive traffic to your site, but it can also help position yourself as an industry leader. If you can become an industry leader, then it would be easier for you to capture the attention of your target audience. The best part? It won’t require any investment on your part.
Keep in mind, though, that this is a long-term strategy. It may take a while before you see results, but all your efforts will be worth it in the end. If you consistently produce high quality content, you’ll start building authority and a solid online presence.
Optimize your website for local SEO
Word of mouth and local advertisements may be excellent ways to promote your local business. But online searches are more powerful. You see, most people would automatically turn to Google if they’re looking for specific products, services, etc. In fact, studies suggest that 97% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses.
People may be searching for “restaurants near me” or “salons near me”. If you want your content to be found online, the best way is to make sure that they rank on search engine results page. Optimizing your site for local SEO can help you enhance your online visibility in local searches and grow your business.
Leverage the power of influencers
These days, one of the most popular ways to promote your business is through influencer marketing. If you an avid Youtube user, then you might have noticed most content creators promoting certain products on their videos.
While this strategy may not be free, it can help you get your products in front of a wider audience quickly and easily. The key is to find a influencer who already has a following in your area and connect with them to see if they’re interested to promote your products.
You can also provide a promo code to the influencer to encourage their followers to purchase your products. Once they apply the promo code upon checkout, then they’ll get a discount. This strategy will not only entire people to purchase, but can also help you track which influencer is driving more sales.
Final thoughts
There is a plethora of options when it comes to promoting your business online. You may not have a wad of cash to go full-on and promote your business as aggressively as the big players in the market, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t attract the attention of your target audience. With a clear goal and a solid marketing strategy in place, there is no doubt that you can grow your business over time.
Use the strategies we’ve outlined above to help you get started in promoting your business. But if you still feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, we’re here to help. Schedule you free consultation with us and we’ll help you build a solid marketing strategy to help you market your business and help you garner the attention it deserves.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Cost-Effective-Ways-to-Market-Your-Local-Business-Online.png12602240Kathlyn Angeles-Timbolhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles-Timbol2022-08-03 10:06:472022-07-29 17:33:416 Cost-Effective Ways to Market Your Local Business Online
In today’s episode we are going to be talking about blogging for your healthcare center or your wellness practice. Blogging is one of the best ways for you to share your knowledge and your education with prospects and with your network online.
Additionally, a well-written blog post helps to boost your search engine (SEO) rankings for your website thus driving more traffic, to your website for specific keywords and keyword phrases.
It’s always important as you’re writing a blog post to keep both that end-user, or that potential patient in mind as well as keeping the search engines in mind too.
How do you go about finding topics to blog about, how do you go about writing that blog post and structuring it, and how do you share it after it’s written?
These are the key elements that we will be covering today in the video about How to Blog to Boost SEO for Healthcare Providers.
00:00 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m Caitlin McDonald and I am the co-founder of Social Speak. And today’s episode we are going to be talking about blogging for your healthcare center or your wellness practice. Now blogging is one of the best ways for you to share your knowledge and your education with prospects and with your network online. Additionally, a well-written blog post helps to boost your search engine rankings for your website thus driving more traffic, to your website for specific keywords and keyword phrases. So it’s always important as you’re writing a blog post to keep both that end-user, or that potential patient in mind as well as keeping the search engines in mind too. So how do you go about finding topics to blog about how do you go about writing that blog post and structuring it and how do you share it after it’s written. So that’s what we’re going to be covering today.
01:19 CM: So the first part of that question is thinking about what topics you should blog about. Now, it’s always important to blog about something that you are knowledgeable about. So you want to make sure that you’re blogging about topics within your practice or industry that you actually know about and care about. If you are not the specialist in that topic, find somebody in your practice who’s better suited to write about it or who can at least edit the information that you’ve put out. We find this often especially with some smaller health care centers where they have one person who’s in charge of doing the blogging. Unfortunately, they don’t necessarily have the expertise in whatever specific topic there is. For our team, for example, when we are going into a new practice, we make sure that we are matching that practice up with a writer who’s going to be suited to talk about those topics. If we’re talking about Pediatrics, or if we’re talking about pain management, we might have two different writers for those two topics. They’re very different, and they require a different level of understanding of who that patient is, what that patient journey is, and everything like that. So let’s get back to writing that blog post, so to find a topic to write about one make sure that it’s something that you are very knowledgeable about two, make sure that some people are searching for it.
03:03 CM: So what I typically recommend doing is taking out a pen and paper, and actually writing a list of different topics that you talk about with patients and with prospects. So by this I mean, what are the questions that people are asking you what are their top concerns what are they looking for, what benefit does the practice provide to them what are the specialties of your practice, what additional things can your services and specialties help to solve for your patients? Now take a look at this list and what I recommend doing is hopping on over to Google and starting to type in these, phrases, what you’ll see is that Google will pre-populate other searches that are related to it, or searches that other people search for. Now, there are also tools that you can use to do this research. So, I like first starting out doing your own brainstorm looking at Google search results, and just set your timer takes about 30 minutes to do this exercise, make as many notes as you can.
04:22 CM: I often find myself hand-writing them, probably it would be a little bit more streamlined if you do this for yourself, in a spreadsheet so that you don’t replicate work overtime. The next thing to do is either head on over to Keyword finder kwfinder.com or over to Neil Patel’s Uberselect app. Now, this is a new app that he has brought to the market and it currently is completely free. So what you do is, within this app and I’ll have a link down below, excuse me Ubersuggest not Uberselect Ubersuggest app. And so it’s Neil… Excuse me, app.neilpatel.com/en/ubersuggest is one way that you can get there or you can just do a Google search for it as well but what you do is there is a related keyword ideas sort of tool within there, and so you can actually type in some of those keywords and keyword phrases.
05:30 CM: And you can see what other search results folks are looking for. Keyword finder you can do the same thing, however, now it is limited to just a few searches per month on that free account. So I do recommend jumping over to Neil Patel’s tool. When you are utilizing this tool and I don’t have it up in front of me. So that’s going to be a whole new blog post and tutorial about how we utilize it. But when you use it, you can see one, what keywords your competitors are looking for and two what those related search terms are for the ones that you enter into that search field. Now, we recommend filtering these results so that you are looking for keywords with a low keyword difficulty score. We recommend starting off if you’re just starting off blogging, putting in a keyword score, a maximum keyword score of about 20, maybe 30.
06:30 CM: Now, this means that it is hypothetically easier to rank for these keywords, you’ll find that typically the result that pops out there is going to be a long-term keyword so a keyword phrase rather than back pain, for example, another thing that you can do is you can plug in the number of searches per month for that keyword. Now as you’re starting off blogging we recommend writing blog posts and trying to rank for keywords that don’t have as many searches for them. So I would plug in a number like 500 here.
07:12 CM: So you’re looking for searches where there are fewer than 500 searches for them and where the keyword difficulty score is fairly low. The reason why we do this is, and I’m taking this from one of our interviews a while ago, is because we follow the skyscraper approach to keyword research and blogging for that SEO benefit. What this means is, if you visualize the Skyline, we are targeting the low-buildings, So we’re targeting the buildings that, Yes, they don’t have as much traffic, but they also don’t have as much competition for them. Then over time, as you’re proving your worth to Google, you can start bidding for those higher skyscrapers. So you can start writing content that has more searches and higher keyword difficulty, score. So you’ve done the list of your brainstorm of all the topics you’ve jumped over to the Ubersuggest app on Neil Patel’s website, you’ve done your keyword research there and you’ve chosen a topic now what do you do? This part is actually my favorite, and it’s seeing what other people have written about that keyword phrase.
08:39 CM: And so what you want to do is just type it into Google and take a look, open up a few of the searches excuse me, search results that come up for that phrase. When you open up the articles I recommend, not reading them word for word, but doing a cursory skim, just to see what other headlines and sub-topics people are talking about. Then close all of the windows take out either your notebook and piece of paper again or jump over to your spreadsheet or a Word document, you could even open up your blog post if you want to a blog post draft and write the outline that you want to follow for that blog post. Now I always recommend putting that title, excuse me, putting that keyword phrase as the title of the blog post or at least in the title of the blog post this will help you rank even better and also make sure that people who are searching specifically for that phrase know that you are the place to go when they see it up in the organic listings. So you’ve done the cursory outline for your blog post and now we recommend filling in the content.
10:03 CM: So what you’re going to have, what you should see on your paper are major topics that you want to cover, sub-categories or sub-topics that you want to cover, And then maybe a couple of bullet points that you wanna make sure that you touch on. So underneath each of these items, type in two to three or more sentences or bullet points for each of these. Now, if you do that, and if you are putting together a robust outline, you might find that at that first go, you already have a 1500-word blog post. I’ve done this before where I’ve done an outline and the outline itself, was over 500 words long. That makes writing a longer blog post very straightforward. Now, let’s say you sit down to fill out these bullet points and you just have a mental block, you can’t think of anything to put down. I recommend jumping over to Google Docs, and under, if you open up a new doc, you can click tools, and then you can do a voice record. So if you do this you can actually record yourself speaking and make a transcription of what you’re going to say and so you can create a few sentences, if you feel more comfortable speaking rather than sitting down in writing, you can at least talk through some of the bullet points so that you have something that then you can convert into a nicely written blog post.
11:35 CM: Now, if all else fails, if you have this outline that’s put together and that’s tapping into your knowledge about what topics should be talked about, you can then Hop on over to WriterAccess or Upwork on, to have somebody else fill in the blanks and write the content. This is an easy way to make sure that you’ve done the research in terms of what other people are looking for, you’ve added your expertise on that specific topic, and then you’re just getting someone to fill in the blanks now to make a blog post work even better for your business there are a few additional things that we recommend adding, the first is video so you’ll see in all of our videos excuse me, in all of our blog posts. We have a video embedded in the blog post as well. Now, having this video adds a multi-media element to your blog post, the multimedia element, allows different people to come and view it. People who wouldn’t necessarily be reading your blog post, maybe they’re more interested in listening to it or watching it.
12:46 CM: So, this adds additional SEO benefit because you’re keeping people on your page longer, and you are uploading the video to YouTube which is in fact the second largest search engine and also owned by Google. So you might be adding an additional place for your name and brand to show up in search results. Another thing that you can do with this video is you can create a transcription of it. So I talked about transcribing with the Google Voice On the Google Doc in order to write the content but if you do a video, that goes into deeper detail on one or two of the topics that you talk about in the video, you can actually create a transcription of that video and add that to the bottom of your blog post. I believe it’s something around 10 minutes of speaking typically equates to about 2500 or 3000 words. Now, imagine what that can do for the content on your website. Now, after you write your blog post, it’s important to make sure that you’re going through for formatting.
14:09 CM: When we go through for formatting we take a look at the outline that you originally created and make sure all of those main topics are header twos, then those sub-topics are header threes, and the topics below that are header fours. Typically within a longer blog post, you’ll see something like two header twos, three to five header threes, and four or more header fours. This allows Google to see what those most important categories are and if your website was structured properly in the CSS and the styling those elements are going to be bolded, or have more, more prominent on a page rather than just the written text. Additionally, we recommend linking two services pages from that blog post. So again, let’s say you’re talking about back pain and you have a service that is great for back pain. It could be a massage, it could be surgery or a specialist. You want to make sure that that Back pain text is linked to the services page or more information about how you can help with back pain. This is called inner page linking.
15:27 CM: And so by doing that again, you’re getting people to more resources. You can also add a section of related posts to your blog post so let’s say you’re talking about one specific specialty within your blog post link to or add the related blog post that also has to do with that specialty or potentially this is a physician interview link to the other blog posts that have physician interviews And it helps keep people on the site longer, so that they know like and trust you more. It also signals to Google that people are finding the information that they want when they view your site and that helps to increase the Domain Authority and where your website is positioned compared to competitors, in the organic search results. The last thing to do with your blog post for your health care and wellness center is to share it with the world. So the past few weeks we’ve been talking about a lot of different tactics that you can do to make this happen. The first would be sharing it on social media, the second sharing it to your newsletter, the third making sure that you are sharing it through sponsored advertising on Facebook. This could be as a boosted post. Your organic reach you’re going to find is fairly low. And we talked about this with the reach apocalypse the other week. So you are going to have to boost the post with at least a little bit of money behind it in order to make sure that it is reaching your audience and other people who might be interested in reading it.
17:11 CM: Now, I hope that this has been helpful. If you have any questions about how to write a blog post for your wellness center please don’t hesitate to reach out. We have blog posts and other resources about how to do this over on our website at socialspeaknetwork.com, And we would love to chat with you to see how we can help with the process. So thank you so much for tuning in. My name’s Caitlin McDonald, I’m here with the social speak network and I can’t wait to see you next time on our next podcast episode.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Blog-to-Boost-SEO-for-Healthcare-Providers.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2021-07-07 10:49:152021-07-02 12:33:09How to Blog to Boost SEO for Healthcare Providers
In 2018 we published a blog on how to easily write a blog post for your business. This is a supplemental video to that blog with updates for blogging in 2021!
Namely, don’t hesitate to write shorter blogs if they fully answer the question at hand.
With the rise in mobile searches and voice searches, Google has prioritized some answers that get straight to the point rather than blogs that include the answer within a long drawn-out piece of content.
You’ve been told that you need to write blogs for your business, you now understand these blogs need to be >2,500 words, but how do you find the time in your schedule to actually write a good blog post?
Everything in marketing always comes back to finding systems that will work for your schedule to write an educational and informative blog post quickly.
In this post I’ll be going through my top tips for writing a good blog post quickly.
If you are just tuning in, over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about how to perform keyword research and find related keywords to include in your blogs:
First and foremost, when you write a piece of web content, it should be about something you are knowledgeable about.
If you are a psychotherapist who specializes in EMDR, but have never done Brainspotting, don’t try to write a blog post explaining the intricate details of Brainspotting. (I’m not an expert in either, so for our psychotherapist clients, I pass the writing of those blog posts to one of our all-star copywriters.)
As you are creating your content strategy and your blogging calendar, try to include blogs that are timely and relevant, but make sure you feel comfortable actually sharing information on them.
A 2,500 blog post may seem daunting as you are getting started, but it really doesn’t need to be when you follow the tips outlined below.
Tip 1: Once you have your topic, see what other articles have been written about it
Before you even get in the writing zone, do a quick Google search about the topic you want to write about. Remember, you want to get a sense of what those related keywords are to include in your content anyways, so this step has a dual purpose.
For this post, my search was for Write a Good Blog Post Quickly.
Guess what comes up?
A blog titled 5 Ways to Write High-Quality Content – Fast
Hey! That looks right on the mark for my blog post.
Ehh, actually after a quick read-through, this blog doesn’t include all the information I want to, but that’s okay! I know it is highly ranked on Google for my proposed keyword and includes super basic topics:
Have a brainstorm of ideas you can pull from
Batch your time
Know your own self and when you are most creative
Write ahead
Keep it simple
These are great tips, but again, I want to be more technical in this blog post on easily creating systems for writing a blog post quickly.
Don’t worry, my efforts to research what other people are already writing haven’t gone to waste.
If you do find a blog post that nails your topic on the head, make a quick note of the outline they follow including:
The headers they use
What keywords or topics stand out
The general flow
Then … CLOSE THE WINDOW. This is your blog and you need to make sure you aren’t plagiarizing. You want to make the blog post your own not a word by word replica of what you just read.
So why is it okay to open up an article or two that just don’t include the information you want to include? Well… It could be that you want to write about something completely off the grid or it could be that nobody has actually taken the time yet to post a detailed enough guide on the topic you want to explore.
If I open up an article that just doesn’t seem to include the information I want to share, I take a moment to consider what I would include in my blog post that is missing from the blog I just read.
Tip 2: Take a Moment to Write Down What is Missing from the Blog Post you just read
Let’s go back to 5 Ways to Write High-Quality Content – Fast. Though the author has some great content tips, he’s missing some major items that help me write my own blog posts effectively.
Namely, the author is missing the steps to:
Research what other pieces of good content are ranking on Google
Create an outline for your blog post
Transcribe audio or video to create not only great written content for your website, but also to include multimedia in your blog posts.
Include filler adjectives and words
Outsource writing for blog posts
The post also has an incorrect fact about how short, concise content is the way to go. You don’t want to ramble on and on, but you want to give valuable information that will actually benefit the reader rather than a quick 300 word blog post (I’m already at 800 words and only on tip 2 for writing high quality blog posts quickly… you better buckle up).
Creating a list of what is missing from the example blog posts will help you create an outline for the informational blog that you want to write for your website.
Tip 3: Write down an outline for the content you are writing for your blog post
You now have the list of elements that are typically included in blogs related to your chosen topic.
You also have the specifics that are missing from the posts that you would like to include in your blog post.
AND, from before you even started your blog, you have the keywords you wish to include and the related keywords from Google.
Even though you already have this information compiled, I always find it helpful to write an actual outline for your blog post.
Why?
There are a number of reasons why you should, but most importantly it is because:
You are a busy professional who will get called into a meeting or be interrupted by a conference call.
You are a mom (or parent) like Amber and myself who will need to change a diaper, make sure homework is getting done, or run their child to T-ball.
Do you really have the focus to write 2,500 words in one sitting?
As you get interrupted, it may feel like you can jump right back into the task at hand, but in reality, it takes your brain a few moments to get back on track and figure out where you are with your blog post.
Creating an outline allows you to more easily spend 15-30 minutes here and there on the blog without out feeling like you are spending half the time rereading what you’ve already written and trying to decide where to go next in the blog post.
Having an outline also keeps you on track for the final parts of your blog. Many writers often cut their blog short towards the end because they are just over the process of writing. Having an outline allows you to take a break, but not loose focus.
This process is called Batching your time (see I am including some of the information from the blog post example).
Tip 4: Batch your time while you are preparing to write and actually writing the blog post for your website
As I just mentioned, batching your time is the process of focusing on one at a time rather than trying to multitask.
Here, it means not checking your email or jumping to Facebook while you are writing.
Each time you shift your focus, your brain needs to reorient itself.
In the process of writing your blog post for your website, there are some things you can do to help you batch your time:
Focus on each step in sequence: Keyword research and finding related keywords, researching similar blog posts, creating your outline for your own blog, actually writing the blog, going back and editing the blog, finding images for your blog, writing the title of your blog post.
Don’t try to edit your blog post until you’ve gotten all of your information down.
If you realize you need more information to write thoughtfully on a topic, but you’ve already done your initial research and are in your writing stage, make a note and then jump to the following section that you can write about. Unfortunately, if you jump back to reading articles, trust me, your blog will take 10 times longer to write.
I’m sure I have more, but because I am using this blog as a way to show my own blog writing process, I’m jumping to the next section because additional points are not coming to me at this time. I may come back and add them, but for now, I move on. 🙂
So again, you want to think of writing your quality blog post as a process. Just like anything else in business, processes help to make you efficient and effective. Batching is one way to help you write your long blog post quickly.
Tip 5: Don’t Write! Transcribe from Audio and Video to Create your Blog Post
This is one of my favorite tips for busy professionals who just don’t seem to have the time to get into a writing groove.
10 minutes of audio creates a blog that is about 2,500 words long.
So, after writing your outline for your blog post you could use an audio converter or record a video to transcribe your words to text to include in your blog post.
Some tools I recommend are Google Docs and YouTube.
Let’s take a look at Google Docs first.
Head on over to Google Drive and click to create a new document. Better yet, you could create your outline as a Google Doc so you can add to it on the go if needed.
Under Tools, there is an option for Voice typing (Ctrl+Shift+S).
Click this, start talking, and your document will start filling up with words.
Now when I do this speech to text, I do find that I need to edit the text as I go. I’ll talk for about 5 sentences, stop the recording, and then edit what was written. You may be able to do the entire document based off your outline and notes, however.
The iPhone speech to text works well, as well. I’ve actually ‘written’ blogs while out for walks with the girls, but Apple will stop transcribing every couple of minutes, so you need to make sure you don’t keep talking with nothing being written down.
I’m sure there is other software you can use that also records your audio for use in a Podcast. Or you can send the audio file off to Rev.com for transcription at $1/minute. Totally worthwhile if you have spent hours trying to get into writing, but not filling the page with any content.
The other option is to use YouTube to transcribe a video.
Using your computer camera or your phone, record yourself talking through the outline you created.
When you upload your video to YouTube, you may need to first verify your account (enter in your phone number in the settings) to post videos that are over 10 minutes long.
Typically, most of our clients who generate a transcription of their blog upload their videos as Unlisted or Private, though I am all for listing these videos as Public to get more of a reach – blogs with videos perform really well, YouTube is a search engine, and you can share your video to social media (always think of how you can repurpose your content as you create it). Make sure the space you are in looks professional if you also plan to publish the video as Public and include it in your blog post.
After you have uploaded your video, click in to edit it and find the link that says Subtitles/CC.
You will be prompted to select your language (I use English though at times I’m not sure).
Then, click under Published where English is listed again.
On the next screen you can download the subtitles created by YouTube as .srt.
I’m not sure what a .srt file actually is, but all you need to do is convert it to a .txt file online and you will be able to open it with your computer. In the past I’ve used Subtitle Tools for the conversion, though a Google search for “Convert .srt file to .txt for free” will work just fine.
The text that is created will be formatted a little strangely with about 7 words per line and no punctuation. Honestly, I get a little overwhelmed by this, but the ability to create the video and written blog in one go is well worth the effort to run through your post and edit it.
Your outline makes this easier as well.
You can work through small chunks and sections by pasting the text under the corresponding blog header. Please let me know if you often work through your transcripts, I’d love to feature more tips about converting a YouTube video into a blog post.
Again, if spending $10-$20 isn’t a problem, you can submit the video to Rev.com and utilize their transcription services.
Tip 6: Outsource your Blog Writing
We frequently outsource blog writing. I’ll keep this section short, but you can find experts in your industry who cost anywhere from $0.03 per word to $0.65 or more per word. So, depending on your budget and time you have available to provide an outline and edit your blog post, you may decide for yourself what budget for the blog writing really makes sense.
We utilize freelancers on Upwork.com and WritersAccess.com to find niche bloggers for our clients. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not an EMDR or Brainspotting expert, so why would I spend hours trying to write that blog post when someone else can write it for a fraction of the cost of my time to research.
Depending on your industry, you can also probably find Guest Bloggers who would write a post on your site for free if they can include their bio and a link back to their own website.
With Guest Bloggers, just make sure their content is unique and reserve the right to edit it slightly so the headers include your focus keywords and related keywords.
I love guest bloggers because they often then will share the link to their own networks or link to it from their website, which then in turn helps get new visitors to your website and helps in SEO.
Wrap Up
Writing a high quality, long blog post doesn’t need to be a difficult task. Depending on how you work you may find that you are better suited to transcribe and audio or video file rather than sitting down and typing.
The most important starting point for any blog, however, is to make sure that you create an outline. I just sat down and busted out this blog before 9am, but it is on a topic I am VERY familiar with (have you checked out our blogging course yet?).
You may not have time to finish a blog in one chunk, so be sure to batch your time to most effective and efficient.
What long blog posts are you working on writing? I’d love to check out your work!
Interested in learning more? Take a look at these articles:
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/seo-not-working.jpg13102000Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2021-04-06 14:47:392021-04-06 19:14:14How to Easily Write a Good Blog Post for your Business (Top Tips)
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.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Blog-Topics-for-2021.png14402560Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2020-12-17 15:56:572021-02-26 10:05:04How to find topics for articles and social media posts in 2021
Today’s blog discusses the quick, easy, and simple processes that we use in order to repurpose the videos that you’re creating for social media. We’ve been discussing how important it is for your medical practice, your wellness center, to be doing videos as a way to stand out online and really create that personal relationship with your target audience and with those prospective patients. However, we then take the video and we recommend utilizing it in a lot of different ways.
One such way is by taking the transcript and turning it into a blog post. So this requires you to upload the video to YouTube, get the embed code, paste the embed code into a blog post, then create the description, put that into the blog post, and then grab the transcript of this after you upload it to a place like Scribie, for example, and put that into the blog post as well.
To simplify this process, we utilize Zapier.
What is Zapier?
Zapier is a communication tool between YouTube and your blog. And we use it for a lot of other systems and processes as well, where if you have something repetitive that you’re always doing over and over again.
There are hundreds of other platforms like it, can connect those two items that you’re just copying and pasting and make it, so it’s a really easy flow from one to the other.
How to use Zapier
So let’s jump in, and I will share my screen. So what we’re going to see first here is Zapier. I already have the dashboard set up.
Make a zap
Start by clicking, “Make a Zap.” Every video that we create, we wanna make sure that we’re sharing it to social media. So on our backend, every single video that gets uploaded to YouTube then also gets posted to our Basecamp work. But I do not have it set up where it also creates the video blog post.
So what we’re going do is YouTube, and you can always search for that as well. And I’m going to click, “A New Video to a Channel.” And then we can click, “Continue.” And so we already have our YouTube account hooked up here, but if we didn’t, then we would go through the process of linking it up.
Log in on your account
Now, for Zapier as well as any other time that you’re linking two different pieces of software online, I just recommend logging into those accounts beforehand, making sure you’re in the right account, and then going through the process of trying to sync that. One of the reasons why I do that is because you might be in your personal account rather than the company account, for example, and you don’t wanna link up your personal stuff with the company stuff. You might as well just make sure from the very beginning.
Get the channel ID
So here, we need to get the channel ID. You could also do, “Upload a Video to a Username.” However, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the username is, but the channel ID is very simple to find.
So I am going to just click this button right here. So I already clicked to upload a video, but the channel ID is just this next one after this channels here. Oops. We’ll click, “Continue.” And then I always recommend testing this trigger, so fingers crossed it worked. Awesome. So our last video that we did is, “Five Content Marketing Ideas for Healthcare Practices.” This was our blog post last week. And look at this, it pulls in the description, when it was published as well as the thumbnails. So that is really cool that it also does the thumbnails because we’re going to be using that for our featured image down the road here. Okay. So what we have is, when this happens, so when a new video is uploaded to the channel on YouTube, we do this.
And so here we want to do WordPress, and we want to create a post. Okay, we’ll click, “Continue,” and we want the WordPress that we already have connected. But, again, you’d wanna make sure you’re logged in here, and it will just prompt you through the steps, so making sure that you have access and you’re giving Zapier the access to that account.
Create a post
So what I wanna do is create a post. However, you could also do pages, media, forums, etcetera, products, pop-ups, whatever you have there. We wanna do a post for this part. The title is the title of the video. And you could also do… If you want to, you could put video in the title there or you could put “From the Wellness video channel” or something. I don’t know, whatever you want to put there. I’m just going to put the title just to keep it simple. The featured media. So here, we might have to play around with it just a little bit to make sure that we get that image there. And it looks as though… There we go. So instead of doing the featured media, what we wanna do is this custom one, and so this will actually pull in that featured image, the thumbnail image, that you had selected when you upload the YouTube video. So I believe I want to do the default URL. Let’s see.
Width and height
I’m going to do the high one, max res. Let’s do this one. Basically, what I was looking at here is the default width and everything, and so the max res is going to be the biggest option that we can do.
Content
So here we just click the description and it will automatically put that description in there. Now, you could add more content in here if you want. For example, you could have, “In this new video we discussed five content marketing ideas for healthcare practices.”
And then you could have the title, period. And then we’d want to have the description here. You know what? I’m going to make this at H3, so you can add some of that SEO stuff in here already, just as HTML. Okay. And so it says “uses WordPress text editor, supports HTML.” So here, I added that little header tag as well as the paragraphs there. Status, so we want the status to be a draft, you could have it be published immediately, but I always recommend just double-checking to make sure that all the settings are correct.
The excerpt
It’s up to you if you utilize excerpts on places on your site. I’m going to leave this blank. Most websites do have this just be a blank field and Google then would, if it needs an excerpt from something it’ll just grab the content. Post date, what we want to do here is the date, the publish date. Okay. Post format, typically, we wanna keep this just as standard, potentially your blog has different formats there, and then the post name we use the title. Okay.
Comment status
I’m going to do closed. Typically for wellness websites and healthcare websites, we do want that to be turned off. However, if you are an influencer or something like that, keep it turned on. We don’t want it sticky. And then we can also do some tags, so for the tags, I’m just going to do… Oops, I forgot the category. So you can have the category as well, I would recommend having something with video. Let’s see. There we go. Oops, it didn’t actually… Yeah. That would be fine. Let’s save. So I’m just going to keep this one tag, we have the category selected here, you could have a different category as well, video blogs or something like that would be good, or just use the base category that you have.
Preview
And again, this is just so that you have fewer items to fill in as you’re reviewing the blog post. So we’re going to do “Test and Continue.” And we created a post. So let’s go in here and check out our post, so that you can see what it looks like. Okay. And if you take a look here, we have this post right here, so we’re going to just click to preview, and as you can see, we have “In this new video about healthcare marketing, we discussed five content marketing ideas for healthcare practices.”
Embed the video
And then it says, b, the content from the description, and you know what we forgot to do? We forgot to embed the video. So this is why you always do the test. So let’s jump on back up here and we’re going to customize the post. And so let’s put in that embed code, and what we’re going to do is, this is the embed URL, and so then you just need to put that into the correct script. So I’ll make sure to post that script down here in just one moment.
Okay, so how the embed information works from YouTube, is there is a standard information that you can even just get when you are on YouTube and you click to embed something. Again, this is just setting it up one time and then it’ll continually do it correctly. But what we wanna do here is I pasted in that information, and I want to write in this SRC, quotations, I wanna put in the correct information there. So here I’m grabbing the embed URL, and I’m just pasting it in there, or clicking so that it goes in there. So let’s just double-check to make sure that this works correctly. And I’m going to re-test. Save, we’ll go back to the posts. I might have to delete that post just to make sure that it… Yeah. Have to delete that post. Trash. Okay. Re-test.
And so an easy way to get that embed code… Again, I’ll paste it down below, sometimes those quotation marks they’ll copy and paste incorrectly just from YouTube. Click “Share.” And so we grab this embedded code.
So you can do this on any video that pops up. It doesn’t have to be yours. Copy this information right here. And again, this SRC Embed right here, this URL is that embed URL that Zapier will be able to provide for you. So that’s how I recommend getting it, I’ll just copy this just so that I can put it in our YouTube description, and then you’ll be good to go.
Final thoughts
So this is really the process that we utilize as a way to make it easier to manage all that content that you’re creating. We’re telling you to create these videos, so what’s the easiest way that’s going to save time and save money to get those videos from YouTube and then into the blog post, because you want this content to live on your blog as a way to really get the most out of it. And make sure that you have that SEO benefit as well as the ability to share it more easily to your newsletter or to an email or something like that. To get people back to the website so that hopefully they’ll end up requesting a consultation.
So if this was confusing to follow at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out, put a comment down below, it was kind of one of our more technical topics. However, Zapier does do a fantastic job, really just making sure that the steps are pretty easy to implement. If it’s your first time going into Zapier and setting up an account, it might look a little confusing. Just click that “Make a Zap” button, search for what you wanna do and you’ll be able to set it up.
Of course, we’re more than happy to schedule a consultation as well. In this call, we’ll see if we’ll be able to be a good fit for your team in order to help you with all of your digital marketing efforts.
If you’ve liked this video, please subscribe, also please check out our podcast over on Podbean and iTunes, and don’t forget to head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Zapier-Blog-1.png12602240Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2020-08-26 12:49:082020-08-26 16:49:48Use Zapier to Create Blog Post from New Video on YouTube
As a healthcare practice, it is really important to stay top of mind with your current patients and also future patients. By using digital marketing there are so many ways to stay connected.
One question we get asked a lot is:
“How do we increase our engagement and promote our practice with digital marketing?”
Well, that answer is a little tricky since there are many different options out there. It’s more of a combination of different tools to make your digital marketing work for you. In the digital marketing world, it is about trial and error, seeing what your audience responds to the most and how to start those conversations.
In this blog, I am going to talk about 5 ways to help increase your engagement and promote your practice.
Word of mouth and referral marketing are still the best ways to grow your practice, but with people being able to access information from SO many places we have to be a little more creative and think outside the box to build those relationships and loyalty.
Once they have come into your practice you want to make sure you stay top of mind, more importantly, you want to make sure you have good online profiles so it is easy for your audience to refer you.
How many of you have wanted to try something new with digital marketing but just don’t know where to start or what to try?
Social media marketing is one of the most popular ways to get in front of your current audience and potential new patients.
You can do this organically or implement paid ads as well. This is not an overnight success, it does take time, but it does work!
Let’s talk about the 5 Ways to Help Increase Your Engagement and Promote Your Practice:
1. Instagram
We have been talking about Instagram a lot this year and we will continue to do so, it is one of the fastest growing social media platforms with the average age 35-65-year-olds. Instagram is all about the visuals, from building a strong brand presence on your feed, having font styles on your images, color scheme, image theme, etc. this makes your feed look clean and interesting. Let’s dive into how to master Instagram Stories
This biggest thing with Instagram right now is the Instagram Stories, these stories only stay up for 24-hours, so this is a great place for:
One really cool thing you can do with these stories is “Highlight” them, this saves them into an area about your feed pictures, you can categorize them so all your stories go to the correct boards. This turns into a great resource for your audience, each video on Instagram Stories can be 15 seconds long, you can record a 45sec to a 1 min long video and then use this app called CutStory and it automatically cuts your video into 15-second increments for you to share.
You can also create branded Instagram stories images with Canva, they have different themes you can choose from, you can use your own font styles, brand colors, logo, and images.
Now, you may be thinking what if I do a video that is more than 1-minute long, where should I put that? Well, don’t worry, Instagram has you covered and that is where IGTV comes into play. This is similar to YouTube but it allows your audience to watch the full video on Instagram, they don’t have to leave the platform.
A few ideas to create IGTV videos around are:
New mother tips
Birthing Plan
Vaccines
Physical Therapy
Counseling Tips
National Observance Days
Surgery Tips
New medical practices
Interviews with nurses and doctors
Instagram has a lot of bells and whistles you are able to tap into and really grow a long-lasting relationship with your audience.
2. Video Marketing
It’s 2019 and it’s all about the videos! Video marketing is huge and will continue to grow. Videos are great because it allows your audience to connect with you quicker. We wrote a blog a few months ago about “How to Create a Strong Video Marketing Strategy” videos are something you either love or hate.
Videos can be educational for your audience, videos with closed captions are even better. Here are a few good stats about video:
Let’s dive into the statistics behind healthcare marketing with video:
About 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video. (Source: Eloqua)
Video is now the sixth most popular content marketing tactic,as 70% of B2B marketers use some form of online video with their overall strategies. (Source: Eloqua)
Of the 80% of internet users who watched a video ad, 46% took some sort of action after viewing the ad. (Source: Video Brewery)
The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. (Source: Mist Media)
Video and e-mail marketing can increase click-through rates by more than 90%.(Source: Mist Media)
Video equals higher viewer retention. The information retained in one minute of online video is equal to about 1.8 million written words. (Source: Brainshark)
Video attracts two to three times as many monthly visitors, doubles their time spent on the site and has a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
Blog posts incorporating video attract three times as many inbound links as blog posts without video. (Source: SEOmoz)
59% of senior executives prefer video over text. (Source: Brainshark)
Having a video on the landing page of your site makes it 53% more likely to show up on page 1 of Google. (Source: Mist Media)
When you think of video marketing, most people think you have to have a studio, pay a professional, take a lot of time on editing, props, backgrounds, and more. In all honesty with the technology of the newer smartphones and HD cameras, you can really shoot your own videos in office. Actually, the more authentic videos are the ones that get the most engagement online.
A couple of things to remember when shooting a video from your smartphones when you are recording a video for Instagram be sure to have your phone vertical, and when shooting a video for YouTube, Blogs, or Facebook you will want your phone horizontal.
Let’s start recording! Be Authentic, real, give value, and have fun!
3. Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are climbing higher on the list for digital marketing, gone are the days where just having a Facebook page worked, Facebook pages work great if you plan on spending money on ads.
There are a ton of Facebook groups out there that your practice can join, you can even start your own group.
For example – Let’s say you are a women’s medical office, Your services include OB-GYN, birthing center, primary care, pediatrician, etc. But, one special thing that your office focuses on is wanting to help new mothers with education. Vaccines, breastfeeding, car seats, home care, feeding, etc. Most of your patients come from within a 25-mile radius of your office, you can create a group on Facebook called “Tips for New Mothers YOUR CITY” in this group you can invite your current patients to join, post daily, as your group continues to grow you will post two or three times a day. You are creating a community of women that are going through the same thing and want answers. You can allow the members of the group to post questions and concerns for your practice to answer. This is a wonderful way to create trust with your patients. You can then start to mention the other services your practice offers.
In this video below, I will show you how to start a group from scratch and also how to search for groups to join.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is NOT dead, I know some may think that email marketing and newsletters are a waste of time, but they actually work great. It is a convenient way to stay top of mind with your patients. With social media marketing and the algorithms it’s hard to really know who has seen your organic posts, then to monitor the engagement. Now, the insights and analytics on the social media platforms tell you how many likes, comments, and shares you had on posts. With email marketing, you can actually see who opened your emails, who read them, and who clicked through to your website.
There are a few ways to incorporate email marketing into your plan:
Content Upgrades, also known as Free downloads. This is a piece of content you put together for your ideal patient to download, in order for them to download it they have to submit their name and email. For example – if we go back to the example in number 3, you could create:
Newborn checklist
Going home checklist
Breastfeeding Tips
New Momma Myths
Top 10 products to have at home for your new baby
etc.
This pdf would then be uploaded to your website and linked into MailChimp or Leadpages to create a landing page with the form for name and email, you can then push this out to social media, your current email list of current patients. Over time you will create quite a few content upgrades. Make a list of different checklists, ebooks, resources you can create for your patients now and then you push that out to gain new email subscriptions to grow your email list. This is an example of what a sign-up form looks like:
Newsletters – You can send weekly or monthly newsletters to your lists, in some cases you may have multiple lists and can customize a newsletter for each list based on your audience. It is important to understand what your audience wants to know about so you can pack your newsletters with valuable content. It doesn’t matter if you do weekly updates or monthly, what matters most is consistency. Whatever you choose to do be sure to stick with it. You can also incorporate your videos into these emails, this allows you to build those deeper relationships!
5. Blogging
Blogging serves dual purposes, it is great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and it allows you to show your expertise. When you are promoting your practice on social media your end goal is to get them back to your website to sign-up for your email list, book an appointment, or fill out paperwork, how do you give them an incentive to go back to your website?
When blogging just like everything else we have spoken about it is all about consistency. One blog per month or two, as long as you do one each month, these are no longer 300-500 word blogs, these are cornerstone blogs which means 1500+ words per blog. We recently wrote a blog on how to share your blog, in that post there is a FREE download, a blog checklist, you can download it here.
Your blogs should cover content that your audience wants to learn about, whether this is myths around vaccines, childbirth, new momma tips, etc.
This is where you tie the above 1-4 items into your blogging. In each blog post you will be:
Making an image you can share onto Instagram
Make a “teaser” video for Instagram with 3 inside tips from your blog
Create a longer video for IGTV about your blog
Create videos to go inside your blog post – you will place these videos on YouTube then insert them into your blog posts
Your website/blog is your hub, you want to drive traffic to your hub. Once your blog is complete you can then share it to multiple platforms with links back to your site, this helps reach new potential patients as well.
As you can see through these 5 different marketing platforms, they each allow you to grow your practice and connect with your audience on a deeper level. They all work based on consistency and planning. This is why having a digital marketing plan is so important.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/How-to-Use-Digital-Marketing-to-Grow-your-Healthcare-Practice-Blog.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-05-15 08:00:412019-05-14 19:25:06How to Use Digital Marketing to Grow your Healthcare Practice
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SEO-and-blogging.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2018-04-26 20:21:162018-04-26 20:28:46Search Engine Optimization, Keyword Research, and Blogging for your Business [April Overview]
Are you SUPER excited that you just got done writing a 2500+ blog post? If you are anything like me that is a HUGE accomplishment! It can take a lot of time to compile a long blog post, but it is well worth it! Bravo! When I started blogging I didn’t realize how important blogs actually were, what they were doing for our business. Blogging was something I always passed along to Caitlin because in my eyes she is an amazing writer. But this year I have taken on the task of writing blogs as well and getting to that 2500+ word count can be tough sometimes.
in this blog today I want to talk about how to share your blog post from your website to the world. We cover a lot of different ways you can share your blog.
When you write a blog post it serves multiple purposes:
Social Media Content
Sales/Lead Page
Pinterest Search Content
Customer Resource
Email Marketing Content
Backlinks
Bookmarking
SEO
So, how do you get your blog from your website to all these sources? It is quite easy. In just a few clicks you can have your blog off into the internet world for everyone to see! Are you ready for that?
Writing a blog post can be a scary thing, you are putting yourself out there, providing valuable information that other people are reading and consuming. It’s one thing to just write blogs and have them on your site and it’s another thing to really start promoting your blogs and driving that traffic back to your site. For a long time, we would write blogs each and every week, have them posted to our website and then just push the link out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Well, that is one way of doing it, but it’s not going to get you the traffic you are wanting. Let’s talk about ways to promote or social share your blog.
Tip #1: Social Sharing
Once you have your blog post it is important to get it out to social media, but remember not every social media platform is the same. You need to adjust the content for each platform.
Facebook – You can share your blog on there and have the first paragraph of the blog and then link, you also want to share the blog post to your business page, groups and depending on the blog you may want to share from your business page over to your personal profile for friends and family to see.
Twitter – With only 280 characters to use for your tweet, you need to be creative when sharing on Twitter. Sometimes you will need to use #Hashtags within the content if you can’t fit them at the bottom. You want to make sure you get your link and at least 5 #Hashtags in your twee. Short, Simple and to the point! What are they going to learn, what’s in it for them on your blog?
Pinterest – Now, I am going against the grain here, Pinterest really should be categorized under “Search Engine”, Pinterest isn’t really a social media platform, it is a search engine, a place people go to find information. People usually think of it as social media so that’s where I am going to talk about it. Surprisingly we get a lot of website traffic each month from our Pinterest account and we have only had our Social Speak account for almost 6 months! Which is great for us, we can see that it is working. The key when sharing your blog post is creating an image within your blog that is the correct size for Pinterest. You can see how Caitlin has a large image in the middle of this blog here, I will also add one to this blog below. Having the correct image sizes for each platform is important and you can do that in Canva.
Instagram – Here is where it gets a little tricky with sharing blogs on Instagram since you can’t have links in your content area until you reach 10,000 followers. We are not there yet but on our way! So, this is what I usually recommend, when our blogs use to be 300 words we would place the whole blog on our Instagram account with image and then say check out more blogs on our website, link in bio. Now, that our blogs are much longer, it’s too much content to put on Instagram, what we do is highlight with points what your blog is about, what benefits they would get out of it and then say check out our blog (Link in bio) for more details on TOPIC OF BLOG HERE. Remember to use hashtags, we say to use anywhere from 3-10 within your content area and then up to 30 as a comment after your post. That is more of a personal preference.
LinkedIn – Least but not last LinkedIn our forgotten gem! LinkedIn is AWESOME for group postings. We always share our blogs to our personal profiles but then we take it a step further are share our blogs to 3-5 groups per week. We handpick these groups so we know what each groups target market is. We turn the title of the blog into a question, for example, the blog we have been highlighting we turned the blog title from “6 Reasons You NEED to be Using Instagram Stories for Business” to “Have You Tried Using Instagram Stories for Your Business?. This helps increase the discussion within that group.
Tip #2 – Bookmarking Your Blog
Now, that you have shared it on social media to your networks it’s time to blast it out to the rest of the world. Bookmarking is a great way to get your blog out to people that you are not connected with online already. What is Bookmarking? It includes different websites that you can enter your own website, blog, videos etc too. People all over can then easily search for different topics and services and your website, blog or video would appear. People have all different sorts of ways they like to collect their information online. Here are a few of the bookmarking sites we recommend.
StumbleUpon – This is a site that people can go to and search all different topics and interests. StumbleUpon is a discovery and advertisement engine that pushes recommends of web content to its users. You can sign up with StumbleUpon through Facebook or your Google account and start posting!
Delicious – This is a site is used for storing, sharing and discovery. You can follow different trends and topics with this site. Here is a LifeHack Article that shares multiple ways to use Delicious
Digg – This is one of the top bookmarking sites out there right now. The way Digg is set up is more of an online magazine, I like the layout of this bookmarking site better than some of the other. There are millions of users each month so you have the opportunity to get your blogs out to millions through Digg and drive traffic back to your website. You will need to register your website and yourself on Digg in order to post.
Reddit – This site is really all about creating an online community to share stories, links, images and more. This is a hot platform to market your website, be consistent with sharing your blog posts here, this also acts as a social media platform because you are like, comment and share.
Last one is https://medium.com/about Medium – “Medium taps into the brains of the world’s most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers to bring you the smartest takes on topics that matter. So whatever your interest, you can always find fresh thinking and unique perspectives.”
BONUS TIP:
We found this tool, that we use for a lot of our larger clients who we are blogging for, we are all about working smarter not harder. There are a ton of bookmarking sites and just that one task can take an hour each week, who has an extra hour laying around? Not me! There is a tool called OnlyWire this automatically pulls your most recent blog posts and puts them to over 10 different sites, including Tumblr, Reddit, Medium, InstaPaper, LiveJournal, Folked, FeedSpot, Blogger Slashdot etc. Some of these sites I haven’t even heard of HA! It can also post to your social media, but I do not recommend that. Take advantage of this tool for the bookmarking sites. I think it costs $59.99 a year! It does drive traffic to your website with all these backlinks.
Tip # 3 – Email Marketing
There is that magical list you have been growing for years now that you need to start reaching out to more, right? Your email list is GOLD if you use it correctly. Each blog you post can be a resource for your email list. You can create a plan for your blogs, maybe 5 steps to SOMETHING and each step was a blog. You can then share this blog series to your email list, add a custom video for this particular email. Or you can have one email be the first blog and video then set up your automated camping for your the rest of the blog series. Be sure to give some exclusive content for that email, you don’t JUST want it to be your blog. Keep your readers engaged and give them TONS OF VALUE. We wrote a blog post awhile back “Best Practices to Engage Your Email List” that is a good place to start on how to create a great email campaign.
How can you add value to your newsletter and promote your blog at the same time?
Set up an interview with someone that has succeeded with what you are talking about. For example, let’s say we write a blog on how we use Pinterest to grow our business by 65%, we have our blog that outlines and tells our story, but what if we did an exclusive video interview with another business owner that had similar success with Pinterest that JUST our email list would see? What 5 benefits would your list walk away with?
Feature a Guest Blogger you can ask a guest blogger that has a similar interest or insights to your topic you are covering and ask them to write a short blog/article for your newsletter or email campaign. This would be someone who is like-minded and like-hearted to you, someone who shares the same target market, someone maybe you could partner with or you would feel comfortable sharing with your list.
Exclusive Offers this is another way you can promote your blogs in your email campaigns and newsletter, giving your audience value is KEY! Offering them something such as a free download, free video series, free consultation to talk them through a process, help them solve a problem.
Tip #4 Quora –
Let’s show the world that you are an expert in your field! Once you create your account you pick the topics you are interested in learning about and then you pick the topics you know most about. People use Quora to ask questions, this is where you can chime in, you can look for those questions in your expertise and answer them, link back to one of your blog posts. At the top of the screen you can see Home and Answer, click on ‘answer’ and based on those topics you put in place that you were an expert in, you can answer these questions. This is a great way to reach your target market by solving a problem for them.
Wrap-up
You can clearly see there are many places to share your blog content for FREE, oh yeah! Besides the OnlyWire app all of these outlets I spoke of today are all FREE! Who doesn’t love FREE? Create a system for sharing your blog post. We write a blog each week along with a video and that blog post gets posted to our site on Tuesday’s and then from there I pull out my list (or this blog) and go through each platform. I am not going to make you print out this whole blog post, so I made a quick cheat sheet for you. You can download below. Hope this helps!
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/How-to-Promote-Your-Blog-Post.png315560Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2018-04-24 08:00:292018-07-22 22:06:50How to Promote Your Blog Post