Blog to Boost SEO for Healthcare Providers

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.

For a step-by-step guide to blogging, please visit: How to Easily Write a Blog Post.

Watch the Episode

Listen to the Health and Wellness Marketing Podcast Episode

Read the full digital marketing for healthcare transcript:

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.

How to Blog to Boost SEO for Healthcare Providers

How to Blog to Boost SEO for Your Family Medicine PracticeHow to Blog to Boost SEO for Your Health and Wellness Practice

How to Blog to Boost SEO for Your Mental Health Practice

how to write high quality blog posts quickly

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:

Ok, so let’s jump in an get started.

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

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.

Not sure what Keywords to include in your Blog?

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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:

  1. You are a busy professional who will get called into a meeting or be interrupted by a conference call.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. Don’t try to edit your blog post until you’ve gotten all of your information down.
  3. 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.
  4. 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).

voice typing google

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.

youtube subtitles

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.

subtitles for youtube

On the next screen you can download the subtitles created by YouTube as .srt.

save subtitles you tube

 

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.

How to quickly write a great blog post for your business, #blogging #bloggingtips, learn how to write a long blog, how to blog for your business, blogging for business

How to quickly write a great blog post for your business, #blogging #bloggingtips, learn how to write a long blog, how to blog for your business, blogging for business, #business

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!

Not sure what Keywords to include in your Blog?

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Interested in learning more? Take a look at these articles:

Blogging in 2017 – The Startling Truth About Blogging

Blog SEO Checklist

4 Reasons Why Contests Should be a Part of Your Marketing Strategy

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

The importance of keeping your content up to date

 

The importance of keeping your Family Medicine content up to date
The importance of keeping your Health and Wellness content up to date
The importance of keeping your Mental Health content up to date
Is your Content Marketing Plan Failing your Business, Editorial Calendar 2019, #nationalholidays #businessevents2019

This blog breaks down the difference between a Content Marketing Strategy and a Content Plan. It then dives into National Observances that your team should consider integrating into its content or editorial calendar.

As we’ve worked with hundreds of businesses as they work with digital marketing to reach their business goals, we’ve found that more often than not there is a disconnect between what they are trying to accomplish and what actually gets done.

The reason?

A lack of planning for how to implement the content strategy causes content to be created in a vacuum. The content is not written to achieve a specific goal.

Originally I was going to write this blog to only focus on the difference between a Content Marketing Strategy and a Content Marketing Plan, but keeping your sights on external and national events is critical to participating as a relevant source of information in the digital world.

Let’s start by diving into a Content Marketing Strategy.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is the Why behind the content you are creating. It includes identifying why your team is creating content, it is the vision you have for future content that is to be created.

This strategy should also identify who you are marking content for. Are some pieces of content designed specifically for prospects, referral partners, or clients? How can you differentiate between them? What are the goals of them? How will you position and use them online?

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

To start creating your Content Marketing Strategy, set your goals.

We recommend thinking first about the issues you may be facing as an organization and then set the goals as a way to solve these.

For example, we’ve worked with clients in the past who wished to use digital marketing to fill their schedule. After diving deeper, we recognized that they weren’t remarketing to or rebooking current clients as effectively as they could. As a way to capture low-hanging fruit, rather than creating content to educate and gain interest from folks whom had never heard of the client, we redesigned the content marketing strategy to focus on engaging with current and past clients.

Common goals of a Content Marketing Strategy include:

  • Increasing Revenue
  • Attracting leads
  • Lower costs
  • Better customers
  • Build an audience
  • Educate

Once you have identified a need in the organization and set a goal, it is easier to recognize alternative solutions to reach the goal.

Another aspect of the Content Strategy is identifying what tone you wish to take. For small businesses with only one or two content creators this can be easy. Do you speak in the first person, do you use past or present tense, are there branded keywords you should incorporate?

The last part of the content strategy is identifying which digital marketing networks to pursue and who to target on each network.

What is a Content Marketing Plan?

A content marketing plan is tactical – these are the actual steps you will take to implement the marketing strategy. In general, we never recommend creating a digital marketing content plan without first creating the strategy.

Why? You may realize after 6 months that the content you are creating has nothing to do with the goals you are trying to achieve!

We see this often with teams.

The director states that each week a blog needs to be written and at least 3 social media posts need to be published each week. However, the marketing experts creating the content don’t clearly understand how their piece fits in with the larger marketing strategy. What is the end goal of the content?

Key aspects to a Content Marketing Plan

The content marketing plan should include topics to cover, calls to action to include, specific promotions, who is responsible to creating various pieces of content, and how content will be published.

In our work, specifically the Roadmap to Digital Marketing, we recommend formatting the bulk of a content marketing plan like an editorial calendar.

An editorial calendar for digital marketing allows your team to easily see how content fits together and what topics should be talked about at certain times during the year (hence my inclusion of the National Observances list below).

Content Strategy and Content Marketing Working Together

As described above, a Content Strategy always comes first and the Content Marketing Plan is built based on the goals identified in the strategy.

One of my favorite examples of how a strategy and a plan work together is if an issue within an organization is that the close rate for new sales is lower than the industry average. The goal here may be to increase the close rate, boosting the bottom line.

After researching and  surveying clients and prospects that decided to pursue another option, it becomes clear that the alternative tends to be a business with more name recognition.

How can content marketing help to shift the perspective and gain more trust? Here the strategy is to increase brand recognition and trust. The plan could be to create more videos with leadership and to incorporate blog posts that dive into company values.

This brings us to using relevant topics as a part of your marketing plan.

Being Relevant with your Content Marketing Increases the Effectiveness of your Digital Marketing Plan

If you are like 98% of our clients, one of the key goals identified in your content marketing strategy is to increase brand recognition and position your organization as an industry influencer.

Incorporating National Observances into your Marketing Plan is a key tactical decision your company can make to achieve this. Of course it is up to you and your team to decide which ones to highlight and how to incorporate them (podcasts, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, promotions and sales, etc).

Some, such as New Years, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas may all seem like obvious choices, but are they actually identified in a calendar?

Does someone on your team know that they are responsible for creating content 3-6 months in advance of these dates?

Then there are industry-specific days, weeks, and months. For example, if you are a health center and realize in February that it is American Heart Month, you are already late to the game.

You’ve missed the opportunity to reach new audiences by being a guest on a Podcast or having a guest blog post published in an industry journal.

Yes, you can still publish a last-minute blog to share on social media, but think of the opportunities you may have missed by not planning ahead.

National Observances to Consider for your Business

Here I’ve identified the top 3-5 National Observances for you to consider integrating into your marketing plan each month. The ones I’ve identified here are important, though some are a bit random. Our complete list of National Observances includes events for any type of business or industry.

Please enter your name and email for access to our full list of National Observances for 2019.

Download 2019 National Observances

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January Observances:

January 1: New Years Day
January 5: National Keto Day
January 24: National Compliment Day
3rd week in January: National Mocktail Week
National Blood Donor Month

February Observances:

February 4: National Hemp Day
February 14: Valentine’s Day
February 22: National Margarita Day
American Heart Month
Black History Month

March Observances:

National Employee Appreciation Day – First Friday in March
March 14: National Pi Day
March 26: National Spinach Day
Endometriosis Awareness Week – (First full week – Monday through Sunday)
National Brain Injury Awareness Month
National Women’s History Month

April Observances:

April 1: April Fools Day
April 8: National Zoo Lovers Day
April 21: Easter
National Child Abuse Awareness Month
National Parkinson’s Awareness Month

May Observances:

May 12: Mother’s Day
May 18: National HIV Vaccine Awareness Day
May 27: Memorial Day
Small Business Week – First Week in May
Celiac Disease Awareness Month
Melanoma Awareness Month

June Observances:

June 1: National Go Barefoot Day
June 12: National Peanut Butter Cookie Day
June 16: Father’s Day
LGBTQIA Pride Month
Men’s Health Month

July Observances:

July 4: Independence Day
July 12: National Simplicity Day
July 31: National Avocado Day
National Grilling Month
National Ice Cream Month

August Observances:

August 1: Respect for Parents Day
August 3: International Beer Day
August 19: National Soft Ice Cream Day
Simplify Your Life Week – First Week
Family Fun Month

September Observances:

September 2: Labor Day
September 8: National Suicide Prevention Month
September 13: National Kids Take over the Kitchen Day
September 30: National Chewing Gum Day
National Chewing Gum Day
National Suicide Prevention Month

October Observances:

October 28: National Chocolate Day
October 31: Halloween
Adopt A Shelter Dog Month
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
National Chiropractic Month

November Observances:

November 11: Veterans Day
November 22: Thanksgiving
November 24: Small Business Saturday
November 26: Cyber Monday
Adopt A Senior Pet Month
Gluten-Free Diet Awareness Month
National Alzheimer’s Disease Month

December Observances:

December 2: Chanukah
December 4: National Cookie Day
December 21: Winter Solstice
December 25: Christmas
National Human Rights Month
National Tie Month

As you build out your Digital Marketing Plan, we recommend downloading our complete list of National Observances. Start by deleting any cells or events that don’t apply to your business. Be sure, however, to think outside of the box.

Could you celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie day with the office?

Does anyone on your team support organizations that rely on the exposure of these National Observances?

Once observances have been identified for your business to highlight in the Content Plan, be sure to assign the observance to an individual. Make sure they consider the goals of creating content for the observance, specific promotions related to the day, partners to approach for joint marketing efforts, etc.

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And of course, if this has been helpful for you, or if you’ve considered outside the box ideas to incorporate National Observances into your content plan, leave a comment below!

Never miss an important marketing event, Is your Content Marketing Plan Failing your Business, Editorial Calendar 2019, #nationalholidays #businessevents2019

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Is your Content Marketing Plan Failing your Business, Editorial Calendar 2019, #nationalholidays #businessevents2019

Is your Content Marketing Plan Failing your Business, Editorial Calendar 2019, #nationalholidays #businessevents2019 Is your Content Marketing Plan Failing your Business, Editorial Calendar 2019, #nationalholidays #businessevents2019

Best Content Management Technologies of 2019 #inboundmarketing #contentmarketing

With all the tools out there it can be difficult to know which content marketing strategy tool you and your marketing team should be utilizing to make sure everybody is moving in the same direction.

In this blog we take a look at the most prominent content marketing calendar apps that are available for many different sized businesses. For small businesses, including those with just one marketing manager, you can get away with organizing your ideas in a Word document or a Google sheet.

However, once you have multiple people working towards that same goal of making sure your business is found and sharing the correct message in your marketing strategy, it is important to consider upgrading to a scheduling and management interface that allows everybody to clearly see where their piece of the pie fits in with the larger content strategy.

To keep you from signing up for each of these tools, I’ve taken a look at:

  • What type of organization it is best for
  • The main features
  • How you can implement it easily into your team
  • The price point.

Many of the applications discussed including Monday.com, HubSpot, CoSchedule, and MeetEdgar have a variety of price points. Again, in our experience, if it is just you, typically you can get away with organizing your ideas on a spreadsheet.

So, let’s dive into there popular content management platforms.

CoSchedule Technology for Digital Marketing Management

The first application that we are going to discuss is CoSchedule. CoSchedule creates One calendar that allows everybody to be on the same page, it allows everybody to communicate in one place.

Additionally, with the more advanced plans of CoSchedule, you can organize everything from event planning through to email marketing, social media, and blogging. CoSchedule is incredible tool for large teams and complex marketing organization. One of my favorite aspects of CoSchedule is the ability to create ongoing follow-up social media links to blog posts in one or two clicks.

CoSchedule for Solopreneurs

For solopreneurs, CoSchedule is a little More expensive than other options. Solo plans do start at $0 to $20 per month, with most individuals looking at the $40 per month option – typically a spreadsheet along with one of the less expensive tools will do the trick.

Where CoSchedule really shines is with in-house marketing teams looking to manage full-scale campaigns.

The professional plan starts at $400 per month, and allows workflows approval flows multiple calendars and comes with a dedicated account manager. From a project management standpoint, this plan reduces the need for multiple individuals providing guidance on any given combination of marketing strategies.

Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software

Best Content Management Technologies of 2019, Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software, #inboundmarketing #contentmarketing

Best Content Management Technologies of 2019, Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software #inboundmarketing #contentmarketing

Best Content Management Technologies of 2019, Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software #inboundmarketing #contentmarketing

Best Content Management Technologies of 2019, Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software #inboundmarketing #contentmarketing

HubSpot for Content Marketing Management

Many of us are very familiar with HubSpot. HubSpot has a combination of three tools and complete inbound marketing management resources. HubSpot places the emphasis on collecting inbound leads from your social media and digital marketing content. Though there are numerous tools that you can use to create the same systems and processes, HubSpot’s value proposition is that everything is in one place.

HubSpot for Larger Teams

Our favorite plan within HubSpot, is again there professional plan. Though the Enterprise option has much more advanced settings such as predictive lead scoring, it is a much higher investment. With the professional plan at $800/month, you have access to SEO and content strategy, social media, calls to action and landing pages.

Additionally, there is a/b testing marketing automation, smart content, and the ability to add teams.

The workflows are easy to set up, and create very systematized automation within your marketing and strategy. This tool, HubSpot, is a great option for businesses that have a marketing team, and want to make sure that every aspect of their marketing is working together. Again, HubSpot places inbound leads at the forefront of all of their software.

Next up, is Monday.com.

Monday.com to Organize your Content

Monday allows you to customize your workflow and dealt out strategies to multiple different teams. Monday is a great project management tool, however we found it a little difficult to manage a Content strategy and editorial calendar. The use of Gandt charts seems like a great idea, but it made projects difficult to understand exactly what steps needed to be completed and if we were on track. Many of our processes tend to be one or two steps, so again it seemed like a little too much for social media management.

Monday for Project Management

With plans starting at $25 per month, and unlimited boards, Monday is a great opportunity to integrate into your workflow if you need to do more project management rather than content creation and syndication. Because there is no central calendar, it can be difficult at times to see how each of the boards really work together.

Another positive for Monday, is the time tracking capabilities, so each member of your team can have a clear understanding of the time spent on each task. This allows you to easily understand if some aspect of marketing is taking much longer than others.

Additionally, Monday.com could be used for larger marketing promotions, however, most businesses need a tool that also works for day-to-day management.

The next tool we will take a look at is Edgar.

Edgar for Content Marketing Organization

Edgar is a great option for businesses looking for a simple tool to manage their social media posting. Typically, we recommend you create a database of content. The content strategy video below, provides tips for places we recommend Gathering content ideas. Once you have all of the content, click go and Edgar will talk into action.

MeetEdgar for Small Business Social Media Management

We recommend small businesses and solopreneurs look at Edgar as an option for their social media management. One issue with this, is that it does not allow you to clearly see the complete marketing strategy picture.

Each aspect of your digital marketing content calendar and content strategy still exists in its own space. Meet Edgar is a great tool for teams to use that do not have very complex marketing promotions in place. If you are one person team it can be an excellent resource for you.

Because I mentioned meet Edgar, I also should mention that for social media management, we utilize at such as Tailwind, Later App, Buffer, and HootSuite. I won’t go into it because he’s here, because they are more for just social media management.

Our blog on Social Media Content Strategy shares additional information regarding how to use each of these tools and where they fit into your social media marketing management strategy.

Create Clear Goals for What you want to accomplish with a content marketing technology

Before settling on a tool and diving into figuring out the setup and on-boarding your team, make sure you are clear about the goals you hope to achieve through using the software. Remember, choosing a tool to help keep track of marketing campaigns and content creation still requires that you understand what topics you plan to discuss and having your team actually write the content.

We have other blogs and videos that cover how to identify key topics to include in your content marketing editorial calendar, as well as a structure to follow for creating your editorial calendar. We often recommend starting with a word doc or spreadsheet rather than immediately hoping into the software you choose. Again, this helps to make sure your team is all on the same page as you move forward with your inbound marketing strategy.

For more reading please visit:

How to easily write a business blog post in 2019
How to Easily Write a Long Blog Post for your Business
Finding Topics Your Tribe Will Love [Video]
How to Use Your Values to Create Exceptional Content for Your Business
Content at your finger tips
Hubspot vs Coschedule for content management software

KW Research - find related keywords

In this video I take a look at how you can find related keywords on Google to boost your position in search results.

Interested in learning more? Take a look at these videos:

Social Media Audit

Finding Topics Your Tribe Will Love 

Internal and External Goals

Services pages are often thrown together by businesses just because they know they need something to explain what they do. We’ve spoken with hundreds of business owners who “plan” to go back and edit their services, but got busy and just haven’t had the time. Quick, take a look at your services page(s), what do you see?

If your website is like most businesses, your services pages focus heavily on the features of what you offer.

“Each is a feature-a factual statement about the product or service being promoted. But features aren’t what entice customers to buy. That’s where benefits come in. A benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?,” meaning the feature provides the customer with something of value to them.” – Entrepreneur.com

This is the BIGGEST mistake your business can make on your services pages.

So, how should your services page be written? Rather than thinking about what you offer specifically, think about how your offerings can transform the lives of your clients. To do this, you need to change your mindset.

First, identify the individual who would benefit the most from each service you offer. Think about their pains, their successes, and how your service BENEFITS them. Think about what other services this individual could sign up for rather than working with you. What makes you different.

Second, try to transform the features of your service into benefits. Rather than answering what you are providing, go through the list of everything your service includes, and turn it into a benefit.

Lastly, create a story around your service. Explain what the ideal customer is going through and how you can solve their pains. Try to follow the structure below:

Structure for your Services Pages

Rather than simply listing the features of your services, the goal is to think in terms of the benefits and create an emotional response. Take a look at the answers you just wrote down – is there a way to turn this into a story?

Use Storytelling Copy:

  • Opening
    • Highlight the Pain
  • Conflict
    • The journey as the user tackles the pain
  • Dialogue
  • Solution
    • Share specific results
    • Utilize case studies

Goal: Highlight the benefits & be conversational

Are you Making this Services Page Mistake

I put together the following questions to help you with your Services pages rewrite!

Your services pages should be written in such a way that they speak directly to your target market and show them why they can’t live without working with you.

Instructions: For each service you offer, answer the following:

Who is the ideal client for the service? In other words, what kind of person is the service designed for? Go beyond the easy answer such as defining a market. Instead, look to be as narrow as you can. There may be a slightly different persona for each service.

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What is the real value of the service to the client? This one is always hard to quantify. Try to think of this as a benefit beyond the obvious. What can individuals do in their life that they weren’t able to do before? Is there an emotional benefit?

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

What is unique or different about your services vs. your competitors’ offering? These differences could be process related, team expertise related, time to completion related, etc. It’s easy for someone to provide a generic answer such as “we’re more experienced,” so you will have to ask follow-up questions. How are we more experienced? Can we tangibly show how we’re more experienced?

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

What is the cost of NOT having the signing up for your services?  This is a little more of the fear factor. What can go wrong for a client who doesn’t implement it? What do they risk if they forgo using you?

 

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How is the service delivered? This is a simple process question. What can your clients expect when they work with you with this service?

 

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Do clients typically have other services from you when they come in for this specific service?

 

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This interview with Joe, the owner of Pebble+Oak, discusses the importance of speaking to your audience in both blog posts and on your website. We don’t expect our in-house team to be able to write coherently on every topic nor get the voice of all of our clients, so we rely on other writers to step up and fill in the void. Joe at Pebble+Oak is one of our go to copywriters who’s able to understand the vision of a business and articulate the unique selling points and their competitive advantage of their service.

interview with pebble and oak

BIMS: So Joe, how did you get into the biz?

Joe: I have always had a passion for writing, and after spending 10 years and the technology sector I saw the opportunity to begin working with clients to discover their own voice in an online world.

BIMS: When you write for your clients how do you ensure that you are capturing their voice not your own?

Joe: At the end of the day, writing is simply telling a story. Before I put anything down on paper for a client, I spend some time getting to know them, their company, who they’re trying to serve, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. I find that these conversations are incredibly insightful in terms of identifying and interpreting their voice and their message.

BIMS: How important do you feel it is for business owners to concentrate on SEO in the blogs and articles that they are writing?

Joe: Is SEO important? Yes. But, I found when business owners and writers concentrate too much on specific keywords, the message they are trying to convey gets lost. When this happens the connection with prospects and customers suffers.

I recommend coming up with a topic and outlining your article, then writing it without necessarily thinking about the keywords. If you need to, you can always add these in afterwards to make it a little more clear for search engines. Often, however, just the process of creating an outline for your article will innately highlight your intended topics.

BIMS: If we aren’t necessarily focusing on keywords in articles, what can we do to make sure that we are getting a big bang for our buck when we are writing blog posts?

Joe: There are a few tips that I highly recommend. First, make sure you or your IT person correctly knows how to load a blog or article onto a website. This means utilizing header tags and adding alt tags to your images. It’s great if you can break up the long content utilizing bullet points or numbers! Within your blog post don’t hesitate to add links to other blogs on similar topics or pages on your website that relate to the blog post itself.

Second, always make sure that you are sharing your article to external sources. My favorites are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, digg, delicious, StumbleUpon, and reddit. (In other words, the Internet….)

And third, I always recommend finding external websites to write articles for rather than just your own site. Common examples include LinkedIn articles and Medium.com. Often, however, online publications and niche trade journals have the option for experts to contribute articles and content, as well. Contributing articles to these sources not only increases your reach beyond your current network, but it also helps to position you as an expert in the field. Above all, these articles create backlinks to your website!

BIMS: I know you are very busy, so thank you for your time! I’m sure you will be back for more interviews in the future. Before we sign off, do you have any closing remarks that could benefit new and old businesses alike?

Joe: There are a lot of buzzwords and “Flavors of the Week” when it comes to marketing your business online. It is easy to get lost in the noise and think “I should be doing that!” While many of these new ideas have merit, don’t lose sight of your values and your brand. Trends will come and go, but the companies who are consistent with who they are the ones that last.

60 blogs in 60 days challenge

What is the goal of your website?

Is it to work as a brochure for your business, to tell the story of your brand, and to ultimately help sell your services? Now stop to think for a moment. When you wrote your services page, did you think about your company (and personal) values or did you just start listing off what you offer?

So often when we are reworking websites for clients, we see their services pages simply stating what they can do. These pages get lost in the shuffle of competitors’ websites and don’t leave a lasting impression of the benefits of working with you, only the features.

Definitions.

Features vs Benefits: What is it vs what is it for ME.
  • Features are defined as surface statements about your product, such as what it can do, its dimensions and specs and so on.
  • Benefits, by definition, show the end result of what a product can actually accomplish for the reader.

If you aren’t listing all of the features, what should you do?

Rather than starting the writing process with the service in mind, start with your customer. Paint a picture and be as specific as possible. What are their fears? What problems do they face in everyday life? Actually write down their narrative and start telling their story. Through your writing, show this individual that you understand what they are struggling to accomplish and try to make an emotional connection with them.

Validate how they feel and ask how they would envision their life or business if this stress was taken off the table. Take the time to write out how their life could change if they were no longer held back by their fears. Again, focus on the emotional aspects of the journey.

Now, how do your services help to solve these issues and what is your process? How is working with you different from working with your competition? What is the cost of staying in the now versus signing up for your services?

At the end of the page, add a call to action to entice your reader to take the next step.

Take a look at what you’ve written. Have you listed off the features or are you actually telling a story that your prospects will relate to? The process of forming your services pages as a story can help you attract the people with whom you want to work rather than just anyone who could benefit from the services. It is a way of showing your values and the value you bring to your clients while at the same time coming across as your authentic self.

Give this exercise a try and let me know what a difference it makes in your business!

What is the goal of your website? Is it to work as a brochure for your business, to tell the story of your brand, and to ultimately help sell your services? Now stop to think for a moment. When you wrote your services page, did you think about your company (and personal) values or did you just start listing off what you offer? So often when we are reworking websites for clients, we see their services pages simply stating what they can do. These pages get lost in the shuffle of competitors' websites and don't leave a lasting impression of the benefits of working with you, only the features.

You wrote a blog… now what?

We often are asked, “I wrote an article, what happens now?” This checklist provides an overview of the steps to publish your blog or article and how to share it as part of your digital marketing content strategy.

Prepare for Publishing

  • Write an effective post title that includes keywords and is persuasive
  • Divide text into smaller sections with headings
  • Deep link to past posts
  • Add a question at the end to encourage discussion
  • Add on-brand, SEO-ready images
  • Add “alt text” to your images, which will be used as your Pinterest pin description
  • Add a featured image (on WordPress)
  • Make sure your blog contains keywords and header tags

Share your Blog

  • Pin your post image onto Pinterest
  • Schedule it to be pinned to any Pinterest group boards that are relevant
  • Share your post on Facebook and Twitter
  • Create a LinkedIn Group Discussion from your Blog Post
  • Post your blog to your LinkedIn Company Page and Personal Profile
  • Schedule your post for Twitter 3-5 more times over next few days and weeks
  • Share an excerpt from your article to Medium.com
  • Respond to comments
  • Check the analytics of your post to see how much engagement it received. The worksheets in our Blogging eBook offer one place to store this information.
  • In 1-2 months, repin your post onto Pinterest and re-share on other social media channels

We often are asked, “I wrote an article, what happens now?” This checklist provides an overview of the steps to publish your blog or article and how to share it as part of your digital marketing content strategy.