Blogging is an excellent marketing strategy to help your business grow and bring in new leads. If you have a website, then you already have somewhere to place your blog. You just need to figure out how to add it and start creating content to post. As a dentist, you might be wondering whether a blog is even appropriate for your industry. I recommend checking out one of our other blogs, which highlights 15 statistics that prove your business needs to be blogging. One of the most compelling is the fact that businesses that blog “have 55% more site visits than those who don’t.”
Blogs help build up your site’s reputation and size, which will bring in more and more visitors as time goes by. By just setting aside a few hours per week to write a blog and post it, you could dramatically increase your website traffic. The problem that many business owners face is that they don’t see themselves as writers. Dentists, especially, might be hesitant because writing is so different from medicine. However, I think everyone has the ability to create a successful blog, regardless of their industry. Here are some tips to help you think of blog topics for a dental practice.
Draw inspiration from frequently asked questions
This is the easiest technique and can yield excellent content and blog articles. Think of the questions that your patients ask you every day or questions you hear over and over again. For dentists, this might be something like, “how often should I floss?” or “Is mouthwash necessary?” Both of those questions can translate directly into a helpful, education blog article. You went through plenty of schooling and have years (maybe decades) of experience, so use that to give credibility and expertise to your articles.
Don’t worry too much about writing style. As opposed to news articles or academic papers, people like reading blogs because of their informal tone. You are writing to your patients or potential patients, so you want to write in a way that connects with them. You shouldn’t overwhelm them with technical vocabulary and excessive medical terminology.
Find your patient’s pain points
If you can figure out the everyday struggles or problems of your patients, you will have even more ideas for great blog topics. A pain point can be defined as “an area of unpleasantness that one is likely to strenuously avoid or, if need be, try to fix” (Source). As a dentist, if you can address common dental related pain points in blog articles, visitors might be more inclined to make an appointment with you or find your website more easily.
An easy way to find pain points is to simply ask your current patients. If you find a common answer, it is likely that even more people (who might not visit a dentist) are suffering from the same problem. Several of your patients might say that they struggle with teeth sensitivity on a daily basis. Going off this, you could write a blog about remedies for tooth sensitivity, one about tips to keep your teeth strong, and one about treatment options to cure teeth sensitivity. As you can see, that one topic could lead to at least those three articles and probably even more.
Search on Google
Don’t discount Google or other search engines in this process. Look up your closest competitors and see if they have blogs. Don’t copy their articles, but see if you could improve on any of their topics or do a better job. Search dental forums or question forums to see what people are asking. If you see tons of posts by people looking for ways to fix their yellowing teeth, you know that is a hot topic. If you see a lot of misinformation being spread, you can use your blog to highlight this as well.
If you don’t want to sign up for Google’s Keyword Planner (helps you find keyword ideas that people are searching for), then you can also use Keyword Tool, which gives you suggestions for keywords. For example, entering “best toothbrush” into the keyword tool yields 288 unique keyword suggestions, such as “best toothbrush for babies” and “best toothbrush for gum disease”, and also 28 questions like “are soft toothbrushes best?” and “what’s the best toothbrush to use with braces?” Using tools like this are helpful ways to come up with many different topics for your blog.
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