Originally published September 7, 2022 , updated on January 13, 2023

Medical practices face many challenges today. They must pull out all the stops to stay relevant in the industry and keep up with healthcare trends. One way to do this is to create engaging, informative, and conversational content as part of the practice’s marketing strategy to attract new patients.

For this to be possible, they must have the right tools for the job: content writers, graphic designers, SEO experts, and social media managers.

The problem is that most medical practices have healthcare professionals as staff members, not content marketers. For smaller practices, having a full-time marketing team on board is not always practical. It adds to the payroll and administrative load and drives up costs.

Even for a larger practice like a clinic, employing a full-time SEO, marketing, and writing team creates a significant payroll burden. The solution is to find an external company that offers healthcare content writing and SEO optimisation services.

Medical Outreach Marketing Strategies for Marketing Your Practice

Doctors are often the best people to promote their own practice. They’re the ones who know what it takes to do a good job and how to find more clients. But most doctors don’t have enough time for marketing, or they don’t know how to market themselves.

That is where medical outreach marketing comes in. It entails reaching out to potential patients and promoting a medical practice through various channels like social media, newsletters, email marketing, etc.

There are many ways doctors and therapists can use this strategy in their medical practice. For instance, you can send out a simple email newsletter with an offer of a free consultation. Or, you can hire an agency that will write articles for you. The agency will target the right keywords, which will give your website better rankings on Google search results pages.

How Healthcare Writers Can Help You Save Time and Money on Your Marketing Tasks

Health content writers are a valuable asset to any medical practice. They can take on the responsibility of creating posts for a doctor’s blog while also focusing on other tasks, such as social media posts, website articles, and email campaigns.

Instead of taking time off from your busy schedule to brief an in-house team to write articles and create white papers or eBooks, you can outsource these tasks to an agency that offers healthcare content writing services.

Health and wellness content writers would, for instance, produce articles and social media posts that answer frequently asked questions and provide general guidelines.

If you have a dental practice, for example, they’ll write articles to answer questions on:

• How to schedule an appointment.
• Different procedures.
• Symptoms of gum disease.
• Causes of gum disease and tooth decay.
• Best oral hygiene practices.
• What is a crown, and what procedures are involved?
• Different types of dentures.
• Why consider teeth whitening?
• What to expect during a dental check-up.
• How often should you visit the dentist?
• Different types of fillings.
• Root canal procedures.
• When is a bridge necessary?
• What to avoid with dentures.
• Foods that cause plaque build-up.
• Teeth whitening options.
• What are implants?
• Are implants safe?

These are only a few examples of what people look for when they search for dental-related information.

General Practice

If you operate a general medical practice, the health and wellness content writers can create posts to answer questions related to:

• Symptoms for particular conditions.
• How to choose a medical practitioner.
• Blood pressure.
• Chronic conditions.
• Virtual consultations.
• Medical screenings.
• Vaccinations.
• Healthy eating.
• When to visit the GP and when to go to an ER.
• FAQ about in-person consultations.
• What’s the difference between walk-in urgent care and emergency care?

The same applies to specialist practices, medical clinics, or a hospital. Providing the information people need to make informed decisions gives the readers confidence in your ability to help them. It helps you build credibility while increasing your website’s visibility in the search engines.

Best Practices From Health Content Writing Services Ensure Optimal Visibility

Medical article production is not an easy task. It requires a lot of research and understanding of the subject matter. And it’s one of the most important aspects of medical communication.

Health and wellness content writers create medical copy that is accurate, factual, readable, and engaging. They answer questions. It’s essential as most people use the internet first to find information about a medical condition before they visit a medical practitioner.

In fact, a 2019 study by eligibility.com showed that 89% of people use the internet to find health-related information before they visit their health practitioner. Another study showed that, in 2017, 72% of consumers used the internet to find healthcare information. 

According to Becker’s Health IT, 74% of the searches are for information related to symptoms, while 82% of searches are for information about prescribed medicines. At least 50% of consumers use the internet to find a new medical practitioner. Research on the diagnosis of a particular condition tops the searches at 87%.

Relevant information that answers the intended searches helps your medical practice website to show up in the search engine results and to build credibility with your target audience. Articles and blog posts make it easier to get to the top ten search results and to maintain the position while giving essential information to your website users.

Why Well-Written and Original Content Is Important

Prospective patients receive thousands of emails in a year. They’re bombarded with television and radio ads, print media ads, and newsletters. When it comes to making healthcare choices, they don’t want to see more marketing messages. Instead, they want you to address their pain points directly.

Well-written articles help your website, email newsletters, and guides stand out. By keeping prospective patients informed, you show their interests come first.

Apart from articles on topics ranging from healthy lifestyles and what to expect from a virtual consultation, they want to know operating hours, costs, benefits, types of services they can expect, and more. The health and wellness content writers can answer those questions.

By the time prospective patients are ready to visit a medical practitioner, they’ll come to you because they trust you.

Healthcare Content Writing Holds Several Benefits for Your Practice

Regularly updating your website, either with blog posts or by updating your service pages, ensures your target audience will more easily find your medical practice’s website.  

Here’s why you’ll want health and wellness content writers to create valuable information pieces as soon as possible:

• Quality posts generate interest in your website.
• People look for tips and guidelines that they can share with friends. Your infographics and informative blog posts create ideal sharing opportunities.
• More shares mean more people notice your medical practice.
• Websites that link to your blog posts drive traffic and signal to Google that you’re an industry expert.
• Google loves industry experts and shows it by rewarding your site with a higher ranking in organic search results.
• Quality articles attract visits for years to come.
• You can also repurpose blog posts to become slides, infographics, podcasts, and downloadable guides.
• A re-purposed blog post is well-suited for posting to social media or to use in email newsletters.
• Quality, informative content drives traffic, educates your website visitors, and turns prospective patients into supporters of your practice.

Why Include a Blog?

A blog offers you the opportunity to create topic hubs to make navigation easier for both search engines and users. Instead of going with a traditional blog roll with the latest article at the top, you have categories. This enables users to find the information they want faster and navigate from one page to another to get comprehensive information.

Content writing services include a blog because studies and statistics show that:

• At least 77% of internet users read blogs regularly.
• Websites with blogs have a 434% higher chance of getting a good ranking in search results.
• Blog posts have a 3.5 times higher share rate by email newsletter subscribers.

Blog post lengths differ according to the topic focus and optimisation strategy. A health and wellness writer can produce a short piece to introduce a medical procedure, and this can be linked to your medical practice services page.

The writer can also link it to a long-form blog post of 2000 words, discussing the symptoms, medication, diagnosis, and treatment options. Images, a short video, or a downloadable eBook on the topic can further enrich the content offering.

Best Practices for Medical Content Provision

The information you share on your website provides details about your services, expertise, and customer service. How you present the information and what you write about will influence their perspective of your medical practice. Trustworthy healthcare content writing meets the following requirements:

Data-Driven With Research to Support the Information Claims

Superficial information and vagueness have no place in medical articles. The best articles contain well-researched information, accurate statistics, and reference to credible sources.

Interesting Presentation and Tone

Prospective patients are people, not robots. With this in mind, the best articles break down complex concepts in easy-to-understand language. The tone is conversational, engaging and inviting.

Original With a Fresh Perspective

The internet is full of articles that repeat the same information. Prospective patients want information that’s unique and addresses their individual health concerns. They don’t want repeats.

How Content Writing Services Help Your Practice Attract New Patients

Whether you have an optometry, physiotherapy, dentistry, or general healthcare practice, content helps to make it visible in the search results. This is important because people use the internet to find information. For instance, a person can perform a search on cold and flu symptoms, and one of the blog posts on your website can come up for the keywords.

The healthcare content writing agency performs keyword research related to your medical practice. Their team also researches topic ideas and search trends.

Following best practices to meet search engine algorithm requirements, they write articles to meet the information needs of your target audience.

Their health and wellness content writers perform in-depth topic research. This is to ensure the information is relevant and written in a tone and style that your audience understands and prefers. Articles and posts are:

• Interesting and free of jargon.
• Keyword optimised to ensure visibility in organic search results.
• Aligned with Google algorithm requirements for readability, quality, and originality.
• Focused on your target audience.
• Accurate and up to date.

The writers target your patient base. For instance, if you operate a family medical practice, articles about screenings, childhood diseases, healthy lifestyles, vaccination, blood pressure management, common ailments, etc., will be highly relevant.

Specialist health writers spend an average of four to six hours creating a well-researched, SEO-optimised blog post of 2000 words. This goes to show just how much time you can save by outsourcing blog creation to a healthcare content writing service agency.

The editing, publishing, and website integration processes also take considerable time. Once published, the team monitors the performance of the piece and traffic to your website. While they are doing this, you can stay focused on patient care and managing your medical practice.

How to Choose a Health Content Writing Agency

Health and wellness writing is a specialised field. Your patients rely on you for accurate information. You’ll want to partner with a company that offers you experienced health and wellness writers, able to write articles about complex issues.

The writers must be skilled in search engine optimisation (SEO) practices and familiar with medical terms. They also need online marketing skills. Finally, they must be able to conduct thorough research.

In addition, the company must have a full portfolio of marketers, designers, editors, content strategists, and project coordinators for design, publishing, marketing, and client relations.

Choosing a generalist marketing agency is fine for standard digital marketing. But for your medical practice, you’ll want an agency that can offer you industry-specific services. To this end, your best option is to invest in the services, experience, and track record of Goodman Lantern.

We know how important it is to create medically relevant copy that is aligned with your target audience’s needs.

Our health and wellness content writers follow best practices to produce accurate, well-researched and engaging articles. These articles drive traffic, inform your readers and build your credibility.

Connect with us for healthcare content writing services to get your medical practice noticed.

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