Creating a Content Strategy for Your Orthodontic Practice

Using content to draw in more traffic to your orthodontic practice is one of the essential ways you should be marketing your business. However, simply posting content isn’t enough to get the results you are looking for. Before you start posting online content as part of your marketing, you will want to come up with a solid strategy. Using intentional strategic methods for posting your content can be the difference between wasting your money and seeing a desirable ROI.

Determine the Types of Content You Will Post

As an orthodontic practice, there are several types of content that will resonate well with your audience. Blogs are always a good type of content to post. When you post informative, well-written blogs, your audience develops trust in you and the quality of your practice. By offering free value to your audience, you gain credibility while also creating positive experiences that will draw people back to your website. Plus, using good SEO techniques will help users find your website when they search for relevant topics.

Another great form of content that works for multiple types of industries, but that is especially well-suited for orthodontic practices, is case studies. (Note: If you’re going to showcase the success of your treatment on a patient, you will need to get a consent form due to HIPPA laws.) Using this form of content is a perfect way to demonstrate to your audience that your practice benefits patients. Of course, you will also want to use social media, both to post interactive content and to promote existing content on your website and blog. Other great forms of content to consider using include infographics, podcasts, and memes. Yes, you can use memes as an orthodontic practice every once and a while, just be sure the humor you use is appropriate.

Focus on Quality Content

While it’s true that you want to post content frequently and on multiple platforms, simply churning out as much content as possible for the sake of frequency will result in your content seeming more like spam than something your audience should actually stop and look at. Brainstorm some ideas in advance so you are prepared with quality content topics.

Your topics should be relevant to your practice, be trending online, and also have some originality to them. Google Analytics can be a useful tool to see how people are engaging with your posts, giving you clues as to what topics are a hit, and which ones are not. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are also good places to look for trending topics, along with websites like Quora.

Be sure your content is engaging, polished, and well-presented. Each post should be seen by multiple sets of eyes before getting the green light. You also want to avoid cookie cutter content, both to perform well on Google searches and to stand out from your competitors. If you’re having a hard time finding a topic that hasn’t been covered, try giving that topic a new perspective to keep the content unique to you.

Establish a Frequency Strategy

While you don’t want your website to become stagnant, you also don’t want to post so much content that your audience can’t keep up or you compromise its quality. For example, aiming for about two blogs per week is a good place to start. Social media platforms are probably the only mediums where posting every day makes some sense, although you should only post as much on social media as you can practically keep up with when it comes to responding to comments.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to the frequency of your posts, but when you find the right balance for you, stick to it. CoSchedule is a very helpful tool that makes it easy to plan out your content in an easy to understand visual format. When it comes to reposting content on social media, as well as scheduling social media posts in general, Hootsuite and Buffer are a couple great resources to use.

Remember, your orthodontic business is your own, so your effective content strategy will also be unique to you. After going through some trial and error, you will find the content strategy that gets those new patients into your office.