Tips on the Best Ways to Promote Your Blog for Your Practice so People Think You’re Everywhere!
Imagine having someone who is interested in your product or service seeing your message everywhere they go on the web… how do you think that would impact your practice?
This is where content marketing can come in handy for physicians who like to blog about what matters most to their potential patients.
By writing just 1 blog per week and following my proven yet simple steps for promoting your blog, you’ll be able to get your message to the masses with minimal time & effort (even if you’re not a marketer)!
Bonus Tip 1: The most common question I get about blogging is “How Do I Come Up With Weekly Topics?“. My suggestion is to write down 10 of your most frequently asked questions. Then create 10 of the questions people should be asking you. That gives you 20 topics right there. By this time, coming up with additional information should be simple. But if you really need help, sign up to ‘Google Alerts‘ to have articles & news related to your business emailed to you on a daily or weekly basis. Then, write about any of those events of interest.
Step 1: Create Blog Content
The first thing you want to do when creating a blog is determine what your keyword / keyword phrase is going to be so you can have a focus for the subject matter. Also, as an added bonus, it may give you some SEO help for the future.
This blog, for example, has the keyword phrase “promoting your blog” in it. Therefore, in my blog, I’ll have that phrase in the title, in the url, at the top of the blog, in an h2 title, in an h3 title (hint: I use the summary) and as an alt tag for my image. The key is using the phrase organically throughout, not deliberately over-stuffing your page with the phrase. In this blog, for instance, I have 7 ‘H‘ codes but only use the keyword phrase in 2 of them.
The most difficult part of this blog for most non-marketers who want to create on is typically going to be coming up with a picture. For best results, use an actual photo you take of something that occurs in your office. If that doesn’t work, do what I do and use a stock image. Then, personalize the stock image. In this blog’s example, I purchased an image (don’t steal someone else’s stuff from Google) from Deposit Photos and simply added a little verbiage and my logo.
Bonus Tip 2: After you create your photo and you’re going to save it in your computer, save the photo as your keyword phrase. Then, when you upload the photo to your blog, optimize the image by using the keyword phrase as your alt-tag and writing a brief description about it. This type of keyword optimization is great because you can use a keyword multiple times without ruining the user experience or risking a slap by the search engines.
Step 2: Create Video for Blog
In step 1 above, you’ve created a textual representation of your thoughts with your blog. Now, it’s time to put those words into action with a video.
No, come back! Really, the video process isn’t that difficult. In fact, you don’t have to get in front of a camera, memorize lines, or create new copy. You can simply create a PowerPoint (or Keynote) presentation with bullet points and screen record yourself doing it.
Tools:
- PowerPoint / Keynote
- Microphone
- Screen Capturing Software (I recommend TechSmith’s Snagit as this tool is only $49), but I am told there are extensions in chrome that will let you do this for free.
Below is a copy of my video. It’s just a simple screen recording of a PowerPoint presentation of this blog with me doing a voice over. It takes about 15 minutes to create and 5-10 minutes to shoot.
Bonus Tip 3: As with the image, when you create the video and save it, use the keyword phrase as the title of the video.
Step 3: Upload Video to YouTube
After you’ve created your video, then upload to video the your YouTube account. Use the keyword phrase in the title and in the first line of your description. After the 1st line of your description, then place a link back to this blog.
Under keywords, add 7-12 keywords and keyword phrases that are related to your content that people may use to search. If you’re stumped on how to do this, go into Google, type in your keyword phrase, scroll to the bottom, and use some of the ‘similar search phrases’ at the bottom of the page.
For example, for this blog, I used the following keyword phrases by using the above method for my YouTube posting: promoting your blog, promote a blog, how to promote a blog, ways to promote your blog, promote your blog tips, how to promote your blog for free, tips for promoting your blog.
Bonus Tip 4:In YouTube, you have the option of uploading a custom thumbnail image. I highly recommend doing this using the exact same image created for this blog. Remember, in the 1st step, I recommended using 1200 x 728 because those are the dimensions that work best with most social media sites, including YouTube!
Once uploaded and completed, then come back to your blog and embed your video into your blog. This will not only help with SEO (backlinking) but will also allow people, who don’t like reading text, to watch a video instead!
Step 4: Upload Power Point to Slideshare
Now that you have already created your PowerPoint / Keynote presentation, why not promote that as well?
Slideshare, owned by LinkedIn, is the best way to promote that. It is a PowerPoint / PDF sharing site that has about 159 million viewers each month.
You can create an account here by using your LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter account. Then simply upload your presentation, optimize with keywords, link back to your blog, and you’re set!
You presentation will now be up for people to see and you get a nice SEO backlink from a credible site.
Here’s what a SlideShare looks like:
Step 5: Create Post in Social Networks for Blog
Now that your blog is created with images and a video, you are ready to promote it to the masses. The most common sites for blogging promotion are:
Pretty much every post is good for Facebook and Twitter, but you’ll have to determine whether or not it makes sense for you to post on Pinterest or LinkedIn. Even if it’s not going to get much engagement, it’s still a good idea to post anyways just to get the backlink.
Bonus Tip 5: To this point, we haven’t spent any money on anything (other than possibly purchasing software for video edits or stock images). However, with all the changes that in Facebook’s algorithm regarding its poor Fan Page reach, it may be a good idea to pay $5 to boost the post on your Fan Page so people can see it.
Step 6: Creating a Podcast for Your Blog
To this point, you’ve got the blog in text form, in .pdf form on slideshare, and in video form. Now, let’s strip out that audio from the video and create a podcast!
It’s really just that simple. Once your video exists, use software to extract that audio (I recommend a free software called VideoLan) in an .mp3 format and upload to your favorite podcast channel.
A good free podcast site is Buzzsprout.
Step 7: Upload & Promote Video on Social Networks
Everything to this point can be taken care of on Monday. For Step 6, wait until Wed or Thurs to promote your Video on social media.
- For Facebook and LinkedIn, I recommend uploading the video directly to the social platform and adding in a backlink to the blog itself.
- For Twitter and Pinterest, I recommend promoting the YouTube video link itself rather than the blog.
It gives you another chance to promote your content but in video format rather than text.
Summary for Promoting a Blog
In total, creating the blog, putting together the power point, creating the image, and promoting should all take 2-3 hours a week. If you get in the habit of doing this one morning a week (I do mine on Sunday mornings) and keep doing this consistently, you have an extremely effective way of promoting your blog so people will think that your content is everywhere!
