News
Make the most of blogging:
For clinics and practitioners
By Jacqueline Howard, Zadro
Are you ready to dip your feet into online marketing? Do you need your voice to be heard in an evolving digital landscape? Then a blog might be for you! No longer seen as a chronicle of personal promotion and endeavours, blogs have evolved to become so much more, they are now a sophisticated tool in your marketing mix and highly important for website search engine ranking. A fantastic place to start your online marketing, a blog can express your objectives, voice and key messages as a practitioner or business owner via a free and easy to use channel.
Here are 7 reasons blogging is good for your business
- Simplicity – Blogs are easy to implement and to use. Systems like WordPress are not only simple to set up and manage, but they provide a great range of flexibility and are highly customisable too
- Control – Once you have a blog you can control the message, tone of voice, and the content and promote your business how you like
- Availability – Even when your business is closed, potential and current customers can access your blog to learn more about your company
- Content – Blogs provide great content for you to share on your other marketing channels, for example social media and e-newsletters
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Blogging is the ideal arena to publish content and ensure your website is continually being updated. Each time you write a blog post, that counts as another indexed page on your website and another opportunity for you to drive traffic or appear in search engines
- Versatility – A blog can become a home for more than just written content, hosting case studies, videos, images and infographics
- Leadership – Blogging about industry insights and news will establish you and your company as a formidable thought leader
What should my blog look like?
Every blog is different, just like every practice, but there are some fairly universal guidelines that you should keep in mind to ensure your content is readable. A blog should:
- Be snappy. People tend to scan web content, so ensure the copy is concise and every word counts. A blog post should be approximately 400 – 800 words (with some leeway on either side). If your post is longer than this, think about serialising it. Then you can get months’ worth of content from one idea
- Have a short and catchy title. Stick to this point in the content you have in your blog. Titles like 5 things that you need to know about blogging work well or statements like What you didn’t know about blogging. Consider that the title may be used across a number of marketing channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and email marketing
- Be professionally written, concise, unique and free of all errors. This includes sentence structure errors, grammar errors, and punctuation errors
- Include an introduction and a conclusion. The blog’s first paragraph (introduction) should quickly summarise what you will talk about in the content and entice the audience to continue reading
- Be educational, informative, research-based or news related. Think about your aim before writing as this will help guide the flow of the content
- Consider your audience. Think about what you want your reader to gain from reading your blog
- Be regular but consistent when publishing. The frequency of posting to your blog is devised based on how often you are able to craft good and valuable content. You’re better off posting something of high quality once a fortnight, than something poorly written and that doesn’t add value for your readers constantly
Jacqueline Howard is a Senior Account Coordinator at Zadro, a strategic integrated communications agency in Sydney specialising in Association and Not-for-Profit marketing & PR