
As healthcare providers, we provide value to our patients all the time. Every time we make a diagnosis and a treatment plan, we provide tremendous value to our "consumers" and to our community.
Providing value on the Internet, however, seems to be less obvious to us. Perhaps it's because we do not really understand what's valuable.
Here's why value is integral to any marketing strategy and some very easy ways to gauge if our content has value. Providing value is very easy of all the other industries on the Internet. As healthcare providers, we are naturally the de facto authorities.
Why Value?
There are many reasons why we need to be creating value with our digital marketing. Here are just 3 reasons why:
- Build Trust - the only way a patient is going to call and make an appointment is after you have become trusted. Every time a new patients says "I've done my research," they are saying they've vetted you and trust you. No one makes an appointment solely because your website was at the top of a Google search. You have to be on the top and then also develop trust.
- Engage - valuable articles/content are interesting to the reader. Ergo, your content makes your article/website/SM platform more engaging. Engaging platforms encourage additional reading/learning and build trust very quickly.
- SEO - content which is shareable (links back to your site) give a quick boost to SEO.
5 Easy Questions to Ask
Here's a quick list of questions you might ask about your content.
- Does it educate? This is really easy. Educational content is easy for health providers to create. We educate all day and to every patient. Using some of these well rehearsed and frequent topics easily provides value to our readers.
- Is it shareable? Would one of your readers consider sharing your content with someone else? Might they tweet or post on their own page? Shareable means valuable.
- Can it be fact checked? Most of this is easy for healthcare. Everything we do is based on fact (evidence based medicine) and, therefore, can be easily fact checked. As subject matter experts (authorities), we provide tremendous value to our prospective patients.
- Is this interesting? Your content may not be interesting to everyone, but it will sure appeal to those interested in that particular subject. As long as your article/content is interesting to a percentage of your patient population, it's interesting.
- Does it solve a problem or answer a question? If your content directly answers a question someone is "Googling," then it's relevant and of value.
You must answer "yes" to only one of these questions. It's easy...and valuable.
Thanks for following and reading. You may also:
A. Follow us on "RussandRandy" on iTunes (our podcast on medical and healthcare Internet marketing) featured on Libsyn, Stitcher, iTunes, ReachMD.com and others.
B. Visit RussandRandy.com - the website associated with the podcast.
C. Be on the lookout for upcoming webinars (New!!!).
To Your Success,
Randy