26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

K is for Keywords

If you want your website to rank higher in Google you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords. Keyword research is vital because identifying the terms people are searching for will determine the kind of content you create and the way you will optimize it.

I frequently come across clients who use one set of words when describing their services, while their target audience uses a completely different set of words. As a result, your audience doesn’t discover your website, because of a mismatch in search terms. Good keyword research makes sure that you use the same words as your target audience.

The Google Keyword Planner within Adwords is a useful tool to find ideas for content based on keyword search. This is a free Google tool that gives you insight into the volume of monthly searches for a particular keyword, and how much competition there is, based on advertising spend for sponsored links. It also returns suggested terms you could use instead of or alongside your original keyword.

You will need to sign up for an Adwords account with a Gmail account but you don’t have to add any credit card details or create any ads to use the tool.

Pro Tip! Use Google Related Searches

Google displays related search results at the bottom of the first page when you type in your Google search query. This is a super-helpful resource as it returns ideas that are relevant to your topic based on user interest and contextual words.

Need some help with keyword optimization?

If you’d like more help with keyword optimization for your website, I’m running a special promotion this month for my email subscribers. You’ll find more details here.

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

J is for JPEG

JPEG is Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, a standard for compressed pictures, widely used on the web. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. The most common filename extensions for files employing JPEG compression are .jpg and .jpeg.

You should always use images to accompany your social media posts and the content you create.  When at all possible, its better to use original images – those you have taken yourself – than stock photo images. If you can’t do this, use one of these recommended photo sites to source your images.

Once you have found the right image,  the next step is to optimize it for use on your website or blog. Using a JPEG file extension for larger photos will give you good results with a relatively small file size.

If you need to reduce the size of your image, use a tool like  JPEGmini, or jpeg.io. Images can have a big impact on loading times – the faster the site, the easier it is to visit and index a page. 

Lastly, be sure to add a caption and alt-text to describe what’s in the image so both search engines and people can make sense of it.

Dive deeper into the topic of optimizing images for search engines with this Yoast post.  

 

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

I is for Instagram

Instagram is on the rise, and will no doubt play a bigger part in healthcare communicators’ social media strategies over the course of this year.

With Facebook reach on the ever-steady decline, and Instagram’s active audience now rising above a billion per month, it makes sense to add the image-sharing platform to your social media mix.

Why use Instagram for healthcare marketing?

Instagram (IG) enables healthcare providers the opportunity to connect in an immediate way with their patients. It is particularly good for community outreach activities and patient education.  Healthcare providers can also use IG to show users a behind-the-scenes view of their practice.

Here’s how board-certified plastic surgeon, Jonathan Kaplan MD describes his approach to using IG in his practice.

By watching us in our “natural habitat,” the prospective patients feel like they know us. We seem more approachable. By the time they show up, there’s more rapport between us vs patients unengaged with us on social media.

Dermatologists, cosmetic dentists, and plastic surgeons can benefit from Instagram by using photos or video to illustrate their services. Practices can showcase before and after photos of patients, as well as videos or illustrations that educate patients on procedures and treatments.

How to get started with Instagram

To get started with Instagram, set up a business profile (or convert your current Instagram profile) to a business Instagram profile.  If you aren’t sure if you are using a business Instagram account, it’s easy to find out. Go to your account and next to “Edit Profile” check to see if you can see the “Promote” button which will tell you if you are using  Instagram for business.)

When you create a business account on Instagram, you’ll be able to get insights about your stories, posts, and followers. With an Instagram business profile, you can see real-time metrics on how your stories and promoted posts perform, and get insights into how followers are interacting with your content.

Next, choose an Instagram username – pick a name that clearly identifies you, your practice, and/or your specialty.

Complete all of your practice information and don’t forget to include a link to your website in your bio so prospective patients can go directly to your site. Aside from your business name, username, and website URL, your Instagram profile provides 150 characters for writing a bio. According to Hootsuite, “your bio is an opportunity to make a first impression, to articulate what your business offers and why people should care. Your bio should explain who you are and what you do while conveying your brand’s identity.”

Your bio is an opportunity to make a first impression, to articulate what your business offers and why people should care. Your bio should explain who you are and what you do while conveying your brand’s identity.

Adding a profile image that’s high quality and reflects your business is a must. Be sure that your IG is aligned with your website and other social media channels in terms of branding and imagery.

Looking for some inspiration?

Take a look at how these healthcare providers are using Instagram in their online marketing.

Further Reading

• For a medical student’s view of Instagram, read 8 reasons why Instagram is important in medicine.
• #Healthy Selfies: Exploration of Health Topics on Instagram is a study which seeks to characterize the health content shared on Instagram.
• 4 Powerful Lessons in Instagram Storytelling, Inspired by Mental Health Awareness Month

 

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

H is for Hashtag

Hashtags, a way for users to easily find similarly themed content, are used regularly by millions of social media users, especially on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Hashtags tie public conversations from different users into a single stream, allowing you to connect more easily with existing conversations and discover new people who are tweeting about the healthcare topics you are interested in.

If you are running a social media campaign, hashtags allow you to measure the level of interest, sentiment (“positive” “negative” or “neutral” attitudes), key demographics and influencers of your campaign. You can then use these findings to plan future campaigns.

What began on Twitter has now spread with varying degrees of success to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn (LinkedIn has recently started to experiment again with hashtags).

Hashtags on Twitter

Hashtags are a powerful way to maintain your visibility on Twitter and boost engagement with your followers. According to Twitter’s own research tweets with hashtags show a 100 percent increase in engagement (clicks, retweets, likes and replies). Hashtags can also expand the reach of your message beyond just those who follow you to help you grow your network.

Two Ways to Use Hashtags on Twitter

(1) Twitter Chats. Hashtags are an integral part of Twitter chats (live Q&A sessions organized around one unique hashtag) allowing you to follow the discussion and participate in real-time.

(2) Live Conference Reporting. Hashtags are useful when it comes to sharing insights from conferences and events. Nowadays, most organizers will designate a specific conference hashtag. By tagging your tweets with this hashtag you can expand the reach of the conference beyond the physical confines of the event.

#TwitterTip: #Don’tGo #HashtagCrazy on #Twitter.

Too many hashtags can diminish your chances of engagement with a tweet. The basic rule of thumb on Twitter is to use 1-3 hashtags within the messaging of your post. More than that and the post tends to become cluttered, hard to read and might be seen as “spammy.” The key is to use hashtags sparingly and only when they add value.

Hashtags on Instagram

Instagram is another hotspot for hashtags and unlike Twitter where less is more when it comes to using hashtags, interactions are highest on Instagram posts with 11+ hashtags. You can follow hashtags on Instagram to stay connected with interests, hobbies and communities you care about.

Hashtags on Pinterest

On Pinterest when you add hashtags to the description for a new Pin, site users can then visit a feed of all the Pins that share that hashtag.

Want to learn more about using hashtags for healthcare conversations?

Check out The What, Why, Where and How of Using Hashtags in Healthcare

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

G is for Grammar

Do you want to present a positive and professional online impression?

Of course, you do.

Nothing gives a poorer impression than bad grammar and spelling.

Even those of us who pride ourselves on our composition and spelling can slip up. It’s easy to type fast and miss that you wrote “their” instead of “there.”

To help avoid these kinds of mistakes, I use Grammarly a free writing app available as a Google Chrome Extension. Grammarly will catch those easy to make mistakes and question your use of the word. It also suggests better ways to get your message across.

Adding Grammarly to Chrome means that your spelling and grammar will be vetted on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and nearly everywhere else you write on the web.

I use it all the time and find it super useful.

Click here to download the app.

You might also like to read 8 Proofreading Tips and Techniques 

 

 

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

F is for Facebook

Worldwide, there are over 2.23 billion monthly active Facebook users and 1.47 billion people on average log onto Facebook daily. Statistically speaking, Facebook is too big to ignore but at a time when organic Facebook Reach is estimated to currently be as low as 1–3%, succeeding on the platform is more difficult than ever.

Social analytics platform Quintly released a new report, in February, for which they analyzed 94,000 Facebook Pages, and over 105 million posts, in order to achieve “a data-driven foundation” for Facebook insights and predictions.

If you’re struggling to make an impact on Facebook, then these findings may help you find a way forward.

Visuals Lead The Way

Facebook recommends each post you create should include some type of creative, like images, GIFs or videos. Quintly’s findings bear this out.

Key Takeaway: As you can see merely posting a link without a video or image leads status updates to under-perform.

Weekends Are The Best Time To Post

On average, Quintly saw a tendency towards posting during the weekday. with 23% of all posts posted during the weekend.

Key Takeaway: Posting on the weekend resulted in 13.3% more engagement. If you’ve not tried posting on weekends, it may also be worth testing.

Want to learn more?

Access the full study here.

You might also like to read 10 Tips To Create More Engaging Content For Your Medical Practice Facebook Page

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

E is for Egg Head

Twitter suspended 70 million accounts in 2018 as part of a crackdown on malicious activity on its platform. While you may not think this crackdown will impact you, there is one surprising way in which Twitter’s attempts to control abuse on the platform might.

Twitter has made it possible to filter out accounts with the default “egg” profile picture so that they don’t appear in your notifications. Twitter will also let you filter out notifications from users who haven’t verified their email addresses or phone numbers.

It is still surprising to me the number of new (and not-so-new) Twitter users who start tweeting from an account with no clearly identifiable name, bio, or profile picture.

The first and most fundamental thing to understand about Twitter is that it is a conversation. Would you approach someone at an event and not introduce yourself first? Would you keep your face hidden from view while you hold a conversation? And yet this is precisely what some users do when they set up their Twitter accounts.

Many Twitter users will not follow accounts without a profile picture on the assumption it is a fake account.

A study published by researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, “Tweeting Is Believing? Understanding Microblog Credibility Perceptions,” analyzed how users assess Twitter credibility.

The study found that:

• users are poor judges of truthfulness based on content alone and instead are influenced by heuristics such as user name when making credibility assessments.
• users represented by the default Twitter icon, or a cartoon avatar are perceived as significantly less credible than users with a personal photo.

As soon as you have created your Twitter account, you should replace the default image with your own picture. Twitter is about human connections. When uploading a picture, don’t use a cartoon, or any other animate or inanimate object for your profile. A professional close-up headshot works best. You also have an opportunity to personalize your profile by uploading a custom header image alongside your profile picture. Use this opportunity to bring more authenticity to your account.

Want more Twitter tips?

Read Become a Social Media Ninja With These 25 Smart Twitter Hacks

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

D is for Dux-Soup

Dux-Soup is a browser plug-in which works with Google Chrome as your virtual assistant on LinkedIn.

Dux-Soup keeps track of every single profile you visit and allows you to make notes directly on the profile page which are saved. Profile date and notes can be export as a .CSV file to be opened in Microsoft Excel or similar. The .CSV file includes data such as the name of the person whose profile you visited, job title, company name, location, email and notes.

Dux-Soup can save you hours of manual data entry when it comes to tracking all your leads you interact with on LinkedIn. You can take and save notes on each profile such as: have sent invite/need to reply to a message / likes Opera etc.

You can opt to use the free version (which enables you to view a hundred LinkedIn profiles a day) or upgrade to the paid version (which allows you to set the number of profile visits you need to make per day and export the .CSV file and make use of the data you gathered.

Dux-Soup is available as a browser plug-in which works with Google Chrome. Download here.

Want to up your LinkedIn game?

Check out How To Brand Yourself For Success On LinkedIn

26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.

C is for Content

A content marketing report based on data from a survey conducted among healthcare marketing professionals who work for hospitals, urgent care centers, physician practices, and other healthcare organizations, found that the rise of content marketing in the healthcare industry continues, with steady growth in usage. 

However, only one-third of respondents said their healthcare organization has a documented content marketing strategy.

Why your healthcare organization needs a content strategy

If you’re serious about marketing your business online, you need a strategy and a plan to execute it.

A content marketing strategy is a roadmap that not only tells you what you’re going to create but how you’re going to create it, when you’re going to publish it and how you’re going to promote it.

It helps you create more meaningful, engaging and sustainable content.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, having a documented (i.e. written down) strategy means:

• You’ll feel significantly less challenged by every aspect of content marketing.
• You’ll generally consider yourself more effective in your use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels.
• You’ll be able to justify spending a higher percentage of your marketing budget on content marketing.

If you’re interested in getting a look at the step-by-step process I use for developing a content strategy with clients, click on this link.

You might also like to read 12 Common Content Marketing Mistakes…And How To Fix Them.

Got questions?

Do you have any questions about content marketing? Leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.