Tag: social media tools

Posted in #HCSM

7 Free Google Tools To Boost Your Healthcare Marketing

Posted on by Editor

Over two decades ago, two Stanford Ph.D. students launched a new search engine with a bold mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. 

Now two decades later, at the first sign of a symptom, patients instinctively turn first to “Dr. Google” to find answers to their health questions.

But Google is more than just a powerful search engine. 

Google also provides us with some really useful tools as online marketers and communicators.

In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite go-to Google tools that I regularly turn to. Best of all these tools are completely free so you can enjoy trying them out without spending a cent.

1. Google Mobile Friendly Test

Use Google Mobile-Friendly Test to see how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device.

Just enter a page URL to see how your page scores.

Why this tool is useful

Having a mobile-responsive site (ie one that automatically changes its layout and placements of certain menus and buttons automatically) is important because firstly, not only are over half of patients searching online for health information on their smartphone, but secondly, Google now gives ranking priority to those sites that are mobile friendly.  In fact, Google has stated that it will penalize websites that aren’t mobile-responsive, so if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’ll likely lose out significantly in the organic search rankings. 

Use Google Mobile-Friendly Test to see how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device.

2. Google Page Speed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a tool that indicates how well a page performs on the Chrome UX Report and suggests performance optimizations.

Why this tool is useful

Although speed has been used in Google ranking for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches. Google announced that starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches too.  This marks an important shift in Google’s approach to measuring page speed while stressing the importance of mobile user experiences.

3. Google Alerts

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, blogs) based on your choice of query –  for example, keeping updated on emerging healthcare trends. You can control how often you receive these alerts (daily or weekly), whether you wish to receive all mentions, or limit it to the most relevant, and you can add new alerts, or delete old ones at any point.

Why this tool is useful

Use Google Alerts to monitor who’s talking about your brand. This is important so you can respond to any criticism, complaints or thank someone for writing something positive about you.

4. Google My Business

Google My Business is a simple-to-use tool that allows small business owners  to increase their online visibility and promote their business information on Google Search.

GMB appears on the desktop – just to the right of the organic and paid search results. If you’re on mobile, it appears as a top result before the organic results. If you haven’t set up your GMB listing, it’s time to do so. Follow these step-by-step instructions to get started right away.

Why this tool is useful

According to Google “Providing and updating business information in Google My Business can help your business’s local ranking on Google and enhance your presence in Search and Maps.”

5. Google Analytics

Tracking the number of visitors to your website, where they came from, how they got there, and what they read can provide you with important marketing insight. The most comprehensive and free tool to do this is Google Analytics.

Why this tool is useful

Use Google Analytics to track top-performing content on your website, and the native analytics tools of each of the social networks you use to discover the type of posts that get the most engagement (shares, comments, likes, click-through rates, etc.)

6. Google AdWords

 Google Ads Keyword Planner gives you insight into the volume of monthly searches for a particular keyword, and how much and how much competition there is, based on advertising spend for sponsored links. It also returns suggested terms you could use instead or alongside your original keyword.

Why this tool is useful

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.

7. Google Trends

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.

Why this tool is useful

You can use this tool to evaluate the popularity of certain terms, compare them against other keyword variations, analyze how their popularity varies over time and in different regions/languages, and show related keywords, which can be helpful in getting new keyword suggestions.

Do you use any of these Google tools? Do you have any other Google tools to add to this list?

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Cliché Finder

Posted on by Editor

This week’s cool tool recommendation is ClicheFinder – a tool to help you eliminate overused clichés from your writing. 

This free tool finds and highlights words, expressions, and phrases that are trite, stale, or overused to help you improve your copy. To use simply copy and paste your text and click the button marked ‘Find Clichés’.

Visit https://www.clichefinder.net to try for yourself.

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: SnapWidget

Posted on by Editor

I love learning about new tools to make social media marketing more creative and effective, so I am sharing some of my favourite tools with you at the start of each week.

This week’s cool tool recommendation is SnapWidget – a tool that allows you to display your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram photos in collage format on your website or blog.

When you post photos and videos to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, the widget on your website, blog or Shopify store automatically updates with new content.

Pricing

You can start with a free plan and if you find you need more features, you can try out a paid plan for free for 14 days.

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

Posted on by Editor

This week’s cool tool recommendation is the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Headline Analyzer.

This headline analyzer is a free tool from the Advanced Marketing Institute that you can use to calculate the EMV of your own headlines. It scores the EMV of your headline with a breakdown of why it scored that value. A perfect score would be 100%, but don’t despair if yours doesn’t match up. According to the Institute, “most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.”

Here’s how it works. 

Enter your headline in the space provided and choose the industry you are targeting your message to.

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Click Submit. 

Here’s my score:

download

While the score is low on EMV, I am still happy with it, as it fulfills my aim of arousing curiosity in the reader.

Your headline carries words that predominantly appeal to most people’s intellectual sphere. Intellectual impact words are especially effective when your goal is to arouse curiosity.

For more headline tools like this, read: 7 Tools To Find Inspiration For Your Headlines

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Pexels

Posted on by Editor

pexels-photo-573238.jpeg

This week’s cool tool recommendation is stock image site Pexels.

Pexels provides over 3,800 high-resolution photos, collated from other free image sites — making it one of the largest free image directories. Pexels has also added a large library of stock videos to its site also under the CC0 license. Use the site’s list of popular searches to find the most in-demand stock video.

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool:  Dr. Link Check

Posted on by Editor

This week I’m recommending  Dr. Link Check– a tool to help you identify broken links on your website and fix them.

Did you know that broken links on your website are sending signals to Google that your website is old and outdated and perhaps even untrustworthy?

Broken links or dead links are hyperlinks on a webpage that are no longer functional. They can negatively impact your SEO by impacting bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that navigate away from a particular site after viewing only one page) and time on site, two factors that directly affect SEO.

Finding broken links is the first step to fixing them. This can be done in a number of ways. One is to use a tool like Dr. Link Checker.

It’s very simple to use. Simply type in the url of your site and let the link checker go to work.

This shows me a list of the broken links on my own website that I need to fix. A majority of these link to dead external sites. This makes sense since I originally linked out to speaking engagements and the conference and meeting sites have been taken down.  In this case, I have no choice but to delete the hyperlink since I have no control over external links.  

When it comes to internal links, I have control over them, and it’s good SEO practice to review content and correct broken links immediately.   

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Content Ideas

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: UberSuggest

Posted on by Editor

This week I’m recommending UberSuggest – a free keyword research tool that lets you see which keywords are performing best for your competitors/peers.

This truly is a super helpful tool when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation. It generates a list of keywords for you based on what is working for your competitors and based on what people are typing into Google, allowing you to see volume, competition, and even seasonal trends for each of your chosen keywords.

Let’s see it in action.

Type in your chosen keyword (or a domain of a competitor to see which keywords are ranking for them). In this example, I’ll use the keyword ‘social media’.

The first thing I get is an overview of keyword search volume (the number of searches this keyword has per month) SEO difficulty (estimated competition in organic search – the higher the number the more competitive) paid difficulty (estimated competition in organic search – the higher the number the more competitive) and cost per click (if you are using paid Google ads).

Keyword Ideas

Now I can start to drill down into keyword ideas based on my head keyword.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can do a lot more, such as identify how popular the keyword is based on its search volume over the last 12 months.  

Content Ideas

Now let’s look at what we can do with these keywords. Ubersuggest shows you the highest performing content for your chosen keywords.

Backlink Data

Backlinks are one of the most important components of Google’s ranking algorithm. However, there is a problem. They are difficult to build. Ubersuggest lets you see exactly what content people are linking to in your space. You then approach each of these sites and ask them to link to you.  

Pricing

You get three free daily searches with the free version. Before you decide to upgrade, you can try out a paid version for free for 7 days.   

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Refind

Posted on by Editor

Find quality articles from around the net that will spark your interest and make you smarter every day with this week’s cool tool recommendation.

Refind – a daily curated list of quality reading from around the web designed to spark your interest and make you smarter.

Sign up to get 7 (or more) new links every day tailored to your interests, curated from 10k+ sources.

Here’s how to get started

1. Create an account at Refind.com

2. Choose 3 topics of interest

3. Rate links to tailor your experience to your interests

4. Choose a Deep Dive or Thought Leader to subscribe to.

5. Choose how many links you wish to receive each day, the time of it day you wish to receive them, and the email address to deliver them to.

6. And now you’re all set to dive into your curated reading list.

Refind is also available for download on the App Store and Google Play.

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Bensound

Posted on by Editor

This week I’m recommending Bensound – a useful source of royalty-free music.

You can use Bensound’s music available under Free License in your multimedia project (online videos, websites, animations, etc.) for free as long as you credit Bensound.

If you need high-quality files (mp3 and wav) choose “Premium” tracks or you can buy a Bensound Pro License.

Visit https://www.bensound.com/licensing to learn more.

Posted in Cool Tool

Monday Morning Cool Tool: Fotor

Posted on by Editor

This week I’m recommending Fotor, a free image editing tool and design maker for PC and mobile.

Easy-to-use interfaces and tutorials make it a breeze to create beautiful images without needing to be a professional designer. You can choose from hundreds of templates and text-image combinations. Creating beautiful designs is as simple as modifying the templates.

You can use it to create a variety of images, including photo collages for social media, making as many edits as you need from an extensive menu of edits. Fotor even provides an area where you can experiment to the side of your canvas. It includes ready-to-go graphics, icons, and studio-quality video templates.   One of my favorite Fotor features is the  LinkedIn banner design and the logo maker. 

A paid version is available that contains more features and is ad-free. 

Visit www.Fotor.com and try it for yourself.