What should you post on your clinic's online platforms?
The founders of marketing super-platform Hubspot have been saying that content marketing delivers loyal customers for a decade now: “Customers and prospects actively seek out brands that provide engaging and valuable content that is relevant to their needs.” (Halligan & Shah, 2010).
Valuable content is usually considered helpful, fulfilling of a need, motivational, inspirational or entertaining.
A question I get asked by so many of our clients is, “What do I post?” Clinics – you do know what to post. You’re surrounded by content, bombarded even, and years of training to get you to where you are means that you know your stuff. Sometimes, you just need a little help getting the ideas from your brain onto the page.
A large part of marketing in 2020 is “content”. There is a constant demand for posts, videos and stories. Running a business, however, is not all about content, and I do not endorse spending all your time when you aren’t injecting scrolling through Instagram and fretting over Google rankings.
If you can’t employ a full-time staff member or agency to handle your content marketing and social media, it will fall down to you. You can waste a morning racking your brains about what to post. Then the day passes, and you haven’t put anything on Facebook. Your blog hasn’t been updated for a month. The guilt sets in, you can’t think, and the more time that passes, the less likely you are to get back to posting.
Mind mapping
Taking time to focus and mind map or list as many content ideas as you can possibly think of can save you valuable time in the long run. You need to slow down and dedicate some time to this in order to speed up posting in the future. To do this, write your clinic in the centre of a piece of paper. Branch off with every service, treatment and product you offer and then go in deeper about the process, condition and combinations, etc.
Write down every thought that pops into your mind; every half idea, every bad idea, every odd idea. Then walk away. Do not skip this step; you need time to process. Come back to it. Add more, connect lines, cross out the weak stu you don’t actually want on there. I then take all of these ideas; highlight the ones I want to group together in themes and then start to chip away at generating some content.
I find having a list of “someday” ideas either in a spreadsheet or note on my phone means I never forget little ideas – I can just jot them down when they pop into my head and I always have a bank to go back to. I recommend doing a new mind map every three months, matching content types and post types to your ideas as before.
Re-purposing
“I’ve got ideas but I’m too busy for social/ blogging/ video.” If this is you, that’s fine! This is common when you’re running a clinic as well as still working in the NHS or having to prioritise your family. Creating a master list of post ideas is the first time-saving hack, so you’re never caught short thinking, “what should I post today?”
Secondly, you should always be re-purposing your content – never use your good ideas in just one place. Had great reaction on a social media post? Write that up for your website blog. Published a new case study online? Email it out to your patients.
Written a new treatment page? Share it as video for those that prefer watching to reading. Got a great series of posts on a condition you’re an expert on? Combine them into an eBook and a press release. You get the gist.
By giving each idea a dual purpose, you’ve doubled your content output without spending even more time trying to come up with ideas. A triple purpose? Even better. Call it up-cycling your best content.
Crafting killer headlines
Your choice of language effects the likelihood of someone reading your post. Some solid suggestions:
• Numbered lists: “Five treatments I trust for acne”
• How tos: “How to use retinols safely”. (Bonus – safety is something we need and therefore value)
• Matchups: “X vs Y for anti-ageing”
• Negatives /warnings: “Don’t skimp on SPF”
• Emotional trigger words: “Secret”, “Explained”, “Killer” “Must”, “Revealed”, “Why”, “Free”. (Warning – free is a danger word, you must over-deliver here or viewers may be turned o because they consider the post misleading).
Notice how I’ve used these techniques and made easily digestible lists throughout this article? Headlines should be fairly short too; I like to use five words on average and a subheading only if needed for context. It’s worth noting that you should always deliver what you promise in these headlines, or else it becomes clickbait. It can damage your website’s “value” as seen by Google as people click off quickly or swipe off your social profile or ad without following or buying.
Five prompts for your next content creation:
• Interview a staff member or peer
• Describe your personal skincare and treatment routine
• Talk a patient through toxin aftercare
• Explain what fi llers actually feel like
• Share your predictions for the future of aesthetics.
Three of these ideas should generate content completely unique to you. The ones based on treatments may be similar to others who post, but patients probably don’t follow more than a few medics or clinics, and post anyway.
Don’t overcommit to unrealistic goals. Instead of rushing to put out five posts a week that you aren’t happy with the quality of, why not aim for two thought-through posts. You can repurpose content for different channels, too, like we discussed above, so your story video can become a written blog, a Facebook post, multiple tweets and a marketing email without having to think of a dozen more ideas.
And finally, if you think you’ve got “content fatigue”, switch o for a while. A 72-hour reset is usually enough to come back to content creation with fresh motivation.
Where I'd look for content inspiration:
• Past post comments
• Industry news/ current events
• Manufacturer brochures
• Competitor websites and socials
• Online topic generators such as Google Trends, Google Autosuggest, answerthepublic.com, Ubersuggest and even paid tools such as Ahrefs
• FAQs in your inboxes
• Social media.
Channels you could create content for:
• Your website (pages can always be extended!)
• Your website (blog)
• Social media feed posts
• Social media stories
• Lists
• Guest blogs/social posts
• Press releases
• eBooks or real books
• Quizzes
• Infographics
• Webinars
• Event speeches/presentations.
Post types:
The most common content generated by the aesthetics industry is treatment education, written testimonials, sales posts and before and afters. Here are some other ideas:
• How tos
• News – try a weekly video round up
• Condition information
• Lists
• Case studies
• Behind the scenes (clinic life)
• Q+A/ surveys
• Video testimonials
• Treatment best practices
• Product reviews
• Demos
• Challenges
• Rants.
Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a family-run digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver award-winning marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and aesthetic brands. Contact her: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram:@webmarketingclinic
