Optometry Marketing: Why Your Practice Needs an Active Blog

Highlights

Optometry marketing strategies should include an active blog for best visibility.
Well-written blog posts will drive more traffic to your site and boost your marketing efforts.
An engaging and informative blog will also establish your practice as a trustworthy authority on eye care.
Google will favor your website if you create fresh, regular content by increasing your rank and visibility on the search engine. This allows your target audience to find you easily.

A successful optometry marketing strategy has blogging at its heart. One of the biggest advantages of an active blog is it attracts leads, boosting patient acquisition. Blogging can also bump your practice up in the search engine rankings. Additionally, you can create blog posts to provide useful information to your target audience, thus establishing the authority and credibility of your practice online.

Importance of Blogging

In today’s wired world, blogging matters. Through blogging, your practice can expand your marketing reach, attract new patients, retain existing ones, and establish yourselves as a local authority in eye care.

Below, we take a closer look at the benefits of blogging.

Blogging Boosts Rankings on Search Engines

A lot of people turn to the internet to ask questions or research their symptoms before setting foot in an optometrist’s office. When you develop content relevant to patients’ queries, you’re more likely to appear in those searches.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo love websites that frequently post engaging, interesting, and informative content. When you do this, the search engines will reward your website with better rankings.

Becoming the go-to blog where optometry consumers come to find useful content that helps them is one sure-fire way of convincing them to choose your practice for their vision care needs.

Blogging Expands Your Online Presence

One of the primary goals of starting a blog is to drive more traffic to your website and turn visitors into patients. Developing useful content with the relevant keywords healthcare consumers search for helps your site appear higher on search engine result pages.

While prospective patients might not be searching for your site specifically, they’ll type a query into search engines. If your post is at the top of searches and provides the answers they seek, visitors may click through to your website. That could make them realize they need your services and convince them to schedule an appointment.

Blogging Establishes Authority

Sharing valuable information and effectively answering niche-specific questions gives you the opportunity to educate your target audience and add value to their lives. For instance, posts with important eye care tips and authoritative advice on eye health can establish your site as credible and trustworthy.

In other words, engaging and educational content that builds authority and trust makes you a thought leader in your specialty. Further, it gives visitors reason to keep coming back to your website.

Eventually, prospects will be inspired to take action, whether it’s calling your practice or self-scheduling appointments online.

Blogging Allows You to Set the Right Tone with Your Target Audience

Your blog is an extension of your optometry practice. It introduces current and potential patients to your practice even before they call or visit. Setting the right tone with your audience when blogging can work to your advantage.

For example, using a conversational tone, where you address readers as ‘you,’ helps build an emotional connection with potential patients and your practice. This makes it easier to win patients whenever prospects require eye care services.

Blogging Best Practices

Even though there isn’t a cookie-cutter approach to blogging, it’s essential to follow the best practices to get the most out of your blog.

Be Consistent

The success of your blog will largely depend on how often you post fresh and quality content. Creating interesting articles consistently can make your posts visible in search results. It’ll also ensure you remain relevant and top of mind with prospects and existing patients.

Focus on Local SEO

Are you focusing your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts on your local area? You can attract more patients by creating content that talks about the relevant issues for people in your area. For example, suppose your target audience is in New York. In that case, you could write about some of the latest developments like, “The New York State Assembly passes legislation that allows optometrists to prescribe [insert medication name] to treat their patients.”

Another great way to optimize your blog for local SEO is to produce content based on local search terms and keywords that also revolve around your practice.

For example, write an article and naturally add keywords that a local user might search for, such as “optometrist in Minneapolis.” Optimizing your blog post with a local term tells search engines what your practice is all about and where you’re located. This increases your possibility of showing up at the top of search results for those specific keywords.

Post Engaging and Informative Content

Unfortunately, you’ll quickly lose the interest of a majority of readers by posting promotional materials in your blog. Save the advertising for the rest of your site and your other marketing channels.

Your blog should focus on creating helpful, engaging, and insightful content that answers the questions of your prospective and current patients. Addressing their needs and offering them valuable content appeals to a wider audience, attracts more traffic to your website, builds trust, and encourages visitors to engage further with your practice.

Make Your Blog Stand Out from The Competition

Your practice has a lot of competition, so ensure the content you write sets you apart from your competitors. You can create engaging content in various ways. For instance, find out what your target audience wants to know, then develop blog posts that explain the common questions.

You can also share the latest news in optometry. With lots of information out there from unreliable sources, you have an opportunity to help your audience understand a particular topic, for example, how a COVID-19 infection might affect vision.

Provide Multimedia Options

Consider offering multimedia options like podcasts, webinars, and infographics to your blog. These options are excellent ways to entice potential patients to spend time interacting with your site.

Webinars

Webinars can be one of the most effective ways to generate leads on a website; 30% to 40% of users who land on a webinar page register for the live event. Creating webinars of an optometrist in your practice addressing common concerns of your patients is also a great way to position your practice as thought leaders in your local optometry market.

Following an event, consider adding the recorded webinar to your blog and requiring an email address to access it. This is a powerful and inexpensive way to build your marketing email list.

Podcasts

Podcasts are fast becoming a preferred way to consume content; 57% of Americans have listened to a podcast, according to The Infinite Dial’s 2021 Digital Media Report, and that number is growing every year.

Many users enjoy podcasts because they feel more intimate than reading content, as though the speaker were talking to the individual listener. Besides, it’s convenient to listen to podcasts on the go or while multitasking. Adding podcasts to your blog can improve engagement and decrease bounce rates.

Infographics

Infographics are another popular addition to blog posts. Most readers don’t read complete blog posts; they skim and leave. Visuals like infographics can catch the eye, add interest, and break up the monotony of a wall of words, all of which get the reader to spend more time on your site.

What’s more, most people grasp a topic better with visuals than with the written word alone, and that fact has special significance in healthcare. In one survey, patients were nearly three times more likely to understand their condition when it was presented to them in infographic form.

In short, the more engaged visitors are in your multimedia content, the longer they will stay on your site and the more likely that they will book an appointment.

A Final Word

Blogging has become an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. If you approach blogging as a way to inform and educate your readers and not a way to sell them something, maintaining an active blog is an effective way to build trust and authority while attracting new patients and retaining the ones you already have.

Attract and Retain More Patients with RevolutionEHR

RevolutionEHR is a complete optometry practice management solution with EHR and practice management at its center, designed to streamline your practice’s workflows. With available patient communication tools, RevolutionEHR is also a powerful way to improve patient acquisition and retention.

Find out how RevolutionEHR can improve patient experience and grow your bottom line, giving you the freedom to focus on serving patients more effectively and efficiently. Request a demo today.