PracticalDermatology

Blogging is a time-tested way to increase the online reach of your dermatology practice and attract more traffic to your website. Good quality blog posts can reach out to your target audience via organic search, RSS feed, email, referral links, and social media promotion. It is easy to share your blog post on your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

However, the challenge lies in how to leverage the potential of social media networks to popularize the blog post to effectively promote the prospects of your practice. Here are some creative ideas to widen the reach of your blog post on various social media networks:

Include the Blog Sub-Heads on Social Media

When you intend to share a particular blog post on social media, make sure to include the sub-heads of the post or important ideas of the post. For instance, if your blog post is titled “5 Innovative Dermatology Procedures for You,” mention all five procedures when you share the post on Facebook. While sharing the post on Twitter, you may only be able to mention about one or two procedures in each tweet, but you can keep re-sharing the post until all the procedures are mentioned.

The format of doing this may be something like: 5 Innovative Dermatology Procedures for You (link) including @Procedure1 @Procedure2 @Procedure3 and so on. If your blog post mentions an individual or a specific brand name, you can include those mentions too when you share the post on social media. This will catch the attention of the person mentioned, and most likely, they will re-share the post.

Align your Blog Post with Popular, Relatable Posts

Sometimes you can identify a very relatable blog post or article written by an authoritative individual enjoying high popularity on social media, and use it to your advantage. You can simply re-share that post along with your own blog post, and add a message, such as: “@Robinson and I have slightly divergent views on this subject. Here are both views presented before you. What is your opinion?”

Use Videos, Animations, or Infographics for your Posts

Blog posts that include videos, animation videos, or infographics are far more likely to be shared online. Whenever you have some authentic data or results of a study or survey to share, include that information in the form of an infographic, and mention some attention-grabbing figures in your blog post headline as well. This will dramatically increase the odds of your post becoming popular on social media.

Sometimes an individual may not like to leave the social network to go to your link to view the blog post. To address even such individuals, you can share an infographic that sums up the content of your blog post or a video and post it right on your social network. The links to the detailed post can be included with the infographic or the video. When you share such value added information, it adds more substance to your social profile. You will gain more followers over time and the viewership of your blog will grow.

Co-Author Posts with another Blogger

If you can identify another professional of similar caliber and profile as yours, who may be a friend, colleague, or a connection from LinkedIn or other social networks, you may consider co-authoring an article or blog post with them. This can create a robust synergy by combining your following and theirs, and widening the online reach for both.

This can be a win-win situation for both of you. Sometimes you may even consider the idea of creating a blog post all by yourself, and choose someone credible to share the credit with on the condition that they will help you promote it. You can identify a respected online influencer who may be interested in such a proposal.

Involve your Audience

While a blog post or an article can exclusively focus on a dermatology topic for your potential patients, its promotion over social media requires involvement of the audience. Social media is a two-way street, and it is all about engagement and conversation. While sharing your post on social media, you can ask the readers to give their vote or answer a specific question or give an opinion.

This could be an informal poll or research activity to know the minds of your audience, and to involve them with your write-up. Appreciate the responses of your audience, engage where necessary, and share, like, or re-tweet interesting responses over multiple social platforms. This will encourage your readers to share the blog post widely over their own respective social networks.

Re-Share Old Blog Posts at Opportune Moments

Some of your blog posts may be ahead of your time, or you may have made a comment or prediction that is yet to come true. If in the near future, events unfold the way you had described or mentioned in your blog post, you can re-share the blog post to generate renewed interest among your audience.

Sometimes a news item may be highly relatable to what you have said in one of your old blog posts. You can showcase that current news item along with your post to attract renewed interest in your post.

Build Curiosity through Pre-Promotion

Sometimes you may feel that you have created a compelling blog post that offers completely new or revolutionary information that could benefit your patients or generate significant interest in the industry. To ensure that the post attracts maximum attention, you can do some pre-promotion to build interest.

Share snippets from the blog post before you are ready to publish it in full. Publish an introductory image, graphic or video that arouses the curiosity of your audience without giving away much. Promotions can be made for a few days or weeks, depending on the content.

Automated tools to schedule blog posts for sharing on social media exist, and you can have a post shared automatically on multiple social channels, if you are short on time. Modify the promotion strategies to suit your unique needs, but implement them diligently to make the most of your blog posts to promote your dermatology practice.

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete Internet marketing company which focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of dermatologists.  With a team of 140+ full time marketers,www.ekwa.com helps dermatologists who know where they want to go get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.

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