Ask Alex

Marketing content is important, but can I make producing it easier in 2023?

Is it your New Year’s resolution to finally get a grip on your marketing and put out more content, having I seen the successes of others? Producing content which educates, entertains, and inspires your target patient is a business priority in these times. Thankfully, it isn’t about the pursuit of one million followers. Instead, it’s about a) getting bookings and b) building your business profile up to attract patients from wider demographics and further postcodes.

Writing up a yearly plan for your output is perfect for big-picture thinking:

• One clinical paper/publication in professional media

• Two events and associated content (pre, during and post)

• One/two media days in-clinic for professional video and photography

• Monthly email, with twice monthly around summer and Christmas

• Two blogs per month for the website: one case study, one condition-led piece

• Monthly social plans - photos, short-form videos, case studies, graphics, stories

I like the term ‘eat the elephant’, where you can break down the mammoth job of creating and sharing content to one bite at a time.

Can’t manage all of this? Don’t worry! Different-sized clinics have different content needs. I’m just advocating for a big plan made now, which can be broken into smaller schedules everyone can keep, such as a monthly social media outlook.

Sometimes, calling in professionals can make content production easier. Whether you need a graphic designer to take some of the social media slack, a writer (we have loads of great ones in this industry) to handle your blogs and emails, or some creatives to come into the clinic once or twice a year for that year’s photos and videos, know when your time is more valuable than the investment. All of my clients get months’ worth of imagery and short-form video when they get a media day in the diary, and it does take the pressure off by having a bank of content to schedule.

You don’t need to post multiple times a day on social - just a consistent commitment. Everyone always thinks about posting on Facebook, Instagram and now TikTok, but neglects to share their content on their website, or with their email database.

Scheduling your content and producing it in batches will make increasing your volume easier. This is a great way of getting social media out of your way when the clinic is manic. There are free (Meta Business Suite) and paid (Sprout Social) tools to get your social content essentials sorted out each month. Anything extra is a bonus! Just don’t forget to use stories and reply to content throughout the day. At least the feed is looked after by scheduling.

Two pillars of content production often get neglected. The first is user-generated content (UGC), and it can often be the bestperforming content in terms of leads generated, if you share it with your target audience. It’s third-party validation, so it’s not just you saying that you’re great. Keep an eye on your mentions and set alerts for any that don’t tag your accounts; these posts are gold! There are two points to re-sharing UGC to remember: always ask permission and spread them out over the month.

The second pillar is content repurposing. Just because you’ve posted something once, doesn’t mean that you can’t use it again. Can you take last year’s top-performing social media posts, blogs or marketing emails and put a new perspective on them? Cutand-paste jobs will be bad for Google rankings (blogs) and spam filters (email) but breathing new life into content can help. Why reinvent the wheel? Can some repurposed content make it into your monthly social media plan? Will the emails that generated the most bookings in 2022 make it into 2023? People’s memories on social media are very short, so it isn’t cheating to rephrase and re-share.

Finally, remember, every time you make a piece of content, ask yourself: “Is this going to resonate with my target audience?”

ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a familyrun digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. The business builds websites and delivers marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic