Unified Practice

If your eyes start to glaze over and you start to sweat when you hear the words “content marketing strategy,” you’re not alone. Though creating a content marketing strategy is a necessary part of your overall clinic marketing strategy, we know it can feel overwhelming to get started. What should you talk about? How do you come up with topics? Where should you post your content?

We teamed up with acupuncturist and marketing expert Michelle Grasek to get her take on the best and easiest way to get started on a content marketing strategy. 

Think about what your practice’s areas of focus are.

The first step to figuring out what you should (and want!) to be talking about is deciding what areas you and your practice focus on or specialize in. Think about these areas of focus as “umbrella” areas. For example, if you really like to help patients with gluten intolerances, your umbrella topic would be “dietary intolerances” or “gut health” or “diet improvement.” By giving yourself umbrella areas, you’re giving yourself the freedom to explore more content topics that are closely related to your primary focus rather than feeling boxed into a singular topic.

Create three content buckets.

After you’ve come up with a few umbrella areas you want to focus on, narrow it down to three (at least to start). These are your “content buckets.” These content buckets are the categories you’ll keep all of your content topics located within. By doing this, it’ll help build your credibility within those areas of expertise, which will not only build trust with current patients but also attract the kind of patients that will turn into long-term, loyal customers.

Grasek recommends starting out with three content buckets to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Once you’ve spent time developing those three buckets and have your content development process down, you can easily add additional buckets to your arsenal. 

Take it week-by-week.

Another recommendation Grasek has to avoid feeling overwhelmed is to take your content development week-by-week. Pick a day that works best for your schedule and block off a couple of hours to plan your content for the next week. As you begin planning your content, Grasek also suggests picking one of your three content buckets to focus on for that week. 

Once you decide on your content bucket, decide the specific content you want to write about and which marketing avenues you want to utilize. For example, if you’re focusing on skin care for that week, maybe you focus on acne. You could write an educational blog about Chinese herbs that help clear up and prevent acne, find other reputable sources that have written about this topic and post those articles throughout the week on social media (after you post your own blog post, of course), and plan an educational email that breaks down the five misconceptions about healing acne. 

Check your analytics and tweak your strategy.

Take time to consider which avenues you’re posting your content on. Take stock of where you see engagement the most from your patients and make that platform a priority in your content marketing strategy. If you haven’t done a ton of content marketing in the past, that’s ok. Just know it may take time to really be able to evaluate your platforms to know which one resonates the most with your patients. Try to look at your platform data at least once a month. This data will help tell you what content styles (e.g. long-form blog article, listicle, how-to, etc.) your patients are really interested in, which will help inform any tweaks you may want to make to your content strategy moving forward. 

Regardless of whether you’ve been dishing out content for years, months, or have just started, it’s always a good idea to revisit your content strategy regularly to ensure you’re putting your time and effort into topics that your audience continues to find value from.

As you think about your content buckets and begin to plan your new content strategy, don’t forget to consider telehealth as a potential umbrella topic. While patients may be aware of the term “telehealth” or “telemedicine,” they may not feel comfortable enough in their understanding — or even see the value — in a virtual visit. Only through educational content can you really explain how your patients can continue to medically benefit from no-touch virtual appointments. 

To get you started, we’ve created an infographic you can download and use across your content platforms: Clinics who accept insurance OR Clinics who do NOT accept insurance.