Congratulations! You’ve posted an incredibly thoughtful, well-written blog post! It’s not easy for hearing care professionals to block out time for anything — let alone writing.
Now your blog post is online for the world to see. Look at you! You’re the belle of the internet ball.
Or are you?
Can anyone see it?
Are you all alone?
A Blog Post Is an Island
Your blog post is now floating in a near infinite sea of blog posts, videos, ads, websites, and articles. How can you expect anybody to find it?
Think about your blog post as an island. Tourists don’t just magically appear on an island; islands have to be advertised. Days of relaxation and sun-drenched shores have to be promised. You have to draw them to your island.
Likewise, prospective patients are not going to magically arrive at your blog post.
Let’s talk about how to help you and your blog posts get found.
Cheat Sheet
In case you want a cheat-sheet version of this blog post, I’m going to give it to you first. You’re welcome. You deserve it after writing that blog post!
However, I’d definitely recommend reading the full blog post for more detail and specific strategies.
I’m biased, obviously.
Cheat Sheet for Blog Post Exposure:
- Write your blog content and structure your website so Google can find relevant content quickly.
- Post your blog content on all social media platforms with an engaging comment.
- Share your blog content on relevant community organizations’ social networks and websites.
- Repurpose your content for YouTube — the world’s second-largest search engine.
- Build off your blog post topic by writing follow-up posts that answer questions related and relevant to your original post.
Specific Strategies
Now let’s talk about strategies in more depth and explain how they work to help increase awareness of your blog post and improve your search engine optimization.
Google — The Explorer
One of the first visitors to your website will be Google. Google crawls your website using software programs called spiders. These spiders crawl around your site searching for clues to understand what each page or post is about. Spiders can crawl your website at whatever frequency Google determines necessary.
By posting frequently on your blog, Google may determine that it needs to send spiders more frequently to discover newly added content. This is one way blog posts can increase your website’s visibility and performance on search engines like Google. Websites that add new, relevant content on a regular basis will outperform stagnant websites.
Spiders will crawl your blog post searching for keywords, and Google then pairs your content with relevant user searches. Its primary goal is answering user questions.
Now that you understand how Google will be reviewing your blog post, make sure you do the following before publishing your post:
- Focus your title and headers (H1, H2, H3) on questions and keywords that users may search for.
- Use headers to break up your content and give organization to your blog post.
- Write your post so that it is easy to read and uses simple vocabulary to explain complex ideas.
- Make sure your website has a sitemap to give the spiders a map for more efficiently crawling your website.
- Add meta data to your post to make your posts accessible to all users and to explain to spiders more detail about objects it can’t see (i.e., images).
If you are on Audigy’s SEO program and send the blog post to our team, all this work will be completed for you.
Google — The Experimenter
This does not mean that your blog post will now appear at the top of Google. Your blog post will likely not show up in the results at all.
Google’s software works like a scientist. The scientist isn’t going to put your blog post first arbitrarily. The scientist is going to test and then observe.
This means that the next time a user asks a question and your blog post seems to answer that question, Google may test your content in its results. Remember, Google’s goal is to answer user questions so they keep using the platform.
Google will show your blog post on the results page, and the user reaction will dictate what Google does with your content.
- If no one clicks on your blog post link, Google may conclude your post doesn’t answer their question.
- If users click through but leave before the page loads, Google may conclude your website is too slow.
- If users click through but leave without performing any actions, Google may conclude that your user experience is poor.
- If users click through and read more pages, Google may conclude your blog post is helpful and that your whole website appears to have additional valuable content.
- If a large volume of visitors go to the blog post, particularly from social and search, Google may conclude that this is popular and relevant content.
Depending on the performance of the blog post, Google may move it higher in the results-page rankings or may lower it. If done correctly, Google may promote your post for you and drive traffic by putting your post in a good-ranking position.
We always hope this will occur, but it’s often the exception rather than the rule. Creating helpful and keyword-rich content will always improve your website’s search engine performance, so regardless, it is a worthwhile endeavor.
If you get rejected by Google, don’t worry. Google has broken many hearts. We can still get people to your blog post.
Facebook — The Buzz
Facebook is one of the greatest tools you have to draw prospective patients to your blog post. You already have an established audience, those who like your page and engage with it. Tailor your message to these existing patients. We are aiming for engagement. Engagement-focused posts can be as simple as posting a question or asking what people think.
As more users engage with the post through likes, shares, and comments, your blog post will begin appearing on their friends’ and family’s news feeds.
Consider boosting a post to gain a better position on news feeds and expanding to a larger audience. By spending under $40, you could extend your reach to several thousand additional users.
As more people talk about your post, react to it, and share it, you will create buzz around your blog post.
LinkedIn — The Expert
LinkedIn is often forgotten as a valuable social network. First, remember your LinkedIn audience is very different from your Facebook audience. Those who follow you on LinkedIn are likely going to be peers, industry experts, and maybe a handful of existing patients.
Our recommendation is to focus on how this blog post could benefit your peers. Here are some strategies:
- Tell your peers that your blog post answers a question you get frequently from your patients, and that you wanted to write a clear response to the question.
- Tell your peers how this blog post has helped an existing patient understand a difficult concept.
- Write about how sharing this type of content in the community can help promote better hearing health.
- Get personal and share an experience about the blog post topic and how it has impacted you or a patient.
Community Sharing — The Advocate
As a hearing care professional, your primary goal is to help people in your community hear better. Most of our members’ practices are incredibly involved in their communities. Blog posts are a great way to expand your outreach efforts.
If you have a topic on hunters’ hearing protection, you might consider reaching out to local hunting organizations, clubs, and groups. A simple message to these organizations about your relevant blog post can lead to a share on social media or a link on their website.
The key is that the content needs to be useful. They will not post or share unless it helps their customers directly. Be an advocate for better hearing in your community by writing relevant posts and sharing your knowledge.
YouTube — The Explainer
Admit it: You love YouTube. We all do. Cat videos, movie trailers — people even go to YouTube to learn how to fix their cars, learn a new skill, or diagnose themselves. YouTube is the center for learning. It’s also considered the second-largest search engine in the world!
You’ve already taken the time to write a blog post. You’ve thought through the topic, you’ve outlined your argument. Why not record a quick video explaining what you just wrote?
These videos don’t need an expensive camera. Get the nicest smartphone in your office, set it up in a steady position, and stage your video in a room with good lighting and a nice background.
These explainer videos shouldn’t be more than five minutes. Share about the topic you blogged about, and use the opportunity to show visuals or teach with objects.
Once you have completed the video, upload it to YouTube. Make sure to fill out the description and meta data for your video so that it can be found. If you are on Audigy’s SEO program and send the video to our team, all this work will be completed for you.
One final recommendation is to have the video embedded into your blog post. This means that at the top of your blog post, you’ll have the video posted. Users can play that before or after reading your content. You can also link to the blog post in your YouTube video description.
A great technique is to post the YouTube video on social media a few weeks after the initial blog post. This will drive a second wave of users to your blog post and help show that it is still engaging users weeks after the initial post.
Become a Content Machine
At Audigy we believe in process. We give awards to people for their process. We dream of writing process documents. I can’t close my eyes without seeing the word “process” imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. (Maybe that was a bit too much.)
It follows that we believe this process should be refined in every practice. As you work through these suggestions, make the process your own.
- Develop blog idea
- Write blog post
- Optimize blog post
- Post blog post
- Share on social media
- Share with community
- Record, upload, and optimize a YouTube video
As you continue to blog, Google will continue to reward your website, and your users will engage more with your content. Happy blogging!