Establishing your dental content writing strategy is a good start to improving your practice’s patient outreach and retention efforts. But that means more than deciding to produce content—it means understanding what types of content will be most effective in realizing your goals.
Are you a new practice focused on building a stable patient base? Does your established practice have trouble creating recurring patients? Are you trying to highlight a new service capability? The type of content you produce depends on your objective.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to content marketing, and it takes a skilled dental content writer to distill your goals into the right collateral. That said, there are a few tried-and-true mediums for communicating your message—all of which can be tailored around your core objectives.
Easy-to-read blog posts
A blog is the simplest method of content marketing and one of the most powerful mediums to convey information in the digital age. Unfortunately, too few dental practices have a blog and the ones that do rarely use them effectively.
A blog is the perfect opportunity to provide quick-hitting tips and information to patients. They’re short, sweet, and to-the-point when it comes to education, and they go a long way in building patient confidence. Here’s a few examples of what a blog post might convey:
- 6 Brushing Tips to Help You Get Those Hard-to-Reach Areas
- The Benefits of Invisalign Braces for Adults
- Here’s Why Dentists Take X-Rays Every Six Months
Blog posts cover one topic and provide easy-to-understand information for patients. They usually address a question, dispel a common myth, or explain a procedure. They’re versatile, too! Share them on social media, include links in emails, or refer people to them as a type of FAQ.
Informative articles
Tired of handing patients printouts explaining their upcoming procedure? Want a better way to cover a complex topic? Informative articles are the answer. These pieces are well-organized, in-depth materials a dental writer can use to cover more complex topics. They’re longer than blog posts and written at a higher level, great for showcasing expertise. Check out a few examples:
- Root Canals: Understanding Your Upcoming Procedure
- How to Properly Care for Teeth After Whitening
- TMJ: Signs, Symptoms, and Diagnosis
Articles usually serve a specific purpose. You might email a root canal patient a link to an informative article before their upcoming procedure. Or, you might include an article about teeth whitening in an email targeted at cosmetic dentistry candidates. The goal of articles is twofold: To inform patients and affirm the expertise of your practice.
Targeted email marketing
Email marketing is a superb way to connect directly with patients and prospects. Like direct mail from decades ago, email marketing puts your message right in front of the people you want to see it. Even better than direct mail, email is sophisticated enough to distinguish and target unique groups. Have a dental content writer tailor a specific message for a specific group and you’ve got a powerful medium for advertising! Here are some examples:
- “Benefits of teeth whitening” for cosmetic dentistry candidates
- “Oral health tips” as part of patient appointment reminder emails
- “Facts about cavities” for emails to parents of children who are patients
A good dental content writer can pair the right message to the right audience, creating a powerful, well-received piece of email collateral. Emails serve an important purpose in being brief touch points, helping your practice stay fresh in the minds of patients who may have a reason to visit.
Clear, concise web content
Your practice’s website is arguably its most important asset. Long before people step foot in the building, they’re checking out your website and making the decision to schedule an appointment (or not!). The web content your dental writer creates is instrumental in setting the right tone and sending the right message.
Web content should inform, persuade, and convey information that’s meaningful to people. It needs to answer the most very basic questions about your practice and give people a reason to trust you. Home, Service, and Contact pages are a good start, but they’re not enough. Good dental content writing will flesh out the most important pages, including:
- Procedure-specific pages, offering a comprehensive overview
- Staff and facility pages, showing your dedication to patients
- Pages covering your most-asked questions and topics
Web content is static—meaning it always lives in the same place on your website, always easy to link people to. More importantly, web pages can act as landing pages from any other digital resource. Link your marketing emails back to them or use them as landing pages for a PPC campaign. Your website is the home base for all the content you produce.
Friendly social media posts
Dentistry is a B2C business, meaning you need some form of customer outreach. Nothing connects you to patients faster or more meaningfully than social media. Capitalizing on this outreach opportunity means writing the right type of social media posts:
- Informative content linking to reputable oral health resources
- Newsworthy content from your practice
- Funny or inspirational content involving dentistry
Social media content should always exemplify your brand voice. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are megaphones. Whatever you’re putting out there is going to be seen and heard by anyone following you. Make sure it’s a message you can get behind.
There are more types of dental content writing to explore, but these are the true pillars. Blog posts, articles, web copy, and social media are versatile pieces of collateral to serve the majority of your practice’s goals.