At Be Visible, we use many different tactics to help our clients reach their goals. For many of the small businesses we serve, one of the biggest struggles is how to drive traffic to their website without investing thousands of dollars in advertising. While we believe very strongly in Search Engine marketing, for some types of clients we recommend other options. We’ve discovered that the key to business blog success for some of our clients is a mixture of personal and professional content.
Take the case of Dr. Michael Sinkin. For Dr. Sinkin, a dentist and a sole practitioner in New York City, the need to drive visitors to his website was a challenge. For a New York City dentist to advertise and compete effectively on Google a very large monthly investment is required, one the doctor was not keen on spending. For Dr. Sinkin, who didn’t even have a website until 2010, we decided instead to use a business blog strategy to help him become visible and drive visitors to his new website, and in addition to let prospective patients discover that he is not only a great dentist, he’s also a very warm and funny guy. It’s a slower proces than Google advertising, but can be very effective over the long term, as we shall see.
“What in the world am I going to write about?” was the first thing out of his mouth when we presented Dr. Sinkin with our idea. Well, he has since figured it out and has become a prolific blogger. He blogs about his life, his staff, his long-time patients (with their permission), and even his dog. Those personal stories help potential patients find out who he really is, and his current patients just really enjoy receiving a nice story from him.
But here’s the key: in between Dr. Sinkin’s personal blogs we intersperse blogs about dentistry. Sounds boring, right? Not really! Our team constantly researches to discover the questions that people are actually asking about dentistry on the web and creates blog content around those questions. The doctor then adds his two cents then we publish and share the blogs.
Some of the blogs on Dr. Sinkin’s site are driving a remarkable amount of visits to the website. Here are three examples:
- 7 Home Remedies for a Toothache – A Dentist’s Opinion: 15,168 visits
- What to Do if a Tooth Cracks or You Lose a Crown?: 4,716 visits
- 5 Ways to get Relief from a Toothache: 1,140 visits
The Results
Of course all of this effort is in vain if it doesn’t provide results. Dr. Sinkin attributes 50% of his new patients to his website since we implemented the blogging program. In this case, the benefits of blogging are many, but the two most important are:
- Blogging improves overall rankings in Google, and helps more people find the site.
- Blogging shows that Dr. Sinkin cares about people and is willing to share his knowledge.
If you can’t figure out what to write about on your business blog, think about the questions that your customers and clients (or patients) ask you on a regular basis. Start there. Or call us!
Check out Dr. Sinkin’s blog, “The Dental and The Incidental” here.
For more about business blogging, click here.
