Becoming......an expert....

This afternoon I am going to TrailFinders, to book a flight to Australia. My niece is getting married in the autumn, so there will be a bit of a family get-together on the Sunshine Coast.

My kids think I'm crazy to use a travel agent: "You can save money by doing it yourself online. It's easy", they say. But for me it's not just about the money. It's also about having confidence that I'm not booking anything stupid, or making life difficult for myself. I want to put myself in the hands of an expert, who will guide me through the flight booking process. I'm happy to pay them some commission to do so.

How do I know that they are experts? Well, they've successfully booked flights for me in the past. They also keep in touch with me, via email, with stories of other travellers who have had good trips organised by TrailFinders. As each month passes, they are building, in my mind a compelling case that they are the experts. I haven't even considered going to use another travel agent.

Why am I telling you this story? Because in our practices it is the same: we need to keep our patients feeling that we are the 'experts', the 'go to' people in healthcare. How do we do that? By telling stories! Stories that touch on anything to do with healthcare. Stories that are interesting, or funny, or controversial. If we don't tell stories to our patients, they will listen to other practitioners stories instead.

We tell these stories in the blogposts on our websites, and via our email newsletters. If you aren't doing blogposts on your website and sending out regular newsletters to your patients, you are missing out on a fantastic opportunity to keep your patients engaged with you, to come back to you when they have more problems, and to talk about you with their friends. All for free!

How do we get started? By writing a blogpost on our clinic website. I recommend using a template that goes like this:

1. I saw something interesting the other day. (I dropped a glass bowl and broke it)

2. It made me think of something (clinical) (something broken: spondylolisthesis) which we can detect by doing...... causes symptoms of....... can be treated best by........ 

3. Back to the interesting thing. Did you know that in China they often highlight repairs to broken ceramic with gold. Its a technique known as 'Kintsugi'

So the idea is to talk about yourself a bit, because it's all about relationships, but also to talk about clinical issues of interest to our patients.

We're definitely NOT asking patients to come in for a check-up or offering a deal. That makes it cheap. All we are doing is working on or relationship with the patient.

If you are a clinic owner, you will already have a website, I'm sure, and can set this up easily. If you are an associate, then you still need to start this as an investment in your future. You could start with a plain 'Blogger' site from Google. Its free! Personally I would use MailerLite, because this can grow into a sophisticated site for your clinic/interest and is really great for email newsletters (which I'll talk about in another post)

As an associate, you could get your employer to create a link in their website to your blog from your bio in the 'about us' section. If you are working for a clinic, do be aware that the patients are normally patients of the clinic, so you cannot collect their email addresses on a separate site. 

How often should I blog? I think weekly is a good aim when doing simple, uncomplicated blogposts. We need to practice using our creative writing muscles. Leaving a longer gap between writing sessions just makes it harder to get going! The nice thing about blogging is that to start with, not many people will see your posts, so you will not be too intimidated. 

btw, I did go to TrailFinders and book the flights. They made it very easy, of course. They're experts!

Homework:

1. Start a simple blog on Googles Blogger App (or if you are feeling slightly more adventurous, do it on MailerLite).

2. Write your first blogpost

This post is the first in a series about blogging and email marketing