What is the difference between a dental blog and your dental practice website?

A blog is simply a website with certain features to it.

First, it's easy to update without special software. Just log in, and create new content.

Second, whatever you add in terms of content is generally on top. A blog re-orders itself dynamically so the home page is always the latest article you created.

So when people come to the blog, they are reading your freshest content.

Since the home page is the most important page for people and for web spiders, a blog always has its freshest content where the people and spiders can see it first.

Third, a blog has the ability to ping, or notify outside directories when new content has been posted.

I go further in my blogsites in that I use an extensively customized blogging system that has a load of additional features that help in search engine optimization, posting videos and doing podcasts and all kinds of other good stuff.

But those are the basics:
1. Easy to create content
2. New content on top
3. Notifies the outside world when new content is posted.

So what I do is create many new blog articles every month for dentists who are too busy to do that. I post them and ping the outside world that new content is there.

In addition, there is no question that when you get people to visit your site, whether it's your website or your blog, you want to get them to agree to be added to your list.

That's because you will only convert maybe 1 out of 50 or 1 out of 100 visitors into patients right then. But the other 49 or 99 may be good candidates to become patients in the future.

Getting people to opt in is hard. I have an advantage over you in that I do direct marketing for a living. And I spend hours and hours studying direct marketing and trying out ideas on other website properties that I own or run or help to run.

Here is what I have found in terms of getting opt ins.

How to build your dental patient prospect list

Whether you have a website or a blog, you have to get people who visit your site to really want something that you are offering. That something can be a free report, or white paper, or video. It should be tied in to what you are offering.

It would make no sense to offer free Superbowl tickets. You'd get a lot of opt ins but you'd go broke and the Superbowl tickets would be the goal of the opt-ins, which has nothing to do with your dentistry.

So for an opt-in you offer something that is ideally of great value to a prospective patient, but of no value to anyone else. I will call this your bait.

And further, I have found that to run a website that gets a high rate of opt ins, you have to do everything differently from what you do in your regular, practice website. I use the term "brochure website" not as a perjorative term, but because it is designed in all cases that I have seen to let people see what you do and who you are and how to get in touch.

That is a brochure and you need one. Every practice should have one. Its purpose is to attract patients who are referred to you, family and friends of patients. Internal marketing which is the most important marketing you can do.

Creating web dental advertising that gets new patients

I have found that you have to design a different website altogether if your purpose is to get opt-ins. That website must be designed with the incentive, the bait, front and center.

So, if you put the concept of a blog together with a design that encourages visitors to opt in, you get a system that builds a list of high value patient prospects, and a system that is easily found on the web.

I add one more thing. I do a lot of promotion of my blogsites. I build backlinks and traffic by getting links from social media sites. Social media sites include Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, Zimbio, Digg, Squidoo, Experienceproject, and maybe 200 others.

Why social media sites? Because they are high authority sites. So links from them build ranking for the blogsites on Google. And because they are hangouts for real people, so they drive traffic to the blogsites also.

All of this is stuff you could do yourself. And you may do it yourself. But it's hard to do. It's time consuming. It takes a lot of effort and knowledge that has to continually be updated because nothing moves faster than Internet marketing.

So basically, I am an Internet marketer working to get you new patients. Today I am using blogsites. I am staying on the leading edge. Doing the work that perhaps you are doing but that almost no dentist has the time or knowledge or interest in doing.

 

If you want to know more about how to do dental marketing and get high case acceptance, the next step is to provide me with your name and email. I will guard your privacy by never sharing your information with anyone. And I will give you my $59.95 book, the third edition all time bestselling book on case acceptance and dental marketing, completely free by download.