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How To Write Blog Posts For A Dental Practice

With 32% of professional marketers thinking their content is poor and 60% of content marketers finding it hard to produce content consistently, it’s safe to say that writing blogs can be difficult – even for professionals.

Isn’t that crazy? 60% of professional writers find it hard to produce content. If they find it challenging no wonder somebody in the dental industry would find it difficult too!

The problem lies in that even if you’re creating new content for your website, that alone won’t help your clinic.

Your customers want to read interesting and useful articles that provide them with the answers to all of the dental questions.

They want to educate themselves in order to make the right call when it comes to booking a dental appointment with you. They want to make a decision on whether or not they’re ready to part with their money BEFORE they step foot inside your clinic.

Now don’t get put off writing blogs. Blogging works – when it’s done right.

In a different blog post I wrote about The Big Five, a framework created by Marcus Sheridan (author of the book They Ask, You Answer) for creating content ideas that your customers actually WANT to consume.

The Big Five is a concept that’ll make it incredibly simple to come up with a TON of ideas for blog posts. The more educational, insightful, and useful the content you create is, the greater the chance of driving new clients to your dental clinic’s website.

But once you have all of those ideas, you still need to expand them into an actual article.

This is the part where we’ll probably lose a couple of you. Creating content is work, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. But for the few that stick this article out, you’re setting yourself up to be light years ahead of your competition.

For the people about to bounce, your objection is typically something along the lines of “I’m a dentist, not a writer”, or “Great, I came up with ideas, but who’s going to write the thing?”, or my personal favourite “I tried writing a blog, but I couldn’t think of anything”.

To this, I call bullspit!

You’ll see it repeated throughout my posts, and I’ll repeat it again here. I fully believe writer’s block is a myth, it doesn’t exist. If you have a framework to follow, a simple set of rules surrounding how you should write, and you dedicate 30 minutes of your day to writing something…anything. The content will flow.

Don’t have 30 minutes?

Get up 30 minutes earlier!

Don’t want to get up 30 minutes earlier! Well, I’ve got a post on time management that will show you EXACTLY how you can find 30 minutes by doing less, yet still accomplishing more. You read that right, I’ll be giving you the secret that people like Tony Robbins, Jeff Bezos, and Garry Vaynerchuk use in their life every day – I’m not sure about you, but they seem like pretty damn successful guys to me!

But back to today’s post. I’m going to give you the framework that will help you turn all of those ideas into articles. It’s so simple that once you start, you’ll wonder why you didn’t discover this sooner.

Click here to download a copy of the framework.

You can use it moving forward to take all of those ideas you came up with after following one of my last posts and turn them into interesting blogs that’ll get you more readers, and then turn those readers into interested clients.

So let’s dive right in.

Most people start by opening up a notebook or Microsoft word. They’ve got their coffee and are full of energy and ready to write. They’ll then spend the next 20 minutes staring at a blank page. It’s at about this time that they’ll decide to quickly check Facebook, maybe refill the now empty coffee mug, check their email and maybe scroll through Instagram. Anything to get their mind off staring at that blank page!

They’ll eventually give in and say something along the lines of “writing is hard, how much will this actually do for my business anyway?” Then finally give up, close the book or software and walk away. And that’s the end of their very brief journey as a writer.

What if I told you that by adding 4 simple headings to that blank page, the words would just start flowing?

You’d probably think I’m talking crazy.

But the truth is, there are 4 simple points that every blog post should cover, and by adding these 4 points to your page it will fire up your brain and before you know it, you’ll have written 500 to 1000 words.

Now I know you’re probably looking at this thinking “500 to 1000 words. That’s crazy talk Sheila! You’re insane!”.

As daunting as that number might be, it’s actually not that much! Take this article for instance. The original idea for this article came from a video I posted to YouTube.

That video has a run time of 5 mins and 24 seconds and I just turned on my camera and talked about the framework for writing a blog post. When I transcribed it to create the outline of this post, the count was over 800 words. A little over 5 minutes talking about a subject created over 800 words!

As an expert in dental care, can you talk about a subject for 5 minutes? Yes? There’s your blog post. Download an app called Otter.ai (they have a free version that gives you 600 minutes per month), turn it on, and start talking. There’s the outline for your blog post! 5 min = 500 words.

The app will transcribe what you’re saying into text, just make sure you speak clearly. Once you’re done, simply take the text from the transcription and edit it into a blog using the framework.

If you’d prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, take out a piece of paper and write down these 4 headings.

  • The Promise
  • The Problem or Myth
  • The Resolution
  • The CTA (or Call to Action)

Now that you’ve done that, let’s go into more detail and discuss how these headings are going to help you write the perfect blog posts for your dental practice.

1. Entice Your Readers In With The Promise

In the promise, we want to catch the reader’s attention with a relevant and enticing headline, followed by a statement of what you promise to deliver to them in exchange for consuming your content.

The promise should hook the reader or viewer into wanting to read or watch more. For an example of a hook, just take a look at any of the tabloids in the grocery store checkout line.

They may be trash, but those headlines sure know how to sell magazines!

2. State The Problem Or Bust A Myth

Whatever you’ve promised your audience in your opening, they may not realize they need this answer yet. Sometimes, you need to hold a mirror up before someone can see they have food on their face.

So in this area, you want to agitate the problem your reader is currently facing and bring it to the forefront.

Empathize with the reader, let them know you understand the problem. If you can articulate it better than they can, they’ll most likely credit you with having the solution.

If you can’t think of a problem to articulate, then bust a myth surrounding the topic of your post instead.

For example – In this post, I’m going to show you that writer’s block is not a real thing and that by implementing a simple framework and dedicating 30 minutes a day to writing, you can create a TON of content for your business. ????

3. Provide Your Reader With The Resolution

Here you’re going to teach 2 or 3 ways that your viewer can solve the problem they are now aware of.

You don’t need to give away all of your secrets. But do give away enough to satisfy their curiosity and show that you’re the authority on the subject of dentistry. Bold headlines and bullet points are your friend and can make it much easier for someone to skim your article to see if it’s something they want to invest time in.

Again the key is to hook the reader, so once you’ve gotten this far, pass the article over to someone not familiar with your industry for feedback.

Ask them a few simple questions after they’ve read it:

  • Was this article easy to understand?
  • Was there anything you weren’t clear on?
  • Did you find it helpful in teaching you about [insert the thing]?

You’re looking for them to confirm that you’re not using too much “dental jargon” and that it reads well to someone not in the dental industry. Too often we forget that we’re the experts in our field and the average person probably has no idea what we’re talking about.

When writing, put yourself in your client’s shoes. They’re on the outside looking in and aren’t familiar with some of your terms, so you need to bring it down to an outsider’s level of understanding.

4. End With A Clear Call To Action!

If the reader has made it this far, you’ve done your job! You’ve successfully hooked them in and provided some insight to help them make a decision, resolve an issue, or learn something of value to them.

So how should you end it?

Well, relationships are all about getting someone to the next stage. If you’re compatible, and you like each other but neither one of you tells the other what you want next, then how will you ever get there?

If someone has read your article, congratulations! You’ve created a relationship!

No, you won’t be asking them to marry you, but you DO want to tell them the next steps in continuing the relationship.

One thing dental experts neglect to do is to tell their audience WHAT they should do to get in touch with your clinic and make an appointment. It may seem like the most obvious thing in the world … to you … but the truth is most people will want to engage but aren’t sure how and feel embarrassed asking, so they never will!

Add a VERY clear call to action at the end of each post or video. Tell the viewer the next steps you want them to take. Do you want them to download something? Do you want them to sign up to your mailing list or channel? Do you want them to leave you a comment? Make an appointment? Book in for teeth cleaning?

If you don’t tell them, they won’t know and chances are they’ll just leave after they’ve consumed your content.

With that said, I’m going to leave you with a call to action of my own.

If you like this post please share it with some friends. Like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, subscribe to our YouTube channel and we will see you in the next one.

Cheers!

CASE STUDY

Dickens Yard Dental

Meet Dr. Sahil Thakkar. Owner, founder, and principal dentist of Dickens Yard Dental, a dental practice based in West London. As a brand new business, the main goal was to increase the number of new patients to kick things off.