Are you a doctor looking to help people online through content marketing and raise your profile at the same time?
Content marketing generates three times as many leads and costs over 60% less than traditional marketing efforts like ads.
In this article, you will learn what content marketing channels work the best right now and how to get the most out of content marketing for doctors in 2020.
Let’s begin!
What is content marketing?
Simply put, content marketing is the process of creating content with the goal of getting positive business results.
The content that yields the best results is the one that provides the most value to consumers.
In other words, creating content with advertising yourself of your business works infinitely worse today, in 2020.
To illustrate this, 70% of people prefer hearing about a business by consuming their content rather than by traditional advertisement.
The focal point of content marketing is… you’ve guessed it… content.
Quality content in large quantities, to be more precise.
For content marketing purposes, it doesn’t matter if your content comes in the form of written word, picture, audio, or video.
You can make everything work.
Why should doctors bother with content marketing?
Being a physician puts you in a unique position to provide tremendous value to people through creating content.
In other words, creating content allows doctors to change people’s lives at scale.
We live in very exciting times.
You could leverage your online presence in any way you wanted.
Be that to simply reach and help as many people as possible, raise your profile, get speaking engagements, sell books, get patience for your practice, earn more money, etc.
If you’re trying to accomplish any of these things or any combination of them, content marketing is your best ticket to success.
I wrote an article “12 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important and How It Can Improve Your Business” so feel free to check it out.
What is the ROI of content marketing?
Let’s get real, measuring the short-term ROI of content marketing is very difficult.
Content marketing is simply not a short-term game.
For example, if you created and published five articles on your new blog and tried measuring the ROI of your investment after a month, you’d think content marketing was the biggest waste of your time.
Because the ROI of five articles on a new blog after a month is a big fat $0.00.
Why?
Because there’s so much content out there.
Search engines like Google have to pick and choose what they put in front of human eyes.
To get traffic on a blog with five articles, you would have to invent the time machine first and go back to 1995.
This is why content marketing is a long-term game.
It leverages the compounding effect that makes many small actions snowball into profound results over time.
How much time does it take for content marketing to take effect?
On average, years.
Quality and quantity of content can certainly speed up this process, of course.
Back to ROI, you can certainly measure it once your content marketing channels start getting traffic, but don’t expect that to be quick.
For example, it takes an article 6-10 months to reach its peak placement on Google.
But once it gets there, the article continues to send traffic your way for months and even years to come.
Lastly, here’s my article on various ROI-related content marketing statistics if you want to take a look at them.
What content marketing channels are currently worth your time?
Let’s talk about where you can publish your content.
To provide you with the most value, I will concentrate on channels that are 1) Evergreen or 2) Blowing up in popularity and reach currently in 2020.
Evergreen channels are blogging and Youtube.
Those two channels are now going anywhere anytime soon because they’re search engine-centric.
People will never stop using Google to get information, which in turn means Youtube as well.
Youtube is a search engine too on top of being owned by Google and integrated into Google’s search results.
Two channels that are blowing up currently are LinkedIn and TikTok.
They’re both gaining massive amounts of users, but, more importantly, their algorithms are enabling content creators to get huge amounts of organic traffic.
Before disregarding either of these channels please let me make a case for them in their dedicated sections.
Podcasts are in a category of their own because they’re both blowing up in popularity and are here to stay as an evergreen channel for many years to come.
The important thing to note is that I will not talk about the intricacies of these channels or how to optimize content for each of them in this article.
Before publishing on any of them, consume a few hours of content from other doctors to get a better picture of what they’re doing on the platform.
Is blogging still worth it?
This is a no-brainer, really.
Blogging is as old as the Internet itself, and it’s not lost its potency to this day.
Let’s just mention that 77% of all Internet users read blogs.
Blogging game did evolve over the years, however.
Quantity is no longer enough.
Today, you need quantity and quality combined.
As a matter of fact, each time you start writing an article, your aim should be to write the best article on that particular keyword out there.
Consumers are looking for comprehensive content and Google is happy to oblige.
Mediocre content gets nowhere these days.
Quantity is still very important.
Check out my article on the topic of creating comprehensive content.
When starting a new blog, many seasoned publishers will tell you to aim to write 30-50 articles within the first 60-90 days.
Because there are hundreds of millions of blogs out there and millions of blog posts get published daily, the standards have gone up.
Luckily, blogging isn’t just a game of being the first, but it’s also a game of being the best.
Meaning, if you’re consistently posting high-quality content, your audience will find you and your blog will grow.
Why is Youtube a great content marketing channel?
Youtube is not simply a video entertainment platform.
In fact, Youtube is the second most popular search engine in the world.
Why do I stress the fact Youtube is a search engine?
Because content published on Youtube is continuing to be relevant for months or even years after you publish it.
Quality videos will continue bringing in viewers and followers for a long time.
Unlike posts on Facebook or Instagram that become irrelevant and invisible within minutes or hours after they were published.
Many of Youtube’s 2+ billion users visit the platform for educational or problem-solving purposes.
“How to” videos are exploding in popularity with a 70% growth rate year on year.
Just like with blogging, growing your channel on Youtube requires consistency and relentlessness.
If you check out some of the doctors on Youtube with tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers, you will notice they have hundreds if not thousands of videos published over many years.
This might sound intimidating, but once you get into the habit of publishing, it’s not that bad.
Your content doesn’t have to be flashy and post-produced.
What matters is the quality of your information and your authenticity.
Understandably, not everyone’s a showman, but you’d do yourself a disservice if you didn’t try.
Even if you’re not a natural when it comes to being in front of the camera, people get infinitely better at doing things after enough repetition.
Medical content on LinkedIn? Seriously?
If you’re thinking LinkedIn is still this tech crowd recruiting platform, you’re wrong.
LinkedIn has long outgrown that label.
It has become Facebook for business people.
Meaning, it has become a content creation and consumption platform on top of its original ideas.
Until a while back, people advised that you contextualize content for the tech crowd, but you don’t even have to do that anymore.
LinkedIn’s users are hungry for quality content on any topic these days.
Right now, there’s so much content consumption on LinkedIn that the algorithm is being very generous with the organic reach you’re able to get when you publish a piece of content.
Basically, it’s Facebook 2012 all over again.
Even if you create a brand new account right now, with zero followers and connections, and publish an article, it will get views.
There are 9 billion content impressions per week in the LinkedIn feed being distributed to only 3 million of weekly content publishers.
The clock is ticking, though.
This opportunity will not be here forever.
Take advantage of it while it’s still there.
Why everyone should consider creating content on TikTok right now
TikTok has become a cultural phenomenon in recent months.
If you have a teen in your family, you’re probably seen them spending time on TikTok.
Just because they would cringe while saying the word ‘cringe,’ or whatever the kids say these days if you told them you were going to make a TikTok account, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
The platform has over 1.5 billion users at this point, and it’s still growing.
Compare that with the fact that only 4% of the social media marketers in the US are using TikTok, you’ll realize how big of an opportunity TikTok presents.
60% of the platform’s monthly active users are 16-24-year-olds and the demographics are only going to go up from there.
Remember, Facebook was for college students once too and now it’s for their parents and grandparents.
And if you think that age demographic is not your audience, I’d just like to mention that those kids have parents and grandparents too.
Be creative and find a way of reaching them through the younger generation of their family.
Why am I trying to convince you that TikTok is a good idea?
Because content consumption and engagement are through the roof currently.
In many cases, people get larger audiences on TikTok in weeks than it took them years to build on other platforms.
In case you were wondering, there are many doctors on TikTok as we speak.
Here are a few examples:
- @drleslie – 465k followers
- @Doctor.Jesss – 130k followers
- @mamadoctorjones – 180k followers
- @austinchiangmd – 73k followers
Why not consume their content for a while and see if you could ever see yourself creating content on there?
Even if TikTok ends up being a fad, you will still reap huge benefits of this insane growth, reach, and engagement on the platform.
Why should podcasting be a part of your content marketing strategy?
Podcasting is rapidly gaining traction in recent years.
51% of the US population have listened to a podcast, while 32% of the US population listens to a podcast at least once a month.
That’s nothing surprising considering how much time we spend in the cars while commuting, or doing other activities that leave us open for audio content consumption.
In fact, we’re so getting used to consuming audio-only content, many people are only ‘listening’ to Youtube videos in the background while doing something else.
I don’t know about you, but I do this all the time.
It’s practical and enables people to get so much more out of doing otherwise boring and unengaging chores.
For those reasons alone, podcasting is here to stay.
If you’re thinking “Oh, but I’d need equipment and a studio… and this… and that…” you’re wrong.
Podcasts can be done with minimal equipment even over the phone or over Skype from the comfort of your home.
Just like Youtube videos, the quality of information your podcast provides is much more important than the production quality.
Content marketing strategy
It’s definitely important to set goals for your content marketing, research your audience, find out where they hang out, what type of content they consume, etc.
Far be it for me to advise you not to do these things, but I wouldn’t stress about it too much, honestly.
When starting, your number one goal is to get in the habit of releasing content.
You could strategize for months, plan everything down to a tee, and then go on and produce one piece of content per month.
That wouldn’t yield any results whatsoever.
Plus, allow your content to shape your content strategy.
In other words, see what kind of feedback you get and do more of what your audience wants and needs from you.
Read all the comments you get and reply to them.
Be blindly consumer-centric.
After a while of doing that, you will start getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t work.
Only then will you be able to form any kind of an educated content marketing strategy.
How to produce as much quality content as possible?
This is the million-dollar question.
A day only has 24 hours and there’s a very finite amount of time you can dedicate to content creation, especially when that’s your “side-gig.”
That’s why it’s important to milk every piece of content you create for everything it’s got.
The key concept to grasp here is that it’s perfectly OK to take a single piece of content and re-purpose it on different platforms.
This means, for example, shooting a video and uploading it on your Youtube channel, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, etc.
The same video is not going to do equally as well on all platforms because people have different mindsets when using Facebook as opposed to LinkedIn, for instance.
Context and nuances do matter, but I wouldn’t worry about that stuff at the beginning.
As you become savvier at the content marketing game, you will learn how to tweak your content a little bit to do better on a certain platform.
To try to learn all the nuances beforehand would not be too effective.
Repetition and execution are your two best friends.
Now, let’s go through a hypothetical example and see how you can get 10, 15, or even 30 pieces of content across all your channels out of a single piece of content.
Just to be clear, a Tweet is a piece of content just like a blog post or a podcast episode is.
Since this is a hypothetical example, it’s important not to get hung up on any given part, but to try to grasp the general concept of how to get the most out of your content.
Example of how to get the most out of a single piece of content
For the purpose of this example, let’s say your content marketing channels are:
- Podcasting platforms of choice
- Blog
- Youtube channel
That sounds like a lot, but remember, you’re going to re-purpose content and contextualize it for each of the platforms, not create a unique piece of content for every one of them.
At the beginning of this little content marketing exercise, we have a one-hour long podcast episode that you also filmed.
So, you have a long-form piece of content that has audio and video aspects to it.
Count: 1 piece of content
What do you do with it?
Step 1) Pull the audio from it and upload it to your podcasting platforms of choice.
Step 2) Upload the video of the entire thing on Youtube.
Step 3) Transcribe the podcast using one of the specialized transcription services on the Internet, edit it and create a blog post
Step 4) Re-publish that blog post on LinkedIn
Count: 4 pieces of content (or more if you’re present on more than one podcasting platform)
You’re bound to leave that one-hour conversation with some interesting thoughts and a selfie of yourself and the other person from the podcast.
Tip: right after you do the podcast, open the Notes app on your phone and write down interesting tidbits.
Step 5) Create two Tweets during that day:
- With the first, one you can promote the podcast episode itself, use the selfie pic
- In the second one, use the interesting thought you wrote down after the podcast interview
Step 5) Create two Instagram posts during that day:
- Create a Story post using the selfie and promote the podcast episode
- Overlay the interesting thought on a royalty-free photo or just use a black background and post it as your second Instagram post. Or you can simply take a screenshot of your Tweet, crop it, and post that
Step 6) Use the same photo and copy from the second Instagram post and post it on LinkedIn
Step 7) Make a Facebook post using the selfie pic and promote the podcast episode there
Count: 10 pieces of content so far
From here, you can chop up the video and pull the most interesting parts to post as standalone pieces.
Let’s say you only end up with a single interesting clip from the whole episode.
Step 8) Post the video clip as is on Youtube, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Step 9) Trim the video down a little bit so it can be uploaded on Instagram and Twitter, add captions and upload it
Count: 15 pieces of content
There you go.
You just posted 15 pieces of content that day.
And this is just the bare minimum you could get out of a one-hour podcast episode.
It’s more likely you’ll end up with twice as many pieces of content than that, actually.
Conclusion
Content marketing is the most powerful force in marketing.
It costs less and yields better results than any other form of marketing.
Creating content takes time, but if you intelligently re-pack and re-purpose content, you will get a lot more out of every piece you create.
Don’t expect quick ROI and don’t give up.
Allow your efforts to compound and amass enough momentum to create a snowball effect.
At that point, you will truly realize the power of content marketing.