Getting Back on the Blogging Bandwagon

As a huge proponent of executing a consistent marketing plan for an entrepreneurial physician business venture or even a medical practice, I've been a poor example recently!

By now, many of you know just how important the Internet, and specifically blogging, has been to the growth of my business, as I have shared the story with you on several occasions.

And just like many businesses and even medical practices do at some point in their life cycle, my physician coaching business experienced growing pains last year. I found myself getting stuck on the treadmill and trying to run faster and faster!

This meant that blogging (one of my key marketing strategies) took the brunt of my chronic lack of time. I felt that not only was I not writing often enough, but that the quality of my writing had suffered too. Instead of keeping to my religious two to three posts a week, with dabs of podcast interviews with interesting entrepreneurial physicians scattered throughout the month, I'd fallen off to a couple of blog posts a month. And it was hard to feel inspired when writing!

Now this state of affairs may be okay for some of you who only need to hear from me occasionally. But I'll let you in on a secret -- it's not just you I'm writing for. It's also the search engines.

When those wily search-engine bots were not discovering me on a regular basis, they tossed me off Page 1, making my physician coaching business much less easy to find. As a consequence, I noticed that I was being contacted far less frequently ... and that, in the long run, translates to less business.

So, even though I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions, I am pulling my socks up, and returning to my marketing plan -- the one that has proved to be extremely effective for my business over the past four to five years. I'm befriending the search engines again!

In case you're interested, it's not just a matter of writing a blog post. It's also a matter of wooing the search engines with the "whispered sweet nothings" language that they love. By using the right keywords and keyword phrases to tickle their fancy, the search engines reward you with the coveted Page 1 placement (and even better, one of the top three slots). I use the fabulous ScribeSEO tool to help me write blog posts and articles that win favor with the search engines, and I shoot for 100% every time (even as I am writing this post now, I am using this tool).

What steps am I taking to prevent myself from falling off the wagon again?

For starters, I'm redesigning how I run my business so that I get to do my favorite things -- coaching, writing and creating -- and all the rest is handled by my fabulous business team. But that's another story for a different post!