David Straight, Author at E-rehab

How the Future of Physical Therapy SEO Will Change (And Why You Need to Pay Attention)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—the never-ending quest to fine-tune (or completely gut) your website so that it performs better in search rankings—can be a tiring race to run because the rule-makers (i.e. Google) are always changing the rules. This can be especially frustrating for your practice when it comes to physical therapy SEO.

But as we push further ahead into 2016, the picture of what the SEO rulebook will look like in the future—and what physical therapists will need to do to keep up—is now starting to come into focus.

Some marketers have predicted that there are three certainties in SEO that will affect all web traffic in the future. By understanding and addressing each of these now, you can prepare your practice for the changes ahead and be ahead of the game:

1. Mobile Searches Will Triumph

As Huyen Truong, the SEO Manager for the SEO Agency in Sydney, points out: “mobile search will soon reach the tipping point—the stage at which the majority of time spent, organic traffic and paid clicks comes from smartphones and tablets rather than the traditional medium of desktop and laptop search.”

Every decision you make, whether it’s web design or social media posting, should come from a mobile device mindset. Before you begin any project, big or small, get in the habit of asking: “How will this look on a mobile phone?” [pullquote3 align=”left” variation=”red” textColor=”#000000″]Before you begin any project, big or small, get in the habit of asking: “How will this look on a mobile phone?” [/pullquote3] In addition, having a website that uses scrolling more than clicking is gradually becoming the new standard for website design. The old system of pages, where your journey through the site’s content involves clicking through layer after layer of pages, is dying. Web designs now leverage the easy scrolling motions of smart phones to place all (or most) of the site’s most important content into a single page that unrolls before the mobile user with a swipe of the thumb. The other mobile-centric practice is, when clicking is necessary, make the buttons large and easy to hit. That helps users overcome the primary weakness of smartphone navigation: it’s hard to accurately click on small targets. And Google knows all of this. (It feels like it knows everything, doesn’t it?) One recent algorithm update specifically looks for mobile-friendly designs and gives them preference over others.

2. High Quality and Great Visuals

Some of the recent Google algorithm updates have also removed keyword optimization from the top of its priority list, and the search engine now looks at the quality of your content—especially whether it’s contextually relevant or not—when it assesses your website.

It also likes visual content, especially when paired with high quality, thorough, well-structured written content.

As the blog Keywords and Jargon explains: “Search engine results page (SERP) rankings show that images, infographics, video and other visual media are much more engaging and relevant than plain text. It’s assumed that a user is more likely to find information that is relevant to their search query.”

3. Voice Search Will Become More Important

With the entry of the oddly endearing (or not-so-endearing) computer personalities of Siri, Cortana from Windows, and Google Now, voice searches are now beginning to influence SEO.

Jason Tabeling of Search Engine Watch made some telling observations about the voice search trend:

55% of teens use voice search daily
56% of adults like using voice search because it makes them feel “tech-savvy”
Phrases that begin with “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” increased by 61% year-over-year

This spike in these phrases correlates with the increased use of voice search. When people do a voice search, they tend to begin their question with these words. Keep this in mind for your physical therapy SEO keywords or even your FAQ pages.

And in case physical therapy SEO still makes you feel overwhelmed, let these parting words from Keywords and Jargon remind you why SEO is worth the trouble: [blockquote align=”right”]”[With SEO,] instead of disrupting a user’s schedule or activity, you’re paving the road for them to easily find you when they’re ready to buy what you’re selling. Instead of having to convince them to buy a product or service, you’re establishing in advance that you are the best option to buy it from.”[/blockquote]

If you’d like some more helpful information on physical therapy SEO, contact us at E-Rehab, where we can put you on the path of capitalizing on these upcoming changes so you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your website in top shape.

The Importance of Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists

Running a successful physical therapy practice is about more than just knowing how to help patients rehabilitate from their injuries. As the owner of a private practice, you’re not only marketing your expertise as a physical therapist. You are also marketing yourself.

This is why reputation marketing for physical therapists is such an important component of running a successful business. The reputation you create in your community will be the biggest reason why your practice thrives or fails. You need to make sure that your patients are happy, and that they’re telling people about their positive experience at your practice.

If you’re not sure how to go about marketing your reputation, here are a few tips you can use to keep the word-of-mouth regarding your practice positive:

Be Proactive

You might think that your reputation is something that just “happens,” without requiring any effort on your part. And in a sense, this is partly true: you will develop a reputation eventually, one way or another.

But if you don’t stay committed to shaping and guiding that reputation, then you may lose control over it. This can mean that your side of the story won’t be heard, and your satisfied patients might never get a chance to tell their stories and attract other patients.

This is why it’s so important to take a proactive role in shaping your reputation. Here’s how:

Before doing anything else, it’s essential that you ensure all patients coming to your practice are in fact satisfied with the treatment they’re receiving. If they’re not, then this should be your first priority, and you should make any necessary changes to address this problem right away.
Once you are certain that all your patients are pleased with their treatment, give them an incentive to tell other people about it. Offer a discount or bonus for referring a new patient, or ask them to leave you a review online. Most patients will be glad to help if they are happy with their outcomes.
Also be sure to stay up-to-date on what’s being said about your practice, both good and bad. If a patient is not satisfied, don’t take it personally. Instead, use it as an opportunity to show others how you respond to criticism, and professionally address any issues that patient may have with a comment. This is the true heart of reputation marketing for physical therapists: knowing how and when to engage in order to polish your reputation.

Give Them a Reason to Brag

Your patients come to you to overcome injuries and pain. You might think that if you help them do that, you’ve done your job and that’s it.

However, that’s exactly what’s expected of you. It won’t necessarily knock anyone’s socks off, and it won’t necessarily build your brand.

It doesn’t take much to set yourself apart. All it takes is something unexpected that shows you have each of your patient’s best interests at heart. For example, a study was performed that showed that waiters could improve tips by 23%, simply by providing extra peppermints after the meal.

A few extra peppermints is nothing – but it’s truly the thought and effort that counts. Try to brainstorm on how you can make the rehabilitation process a 5-star experience for patients. It could be something as simple as warm towels, a glass of lemonade, or just taking a few extra minutes to get to know your patients.

[pullquote1 align=”center” textColor=”#000000″]Give your patients more than the minimum that they would expect, and they won’t be able to stop telling their friends about you. [/pullquote1]

Make Sure Your Online Presence Captures Your In-Person Experience

After you’ve taken the time to make sure everything is perfect in your office, make sure this all translates to your online presence. Here are a few ways to make this happen:

Go through your website and see if there’s anything clunky or frustrating. If you’ve found any negative reviews, this is a great time to learn from them.
Make everything as painless as possible, from setting an appointment online to getting in contact with you, so that visitors don’t have to hunt around.
You can also use your website to provide service outside of regular hours. Consider hosting a few videos showing simple exercises for pain relief, or blog about sports injuries and other topics that will interest your patients.

Many physical therapists view their online presence as a hassle that they have to deal with. That’s why so many have ugly, plain websites that do nothing for them.

If instead you view it as an opportunity to set yourself apart, your reputation will improve and spread in no time.
[titled_box title=”Start Focusing on Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists Today” variation=”red” bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#000000″]If you’d like to learn more about powerful reputation marketing for physical therapists, contact us today. We can help you harness the power of the Internet to make you the go-to authority in your area – guaranteed.[/titled_box]

Put the Best PT Marketing Ideas to Work for Your Practice

Is your PT practice struggling to get new clients, losing clients, or just lacking the consistency needed to keep your therapists busy? If this sounds familiar, it might be because you aren’t taking full advantage of all the effective PT marketing strategies that are available to you. To help you make better use of these essential tools, here are the best PT marketing ideas that you can start utilizing at your practice today:

Overcome the POPTS dilemma:

Many orthopedic doctors refer to their own physical therapy (POPTS), which can leave your PT practice hanging, especially if the majority of your patients come from orthopedic physician referrals. If this is your practice’s problem, then it’s time to overhaul your marketing strategy, which will help you rely less on orthopedic physician referrals and more on referrals from GPs, internists, returning patients, and patient referrals. When it comes to marketing, it’s best to re-order your priorities to the following groups:

Referrals from GPs & internists,
Returning patients,
Referrals from returning patients,
Walk-ins.

How do I do that?

Start with a budget for marketing. Many practices don’t worry about marketing because they’ve been reliant on orthopedic physician referrals to drive their business. With your new priority list in mind, develop a realistic budget to determine how much you can spend on marketing.

How much should you budget for physical therapy marketing? My standard answer is as much as it takes to grow the practice and meet your goals, and not a penny more. That said, it’s not uncommon to budget 20-30% of your profits or 4-10% of your gross revenue for marketing.

Once you’ve established a budget, focus on formulating a game plan for how you will market your PT practice.

Online marketing is the fastest growing promotional channel, and this is for a good reason: It’s quick and cheap, and also gives you access to a wide audience.

Types of Online PT Marketing to Consider

So now that you have a budget and are committed to online marketing, it’s time to get started. Here are the basics for any PT online marketing campaign:

Search Engines: the search engines are where a vast majority of your patients or prospects start the process of getting to know you. It’s important to put some time, effort, and money into ranking your practice on page one for:
1. a search for your business name,
2. a search for physical therapy in your city (e.g. physical therapy Los Angeles),
3. a search for niche services you provide (e.g. vestibular therapy, women’s health, TMJ treatment, etc.).

Website: Your practice needs a good website that gives visitors the information they need to decide that you are in fact the right practice for them. While you can make a website on your own, it’s a better idea to have it created by professionals instead. A company that builds websites will know the right way to create a design so that it attracts attention without annoying your visitors. You want your website to look polished and professional, and unless you have experience designing business websites yourself, you will will need a professional to get the look you’re going for.

Your website should include basic contact and location information, your hours, and your practice’s specialties. Include bios and pictures of each physical therapist that details their experience, certification, and specialties. This will help you with Internet searches, since many people use it as their main tool to find a therapist who can help them with a specific injury.

Newsletter: An email newsletter is a great way to reach new and returning patients who can subscribe using their email address. These newsletters should detail news about your practice (new equipment, a new therapist, special holiday hours, etc.), along with some information about physical therapy in general. The options are really quite wide open here. Stay conscientious of the fact that your newsletter readers are interested in staying healthy, recovering quickly, and preventing future injuries. Use your newsletter as an opportunity to demonstrate that you are the experts in your field by highlighting educational and informative articles and adding in your own expert voice.

Social media: Your practice should also have a social media campaign as a way to reach existing patients who will refer your practice to their friends. Encourage your existing patients to follow your social media accounts to keep up to date with your practice. Your social media campaign should be informative and interactive. Follow and post content that relates to health and physical therapy in general, rather than topics that are only specific to your practice. Also be sure to respond to any comments you receive, both positive and negative. Having a strong social media presence will make your practice stand out within your community and will also lead to more walk-in patients.

Ratings & Reviews: online reputation is the second most trusted form of advertising. Establishing yourself as a leader in the community, via patient ratings and reviews, will definitely drive business. Having a systematic process in place to capture the 5-star satisfaction your patients’ convey to you in the practice and then getting that message out on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Healthgrades.com, is another great way to drive new business in the door.

[squeeze_box]If an online marketing campaign seems daunting to you, don’t worry. You don’t have to be in this alone. For more information on PT marketing ideas for your practice or to find out how we can develop a campaign for you, contact E-Rehab today![/squeeze_box]

Physical Therapy Website Design: Creating a Library of Educational Information for Patients

A crucial part of physical therapy website design is providing information patients really want to know about rather than reading mere sales tactics. When prospective patients seek out physical therapy, they want to know what sets you apart from everyone else. Ultimately, most of those people likely have serious physical problems and don’t want to spend hours of time deciding between physical therapy clinics that look too much alike.

One way to set yourself apart is providing a library of educational information on your site that’s easily organized under categories. Under each category, you can bring a comprehensive list of what you do, what your mission statement is, plus answering pertinent questions most patients ask.

Here at E-rehab.com we’ll help you put this all together utilizing the best in multimedia so a first-time visitor gets a complete picture of who you are within minutes.

Creating a Q&A Section

One of the most essential elements in a menu providing information is a basic Q&A section answering the most pertinent questions about you. However, if you’ve ever been in the shoes of a patient, you know not every question is easily answerable in a Q&A. Try to think more thoroughly about what you’d want to ask and place the question and answer there. The more obscure the question, the better since someone will inevitably ask it eventually.

When creating the Q&A, organize it alphabetically or by subject for faster reference. In a mobile culture, especially, many patients are probably reading this on their mobile devices. If they can’t find information in minutes (or even seconds), they’ll likely give up and go somewhere else.

Also, when providing answers in your Q&A, be thorough in the answers. Provide information you can’t find on a Google search so patients know you went to more work for their benefit. One thing patients won’t warm to is overly simple, pat answers.

Providing Information on Individual Procedures

Most people searching for info about physical therapy want to know what type of techniques you provide for various physical ailments. Again, creating categories for each condition is a smart way to organize this information so someone doesn’t have to search on your site to find something.

Under each category, mention any innovative techniques you bring to physical therapy that few others are doing. Be thorough with the information like you were with the Q&A, especially under categories that are the most typical. Physical therapy for back problems are quite common, as are techniques to help those recovering after accidents or surgeries.

Indicate exactly how long each procedure takes and what the best results are. It’s here where you can provide a separate library of videos that showcase exactly what you do.

Creating a Library of Short Videos

When creating videos about your procedures, being as transparent as possible is essential in an era where we want facts about everything. Creating a video series is also a good idea so you break down a particular physical therapy technique into multiple, short segments.

With patient approval, try creating short videos showcasing the physical therapy taking place. By showing one session in real-time through a series of videos, you give a sense of actually being there, how patients react, and what the immediate results are.

End your video series with testimonials from those patients and how they felt after one or several physical therapy sessions. This is the best information your first-time videos can have and tells so much in a mere minute. Nevertheless, your textual information is there to complement the videos. Add detailed images of inside the body showing how physical therapy helps muscle tissue.

[note_box]

Your Website can be More than a Sales Tool

Patients check you and your practice out online before they come in for care.

Use your website as a digital tool to reinforce the information/education you have provided them verbally. A good physical therapy design should consider educational opportunities. E-rehab.com provides patient education, patient handouts, exercise videos, and more.[/note_box]

Contact us here at E-rehab.com and we’ll help you put together a library of information on your site that encapsulates everything for both mobile and desktop users.

How To Begin Your Keyword Research for Physical Therapy SEO

Good Physical Therapy SEO Starts with Some Simple Planning

New doctors and physical therapists building their practices websites can greatly improve their reach by targeting physical therapy SEO keywords. But how do you know what words to target? Here are the steps to keyword research you’ll need to implement in order to start your SEO marketing strategy, specified for physical therapists and their work.

Brainstorm First

To start, it’s important to brainstorm a list of keywords that you know will pertain to your office. This list would include (but is not limited to):

your name/your brand (Ex. Dr. Edward Smith Therapy/First Coast Physical Therapy)
physical therapy + your location
typical injuries your office treats (whiplash/car accident injuries, sports injuries, back pain)
therapy modalities you implement

Once You Pick Keywords, Then Put Them Through This Test

There are four factors to consider when choosing keywords that you will include on your website.

Relevant Keywords – this is pretty simple to understand. Relevant keywords are those keywords that your market niche will use to search for you. A PT practice owner in Cleveland might have the thought that he/she should try to rank for a term like “low back pain treatment in Cleveland”. However, you have to ask yourself this question, “If I rank, will people click on the link and actually call my office?” Based on search engine rankings and the traffic that these terms (e.g. low back pain treatment in Cleveland) generate, I would argue that in most cases, there are some higher priority marketing efforts you should invest in first. Physical therapists are not thought of as a primary care providers the healthcare system…yet. If you are going to try to rank for terms like “low back pain treatment in Cleveland”, you will need to rank for a large number of these terms to generate enough traffic to convert website visitors to patients.
Competition – if you are a new practice with a new website, and you are in a big city like NYC, there’s little chance you will rank in the next 6-12 months. Google ranks website that have domain authority and lots of backlinks. It takes time and a lot of effort from a good SEO company to rank in major markets. It can be done but it is a long-term strategy.
High Traffic Keywords – during your keyword analysis, you should use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner to estimate the number of searches that are done for a given keyword. This is closely related to the concept of relevance. If your target audience rarely searches for a given keyword, or isn’t likely to click on the Google link, of you do rank, it’s not worth the effort. On the other hand, if there is an acceptable amount of traffic and the market isn’t too competitive, then you should add this keyword to your list.
Commerciality – after you determined that a keyword is a relevant term, there isn’t too much competition, and there is enough people searching for the term, then you want to think about commerciality. This term describes the likelihood that someone will click on your keyword and call your office. It’s best illustrated with an example. Let’s say that you are considering ranking for the keyword “physical therapy Cleveland”. The other keyword you are considering is “physical therapist Cleveland”. Both are relevant to your practice. Neither are too competitive (i.e. with reasonable time and effort you could rank on page 1 of Google). Both have a significant number of searches (high traffic). Physical therapy is know to the public as a service and not a profession (this too is changing IMHO). Therefore, the search “physical therapy Cleveland” is a better term to rank for. If you had to choose a keyword term to spend your time and money to try to rank for, then you would choose “physical therapy Cleveland”. Ranking for this term is more likely to generate traffic that will call your office and schedule for an appointment. Here’s a link to a video that describes this term.

Use a Couple Free Tools

As you categorize your terms, you should use research tools to help you narrow down your list. If you’re on a budget, free tools like Buzzsumo or Moz.com can help you find websites similar to yours, and will allow you to study what makes these sites work. These tools allow you to see how well your website is doing, as well as how it compares to other competitors. By studying your competitors, you can get a better sense of how to optimize your website.

DO NOT Keyword Stuff Your Blog Posts or Pages

Lastly, after all your research, implement your keywords strategically. In order to improve your search rankings, you want to use your list of keywords effectively. It’s not enough to just copy and paste them in a list on your website, or heavily use them in your blog posts to push spammy messages hoping you will rank on page one. In fact, those strategies could hurt your ranking. Instead, create unique and valuable content that uses your keywords at part of a theme. For example, let’s say one of your keywords is “Physical therapy Nashville.” A blog post about staying injury-free before you take advantage of outdoor recreational activities in one of Nashville’s many parks, can generate more relevance than a generic blog post on physical therapy in Nashville.

By picking and choosing your keywords based on your own knowledge and some simple analysis, you’ll be more likely to create a successful web presence for your business. To learn more about SEO research, contact us.

Video Marketing for Physical Therapists: Targeting the Right Patients and Bringing Transparency

The process of video marketing for physical therapists is one that requires showcasing exactly what makes you different from your competition. No doubt you have many other physical therapy clinics competing with you in your town or city. You might have even lost many of your patients to your competition because your competitors offered something different or innovative.

While this might sound like pure business logic, the real problem is your competitors either do a better job of marketing, have stronger relationships with referring physicians, or have some sort of financial relationship with doctors/hospitals.

One way to “even the playing field” is to use video to share your high quality care.

In a visual culture, video marketing is one of the best methods of bringing differentiating yourself and what better way to do it than with patient testimonials on camera.

Patients who seek physical therapy want more transparency about how your clinic operates. They also want educational information about what you provide and what sets you apart from others. Even if you don’t feel like you are a leader with your treatment techniques or outcomes, patients still want to learn more about you. Video is a great way to create a long-term competitive advantage.

Many who seek physical therapy do so out of necessity or due to physical pain. So the video marketing you do needs a serious approach. How do you properly convey who you are, though, in a marketing video?

Some Topics for Your Videos

Most companies have a mission statement. Creating a video about your mission statement and your goals for patients is important.
Telling stories about what led you to pursue a career in physical therapy is a great lead-in for patients as a way toward more trust.
Telling stories about patients you’ve worked with in the past can help demonstrate your empathy.
Even better is when you equate your founding to perhaps your own physical ailments. If a specific physical therapy experience helped you overcome a past medical issue or injury, this enhances your sense of understanding about how other patients feel when they seek physical therapy.
Expert interviews are great ways to establish authority and differentiate your self from the competition. Pick topics that you specialize in and share your knowledge with your community (see the example below).

Transparency About How Your Clinic is Run

Secrecy in any company, especially a medical clinic, frequently turns off prospective patients. They want to see what you do. With consent of your medical staff (and even patients), footage of actual physical therapy techniques taking place is a great way to share your clinical expertise, culture, and to improve transparency.

Social Proof

As we have mentioned before, and as stated in the Neilson’s Trust in Advertising study, ratings and reviews come in second or third when it comes to consumer action and advertising trust. If ratings and reviews are trusted, certainly patient video testimonials are also going to be a great trust builder for your practice.

Targeting the Right Patient Demographic

In Dan Kennedy’s book, No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses , he provides readers with some simple yet crucial advice when creating your marketing message. Match your message to your market and use the right medium. You should absolutely apply these simple principles to your video marketing efforts. If you are trying to reach the senior demographic, use senior testimonials, and have them discuss their success with their “senior” diagnoses (e.g. stenosis, osteoarthritis, balance disorders, etc.). If you are targeting younger athletes, then consider using video but delivering it via 15 second snippets on Instagram.

Use Keywords in Your Videos

We recommend that you also use specialized keywords (both short and longtail) to increase the likelihood that your videos will rank better in YouTube and in some cases, even on Google. You can increase the chance that your videos will rank by posting them on your social networking platforms and encouraging likes, comments, and shares.

Video is a great online marketing tool, no question about it. It’s well within the financial reach of any physical therapy private practice. When you create your videos, consider your demographics, use video to share transparency about your clinic, and use them for social proof or patient testimonials. Good video can create a competitive advantage for you so have fun with it.

Improving Your Physical Therapy Newsletters Open Rate

As a small practice, physical therapy newsletters are a great way to share news, explain your expertise, and provide offers to your patients, but what happens if your analytics are telling you that no one reads them? Here are our top strategies to increase the open rates for your physical therapy newsletters.

1. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize.

There are many things that you can personalize in order to encourage click-through rates.

First, personalize the “From” field by including your real name. People are more inclined to click an email coming from a real person (you), not just the name of your practice. In addition, having your name in the “From” field dissuades spam filters from blocking your email. This also helps build your office as a people-friendly one, when people can recognize you as the sender.

Second, personalize emails by addressing your subscribers or patients personally. If you have the data to apply your subscriber’s name to the subject line or preview to the body of an email, use it. According to research by Hubspot with Market Domination Media, open rates increased by 1.2 percent when the first name of a subscriber was included in the subject line. By addressing a recipient personally, you‘ll draw their attention more so than not using their name.

If you don’t have the data to address your recipients with their names–maybe due to online sign-up forms versus patients who have already visited you—you can still market to them personally by using “you.” In the same study, addressing the receiver as “you” and telling them what they will receive increased open rates. Thank yous are also effective in increasing the click-through rate.

Overall, personalization is a helpful strategy in improving your email open rates. If you aren’t doing it, it’s time to start incorporating it into your emails. Just remember to do it sparingly; overuse can decrease curiosity, so rotate this strategy with other tools.

2. Pay attention to the subject line.

Getting someone to open an email is largely dependent on how the subject line grabs the reader’s attention.

The same tricks to writing a headline for an article applies to an email’s subject line. Keep your subject lines short (around 6 words), use eye-catching adjectives and phrases (such as “strange,” “essential,” “against all odds” etc.), and avoid spammykeywords (such as “cash” or “save”). By spending time on crafting an interesting headline, you‘ll have a better time convincing readers to click on your email, before they decide to avoid or trash it. You can find the research that backs up these tips over at Entrepreneur.

3. Make sure your emails are mobile responsive.

As statistics have shown, checking and opening email on mobile devices have grown. About 74 percent of mobile users check their email, and while open rates vary from one industry to the next, everyone can benefit from responsive email design. Simply making sure your campaigns are visible on a smartphone or tablet can increase your open rates drastically, especially if your email newsletters don’t currently support responsive design.

4. Use segmentation.

Segmenting your email list is a great way to improve your email open rates, since it allows you to get the right content to the right people. Basically, after studying your lists and finding out what people want, you can send emails with differing content, based on the receiver’s personal interests or challenges. In a study by Marketing Sherpa, using segmentation strategies increased their open rates from 20% to 40%, and clickthrough rates from 2% to 6%. For your office, a segmented list can look like one group who wants special information and tips for physical therapy after work-related problems or injuries, and another segmented list could be for sports or active bodies that could see you for sports-related pains.

5. Share Something of Value

Offering diverse content that is worth reading is the holly grail of email marketing. When your emails don’t apply to your patients are are simply about musculoskeletal conditions that your patients don’t have, you‘re likely to see a drop in open rates. You can spice them up by adding videos, photos,infographics, and links to valuable, useful content on your blog or website. In addition, changing your email’s layout might do some good as well.

E-rehab’s Newsletter Strategy

[info_box]Since 2003, E-rehab.com has provided its PT customers with patient and physician newsletters. Originally, we would send out information about conditions that PTs treat. After a small patient focus group, we switched our message. We now send out information about wellness topics that are more interesting, patients report they are more valuable, and we’ve repeatedly heard positive feedback from our customers. You can check out some newsletter examples here. If you need help developing your physical therapy newsletters, contact us. We’d love to help you with your newsletter marketing.[/info_box]

Local Physical Therapy Social Media Marketing 101

You’re already a talented and invested physical therapist. You’ve probably got a steady stream of patients who trust you and are seeing results. What’s next? How can you grow your client base and keep your patients healthy, even after their sessions are wrapped up? We suggest physical therapy social media marketing.

You don’t need to be a trained marketing professional to develop your online community. In fact, sometimes that authentic novice approach can help your business stand out among all the cookie cutter stick-to-the-book traditional tactics. So, in between sessions, give a few of these channels a try.

Pinterest

If you’re not on Pinterest already and think it’s just for crafters and bakers, it’s time to get reacquainted. Pinterest was the fastest growing social network over the past year, and it has qualities that you won’t quite find on Facebook. “At their core, the difference between Pinterest and other social networks is why people use it,” Kevin Roose explains, “— to plan for the future, rather than exhuming the past or analyzing the present.” On Pinterest, health-and-recovery-minded users, like your patients, plan for the future by pinning wellness tips, healthy recipes, and inspirational quotes. “Pinning says ‘I want this.’ It’s aspirational.”

Your physical therapy practice can be a hub for such holistic aspirations. Of course you’ll have boards dedicated to PT-specific topics (i.e. Knee Pain, Spine Rehab, Shoulder Problems, etc.) and other subjects that would be a perfect fit for Pinterest‘s “Health & Fitness” category, but you should also tap into the most popular categories like “Food & Drink.” For example, you could pin anti-inflammatory foods, therapeutic teas, protein-rich smoothies, and so on. Latch on to another popular category, “Women’s Fashion,” by pinning workout gear that your active or working-to-become active clients would be interested in. Think beyond the walls of your practice and consider the entire lifestyle of a person on the road to wellness. The topic“Physical Therapy” has 1.78 thousand followers; start showing a few of them why your PT brand is worth following.

Blog

Don’t freak out just yet—you don’t need to write a novel or post every day to have a quality blog for your practice. You also don’t need to be a tech wiz. With platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr (the second fastest growing social network over the past year), it takes minutes to set up a blog and begin participating in one of the biggest trends in marketing: content marketing. Content marketing is an approach which focuses on creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract and engage with an audience. Blog posts are an excellent vehicle for such content, whose keyword-rich format can also help your business by improving your search engine optimization.

Okay, enough jargon. Think about what your client base would find compelling, informative, and shareable. You could write a 300-word piece about five ways to improve shoulder mobility. You could invite a guest blogger (i.e. a patient) to share how PT has changed her life. You could ask your chef neighbor to type up her favorite smoothie recipe and share a few tips on healthy eating. Compile a list of your top ten favorite outdoor activities in your city. Host a giveaway, like a free resistance band, for a randomly selected commenter. Are your own ideas flowing yet?

Facebook & Twitter

You have a Facebook Page, right? Maybe a Twitter profile, too (if not, we can set these up for you)? These platforms are easy to get started on and are an effective way to build and engage with your online community. Like with other digital tools, it comes down to sharing high-quality, relevant content and interacting with your audience in a meaningful, authentic way. Since Facebook and Twitter are typically more well-known than the other channels we’ve mentioned, we won’t go too in-depth on the mechanics, but do know that having an active presence on these sites is becoming more of an expectation than a bonus for businesses. If a patient is in a work meeting and has a quick question (“Is the office cancelled today because of the snow?”), they’re probably going to pop on over to your (hopefully existent and active) Facebook Page or Twitter profile for real-time, up-to-date info. Trying to build up a collection of testimonials? Encouraging people to review you on Facebook is a great way to do so. You can then take these positive reviews and highlight them on your other channels, perhaps after turning the quotes into mini works of art with some free, easy design programs (i.e. Canva).

Practice patience

Be patient with yourself as you experiment with what works for your audience. You may be surprised by what resonates (or doesn’t), and just as your practice was built brick by brick, it will take time to develop your online community. Trust that the new growth you’re cultivating online will circle back to a more enriching experience at your clinic, for you and your clients.

How We Can Help

[note_box]E-rehab.com publishes regular, fresh, and engaging content for its members. From videos to memes, we provide a variety of content to compliment your social media marketing strategy. Contact us us to learn more about how we can help you with your social media marketing.[/note_box]

3 Ideas for Local Physical Therapy Blogging

For any website, a blog plays an important role in developing physical therapy blogging. But sometimes it’s hard to find a fresh topic to write about, especially if you’re writing consistently. Here are three ways to incorporate your keywords in a refreshing way, to help you with your blogging roadblocks.

1. Address local needs.

You already know a lot about the community you work in, and what their needs are: you can learn a lot from your current pool of individuals seeking your help. Do you get a lot of student-athletes, since you work by a university? Do your demographics reflect a large population of individuals working in construction, and therefore share similar back or body aches? Or maybe you’re settled in a tech hub, and seeing people come in for rehabilitation after painful days and nights sitting at a computer. Knowing this, you can easily provide advice or tips for your local population, drawing more people to your blog. If you need help, look up statistics on the top worked jobs in your city, and apply your knowledge of that group to your work. As you address your local needs, you’ll be able to provide valuable, local, SEO content that will help your blog.

2. Apply national research to your area–with your own twist.

Staying on top of trends and news on physical therapy, and reporting on them, is another great way to boost the relevant content in your blog. For example, a recent study on Harvard’s Medical School site showed that physical therapy worked just as well as surgery to alleviate pain due to lumbar spinal stenosis, a type of lower back pain. This type of pain is typically seen among aging patients (usually over 50 years old), as the spine degenerates over time.

The challenge here, however, is differentiating your content from others that simply “pile on” to the trend. Just sharing the news isn’t enough. You should add-on a unique angle in order to create a unique post about the report. For example, with the above research, you can report on how your office can take care of this lower back pain if you’ve had patients with this problem, or know that your community might face this problem over time (e.g. your community is made up of middle-age patients that might see this problem over time). You can add local statistics of how your community might in-time, face this issue, or even add a few tips and advice on how to take care of their bodies as they age. By adding your expertise and knowledge, you can better differentiate yourself among other physical therapy blogs and results.

3. Share your community involvement.

Are you active in your community? Do you co-sponsor events, or have worked with a local non-profit to teach the public about health? Your blog is the perfect platform to share that type of news! One of the best ways to improve your search results through your blog is to report on your relationships with the community. By being able to situate yourself among other local businesses, your webpages will receive a better ranking, as it validates your local influence.

Building those connections not only adds value in your community, but also virtually among SEO results. In order to build a successful reputation online, you also have to build it among your community physically. If your office is brand new, consider working with businesses or organizations that could use your expertise or services. That relationship helps build your reputation among the community, as well as online, when other businesses, organizations, or new patients, can vouch for your local validity.

With these three different strategies, you can continue to build a successful blog for your business.

[note_box]Looking for a blogger for your physical therapy practice? We can help. Not only do we write on topics relevant for your practice, we can also SEO optimize the posts to greatly increase the likelihood your practice will rank for keywords that are important to you. For help with finding the right keywords and improving your online marketing strategy, contact us.[/note_box]

How to Choose Physical Therapy Website Developer

There are certain things that everyone is looking for in a physical therapy website developer. Some of these are pretty basic things.

You want a functional website that’s going to generate more traffic for your business.
You want your website to be a patient education tool.
You want your website to help with operational efficiency.
You want your website to communicate your expertise, etc., etc.

The tone of your website is generally considered to be important. Given that most of your traffic to your website will be prospects (potential patients), you want your website so be easy to navigate and to clearly represent the quality of service you provide. What I often state is, “In a service business, people judge what they can’t see based on what they can see.” Make sure your website is very attractive.

These are all important things to keep in mind when you’re looking for a physical therapy web developer. However, it’s also important to communicate exactly what you’re hoping to achieve. You’ll have to work hand-in-hand with them to get the types of results you want.

What Are You Trying to Achieve?

It’s always a good idea to be really clear about what you’re trying to achieve with your website. Do you want to attract new patients? This is often what many physical therapists want to do with their online presence. But for some, new patients may not matter that much. Instead, they may want to improve their online image. Maybe they want to become thought leaders in their field. For them, the quality of viewers attracted may be more important than the quantity. It’s important to convey your aims to your web developer so that you can see the types of results you want.

Design Secret: Look at a Lot of Websites but Only Spend 5 Seconds on Each PT Website

It’s a great idea to look at websites of companies within the physical therapy profession. Once you know what your competitors are going for, you can compete with them more easily. Forbes magazine agrees with this idea, adding, “Most designers are not experts in your field of business. Having a list of competitor websites and doing your own research about those competitors and similar businesses can help you articulate ideas for the new website.” Here’s a tip though. You could waste hours of time looking at other physical therapy websites. Don’t! Do a search for physical therapy in various cities. Click on links the to each PT website but only look at it for 5 seconds. You will know within that timeframe if you like the look and feel of the website or not. If you do, write it down and communicate it to your developer.

What Does Your Web Developer Specialize In?

Before you start working with a web developer, you might want to check out their previous work and see what they specialize in. If you’re a physical therapist working with E-rehab, you don’t need to worry because we specialize in building websites for physical therapy private practices. You can feel free to point to our previous work and tell us what you liked and what you didn’t.

We bring a certain type of expertise to the task while you bring another. We’re experts in web development while you know the services you provide. It’s important for you to stay involved in the process, overseeing the content and design to make sure that it portrays your practice accurately. At E-Rehab, we’ll be happy to keep you as involved in the process as you’d like to be.

An article from Huffington Post also suggests that you should check out the “back-end” of websites your web developer has built. This will give you an idea of what it will be like to later edit your website on your own. Is it going to be a simple, easy process or will it be too complicated for you? We build our websites on the most popular website development platform on the web-WordPress. This means it is easy to update your website on your own. We even provide personalized training, videos, and phone and email support 5 days a week for you.

[note_box]Take home message: Your website should generate business, communicate your brand image and expertise, improve efficiency, and should be a patient education tool. It can also be a place where you sell product, appointment requests are taken, paperwork is filled out, where a video story about your practice is communicated, where outcomes are presented, and more. Take the time to invest in a good physical therapy website. It will certainly pay dividends on a daily basis.[/note_box]

Stop the Lead Generation Madness

Each day I speak with a client or prospect that wants to generate more business from the web. They are overwhelmed, confused, have been burned and simply don’t know what to do.

It’s not surprising when you consider all of the possible forms of advertising communication as diagrammed here in The Conversation Prism:

Your head really starts to spin when you think of social media:

By Brian Solis and JESS3 (https://www.theconversationprism.com/) [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Here are E-rehab’s Physical Therapy Online Marketing Recommendations

1. Make sure you have a great website – it’s one of the most trusted forms of advertising according to Nielson.

2. Make sure you have a mobile optimized website. 30% plus of your physical therapy website viewers are going to visit you on a smartphone.

3. Send out an email newsletter (examples here). It is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to welcome, communicate, and stay in touch with past patients.

4. Ratings and Reviews – online reviews are the second most trusted and actionable form of advertising according to Nielson.

5. Create videos about your practice, your expertise, about patient reviews, and patient testimonials. Here are examples of reputation videos at Terrapin Physical Therapy’s YouTube channel.

6. Use Facebook and Twitter to communicate social signals to the search engines and to demonstrate your expertise and credibility.

7. Create a blog and optimize the posts to rank for common conditions you treat like MBF Rehab has done.

Invest in the Hub & Spokes

[info_box]You can spend hours every week chasing after the latest tech that might generate new patients. Our advice is to stop the madness and create a solid online marketing platform that includes the seven components above. We call it the Hub & Spoke Model. Your website is your hub of online marketing and the other components are the spokes. Invest in these and you will build your brand and develop more business from community members that have a need for PT.[/info_box]

Physical Therapy Online Marketing: Finding Your Key Audience in Patients and Referrals

Physical therapy online marketing is a necessary move if you want to hone in on capturing prospective patients who spend time online. Even if you’ve already done extensive online marketing for your physical therapy practice, you’ve likely realized that you need to focus more on capturing the right demographics. It isn’t enough to just market yourself to the entire online world and hope someone will notice and visit your website.

Ultimately, being thorough in finding key groups of people you need to capture, is the real secret to successful online marketing today. Those individuals are much easier to find through social media, though it doesn’t have to focus just there to attract the right people. It also means attracting prospective clients through website media or email.

So what type of contacts should you be seeking for your physical therapy clinic? Patients frequently fall into two different categories. Beyond there, you have other patients who are more local, plus those in the medical community who can help you improve your reputation.

Marketing To Past Patients

In your database, you likely have numerous patients who haven’t visited your physical therapy clinic for months or maybe years. In some cases, patients leave town due to personal circumstance or because they found another physical therapy source better suited for them.

Don’t delete these people from your database since you could still win them back with proper social media marketing or through email newsletters. If you had a social media account when they started with you, no doubt they still follow you on places like Twitter or Facebook. It’s rare when people take the time to unfollow someone they already followed years ago, especially if they have thousands of other people on their lists.

Link up with these former patients again with a direct message offering a special deal at your clinic. Or, perhaps advertise discounts directly on your social media feed. Direct messaging needs doing with discretion, since it can easily look like spam if you’re not careful. By checking to see if the person still follows you, advertising directly on your account means they’ll see it there anyway.

If they signed up for an email newsletter, send them specialized emails detailing what makes you stand out from your competitors of late. Your improvement examples will follow exactly what led those past patients to change to your competitor months or years before.

Marketing to Current Patients

To round out the potential for a healthy return on investment toward your marketing, re-focus efforts on marketing toward your current patients. Retaining patients you already have is imperative for this year and every year since they could also easily slip away if you’re not careful.

You can do this by also offering discounts for valued patients, plus providing health education on topics they can’t find anywhere else. The latter might be the most important of all, when value is what many people want while seeking medical treatments.

By making exclusive educational information available on social media or through newsletters, you help people improve their health on their own complementing the physical therapy you provide.

Marketing to Local Patients and Other Doctors

Local marketing is more important than ever, you can capture those already having physical therapy done with your competitors. When you place your information on local online directories, like Yelp or Yahoo! Local, you increase your chances of being found. Don’t forget, though, that you need your name, address, and phone number consistently on every entry so everyone can easily contact you immediately. Far too many businesses forget to place simple contact information in their local directory listings.

As for marketing toward doctors, you want them available for referrals and recommendations.

Contact us here at E-rehab.com so we can help you with your physical therapy online marketing procedures this year. It’s time you captured and re-captured the people who make or made your clinic successful on a consistent basis.