How to Build a Better Hospital Blog

Your hospital’s blog is a powerful tool. Updating blog content on a regular basis can provide your hospital with a number of benefits, including brand building and awareness, it can help position your hospital as a thought leader and it can also help demonstrate your expertise.

Blogging is also great for optimization. Strategic and active blogging can help increase web traffic. Despite the “SEO value” of blogging, many blogs just aren’t properly optimized. Here are a few ideas on how to make your blog better:

Timely and relevant information is important. What is everyone talking about in the news, but many probably don’t know the facts? The answer: Ebola. Why not create different blog posts explaining what Ebola is, how it can spread and available treatment. People are curious, provide simple, easy-to-understand content that they can share with their friends and family.

Optimization is critical. A blog post that has interesting and useful information that is seen by just your department employees probably isn’t very beneficial. Posting a blog doesn’t mean you are done. Include alt tags for all photos, meta descriptions and other tags in their appropriate spots. Many people like to just copy, paste and hit publish. Slow down and fill out the extra information available with most blog applications. (i.e. – WordPress, Joomla, etc) It will pay off in the long run!

Informative posts work best. Make your blog a resource for your readers. People have many choices for finding content to read on the web, if you want to be noticed on the web you need to provide value through information, education or entertainment.

Regularly updated and relevant blogs are great and can reap positive results.