Get Off The Blogging Hamster Wheel

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me today is my cohost, big Jim Mac, Jim McDannald from Canada. Quebec Quebec, Canada.

Montreal Quebec, Canada to be exact.

And we were actually over the weekend, Nova Scotia came up in a conversation, and my wife said, where is Nova Scotia? I said, that's a good question. I knew where it was, and she said, oh, how many because you don't have states in Canada. Is it provinces?

Yep. There's provinces and territories in Canada.

Yeah. So, yeah, my wife said, oh, where whereabouts is Nova Scotia? I said, I know it's right over on the East Coast, and I said British Columbia is right over on the West Coast. I said, and there's a lot of things in between, but I don't really know what's there. So we got the map here, we had a look.

We didn't realize how many provinces and territories there were in Canada.

Yep. Yep. It's a it's a it's a big country.

Yeah. And it looks cold in all of them.

Yeah. Yeah. We had, I think at one point, we had, like, about three feet of snow on the ground. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a cold climate for sure.

So okay, Jim. You said this one is gonna be controversial.

I don't know if controversial is the right word, but we might have a differing a difference of opinion on this one. But

Okay.

Today

Tell me

your lies. Lies are Yeah. The podiatrist should most podiatrists should get off the blog post hamster wheel. You know, there's a lot of people, you know, some coaches, some marketing agencies, some the Internet will tell you to do it, but a lot of people jump right into blogging right away. And we're gonna discuss today maybe why that's not the first step that you should do once you're doing things with your online marketing.

I think there's some reasons why it's both a good thing and the reasons why, like I said, it shouldn't be your top priority.

Okay. Where do you start? Where in what should they be doing then instead? Because I know there's no point doing blogging if you don't have a website.

Yeah. Exactly. So the the first step I would say is that like, you know, on the list of priorities, it's probably down around like number nine, ten or 11. So first thing obviously is a is is a website. Yeah.

Number one. Right? Like a website that basically, like like you're famous for saying, you know, you know, when we look at your website, you know, could I convict you of a crime? Yeah. Do I have enough evidence on your website to, you know, convict you of a crime for doing that thing?

So number one is just to build out a great website, you know, it shows all of the services you provide, the treatment you provide, authentic photos, ways that, you know, some reviews, kind of these badges of trust, you know, calls to action that allow people to, you know, make an appointment with you. That's kind of the the the the first level of website. Right? And then in my mind, it's it's more about doing, you know, relevant local Google Ads. Search ads are important.

Also working on the SEO, working on the Google business profile, email marketing, sometimes some Facebook ads. And then, you know, if you do, you know, down further on the list, if you do like to write and you want to do some blogging, I think it's fine. But I feel a lot of people kind of jump to to blogging being, you know, maybe the second or third thing that they wanna do. And then it's sometimes it's the provider themselves that's gonna be writing these blogs, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it shouldn't be the top priority in my mind.

Okay. Is this gonna upset you if I agree with you?

No. No. It's fine if wanna agree with me.

No. Because yeah. Like, I I'm always telling people, yeah, you should have a blog on your website, you should be writing blogs. But I can't stand blogs that are just irrelevant rubbish when somebody feels, oh, I have to write a blog every week. So they just write track it's just crap.

It's just rubbish. It's stuff that they're not interested in. They feel like, oh, I must just write something, so they put it out there. So I'd rather them not write at all than put rubbish out there. But I agree.

All those other things should be in place, and then the blogs come later on.

No. That's I'm glad we agree on that. I don't think, you know, it's not too controversial there, but I think also what it's the, like, best best page, you know, in your local area or maybe even in your country that kinda describes that procedure that you do, that treatment you provide, and really, you know, as much detail or maybe like we talked about in the past, maybe having a lead magnet, you know, to like, if someone's at home and was curious about learning more about what it is, what some at home treatments they can do or some at home ways of, you know, trying to take care of that problem. I would I'd really focus on that. And once you've kind of like tapped all of those out, that's probably another sign that, okay, maybe it's time to start blogging.

Yeah. So there's a difference between writing, like, evergreen articles and blogging. So we what you're talking a lot about is so if you like I say, yeah, if is there enough evidence on your website to convict you if what we did was a crime or what you love doing in podiatry was a crime? So if you really like orthotics and biomechanics, then the those areas of your website really need to be has needs to have the information there.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you can have I think I see the blog as more kind of a a way to have some updates. Maybe, you know, you you bought a new type of laser orthotic or doing orthotics in the office with kind of like three d printing or something, you know, kind of announcing that, announcing things you're doing in the in the, you know, in the the local area if you're, you know, volunteering or sponsoring the local diabetes walk.

Yeah.

You know, I think there are ways to make the blog relevant. But like I said, I think it's it's kinda like lower down that party list once you've kind of put time and effort into those things because, you know, the next kind of thing that can, you know, if the podiatrist is doing themselves is that, you know, when you're writing blogs, it's kinda taking time away from doing something else. So, you know, you don't have to spend hours and hours writing blogs, but it can be a bit time consuming that someone for someone either that doesn't like to write, doesn't know how to use chat GPT Yeah. Or or, you know, or doesn't wanna pay a a writer to do those things. I see a lot of, you know, if you out outsource it, right, that could that could be a benefit.

But then I see a lot there's a lot of services out there that are kind of these vanilla, not distinctive blogs, you know, just kind of like five five ways to treat heel pain that maybe should already be on the plantar fasciitis page.

Yeah.

But, you know, what's what's a unique way to connect with your local the local local patients in your area is something that I think about when you're thinking about blog topics. They can be a little bit more, like I said, updates and more news related as opposed to just simply, you know you know, kind of more about the treatments or the things you do in your clinic.

Yeah. No. It's it's true because it's it's it is more like news related, what's relevant right now. Because one of the things like, when the Australian opens on or the US Open or Wimbledon, I usually say to different coaching clients, if you wanna write a blog about tennis, now is a good time to write it. I said each day, just Google injuries at the US Open or injuries at the Australian Open.

Yeah. Foot injuries. I said, they might say, oh, I was about to say Pete Sampras. Jeez. That was a long time ago, wasn't it?

For some reason The kids the kids in the audience may not know who who him or Andre Agassi are. So

Yeah. I know. They just popped in, mate. Anyway, whoever the the you know, say Djokovic, for example. If all of sudden Djokovic has a foot injury and you know what that injury is and you've got some advice, I said writing a blog article about Djokovic's foot injury could actually be a not a good blog article to write.

However, I always say, if you're gonna write a blog article, you need to have all those evergreen articles and everything in place because within your blog article, you want to link them to other parts of your website so that they read the simple oh, I wanna click on here. So the other stuff has to be there or otherwise, the blog article is just a waste of time.

Yeah. They're sometimes referred to that as newsjacking. Newsjacking. Like, the yep. So you basically hijack.

Yeah. You're you're hijacking the news story and kind of, you know, you're providing some value to kinda describe maybe what that injury is or, you know, a more detailed approach. And then, like you said, it kinda links back to your website. So maybe someone trying to find information about that injury may find it and, you know, like link to your website. So that that can be a benefit.

You know, I think, you know, there's other ways, like I talked about, think that that that's an interesting way. One of the other reasons why not to initially do blogging right away is there can be sometimes difficult to tell the ROI, you know, actually for most things online now, there's a kind of a peak moment, maybe five or six years ago when kind of everything could be tracked by Google Analytics or Yeah. Facebook ads can be tracked down to the last dollar spent. But but these days, it's a little bit more difficult to see, you know, what that is, either through blogging and other things. So, you know, is this gonna translate into increased revenue or positive return on investment?

Like, is your time that you're putting into the blogs, you know, valuable enough? Is it, you know, creating things? Or if you're outsourcing these blogs to be made by somebody, you know, is there ways to determine how many clicks you've gotten from that blog post and, you know, find if someone's made an appointment from there? So having these kind of attribution systems, like I said, they're not as reliable as they used to be. But if you can see, you know, based on the traffic numbers or basically, you know, if you wrote a an ad about or wrote an article about Djokovic's foot injury or, you know, you can take a look on your Google Analytics and see, wow, like 700 people came to look at it or a thousand did.

But, you know, it's also tough to tell, are those, you know, were those patients local? Were they, you know, someone in from, you know, someone from The Czech Republic or from, you know, from Europe checking out this article you wrote. So sometimes a little bit difficult. It's not a bad thing to do, but, you know, sometimes it can be difficult to track down that ROI.

So you're not anti blogging?

No. I'm not anti blog I'm not an anti blogger. I'm a blogger myself, but I think it just like to every know, for every thing there's a season. Right? And I I just see it being as like a first line of as some as some people like pushing as a first line of of marketing.

It's it's more to me like a second or third line. So

Yeah. No. I know what you mean because you go to some people's website and it'll have the homepage, and it'll have just a really a little bit of information. And then it might have some of the services they do, and you click on that, and it might say 10 different things, but there's like one paragraph on each of those. So it doesn't actually tell them anything about those services, but then you'll click on their blog, and they've got 52 blog articles writing about all this different stuff that doesn't link to anywhere on the website because there's nowhere for it to go.

And you sort of go, well, there's a lot of time you spent blogging when you should have actually maybe put that time into filling out more or building out the website a little bit more.

No. That that's a perfect example. I think what we talked about is it's really about priorities. You know, I think when we you know, I went on your show the first time, we kinda talked about the five essential aspects of an online presence, And and we we didn't talk about blocking on that one for a very specific purpose. So I think it's, you know, if you love writing, I'm not trying to like dissuade anyone.

There definitely can be some benefits if you do it in the right way. But for most podiatrists that, you know, have a busy clinic or managing staff to really have a high quality like, you know, you know, high traffic blog, it's it's probably pretty unlikely. Because we're kinda getting to the next the next reason is that there's a lot of competition these days. You know, there's a lot of people doing this news jacking. There's a lot of people, you know, hiring somebody out to try to do this.

So, you know, it it it's it's difficult to determine the ROI, but it's there's a lot of competition that's also out there. So, you know, to really be unique, you need to stand out. So it's sometimes the the niche topic or the something that's local to where you're from. If you're from a certain neighborhood in Sydney, right, you know, you're volunteering at something in that neighborhood in Sydney, Australia or in Denver, Colorado, that's that's when you're gonna get a little bit more maybe bang for your buck when you're when the audience is looking for those things. And like I said, if you do have a blog post, you know, it can be shared on some of your social media channels, whether you have a LinkedIn account or you have a Facebook page.

Yeah. These things make more sense than just, you know, what I always see, which is, you know, make appointment, make appointment, make appointment, you know. Yeah. You could put this stuff in your newsletter as well linked to it. But like I said, it's to everything is seasoned and usually it's, you know, it's it's after that your your your your website's been cranking for a few years and you've kind of tapped out these other marketing channels and it's it's time to consider it.

But that's just kind of there's a lot of competition out there, needless to say.

Okay. Need to because you were doing a ranking before, where do you rank an email newsletter before or after blogging?

Much higher. Oh, good.

Yeah. So do

I. Yeah. Because the recall I mean, you have you own a list of, you know, what, you know, between maybe a thousand or 3,000 patients. It's going directly into the inbox. You know, it it's it's much more likely to be read and acted upon as opposed to just a blog post you publish.

And you're almost just you're almost just hoping that someone finds it either through Google

Yeah.

Or or you're utilizing, like I said, you can use a lot utilize it on some of these social media channels or within your newsletter, but it it shouldn't be you shouldn't be hoping for like, you know, hundreds or even, you know, that that much traffic just from a blog post. I think it like this we're kinda getting to that last point we'll talk about today and that's like, that will you know, there's a limited audience reach when you have blogs. Right? You know, if you're making a very for news jacking, you know that that there's like a shelf life to how long that blog is gonna be good for. So it's not like you can write about Djokovic, you know, in 2023 and some may maybe someone's gonna search that in 2025.

But was it, you know, it's such a short half life that once again, you're better off having these evergreen pages on your website that people, you know, the types of treatments you provide, maybe it's some type of new modality, kinda going to details about those things. Maybe you put new stuff, you know, that a certain amount of this is kind of not evergreen, and that's okay. But just realize that you're gonna be kind of like working against yourself. You wanna try to bake stuff that's gonna last for five years or ten years, But that's that's really, really important. You know, you can sometimes utilize the the visibility just just the way Google works is that these kinda timely are you you wanna be timely or timeless.

So you wanna really wanna kinda focus on those timeless articles before you jump in and doing these kinda timely blog posts.

Here we were at the beginning thinking we were gonna disagree on this. And and you even warned me before and you said, well, Tyson, I'm gonna upset you today. And but you haven't you haven't upset me at all because I agree exactly with what you're saying. And I know, like, I've said to a lot of people in the past, oh, you need to be writing blog articles because I know I've looked at their website, and their website will be freaking great with everything else I got there, and they're just not writing anything else. So I'm going, write a blog article, but also think going back to some of the stuff that you've written in the past and just Sometimes you'll write something now.

You look back in two years' time, you go, what drug was I on when I wrote this? Because it's just not written well. It needs to be it needs to be improved, or there's just things about it that you know that if I rewrite this, it could be better. It'll be more accurate with what's actually happening in my practice.

No. For sure. And I think that's that's a huge point. It's like it's not necessarily that, you know, blogging is bad or you shouldn't do it. It's kind of where it stacks up in that priority list.

Think and especially when you're approaching the blog post from that patient perspective, you know, but I just see a lot of, you know, top five list, top 10 lists of, you know, symptoms of heel pain or those types of things. Yeah. And I don't know, like, maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't like, I don't on the majority of podiatry websites I go to or even other healthcare provider websites that I go to, my dentist, other places. I'm not really that interested. I I can't remember a single time when I was looking for healthcare provider and I came across their blog and I was like, oh my gosh, like, I'm in the right place.

This is where I wanna go. It's really to me, it is more of those like pillar pages or those evergreen pages on the website like, oh, like, I, you know, my my my kid, you know, has a tooth problem. If they have a great, you know, pediatric dentistry page about how they treat kids and how they've had this training, you know. Those are the kind of symbols of trust I'm looking for. I don't wanna see go to, you know, a website, you know, which for dent for pediatric dentist and just see like, you know, people my age or older, you know, does they may have like you said, they may have I'm a treating pediatric patients as well and it's like three sentences on like a pretty much blank page.

Like, doesn't instill it's almost does the opposite. Right? Almost Yeah. It feels like a lack of trust when you see like a thrown together like, you know, what should be like an evergreen, like best page on the internet about this topic if you really are treating pediatric patients in that way. So just my 2¢.

Like I said, it's not it seems like we're on the same page with this, which is I kinda thought we would be, but I just wanna try to rally you up a little bit.

Oh, no. But think things have changed as well. You go back ten years ago and everything was people didn't have a lot of content in the website. There was a lot of blog writing, and they used to just pop up all over the place. But now you picture if every single podiatrist in the world is writing a blog article on heel pain this week, That's a lot of the same information getting put out there.

So trying to target it, especially more locally to your particular area. Because I know in Cairns, we will have the Cairns Ironman. We have different triathlons throughout the year. We have marathons that are on. We have horse racing events, which I did write an article on horse racing once.

But if you can target target some of the stuff you're gonna write around news or what's happening in your area, more chance because that's what people are looking for in your area.

No. I making unique to your local area is what it's all about. You know, whether it be, like I said, you're volunteering somewhere, you've got some new modality, you've got something that really, you know, relatively important that number one is gonna benefit patients. Right? Like, that's the thing.

It's like, how are they gonna bet from benefit from that? Or how are they gonna how will this build trust with the patient to see that you are an active member of the community? What I see, you know, what I want people to get away from is that this kinda like this FOMO or this feeling that like, well, I need like, I hear the blogging is the way and blogging is the what I have to do. So I mean, they're gonna number one, sync a bunch of time into something where, like I said, either they don't like to write, they don't feel like they're very good writer, they don't know don't know how to use chat GPT, so it becomes kind of a time sync. So they're spending time doing it.

Or on the other hand, you have people that are, you know, you know, I think most marketing services providers in the podiatry niche are relatively, you know, straightforward and hopefully most are good. But, you know, it it can be something it's they just wanna sell it to you. Right? It's another thing for them to sell to you. And, you know, is that the best overall use of your money on these, like I said, these top five or top Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Thing. So

It's something you said then that I've heard so many podiatrists say that, oh, I'm working with this online company. They're gonna do my Google Ads, and they're writing blog posts for me, and they're gonna write four blog articles for me a month. So it's not a podiatrist writing it. It's just some rando who's probably using chat GPT or something like that who's using it to write a very generic article, and you're paying for them to write these four blog articles for you every month, and the articles are really doing squat nothing. Not really doing much at all.

That is what's really under your skin, isn't it?

Think that's

the time could see the look on your face.

You're like, oh, yeah.

Yes. That's what I really wanted to say.

No. I mean, it's a combination of like the time savings and the cost savings. Right? I want I want people if they're gonna spend if they're gonna invest in in marketing for the practice Yeah. To really get the most bank for their buck.

And like you said, these templated or just kind of generic blog posts, that's not gonna move the needle. You know, talk to anyone that's, you know, that's had a successful podi you know, podiatry marketing kind of set up either with me or with other people. And I guarantee you, like no one is gonna say these blog posts changed my life. It's not gonna happen. And I'm not saying they're bad, but there's definitely some things that can move the needle in ways that do benefit a practice and kind of nailing those things down first in that priority checklist, moving it down the line and maybe, like I said, three to five years when things are humming along and you're, you know, you want the right things or you're ready to you just have so much money, you know, to do with.

You could you could buy those, you know, cookie cutter blogs from somebody. But for right now, I think most podiatrists would benefit from from other forms of marketing first and foremost.

Yeah. Well, I've I've mentioned I don't know if I mentioned on here or other places, but, yeah, when we had our website when we had, say, a free book offer where people could download a book and in return, they give us email address, and we'd nurture them over a period of time. I could measure exactly how much my my return on investment was from that. That over a six month period, 500 books, 25 of people got orthotics, worked out about $90,000 of revenue that was generated from that particular activity. Had nothing to with my blog writing.

So next week's article next week's topic that I'm gonna talk about is how to write blog articles without burning out.

That's true. I'm gonna do that. On the show. We can't just talk past each other. Come on.

We can't just, like, know, we gotta, like, butt heads on the show. We can't just, like, have these these topics.

No. No. It's okay. Everyone knows how to write blogs. But but like you said, though, the the part with blog writing is I think if you're outsourcing it for someone to do it, then like you said, make sure everything else is in place first.

Because otherwise, you're just wasting your money. There's no point someone just writing a generic article and pumping it out there. It's not really gonna do too much at all. And all my other computer friends say the same thing.

No. I mean, now with ChatGPT and all these AI writing things, you know, like anybody can kinda do it for free or like low cost. So if you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna do it, put out these generic articles, like do ChatGPT, edit it, and then just like call it done. Because otherwise, it's just, like I said, not a good use of time or money right now.

Yeah. Well, it saves me having to do next week's topic on how to write blog articles without mentally burning out. We'll come up with something else. So have you got anything else you wanna add to this?

No. I think that's it. Like I said, just it's not blog blog writing is great. Like just but just make sure that it's prioritized in kind of the right order. And yeah, if you have any questions or, you know, if you'd totally disagree with me, I'd be happy to to hear what you have to say.

You know, send us a message, you know, we're over at podiatry.marketing is our website. We've got a comment form there. So, you know, like last week, Tyson was trying to, you know, offend everybody and kind of get everyone riled up. And this week, if you're if you're you know, blog posting maximalist and you wanna, like, let me have it, just let me know.

Yeah. And we may we may even bring it up at the upcoming podiatry marketing event that we're gonna run-in Chicago.

Yep. We'll see about that.

Yeah. Details coming soon. Okay, Jim. So I look forward to talking to again next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. Bye.

Bye. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.