Category: Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Chiropractic email marketing, Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Creating Chiropractic Marketing Success: Are you Proactive or Reactive?

by Dr. J on July 16, 2010 • 1 Comment

Are you running proactive or reactive Chiropractic internet marketing?

Chances are you’ve probably never even thought about it. Marketing is marketing right? Your attitude and approach to your Chiropractic marketing can have just as significant of an impact on it’s success as the marketing content itself.

Due to the daily time demands of a Chiropractic practice, many Doctors of Chiropractic simply run their marketing with a reactive approach. What the heck is reactive Chiropractic marketing? In the most simple terms it is when a Chiropractic marketing strategy simply reacts in response to changes. While reacting to changes in a market is an important aspect of any marketing program, it can’t be the sole foundation for your advertising efforts.

Don’t get me wrong, you definitely need to react to change. You need to analyze ROI and the effectiveness of your marketing. No one is telling you NOT to respond to change. The problem is most Chiropractors work exclusively in reactive marketing mindset. They develop tunnel vision and break things down to a black and white world consisting of one problem and one solution. This leads to marketing that is two steps behind and can be devastating to your Chiropractic success.

Let me give you some quick examples. Let’s say you run a newspaper ad. It runs for one or two weeks with minimal results. Due to the expense and the dismal results you pull the plug on your newspaper marketing because it “doesn’t work”.

Another example can be seen with the current state of our economy in America. All across the country times are tough and things are slow. Many practices are reacting to this by simply scaling back or eliminating much of their advertising to control costs.

While the above examples may seem like perfectly acceptable ways to react to a situation, they are not proactive solutions. In actuality they are simple responses made with little thought about the future of your Chiropractic success. At best they are short term solutions.

So what’s the difference between proactive and reactive Chiropractic marketing? As we discussed before, reactive marketing is simply taking a black and white approach to your advertising. You see a problem and pick an easy solution. This creates quick fixes and limited opportunity for growth. It’s patching a hole, slapping a band-aid on the situation, and waiting for success to find you.

Proactive Chiropractic marketing takes things to the next step. While it may be necessary to apply a short term fix, proactive Chiropractors are constantly thinking outside of the box. They are always looking for alternative solutions, ways to create opportunities, anticipating changes, and always thinking about the long term.

Proactive Chiropractic marketing avoids the easy knee jerk reaction to a situation. Rather than canceling that failing newspaper ad, the proactive Chiropractor is more likely to spend time making changes to it until they find what works. Instead of cutting back on their advertising budget during a slow economy, a proactive practice will stay the course or even increase their advertising budget. If current advertising isn’t creating the desired results, the proactive Chiropractic practice tries new and creative marketing techniques to create success.

Are you running proactive Chiropractic marketing? Or are you simply going with the flow and reacting to change after the fact? While reactive Chiropractic marketing may work in the here and now, it can actually be a barrier to your long term success . Now is the time to take a critical look at your Chiropractic marketing. Stop reacting and start creating the success you desire!

Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Too Unique?: Why Automating Unique Chiropractic Content Creation May be a Bad Idea (Part 4)

by Dr. J on July 13, 2010 • 0 Comments

In part 3 of this series we discussed some examples of how unique article and content creation tools can mangle an original article or post and create an embarrassing mess of a revision. In the world of Chiropractic marketing this can have devastating effects. If you are an affiliate marketer or spammer your main concern is probably just creating backlinks and getting your link published as many time as possible. You may not be concerned with the quality of the content you are publishing. As Doctors of Chiropractic we do not have this luxury. As a Chiropractor your reputation is key to the success and growth of your career and practice.

When I come across a terrible article, post, or comment that was obviously generated by some automated program I can’t help but develop a negative opinion of the publisher and author. It looks lazy, sloppy, and unprofessional. I hold this point of view and I actually understand how and why the horrible content ended up being published. Most likely a busy and well intentioned Doctor of Chiropractic simply plugged their original content into some magic unique content creation tool and went on their way without ever examining the quality of content created.

Meanwhile most of the people who come across this sub-par content won’t have this understanding. When they come across some jumbled up mess of illogical text containing a link or two they are going to quickly question the professionalism (and sanity) of the author. Worse yet, they’ll most likely end up disregarding any other content from the same source in the future.

I’d like to take a moment to point out that I haven’t tried every automatic article revision or unique content creation tool available. I have worked with and tried enough of them to know they need to be closely monitored. As a Doctor of Chiropractic you are ultimately held responsible for the Chiropractic marketing content you publish. Used without caution these tools can cause more harm than good to your Chiropractic practice.

I’m not discouraging the use of all of these tools. I’m simply saying the Chiropractic profession needs to focus on quality control and make a sincere effort to monitor the quality of the content being created. I’ve had pretty poor results so I choose to spend a few minutes now and then and rework articles on my own. Once you’ve done it yourself a few times you can generally rework an article pretty quickly. The time spent doing it right yourself the first time is usually less than the time required to track down and fix illogical junk regurgitated by an automated program.

Another option is to pay someone else to rework your content for you. This route is sometimes even more cost effective than the high cost of many of automated programs. There are entire sites devoted to article and content revision. The internet is loaded with freelancers who specialize in article revision and unique content creation. We even offer article revision and reworking and content creation services in our store.

The bottom line is to use caution and choose content revision and unique article creation tools that work best for you and your Chiropractic practice.

In this series of posts I’ve refused to specifically mention any tools, websites, or examples of any any specific content. This was done out of respect for my internet and Chiropractic colleagues. This was meant to be an informative series of posts, and not a venue to slam specific individuals and I intend to keep things that way.

What do you think? Am I totally off base? Have you come across a unique content creation or revision tool that works well for you? Let me know! I’m definitely open minded and willing to try recommendations of my colleagues. Voice your opinion by posting a comment below. Agree, disagree, blast me or anything in between. All comments are moderated and require approval, but I simply ask that you keep it clean and not attack others.

Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Too Unique?: Why Automating Unique Chiropractic Content Creation May be a Bad Idea (Part 3)

by Dr. J on July 13, 2010 • 0 Comments

As we were discussing in part 2 of this series, we are intelligent enough to infer the different meanings of words when used in a different context but unique article creation software often is not.

Many of these programs create unique versions of an article simply by swapping words for their synonyms which can produce some sad content. Let me drive my point home by examining how these unique content creators can take your content and chop it up into an ugly mess of meaningless text.

Let’s suppose you wanted to rewrite the following sentence and produce some different variations of it:

While walking the dog, Bill saw a bug and smashed it.

Now let’s say in an effort to save some of your valuable time, you simply plug this sentence into a unique content creation program or website. For the sake of this article we will assume the only words that would be reworked would be the words “walking”, “dog, “bug” or “smashed”.

I decided to head over to one of my favorite sites, http://thesaurus.com, to pull up some common synonyms for the 4 words in our example. Here are a few examples of what I found.

Walking: advance, amble, ambulate, canter, escort, exercise, hike, lumber, stalk, shuffle, stroll
Dog: canine, bitch, cur, doggy, bow wow, hound, pup, puppy, mutt, pooch, flea bag
Bug: disease, germ, virus, bacterium, failure, error, insect, malfunction, glitch, annoy, harass
Smashed: bang, blast, clobber, shatter, pound, intoxicated

You can probably already identify the problem. Most of these sites and programs just aren’t intelligent enough to know when and where to properly make changes to content. They will often just blindly swap out a word for its synonym with no regard for context or proper usage. The results are frequently awkward and often even somewhat comical. Using our list of synonyms many of these unique content creation programs would alter our original sentence and create gems such as:

While ambulating the canine, Bill saw a insect and intoxicated it.
While hiking the bitch, Bill saw a error and blasted it.
While strolling the fido, Bill saw a annoy and banged it.
While shuffling the hound, Bill saw a germ and shattered it.
While escorting the pooch, Bill saw a disease and pounded it.
While cantering the mutt, Bill saw a malfunction and clobbered it.

While the content above is definitely 100% unique, it is also 100% useless. Keep in mind this is only one sentence. Just imagine this mess occurring on a larger scale and garbling text everywhere within the content of that 1500 word article you wrote. Yikes! Although you may be able to get this useless drivel and a link published, it is probably eventually going to cause more harm than good. This content will be shared, discovered, and read by your prospective patients and clients. What will they think when they read it? I’ll leave you to ponder over that question and I’ll be back to wrap things up in the next post!

Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Too Unique?: Why Automating Unique Chiropractic Content Creation May be a Bad Idea (Part 2)

by Dr. J on July 13, 2010 • 2 Comments

In our last post we discussed the need to create and publish unique content. Although content should be unique it doesn’t need to be entirely new. You can rework an article and edit it to make it significantly different and unique from it’s parent article. In other words, you can make minor changes to content to convey the exact same message in a different way. With that in mind we can begin to understand the logic behind unique article creation software.

The idea is simple. Write one unique and original Chiropractic article, post, or blog comment. Next, simply upload that article to a site or software program and let it automatically and instantly churn out dozens of unique variations of that article. You do the work to write one article and get dozens of unique versions in return. Some of these sites and programs will even automatically submit these unique versions to various sites for you too! Sounds too good to be true right? I think you see where I’m heading with this.

It’s a wonderful idea if it could all be properly executed. The problem is most of the software and sites out there are marginally useful at best. Why? They often produce variations of articles that are either awkwardly worded, or downright unreadable.

Although I’m not familiar with all of the unique content creation software out there I can tell you how many of them work. In most cases the software simply rewrites an article the same way you or I probably would; they make minor changes to word order and swap out words for their synonyms. For instance, the may take the word “dog” and switch it to “canine”. Not too big of a deal right? After all the meaning of the word is still the same. So what’s the problem?

Unfortunately, English is a very complex language. The same word can often mean something totally different depending on the situation or context in which it is used. Take for example the word, “bug”. Used as a noun the word can refer to an insect. The word “bug” can also mean a glitch, error, or malfunction (such as a bug in a computer program). If used as a verb, the definition of the word “bug” would change to “annoy”. While we are intelligent enough to infer the different meanings of these words when used in a different context, most of these magic article revision software programs are not. In fact, they can produce results that are pretty pathetic.

We’ll discuss some examples in our next post!

Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing

Too Unique?: Why Automating Unique Chiropractic Content Creation May be a Bad Idea (Part 1)

by Dr. J on July 13, 2010 • 4 Comments

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of Chiropractors using software to automatically generate numerous unique articles from an original article they wrote or to create multiple blog posts or comments from an original. I totally understand the concept, but the problem is most of these sites and programs often end up spitting out garbage. While these tools live up to their name and create unique content, it may end up doing more harm than good. In this 4 part series I’ll be discussing what unique content creation software is, why it’s around, and my personal opinion on its usefulness and effectiveness in the world of Chiropractic marketing.

Let’s start with the basics. Why would someone even need to create unique variations of content like an article or blog post? It all boils down to the old saying “content is king”. To stay at the top of the Chiropractic internet marketing game you need to publish original and unique content on a regular basis. You might think writing one article would be enough, but that just isn’t the case.

To compete in the world of internet marketing you need to publish a lot of unique content to a lot of different sites and locations. Why? Although there are dozens of reasons we’ll focus on two main reasons. One is to simply create visibility and awareness of your name and website. The other reason is to create backlinks to boost your website page rank and your site’s position in internet search results. Generally, the more links you have published to your site the better. Therefore many Chiropractors and affiliate marketers publish as many articles as possible with a link to their website included in the text.

Now comes the next obvious question. I should just publish my one article to dozens of websites, blogs and article sites right? Wrong. While this would be the easy way to do things it won’t work. The top article submission sites and other content rich sites usually require the content you submit to be 100% original and unique. You won’t get away with publishing identical content in mass (at least not for long.) Yes, these sites really do check. Publish the same article dozens of times and you’ll not only find yourself labeled as a spammer, you’ll also find your articles deleted and yourself banned from many submission sites.

To further complicate matters is the fact that Google frowns upon duplicate content. So much so that they recently began taking steps to penalize sites in their search rankings that appear to publish deliberate or malicious duplicate content. Getting into all the details is beyond the scope of this post, but let’s just say you need to publish unique content and not the same old stuff over and over again!

Chiropractic email marketing, Chiropractic Internet Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Marketing and Advertising, Chiropractic Social Media Advertising and Marketing, General

Chiropractic Marketing in 2010: What Would BJ Do?

by Dr. J on June 24, 2010 • 5 Comments

Imagine what BJ Palmer would have accomplished with the internet and social media sites like facebook and twitter!

Pause for a moment and imagine what BJ Palmer would have done with the power of the internet. Envision the Chiropractic marketing tactics he would have employed if he had access to the entire world via instant electronic communication. Can you even fathom what BJ would have done with YouTube and Facebook? Can you imagine the insane SEO domination campaigns Dr. Palmer would have waged!? What I wouldn’t give to read BJ Palmer’s Official Blog! Just imagine what he could have accomplished with access to millions of people with a few clicks of the mouse or some simple keystrokes.

My point here is the vast majority of the Chiropractic profession is missing the boat. I’m amazed how many practices still don’t have a website. I’m even more amazed how many practices are content with using the same website they had designed in the mid 1990s. I’m probably just as puzzled and perplexed by the large number of Chiropractors who simply dismiss web 2.0 and social media as a passing fad.

Many Chiropractors are happy to dismiss the internet and social media as unimportant, a waste of time, or a passing fad. If that was true would huge corporations and fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, or Boeing even bother with a Twitter account or websites?

Wal-Mart, by the way, currently has no less than 15 official Twitter accounts and profiles in use to promote the U.S. side of their business alone! I haven’t even touched on how many major corporations and huge companies have blogs, or facebook accounts. That all seems like a lot of time, effort, and money to invest if social media and the internet aren’t beneficial forms of marketing!

Even those Chiropractic practices with a website and accounts on most of the main social media sites probably aren’t using these tools to their full potential. Chiropractic internet and social media marketing is a dynamic and immensely powerful tool if used correctly. However, a stale website or social media profile that sits without attention or updates for months are essentially as useless as no internet presence at all.

With the internet and social media, we have at our disposal the most powerful marketing and patient education venue we’ve seen in our lifetime. Ask yourself if you are using these opportunities to their full potential. What would BJ do? Would he sit on his hands and let these amazing opportunities pass him by? Would he half halfheartedly fumble together a website or blog, leaving it sit without attention, and call it good?

I’m confident BJ Palmer would tap into the immense reach and power of the internet and social media and take it to the next level. Not only would he fully utilize all of the Chiropractic internet marketing opportunities available, he would create revolutionary new opportunities for himself and our profession. BJ Palmer would have used the internet and social media to promote Chiropractic care across the globe and he would have done it in bold new ways amazing even by today’s standards.

Are you using the unique opportunities provided to you with the internet and modern technology? Are you seizing the moment and fully immersing your Chiropractic marketing plan in the internet and social media pool? If you aren’t, NOW is the time to start. If you ARE doing something, now is the time to step up and double your efforts! Yes, keeping up with the constantly changing demands of Chiropractic internet marketing is a challenge, but it’s a challenge worth meeting.

BJ was fond of the saying, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”. Would his attitude be any different toward Chiropractic internet marketing? The opportunities are there, we all just need to spend more time seizing them and less time making excuses.

-“Nuff said”