What is Inclusive Language?

Inclusive language avoids biases, slang, and expressions that discriminate against people based on their age, race, gender, or socioeconomic background. Here are a few examples of how you can use inclusive language in your practice.

Avoid Acronyms

Avoiding acronyms will make your marketing clearer and create a more welcoming atmosphere within the office. If your team uses certain acronyms or phrases for equipment, job titles, etc., new employees will not know what those acronyms mean and may feel left out.

Use Plain Language

There are a lot of medical terminologies that sound like another language to people who are not medical professionals. Instead of encouraging people to get a blepharoplasty, use the term “eyelid surgery” so that they will better understand and not feel intimidated or embarrassed to ask what “blepharoplasty” means. You should also avoid metaphors when discussing procedures with a patient so that they have a clear understanding of what that procedure and the recovery will involve.

Avoid “She”/”Him”

Although some doctors, such as an OB/GYN, only work with one gender, most plastic surgeries or cosmetic procedures can be performed on anyone. Many men feel uncomfortable receiving certain aesthetic procedures such as Botox or chemical peels because a lot of marketing is geared toward women. With inclusive language that simply refers to the general population as “they,” everyone feels that they can receive the services they want.

Gender-Neutral Labels

Gender-neutral labels should also be used in conversation, both with your coworkers and patients. Instead of asking whether someone has a girlfriend or boyfriend, ask about their partner or spouse. On patient forms, you can consider asking for a guardian or parent as an emergency contact instead of a mother or father since that person may come from a same-sex household. You can also ask your patients to share their pronouns, but make sure they do not feel obligated to share this information.

Reflect Diversity in Your Designs

People want to see other people like them doing the things they want to do. The representation of certain groups of people, such as minorities or those with disabilities, is often lacking. Businesses that lack diverse representation deter a large client pool who don’t think your practice will be right for them.

Mindfulness of Terms

There are many terms used daily that we do not realize have roots in racism and discrimination. For example, the original meaning of pow wow is a sacred Native American ritual or ceremonial event but this term is often used to describe meetings or get-togethers. Although you might not have intended to be offensive, the use of “pow wow” in that manner disregards indigenous culture.

How You Can Incorporate Inclusive Language

At Digital Limelight Media, our team of marketing specialists, content writers, and web designers will help you create an inclusive brand that welcomes all patients. Visit us online or give our office a call at 616.222.3735 to learn about all the services we offer, from website design to CRM to video editing.

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What Makes a Story Engaging?

Stories are a transformative experience, but the process of storytelling requires a bit more than just your innate creativity. These are four components to keep in mind with any story you write:

Narration

Even if the story you are telling doesn’t feel like a novel or live-action film, any sequence of events essentially creates a story. You can include the story of how your practice was created, what drove you to the medical field, or other accounts that will engage clients and create a personal connection with them.

Interaction

A key component of storytelling is how your audience will engage with that story. Stories create a connection between audience members interested in the content of that story and the connection between the audience and storyteller. In your practice, you can bring this interaction to life by getting your readers to take part in the story. For example, if you are writing a blog about braces, use the word “you” to interact with the reader and bring them into the story of how braces will benefit them.

Imagination

All stories require imagination, not just to create them but also to engage with them. If you are telling the story of how your practice started, readers might be able to imagine their own moments of achievement and relate to the components of your story. To create this sense of imagination, use lots of details in your characters, settings, and events.

Attention-Grabber

A common phrase in storytelling is “show, don’t tell.” Rather than telling people that they will benefit from the service or product you are discussing, show them an imaginative sequence of events and detail those benefits in action.

Who Do We Enjoy Storytelling?

The art of storytelling has been around for thousands of years as a way to pass down history and culture. In today’s business world, you might be telling stories for a few different reasons.

Simplify Complex Messages

Your potential clients might not understand all the complex medical procedures available to treat their concerns or desired service. Stories can break down those complicated procedures in ways that any person outside of the medical field could understand.

Shape Ideas

Stories have the power to change behavior and influence readers. Data and science are vital in the medical field and stories can take that data and shape it in a way to show the numbers in action or show the effects of that data.  

Connect with Others

Storytelling creates a universal language with common tropes: the hero’s journey, the underdog, etc. On your website, readers can see a representation of their health condition or feel that they are not alone in their struggles with acne, positive body image, skincare, etc.

Inspire and Motivate

When you connect with people’s emotions, you motivate them toward a certain action. Creating an authentic, transparent brand and a narrative around this brand encourages people to visit your office and keep coming back.

Story Elements

Stories have several necessary “ingredients” that bring them together. Overall, your story must be entertaining, believable, educational, relatable, and memorable. Creating strong elements in each of these categories makes all of that happen. Let’s create a story example to walk you through each element: writing a blog about skin rejuvenation procedures.

1. Characters

Every story needs a main character or protagonist. The character in this story would be your potential client interested in rejuvenating their skin. You, as their medical provider, are another offstage character.

2. Conflict

Conflict is what makes readers engage and connect with the story that they are reading. Without some conflict, you do not have a story. In this example, the conflict might be that your reader feels self-conscious about their skin or is suffering from an irritating skin condition like rosacea or acne.

3. Resolution

Like conflict, the resolution is necessary for your story to be complete. The resolution is what gives context to the characters and the conflict they were involved in. This is also where your call to action will be, and this prompts readers to schedule a consultation or appointment.

4. Plot

The plot structure is what creates an easily readable story. If the flow of events does not make sense, it can ruin the quality of your story and the amazing characters you’ve created. There has to be a connection between each event or step in the customer’s journey to receiving a cosmetic treatment.

5. Setting

The setting helps with the “show, don’t tell” principle and it allows you to show the goals of your characters in action. In your blog, that setting might be your character achieving great skin and being able to enjoy the outdoors or feel more confident without makeup when they go to school or work.

How to Tell an Amazing Story

Know Your Audience

Who are you telling your story to? Who will benefit from your story? Consider your target market and the type of people you want your story to attract then build a narrative that attracts that audience.

Define Your Message

What is the goal of your story? You might be giving readers health advice, telling them about a certain procedure, promoting your practice, etc. You should be able to summarize your message in ten words or less. If you can’t, your story may be a bit too broad or unfocused.

Consider What Kind of Story You Are Telling

Stories are told for all kinds of purposes. Creating human connection, education, generating action, and building a sense of community are just a few angles you can use to write your story.

Create a Call-to-Action

What do you want readers to do after they read your narrative? Maybe you are encouraging them to schedule an appointment, sign up for your newsletter, or follow you on social media. End your narrative with a couple of sentences that encourage readers to take that desired action.

Decide Your Format

Stories can be told in writing, in pictures, or spoken words. You may consider doing something unique such as a video of you explaining a procedure or telling the company story. You could also create a podcast or design graphics as other forms of engaging, storytelling art. The format you decide on will also determine where your story is shared, whether it is on Instagram, your website, an email, YouTube, etc.

We Can Help

At Digital Limelight Media, we want to tell your story and create a unique brand that will bring in new clients and keep existing clients coming back. Give our office a call at 616-222-3735 to learn more about how our creative team of web designers and content writers can help bring your story to life.

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Link Relevance

Link relevance refers to the location of the website (domain) and where the link is placed. Link relevance includes:

• Domain relevance: the broad topics your website is classified by
• Page relevance: the specific category and subcategory each page fits into
• Anchor text: links to other pages and different subtopics/subcategories

Content Relevance

Content relevance refers to the pages on your website that you get links to. For SEO purposes, you want to include a certain number of links while remaining on topic, which can be tricky. It is a balance of creating content relevant to your practice and sticking the correct topic while incorporating as many links as possible.

What Matters More?

Some marketing specialists believe content relevance matters more. Here are the reasons why:

Any Person Can Link to You

Your website can be linked to the content of any other website. Even if it is a blog post or webpage with a topic not directly related to your practice, the link creates more traffic and boots SEO value.

Trust

When websites with a trusted domain (well-known, popular sites) link your website in their content, value and a level of trust also pass to your website. However, this value is only earned through link relevance. Content relevance gives your website value and boosts search rankings no matter how well-known the website linking your content is.

Content Creates a Strong Signal for Google

Even if you post content that is not related to your practice or the medical industry, this content is essentially owned by you. Therefore, if you post any content with keywords related to any topic, people can search for those keywords and your website may show up. For example, at DLM, we create backend pages of city-specific content for our clients. If you are a plastic surgery center in Grand Rapids, Michigan and we write a page about Grand Rapids or the surrounding cities, this helps your practice show up in Google search results when people search for that city.

Does Google Care About Irrelevant Content?

Usually no, as long as most of your content has value. That is, most of your content is topically relevant to your website and links together between these topically relevant pages and links. Even if you create topically irrelevant content, you can add internal links to more relevant pages which will make this content seem less isolated in the larger sitemap of your website.

Build Your Website with Digital Limelight Media

At Digital Limelight Media, we know all the newest techniques to create websites that generate online visibility and can quickly earn you more leads. Visit us online to learn more about developing your website and the services we offer.

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An old publishing date isn’t a death sentence for old blogs or articles on your website, but outdated information is. The challenge is to provide relevant content that will last through the ages and keep bringing in traffic, despite trends coming and going. A great way to do this is through evergreen content. So what does evergreen content mean in marketing?

What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen Content is information that remains relevant and true for your audience despite the passage of time. The name takes inspiration from evergreen trees that remain alive and well throughout all seasons, never shedding their leaves. Similarly, evergreen content has a timeless nature to its helpful information that won’t die off quickly, or even 5 years down the road. 

An example of evergreen content could be answering common questions, the history of your brand, or basic information on your industry. On the other hand, an example of timely (not evergreen) content may be a trend report, current news article, or a blog chalked full of information that will be outdated within a few months. 

Why is Evergreen Content Important?

While timely content is necessary and serves a purpose, content that an audience can keep coming back to builds relevance for your brand and is the hallmark of a best practice search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Content that draws major traffic over time is better than a lot of articles that become irrelevant quickly, sinking into the backrooms of the internet, never again to see the light of day.

Additionally, the subject matter of evergreen content is timeless for a reason. It answers questions people have asked for years and provides information they are interested in. This makes it a fantastic conductor for SEO keywords. When the algorithm sees traffic coming, staying, and returning to your article, it deems it as useful and relevant, pushing it to the top of a search results page over time. 

How Do You Write Evergreen Content?

Now that you know evergreen content is important, how do you begin? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Choose Relevant Topics

Make sure to choose information your audience cares about. Put yourself in their shoes and give them the information they are looking for. A great way to do this is by making a list of frequently asked questions. When you’ve been in business for a while you can find common threads in the conversations you have with customers, clients, and patients. Use these as inspiration for your evergreen content. You can write about regular stumbling blocks or clarify common misinterpretations about your industry. 

Provide Substance

When writing topics that can apply to a broad range of people for a long time, the content will become more vague. But that doesn’t mean it has to be empty words. Use your specialty, expertise, and personality to provide something you’d like to read yourself. Your audience will resonate with content that is both applicable and substantial.

Do Your Keyword Research

Since the goal of evergreen content is to be around for a long time and to capture lots of readers, it creates the perfect place for keywords. Make sure you’re researching common search queries for topic inspiration, long tail keywords, and short tail keywords. Work these into your SEO strategy to keep your evergreen content capturing the most traffic possible. Learn more about SEO.

Update & Modify When Needed

It’s a common misconception that once you push publish on a blog that you cannot make any changes. It’s not only possible to update past blogs but extremely important! Provide updated branding, stats, or information to old articles on your website, as the need arises. Add a new common question to your FAQ blog or update your article with the latest research on the subject. Some websites even denote the last time an article was updated to show their content is relevant. Making it a regular habit to check in on your content gives you the chance to catch anything that could make it out of date. 

Having Trouble Growing Your Evergreen Content?

Combined with strategic timely content, evergreen content is part of a healthy website. Growing and maintaining your content to be timeless takes work. Investing time, research, and effort into an evergreen SEO strategy isn’t always feasible when you have a business to run. Digital Limelight Media provides full service SEO, lead management, and digital marketing services. We’re experts in crafting content that stands the test of time and are always innovating to achieve the best results. If you’re interested in growing beyond stale content to provide relevant and timeless information to your audience, give us a call. 

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Benefits of Blogging

1. Drive Traffic with New Content

Keeping your site up to date with new content is one of the most important ways of signaling to Google that you are a great resource for searches. Similarly, Google will typically rank sites with more pages higher than smaller sites.

Think about how much or how often you add to your existing site pages. With so much evergreen content, the answer is probably “not much.” This is one reason a blog can be so beneficial for SEO. Keeping a regular blog consistently adds indexed pages on your site, increasing your opportunities to show up in an organic search.

2. Convert Blog Readers into Leads

One important strategy when it comes to blogging is converting your readers into leads. For a medical practice, this usually looks like adding a call to action—something like “schedule a consultation” or “call us for an appointment.” The more opportunities to convert on your site the better.

3. Answer Common Questions

In consultations, you probably answer some of the same questions over and over each day. This means that your potential new patients are probably Googling these questions as well! A blog is a great way to keep your patients informed and meet them where they are. Answering those common questions through your blog is great for your SEO and helps build your authority online.

Disadvantages of Blogging—And What to Try Instead

1. Steep Competition

A blog is a good way to rank higher for your target keywords, but you should also consider your competition. For example, it would be very difficult for a small, family-owned plastic surgery practice to rank on the first page for “Breast Augmentation Recovery.” Larger sites like plasticsurgery.org or healthline.com will dominate those first few spots. However, your odds will improve if you are considering more niche topics and keywords, like the name of your city. This is where a tailored strategy for your practice’s blog comes into play. Your DLM Marketing Specialist can help you decide which blog topics will be most effective for you.

2. Establishing Authority is Difficult

This point goes hand-in-hand with the problem of steep competition. Many times, when readers are looking to answer their questions, they are more likely to trust the authority of a website or name they already recognize. If you are a smaller or newer practice, this makes it more difficult for you to attract clicks. You should always include some information on your website that will build trust—like your educational background, experience, and certifications—but these won’t necessarily be obvious in a Google search result alone.

3. Blogs Can Be Time Consuming

There’s no way around it—writing a high-quality blog takes time. From choosing topics each month to doing research to writing the first draft to editing and proofreading, plenty of work goes into maintaining a blog that will benefit SEO and your audience. If your blog strategy isn’t working for you, all that time would be better spent on other content writing projects.

Try: FAQs and Updating Site Pages

As previously established, blogs are a great way to answer frequently asked questions and update your website with new material. However, adding these FAQs directly onto your existing pages is another great strategy. This seamlessly builds keywords into your content and signals to Google that you are keeping your site updated. At the same time, adding FAQs and updating pages is a simple way to increase the word count of each page, another SEO benefit. It can also be more efficient when it comes to the time you put into your content.

Try: Email and Social Media

One of the obvious downsides of a blog is making sure that your audience sees new posts when they go live. Think about it—how often do you check out a favorite brand or business’ website to see if they have posted a new blog? Email and social media meet your audience where they already are. You can make sure your social plan or email marketing include links to new blog posts, or simply focus more on these mediums when it comes to updating patients with news about your practice.

Give Us a Call

Questions about your content strategy? Give Team DLM a call at (616) 222-3735 or contact us online to learn more.

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Links

In content, links are direct pathways to other online resources. Inserting a URL to another site literally “links” your content with the other pages content. How does this make your content stand out in the crowd? The web allows you to string information together across different platforms. You can group like information. Links prevent your content from free floating; they anchor your page in a “family” of information. If your user finds one “family” member, they are more likely to spot your content.

Keywords

Insert keywords where they make sense. Keywords are like someone’s name tag. If you say a name continually, you will get your users attention. Including keywords more often improves search optimization. Dropping key terms like “doctor” “physician” “practice” “rating” into your blog post, homepage or web description.

Placing keywords next to each other also optimizes content. When you use a first name with their last name, for example, you can better command their attention. Place “doctor” and “rating” next to each other for combined results.

Be organic with your keywords. It is important to blend the style of your content with your keywords. For example, where a close friend might say “doc” a more formal user might search “Doctor Sir”. Where more formal keywords may work best on website pages, informal keywords can optimize blog posts. Including both terms in your content improve optimization even more.

Google Trends

Trending keywords can create even better search engine optimization. Looking for most searched items can optimize your search. You could even take it further; including niche terms that are common in your competitors content could make your pages stand out. You can check out http://www.google.com/trends for commonly searched terms based on year, location, and topic.

These three methods, when combined, will optimize your results. Patients can type in keywords and be guided to your content. They will hear your voice in the internet crowd; they will schedule their next consultation.

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What Is a Blog?
First, let’s start out with the basics. What is a blog? Dictionary.com defines a blog as “a website containing a writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites.” A blog can also be described as “a single entry or post on such website.”

History

Early Days: The first blog is believed to be Links.net, which was created by a Swarthmore College student Justin Hall in 1994. Since the term “blog” was not yet used, he simply called it his personal homepage. Then, in 1997, the term “weblog” was created by Jorn Barger, who created the blog Robot Wisdom. In 1998, the first blog was posted on a traditional new site by Johnathan Dube. Then, in 1999, the term “weblog” was changed to simply “blog” by programmer Peter Merholz. The most popular blogging platforms in these early stages were LiveJournal and what is now known as Blogger.

The 2000s: This was the period of growth for blogging. The most popular early blogs were political blogs. By 2001, blogging had become popular enough for how-to articles and guidelines for blogs to appear. Many successful blogs got their beginnings in the early 2000s, like the Huffington Post. In 2003, the extremely popular WordPress was created. The AdSense advertising program was also launched, making it possible for bloggers to start making money.

Mainstream Blogs: By the mid-2000s, blogs had become very popular. In January of 2005, a study stated that 32 million Americans were reading blogs. Media sources, such as CNN also began teaming up with blogs and bloggers. The number of blogs continued to grow, and now almost every mainstream news source and corporation today have at least one blog. Today, blogs and podcasts are making their way into the blogosphere.

Blogging has greatly grown in popularity over the years and isn’t going anywhere soon. If you don’t already have one, we highly recommend starting your own blog today!

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First off, a blog can help build trust between you and readers. When you are sharing advice or information that can prove helpful to readers, you are placing yourself as an expert on those topics. Blogging can also help to market your business, since blog posts are often shared between many social media networks. If one person finds your blog helpful, they may share it so others can read it, and so on.

Blogging also improves search engine optimization for your website. Google often places blogs on the first page of searches, so the more blog posts you have the higher the change your blog will be posted on Google’s first page, and the more leads you may have. It is important to design at least some of your blog posts for SEO purposes, so that people can find your blog easier when using a search engine.

The best website for creating a blog is WordPress. It is extremely SEO-friendly and is easy to use, saving you from the frustrations of having to use a new website. After creating a WordPress blog, be sure to install Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and XML Sitemaps. Organic content needs to be written on your blogs so that Google does not keyword things.

Lastly, be sure to write about topics that people are interested in. But, how do you know what they want to read? One way is to type in keywords connected to your blog topics in a search engine and see what comes up. Also, see what other bloggers in your industry are writing about. If you are writing about what people are interested in, you are sure to get more reads.

As you can see, creating a blog can be very beneficial to your website. Now, get writing!

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