Posts Tagged ‘ ethical chiropractic advertising ’

What is the overall theme or message you send to the public with your Chiropractic marketing? Have you ever thought about it?

I would guess from most of the Chiropractic advertising I see, that many Doctors of Chiropractic DO NOT spend a great deal of time thinking about what message they are conveying with their advertising.  This leads to sporadic spurts of Chiropractic advertising confusion.

Most Doctors of Chiropractic simply don’t know WHAT they are trying to say.  It’s not because they have nothing to say.  It’s because as Doctors of Chiropractic we know how valuable Chiropractic is and we are passionate about telling the world!  We have so much to say we try to communicate all of our messages without much thought to order or consistency.  This all leads to two common Chiropractic marketing pitfalls: inconsistency and confusion.

One of the most common Chiropractic marketing mistakes is inconsistent advertising.  Many Chiropractic practices run many different ads in an illogical order.  While the ads themselves make sense, they don’t work well with the ad that ran the day before or the week after.  For example, one advertisement promotes Chiropractic as a treatment for back pain.  The next ad might focus on nutrition.  The next ad focuses on neck pain or headaches.  Another ad might discuss the importance of children receiving Chiropractic care.  If your ads run months apart it may not be much of an issue.  However, if you run many advertisements close together this can be problematic.

I’m not saying you can’t promote all of these aspects of your practice or Chiropractic.  I’m simply saying you need to do so in a logical manner.  If you want to discuss pain and injury then by all means pick one series of ads and focus on pain and injury.  Run your 3 or 4 different advertisements about pain and injury before jumping to another topic.   Another series of ads might discuss wellness and preventative care.  If you offer unique treatment or services like acupuncture, spinal decompression or massage then discuss those in a logical order in another campaign.

With some careful attention to detail you can even work in transition phrases to help ease your audience into the next topic.  While this may seem like overkill, it sends a well organized and consistent message to the community.

The second major mistake many Chiropractic practices make is trying to send too many marketing messages in one advertisement.  We’ve all seen (and probably ran) those ads that attempt to discuss all of our Chiropractic greatness on a postage stamp sized area.  One advertisement is not the place to list all of your skills.  Listing your practice name and a bunch of phrases like nutrition, pediatrics, acupuncture, laser therapy, decompression, geriatrics, sports injuries, auto-injuries, personal injuries, orthotics and underwater basket-weaving is not effective advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing.  If you are one of those rare jack-of-all-trades in the Chiropractic profession, by all means promote all of the benefits of your practice.  Just do yourself a favor, and do it in a consistent manner.  One of the worst things you can do is try to promote EVERYTHING about your practice in one advertisement (or even in one ad campaign).

Start by picking the top 2 or 3 aspects of your practice and focus on promoting those in a single ad.  Once again, if you have a lot to promote break it down into different ad campaigns.  Make a list of everything you want to promote and then design individual advertisements to promote everything on your list.

Last but not least, make sure you aren’t contradicting yourself with your marketing. Are you practicing what you preach?  Are you getting adjusted? Are you taking the supplements or using the same exercises you promote to your patients?  You’d better be, or at least be prepared with a good explanation why you aren’t!

Are your advertising messages contradicting each other?  I’ve seen Chiropractic practices say one thing in an advertisement one week and turn around two ads later and say something in complete opposition.  Nothing places doubt about Chiropractic, and your practice, faster than sending contradictory messages in your advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing. Take the time to design a logical and well thought out marketing campaign and you have a much better chance of creating Chiropractic marketing success!

10 Tips to Streamline Your Chiropractic Patient Testimonial Videos

Like any other aspect of your Chiropractic practice, you need to streamline your Video Chiropractic Patient Testimonial process. A video patient testimonial is a highly valuable marketing tool, but obtaining it shouldn’t disrupt patient flow and other activities within your practice. Let’s look at 10 easy ways we can make the process more efficient.

1. Delegate Responsibility: Decide who will be responsible for the patient testimonial process. It’s usually a good idea to have one or two people trained and educated on the entire process. These individuals should be the only ones filming the testimonials etc. Having specific individuals responsible for the process leads to consistency and efficiency. Having 2 individuals well versed in the process allows for life to continue on in the event a staff member is ill or otherwise absent from the practice.

2. Determine who will be approached: Not every patient is going to be a candidate for a video Chiropractic patient testimonial. The ideal candidate is a happy and long term member of your practice who’s been through the acute stage of care and has decided to stay with your practice for wellness or maintenance care. A patient with an outgoing personality is always a plus as well.

Be sure to sit down in a meeting with your staff and discuss the importance of knowing who to approach.

3. Determine WHEN to approach patients: Once you and your staff have defined the right type of patient to approach, you need to discuss when, and when not, to request a testimonial from them.

If a patient is going through personal tragedy (such as a death or divorce), experiencing an acute flare up of their condition, or just disputed a bill with your office then NOW is not a good time to be asking for a testimonial from them. Knowing WHEN to ask is probably just as important to know who to ask.

4. Keep records: Make a notation of which patients have already supplied, or declined to supply, a testimonial. It’s certainly acceptable to “try again” with a reluctant patient at a later point but don’t be too pushy. Repeatedly badgering reluctant patients or constantly asking patients who’ve already supplied a testimonial is going to offend and alienate your patients.

5. Come up with a script: You need a plan and direction for the entire patient testimonial process. One great way to do this is to develop scripts. These don’t necessarily have to be rigid scripts followed verbatim by staff. Simply give your staff an idea of how they should approach patients, a general idea of what to say, and plan out the ideal patient testimonial process. If you don’t like the idea of a “script” consider this an outline or guide for the entire process.

The most important aspect of your patient testimonial script is going to be how it guides the flow of tasks. Concern yourself less with telling staff what to say and more with guiding them on the order you’d like things performed. Your script should outline where patients are taken to complete testimonial release forms and how the patient is guided through the entire process.

6. Decide on a length: Decide on a desired length for each testimonial. In general one to two minutes is usually ample time for a patient to get their point across. Anything longer runs the risk of losing the attention of the audience. Of course you can vary your requirements as you see fit, but defining a soft cap on testimonial length can streamline the process and keep patients from rambling.

Determining a limit on the length of time required of the practice to obtain patient testimonials is another great way to keep things moving efficiently. In general the entire process shouldn’t take any more than 5 or 10 minutes. Let your staff know what you expect of them.

7. X marks the spot: If you’ve decided to set aside a dedicated location for your testimonials you can further expedite the process by marking where patients sit or stand, and where cameras and lighting should be placed. Taping an “X” on the spot you want the patient is a great way to speed up positioning and camera adjustments.

You can take further actions such as permanently mounting lighting in place or mounting a camera on a tripod and preventing it from being bumped out of position.

8. Be professional: While many practices have a very loose and fun atmosphere, you should maintain a great deal of professionalism in the video testimonial process. Maintaining this professionalism will help prevent staff from going “off track” with friendly and talkative patients and will result in higher quality testimonials.

9. Thank your patient!: Be sure to thank patients for taking time to provide their testimonial. Following up with a “thank you” post card in the mail is a great way to express your gratitude.

10. Practice: Although it seems a little weird, you need to practice the entire process a few times before approaching patients. Getting together with staff and going through a few dry runs is a great way to make sure everyone understands the process and procedures. Take a lunch hour one day and run through the process with some mock patients.

These are 10 simple tips to maximize the efficiency of your video Chiropractic patient testimonial process. You and your patients are very busy. Keeping the entire process running smoothly and quickly will keep your practice and your patients happy. It also increases the likelihood that other patients will participate once they see it is quick and painless.

So now that we’ve covered the advantages and disadvantages of the Chiropractic video patient testimonial, let’s look at how you can get started.

What  exactly do you need to get started?

1. A Digital Camcorder or Mini-Cam. You may have an older tape style camcorder that you can hook up to a computer, but it will not work as well. It will require more steps to convert the video, and the video quality will be pretty terrible compared to modern digital and HD quality.

Digital is definitely the way to go here. I highly recommend a HD (high definition) camcorder. If you can’t, or won’t, afford a full blown camcorder you can purchase one of the smaller mini or pocket camcorders which are now available in HD. I’d recommend at least 720p HD quality but 1080p is better yet. You can find one of these smaller mini camcorders at your local superstore, office store, electronics store, and dozens of sites all over the internet. You can easily find one in the $100-$150 range.

One great place to start your digital HD camcorder shopping is at Amazon.com. They are probably the most trusted online store and a great source for some good deals on a huge variety of products. Use the search box below to search for digital camcorders or anything else you’re interested in. Chances are they have it!

2.  A Computer: You’re going to need to own, or at least have regular access to, a computer or laptop capable of handling some basic video editing tasks. You need the computer to access, edit, and upload the video files.  Processing, transcoding, and working with video files can be a pretty resource hogging task, so I recommend a newer computer and not the 9 year old dust box in the basement!

Minimum computer requirements will vary greatly depending on just how crazy you want to be with your video editing.   Newer Intel dual core processors, at least 160-250 GB of hard drive storage space, and 2.0 GB of memory are a decent starting point capable of handling the medium to basic video editing needs of the typical Chiropractor.

This is just  my personal opinion, but I highly recommend HP brand computers. Every HP I’ve owned has been extremely reliable. I still have one that has seen heavy daily use for 8 years!

If you are looking to purchase a laptop for your video editing, I’d highly recommend Toshiba laptops.  I’ve never owned anything else and have never had any issues. Check out some of their great deals currently available at the link below:

3. Video Editing Software: Some sort of video editing software is recommend but not absolutely required. Many of the digital camcorders come with some sort of very basic software to allow you to clip or crop out portions of your clips and combine different clips.   Many new computers also include free basic video editing software which may be enough for your needs.  These  may be all you need to get started if you don’t have the need or desire to make many custom edits to your videos.

Some of the more high quality third party video editing programs will allow you to add post production polishing touches like adding text over your video, adding background music and overlaying logos and other special effects.

4. A Clean, Attractive, and Well Lit Area for Filming. Many Chiropractors elect to dedicate a small room, or corner of a room, solely for the purposes of shooting patient testimonials. A sort of “mini studio” if you will. I think it is a great idea. Having your chiropractic video patient testimonials all shot in the same attractive area gives a sense of unity to your testimonials and looks very professional.

If you have a busy practice I highly recommend filming your video patient testimonials away from the action. Although you may be tempted to want to show how great your practice is, all of the foot traffic and patients performing active rehab exercises in the background is distracting. I’ve seen many great chiropractic video patient testimonials ruined by staff repeatedly walking in and out of frame, patients checking in and out, and other distractions.

It’s all a distracting mess that takes away from the happy patient telling the public about their success with your practice. Don’t let the procedures of your practice take away from the patient’s message. Besides, you can always shoot another video  dedicated to showing all of your practice action in detail!

5. A Website:
Although a website isn’t an absolute necessity it gives a great place to post your videos, and more importantly, more information about you and your practice.

6. A Free YouTube Account: Hosting video on YouTube is free and a MUST. It’s simply the most popular video site and allows you to create your own channel to host your videos. It’s a site with millions of members and you need to be using it to promote your videos and your practice.

7. Other Free Social Media Accounts. Once videos are posted on YouTube and/or your website or blog you need to promote them. You can link to and spread the word about your videos on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more. Many of these sites also allow you to post your videos there as well.

8. Procedures. Like any other part of your practice you need to come up with a general game plan for your Chiropractic video patient testimonials.  Having a game plan for patient testimonials will make for higher quality and more efficient procedures.

9. Patient Permission. Many Doctors of Chiropractic overlook this. The fact is you should be getting written permission and a release form from patients. You need to be specifically getting permission to use their testimonials in your marketing. Asking them verbally isn’t enough. Some doctors choose to simply ask and get the release verbally on video at the beginning of the testimonial. While this is certainly better than not documenting the fact that you asked, I still recommend some sort of patient release form.  We’ll be posting a free sample form template soon!

10. Time and Creativity. Like anything else worthwhile; filming, editing, uploading, and promoting Chiropractic patient testimonials takes time.  You need to be willing to devote the time and effort to make your efforts successful.

11. A Written Alternative. While many of your patients are outgoing media hounds willing to jump at the chance of being on camera and potentially on TV or the internet, some are not. For a multitude of reasons many patients are camera shy and prefer to not give a video testimonial. Offer these patients a form to provide a written testimonial. A glowing written testimonial is better than none at all!

Without a doubt, the king of all Chiropractic patient testimonials is the video testimonial.  Recording a short video testimonial from patients is more time consuming than other types of testimonials, but also usually creates the greatest results.  Let’s take a closer look at some advantages and disadvantages of the video patient testimonial.

Disadvantages

• Time consuming: It takes time to film, edit, and post video testimonials (especially when you are first learning how to do the entire process).

• Expense: Video testimonials require you to invest in some equipment and computer software that you may not already have. This can make the initial expense more than other forms of testimonials.

• Permanent and Not As Easy to Edit: Although they all mean well, patients aren’t familiar with the legal and ethical issues facing the modern Chiropractor. They also may be nervous when in front of a camera.  As a result they may say or do things that aren’t in the best interests of your Chiropractic practice.  Making minor corrections to a video testimonial is more difficult than text. With a text testimonial you can quickly make minor changes and indicate the changes you made. A video testimonial doesn’t afford this luxury. Editing the middle of a video testimonial may be difficult, may require cutting or cropping, or might even require completely re shooting the testimonial.

• Difficulty: Although not extremely difficult, video testimonials require more effort and knowledge than a basic text or audio Chiropractic patient testimonial.

• Patient Reluctance: Many patients are reluctant to appear on video and thus these patients are less likely to agree to a video testimonial.  You may find less people willing to provide a video testimonial versus a text testimonial.

Advantages

• Trust and Credibility: This is without a doubt the biggest advantage of the video patient testimonial.  In fact it’s such a huge advantage it pretty much trumps all off the disadvantages we mentioned above!   The social proof value of a video testimonial is much greater than that provided by a text testimonial.  As a society we generally place more trust in something we can see and hear firsthand. There is simply no substitute to watching and hearing a person provide their personal account of something.   Seeing a patient provide a glowing testimonial of Chiropractic care and your practice is truly priceless.

• Validity: A video testimonial reduces the chances that you can be accused of falsifying or editing the actual content of patient testimonials.

• Requires Less Time and Commitment from your Audience: Let’s face it, we have become an instant gratification society. The general public doesn’t like to read anymore than they have to, especially when it comes to things like advertising. The sad truth is many people will disregard text testimonials simply due to the fact that it requires their time and effort to read.

• Versatility: The video Chiropractic testimonial is highly versatile. It can be used in a variety of different venues and media outlets. Video testimonials can be used on your Chiropractic website, chiropractic blog, in DVDs and other chiropractic marketing materials, in television commercials, on social media accounts and more. Video allows you to be much more creative than text.

• Website Search Engine Optimization and Increased Site Traffic: Prospective patients and the general public aren’t the only ones who value video. Google and other internet search engines love it too! By regularly updating video to popular  sites such as YouTube you can improve your Chiropractic website’s position in internet search results and drive visitors to your Chiropractic blog or website.  Thanks to Dr. Jason Ulsrud over at RockStar-Chiro for pointing out I should indeed add this to the list of advantages!

These are just a few of the main advantages and disadvantages of the video Chiropractic patient testimonial. What are your thoughts? Do you have something you feel I left off of the list? Let me know by leaving a comment below. I’d be happy to add your input to our discussion and even provide you with the credit!  Feel free to leave your comments and feedback in the comment section below.

In our next post we’ll begin taking a look at the actual process of the video testimonial along with tips on how to pull off some of the best Chiropractic video testimonials around!

Until then keep promoting yourselves and our profession!

-Dr. James

I’m often asked by Doctors of Chiropractic if I think patient testimonials are a good idea.  Done properly, I think they are a wonderful idea and one of the best ways to build social proof in the world of Chiropractic marketing. In this series of articles we’ll be discussing Chiropractic patient testimonials, video testimonials, social proof, and more. I’ll also be providing some handy tips along the way on how to best accomplish all of this. I’ll even end by providing FREE downloadable permission and release forms to allow you to legally and ethically use your patient testimonials.  So enough introduction, let’s get started!

Patient testimonials fit right into an area of Chiropractic internet marketing that has become a hot topic of late: Social Proof.  Social proof is nothing new. It’s simply a new buzz word and spin applied to an age old concept.  On the most basic level, social proof is little more than providing reviews ,testimonials, and other evidence to prove that your product or service is effective, accepted, and well liked.

Patient testimonials are obviously an ideal technique to build social proof. While print or text testimonials are effective, the best idea is always video. If you can’t or won’t work with video testimonials than you should try and at least use photos along with your testimonial.  Most people tend to dismiss plain text testimonials as simply being made up. A photo of the individual along with their testimonial is a better idea since it puts a face with the text and helps to establish a little more credibility.  The king of all Chiropractic patient testimonials is without a doubt, the video testimonial.

We have become a very visual society. We tend to place more trust in something we can see and hear for ourselves rather than simply reading.  Video testimonials are probably one of the best ways a Doctor of Chiropractic can build social proof. Although they require more work than other types of testimonials, it is well worth the extra effort.  We’ll  take a look at some of the benefits and disadvantages of video testimonials in our next post.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!