How Quality Writing Elevates Your Dental Practice Brand
How Writing Impacts Your Marketing Efforts
We are bombarded with images in our modern world: flawless skin, steaming cups of coffee, tidy kitchens, autumn leaves, and—of course—puppies. Our culture is so visual that a growing number of companies specialize in producing stock photos and clip art for various industries. For dentists, this means a lot of perfect smiles, perfect smiling families, with perfectly white teeth. You find these images on almost every dental website/postcard/sign/brochure, and they are certainly appealing to the eye—but for how long? People today understand that the smiling woman on the website isn’t an actual patient. The demographically balanced photo on the postcard? No, these people haven’t been to the office either. So, despite the initial power of a stock image, the feeling doesn’t last.
When people search for a dental home, they want more than a photo. They won’t invest their trust in your team with only a photo. They need words, your words, carefully crafted writing that goes beyond the superficial and speaks to the heart. When patients interact with your content (website, ads, postcards, reviews, social media, etc.), it’s like they’re meeting someone for the first time. At first, they only have a face (an image or graphic, preferably original and organic); these visuals set the tone and certainly make a first impression, but they do very little to reveal the true nature of your brand. Only when patients begin reading do they experience the core and mission of your practice.
If words, therefore, build a brand, then it’s critically important that you write effective dental marketing content. Dental practices should never present poorly edited social media posts, website content, blogs, etc. Not noticing such detail says much about your standards and your brand—display only error-free prose; better yet, present engaging, creative, error-free prose. Here are five writing strategies that engage readers and reflect positively on your dental practice brand.
1. First Comes Focus
The foundation of all weak writing is a lack of focus. With a blurry objective, writing feels threadbare and diluted; even if readers are left with a pile of information, the ideas are jumbled, like a kaleidoscope. Writing with focus is like having a compass heading on each word and paragraph, pointing all the text toward a central goal.
Focus consists of three main parts: what you want to say, how you want to affect readers, and the best writing strategy to craft your message. Before you begin drafting, let your thoughts simmer. Keep a pad of paper handy. You might even do some freewriting or brainstorming to get ideas dislodged and flowing in your mind. As you write, revisit your focus from time to time. It’s easy to follow an interesting tangent and discover that you’ve entered a rabbit hole. You may have produced some excellent writing, but it doesn’t support the focus. Although these passages must go, you shouldn’t delete them permanently. Instead, paste this text into a document labeled “Writing Scraps.” By keeping all this extra material, you begin generating an idea repository to visit later.
2. Delete, Delete, Delete
The best way to write effective dental marketing content is to delete. That’s right, you’ll make your writing stronger just by deleting more words and reorganizing the text. Unfortunately, many people believe that longer writing is better writing. I guess it’s easy to understand why. In school, teachers often set page requirements to motivate students. Sadly, this strategy usually encourages kids to water down their writing, so it takes up more space on the page. I taught writing for many years and received this type of passage often: “The main character in this novel is Laura, who is ten years old. In the first chapter of this novel, Laura gets home from a concert. The concert she went to see was Taylor Swift.” (35 words) After deleting the unnecessary words: “In chapter one, the main character, ten-year-old Laura, returns home from a Taylor Swift concert.” (17 words). With over 50% of the words deleted, the writing is more concentrated and effective. Rule of thumb: remove all wasted space (words) and create the tightest possible configuration—without sacrificing clarity or message.
3. Word Choice, Keep It Common
When I hear someone give a talk and use an uncommon word, I think, Well, that was a mistake; now everyone in this auditorium is Googling the meaning and not listening. I understand the temptation to season a writing piece with words currently outside mainstream vocabulary. Maybe you feel that it will make you sound more intelligent. Perhaps you heard someone else use it and can’t wait to try it. Whatever the reason, it’s important to understand that your message will suffer. If you want to communicate well and correspond your ideas to prospective patients, use words that most people understand, words that people are currently using; there’s always a comparable substitute that people know, and in this way, your message isn’t muddled.
4. Word/Sentence/Paragraph Variability
Variation is one of the most effective writing strategies to engage readers. In other words, writing material that never follows a routine because the subconscious mind notices this repetition and labels it dull and weak. Therefore, some of your sentences should be long and incorporate compound elements. Others should be short. Really short. Minute. Sometimes put modifiers at the beginning of a sentence, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end. Words should always vary as well. Repetition (unless used for emphasis) rings badly in the ear, especially for those reading a piece for the first time. This is why you must reread your work aloud. The more you hear your writing, the easier it will be to discover distracting repetition.
5. Check Spelling and Grammar
No matter how compelling your message or engaging your writing style, a lack of proofreading can tank content. Even though correctness means nothing when it comes to expertise or general intelligence, the general public will certainly use spelling and grammar to judge. In other words, the public will judge your ability to deliver quality dental care based on your ability to produce grammatically correct content. Yes, error-free writing is that important when it comes to building a solid brand. And at this time, there isn’t an excuse for errors in your writing. Most word processing programs come with spelling and grammar checkers, and there are some very affordable options that even address sentence structure and tone. The best writing aid available today is Grammarly; this program (which offers a free and paid professional version) operates in your current word processor, email services, website, and social media platforms. Using Grammarly is like having a second set of eyes checking over all your work for typos, missing words, grammar errors, spelling mistakes, rambling sentences, jumbled sentence structure, and poor word choice. I recommend getting a subscription and using it to check all outgoing writing. You and your dental team work too hard on your content to let insufficient proofreading weaken your efforts.
Be Genuine and Have Fun
Above all, honesty is what you need most to write effective dental marketing content. Honest writing feels natural and relaxed. When people attempt to copy someone else’s style, it’s like a woman putting on heels for the first time and going to a job interview. It’s painfully awkward. The reader feels as unsteady as the one who arranged the words. This doesn’t mean we write the way we speak. It just means that your tone (or the “spirit” of your writing) should always reflect you. Anything less comes across as fake and inconsistent.
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