Your medical practice is most likely focused on attracting patients from your own backyard and greater region, unless you\u2019re a nationally renowned hospital such as the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, or Johns Hopkins Hospital that attracts patient from across the U.S. and around the world.<\/p>\n
Your outreach strategy then is hyper-local and this post will show you how to get started getting the attention of local media to generate some press for the healthcare services that you offer.<\/p>\n
These publications, while often small and sometimes not as polished as national media outlets, they\u2019re often entrenched in the local community and can really help build your offline (and online) presence.<\/p>\n
The things that happen in your practice may be commonplace to you and just another day at the office. You probably think that you and your practice are rather routine…and maybe even boring.<\/p>\n
But, some seemingly everyday events can be newsworthy, like hiring new staff. Creating a press release about this and sending it to local news outlets will result in publication. Staff will feel good seeing themselves in the press and it\u2019s not outside of the possibility for their friends and family to share the news online!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re celebrating a 5 or 10 year anniversary, buying a new building, have treated \u2018X\u2019 amount of patients, reached a milestone, updated certifications, received new training, added new state-of-the-art equipment, offering new services or have even won an award, your community and your patients want to know!<\/p>\n
These types events are always newsworthy (and you shouldn\u2019t be afraid to brag) because each shows that your practice is growing, learning, evolving, helping to greatly set you apart from your competition.<\/p>\n
Getting involved with your local community is a great way to create something that is newsworthy<\/a>. The best part is that it\u2019s so very easy to do so!<\/p>\n We\u2019ve worked with medical practices across the US and have seen a variety of ways practices can get involved in the local community.<\/p>\n Some of our favorites include:<\/p>\n All of these are ways to get involved, do good and get some solid local press!<\/p>\n Your first instinct may be to go directly to the largest newspaper in town and the TV news stations. While those are great outlets to get mentioned on, they\u2019re not you\u2019re only option and shouldn\u2019t be your first pitch.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that when looking to get mentions about the practice in the news, you\u2019re not only competing against the other healthcare practices in your area to get a story written about you, you\u2019re also competing every other single business in the area that wants the spotlight.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget, most news outlets also need to save space for national news articles well. Just because you\u2019re local doesn’t mean that they care any more about you than the next guy.<\/p>\n All of that is to say, don\u2019t overlook the following outlets (I\u2019ve included outlets from our hometown – usually there\u2019s something similar in your city) as they\u2019re generally easier to work with and often drive the same results a large media outlet would:<\/p>\n Now, know that most large media outlets prefer to \u201cget the break\u201d or have an exclusive on a story.<\/p>\n Often times, large publications will not publish news that\u2019s already been covered by smaller, local, media. We recommend that if you\u2019ve got major news or really want a placement your area\u2019s largest outlets that you approach them first.<\/p>\n There’s two parts to making yourself available for stories as an expert:<\/p>\n Starting a blog is key to demonstrating your expertise. Sharing your experiences, answering frequently asked questions about procedures, and debunking health myths or quelling fears will not only show you depth of knowledge\u00a0but these posts give you something to point editors to.<\/p>\n Published journal articles are very authoritative and something that you can also use to show your expertise, however blogs are written in a different tone that show how relatable you are, your ability to explain complex topics to patients, and prove that you’re a good candidate to be quoted, interviewed, or featured in “ask an expert” features.<\/p>\n Many journalists that you’ll be engaging with aren’t doctors themselves or maybe they don’t have much of a scientific or medical background because they’re writers.<\/p>\n So, step one is to write content for your own website to prove that you know what you’re talking about.<\/p>\n The next step is reaching out to editors which can be accomplished in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n If you want people to talk about you it\u2019s important to connect with them first.<\/p>\n Be social, get on social media and share their articles, videos, and blog posts on your own feed. Interact with them online and establish a relationship.<\/p>\n Then you can reach out them, make an introduction about what you do.<\/p>\n Get creative with the story ideas. You\u2019re not always going to find a writer or blogger that exclusively covers the specific area of expertise that you\u2019re in. You may be able to comment on something based on your experience such as, \u201cMany people come into my office for this common running injury but really, they need to go see this specialist that I refer them to.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s always an angle, and such a variety of ways to get local press for your healthcare practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your medical practice is most likely focused on attracting patients from your own backyard and greater region, unless you\u2019re a nationally renowned hospital such as the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, or Johns Hopkins Hospital that attracts patient from across the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
What Outlets Can I Pitch My Practice To?<\/h2>\n
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Make Yourself Available for Stories as an Expert<\/h2>\n
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Be Social, Reach Out, Get Creative<\/h2>\n