I come across a lot of very specific recommendations about the minutia of chiropractic internet marketing (add this “Like” button, claim your Yelp profile, create a video, etc.).  I think that sometimes the big picture gets lost among all these details.  Why are you adding that Like button?  What role does Yelp play in your strategy?  What is the action the video is intended to promote?  If you don’t assess each idea against your overall chiropractic internet marketing plan, it’s easy for your internet presence to become fragmented (and time-consuming) without delivering a lot of results.  If you’ve never sketched out the big picture, it’s about time that you do so.  Here we go…

Owning Your Local Web Presence

First of all, many thanks to Mike Blumenthal for creating this infographic and releasing it under the creative commons license for teaching purposes.  It does an excellent job including all facets of internet marketing in one place AND establishing the relationships and hierarchies among the parts.  This graphic was created for small business owners operating local businesses and is spot-on for how you want to think about your chiropractic internet marketing endeavors.

web-equity-for-chiropractic-internet-marketing

What Does it Mean?

Core

At the center of your chiropractic internet marketing universe is your practice name, phone number and domain name.  Do your best to pick these once and never change them!

Ring 1

The usernames and passwords ring is a reminder that you need to have a consistent and secure strategy for maintaining this data.  Lose it and you have locked yourself out of your own world.

Ring 2

This ring consists of your chiropractic website, your chiropractic blog (which should be embedded on your website), and your N.A.P. which stands for Name, Address, Phone.  Your Name, Address, Phone and Website (with Blog) are your online ID for your local practice.

You could choose to stop after this ring. If you elect to take your chiropractic internet marketing further into the outer rings, be sure that everything you are doing reinforces and strengthens the core of the circle.  Every review, Facebook page, email newsletter, directory listing, etc. should contain your N.A.P. information and link to your website.  All paths funnel inward.

Social Side (Right)

The items on the right side of the outer rings are the social aspects of chiropractic internet marketing.  They include conversations by way of blog comments, tweets on twitter, relationships on LinkedIn, and check-ins of Foursquare.

Don’t spread yourself too thin across all the possibilities. It is much more important to be a contributing, valued member of one online community that a sporadic participant in many.

For chiropractors, we suggest Twitter for its ability to mine tweets in real time and Facebook for its ability to reach large audiences of like-minded people in groups.

Search Side (Left)

The right-hand side of the graphic defines the search aspect of chiropractic internet marketing.  There is a lot more that goes into having a website perform well in local search than just claiming your Google Place Page.  To appear high in the search results, you need to establish or claim your listing on all the leading directory, review and rating sites.  And you must MAKE SURE THAT YOUR N.A.P. always matches exactly.  Beyond that, you’ll need some local citations (mentions of your N.A.P. on other local websites) and some links pointing into your site.

Exactly how many citations, how many directories and how many links you’ll need to rank well is determine by the intensity of the competition in your local market.  Chiropractic internet marketing isn’t always about being the best (in an absolute sense), but rather about being better than the other local chiropractors.

Once you achieve top rankings in search engines, don’t rest on your laurels.  Keep moving forward.  Remember that if you stand still, others will catch and surpass you.

Put First Things First

This graphic is based on concentric circles for a reason.  The core matters the most.  Do not get sidetracked with tips, gizmos and tricks on the periphery if you haven’t built a solid core.  This core will need to support your chiropractic internet marketing objectives for years (or decades).  Make solid long-term decisions and don’t play short-term search engine games.

Chiropractic Internet Marketing Core Mishaps

why-we-fail-in-chiropractic-internet-marketing

This diagram is an excellent depiction of what you should be doing.  Unfortunately, many chiropractors are building on a shaky core. Here are some things to look for:

  1. You don’t own your domain name.
  2. You purchased a replicated website where you cannot easily control the content and layout.  You will also lose (or need to recreate) all of your blog content if you ever switch providers.
  3. Your blog does not reside on your website, but rather is hosted at Blogger, Blogspot or another third-party site.
  4. Your address is inconsistent across different websites either because you moved or you have a suite or unit number that isn’t consistently listed.
  5. Your phone number is inconsistent across different website because you are using different numbers to track call volumes.
  6. Your legal chiropractic business name is the same as your personal name (not a good idea for several reasons).
  7. Your domain name is CITYchiropractor.com or chiropractorinCITY.com instead of a name derived from your practice name.

If any of these core mishaps apply to you, you should really seek the advice of a chiropractic internet marketing expert.  The tradeoffs to be weighed in the solutions are very case-specific.  That’s why we created our complimentary diagnostic service.  When you request your diagnostic, mention the items you are concerned about in the comments box and we’ll focus some extra attention there. Click here for free diagnostic sign-ups.

Other Articles We Recommend For You