This blog talks a lot about the benefits of content marketing but we don’t often talk about the pain of content marketing.

This content marketing stuff is a lot of work.

Each blog post like this can take an hour to develop and write. When we are doing a few of these every week. That’s a few hours per week dedicated just to blogging. Who has the time?

I was just at my regular doctor and she gave me the names of a couple of specialists for this medical issue I’m experiencing.

Like all of us, I’m rushing around and need to get a chore done before I run back to the office. I need to mail a package and so there I am stuck in the line at the post office again. Well I guess while I’m stuck in this line I’ll pull out my iPhone and take a look at these specialists’ websites and learn about them.

I’m not sure which one I want to use but I definitely want the one that gives me the greatest confidence. I’m not putting such an important health matter in the hands of someone that does not look totally competent and buttoned-down.

If you’re reading this, then you’ve proved that blogs are a good way to get people’s attention.

We posted recently about why blogs are important to help grow your medical practice. A research study by Pew found that 72% of internet users were “online health seekers”- that is, they searched the web for some type of healthcare information.

A blog will not only help you be found (by showing up more often in search results) but will help you show your expertise as a healthcare provider: PwC found that 61% of consumers trust online health information that is shared by a doctor, and your blog is an opportunity for you to share your knowledge.

By now you know that the best time to start a blog is now, but how exactly can you blog most effectively? Here are some tips to writing a good blog post that will help grow your medical practice.

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in the case of Instagram, your pictures may be worth more revenue for your business. A study by SumAll found that Instagram accounts for a 1.5-3.5% increase in revenue for US businesses (3.6% in the UK).

What is Instagram? Launched in October 2010, it’s a photo-sharing app that was originally only available for iPhones but is now also available for Android and Windows phones. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in February 2012, and today over 20 million photos are posted daily.

If there’s one thing that’s remained constant with Facebook since its creation in 2004, it’s change.

In 2012, the traditional “wall” design for Pages was replaced with the “Timeline”. Facebook users tend to be initially resistant to change- a poll by SodaHead in early 2012 showed that 70% didn’t like the Timeline design.

Earlier this month, Facebook unveiled yet another set of changes to come to Pages.

Facebook is an important tool for small business marketers. If you are an Admin for a Facebook page, you might have noticed some pretty significant changes recently. The most notable of these is the addition of the Pages to Watch feature, which allows Page Admins to track the statistics of their competitors pages.

InsideFacebook suggested that Facebook had begun testing the feature as early as August 2013, but like many other changes, Pages to Watch was rolled out over an extended period of time and only just recently became available for all Pages. But what IS “Pages to Watch”, and what will it mean for your business?

“Lead nurturing” sounds too geeky for any small business to bother with but in fact is totally necessary if you are serious about digital marketing.

“Lead nurturing” is a fancy way of saying “staying in touch”. (That probably sounds more achievable already.)

Specifically, lead nurturing is about staying in touch with consumers that have visited your website or blog and filled out a form on a landing page (typically for some kind of offer, say a discount coupon, or piece of content, like an ebook.)

A call-to-action (CTA) is a graphic or line of text that motivates your visitors to take action.

CTA’s are one of key elements in turning your content marketing from “library” into “sales machine”.

A CTA takes your visitor from a content piece like a blog post and sends them to a landing page.On the landing page you offer your visitor the chance to exchange their contact information for an offer—often a piece of premium content like an ebook. Once your visitor’s contact information is logged in your (email, marketing or CRM) system you have the ability to perform email marketing to them, “nurturing” them to one day become a “real” sales lead.