Creating a Month of Content on a Lunch Break
It’s Complicated – Compared to Most Chiropractic Offices
Tulsa Spine and Rehab is a multi-specialty rehab facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its owner and manager, Dr. Sean Riley, is 40 and has been in practice as a chiropractor for 13 years. But the clinic is different from most chiropractic offices in that it also includes physical therapists, clinical massage therapists, and yoga instructors.
Riley’s decision to go into chiropractic grew out of his own personal experience.
“I was an athlete growing up, and I sustained multiple back, leg, knee, all those types of injuries,” he recalls. He became interested and even enamored with the human body and how to treat it.
Riley’s unorthodox decision to team up with physical therapists and other providers of effective, non-surgical treatment options grew out of his sports experiences as well. “I wanted to surround myself with a bunch of like-minded team members who are interested in doing the same thing. And that is, essentially, trying to figure out what a patient’s problem is and trying to provide them multiple options under one roof.”
The choice earned Riley some strange looks, though, because traditionally, some of those experts have been rivals.
“There’s a huge turf war between chiropractors and physical therapists,” Riley explains, “because chiropractors are trained to administer exercise and rehab. And physical therapists, these days, are trained to manipulate, and some of them are really good at manual therapy. So it’s like, ‘Hey, he’s doing what I’m doing!’ and ‘She’s doing what I should be doing.’ What I thought is, ‘I’m just going to be really good at what I do—manual therapy and other certain things—and I’m going to surround myself with some other folks who are really good at what they do.’”
So the clinic has someone who specializes in knees, backs, and shoulders, another person who specializes in balance and coordination, people who specialize in massage therapy, and yet others who specialize in spinal manipulation. Having such a wide range of options means that if one approach doesn’t work for a particular patient, her course of treatment can be changed without having to send her elsewhere.
Riley describes the clinic as being “very patient-based” and “outcome-oriented.”
“The joke with chiropractic is, ‘Once you go, you’ll have to go the rest of your life,’” he says. In contrast, at Tulsa Spine and Rehab, “treatment plans are very conservative: four to six visits, which is unheard of for chiropractic.”
Other chiropractors, Riley notes, typically start out by doing X-rays of a new patient, and may not even provide treatment on the first visit.
“I don’t shoot X-rays anymore, which is also unheard of,” he says. “With all these little things, it’s important that I’m able to tell the story of what we’re trying to do and what separates us from other offices, because there are a lot of other really good chiropractors in the Tulsa area.”
Telling a Complicated Story to Differentiate His Business
Telling that story, however, didn’t come easily to Riley. He had a website he describes as being like a brochure: “stagnant.” Occasionally, his staff would approach him and say, “Hey Dr. Riley, we need some marketing content for the website.”
“And I’m like, ‘Goodness, gosh,’” he remembers. “So I’d just sit there and stare at the screen thinking, ‘What am I going to say about my office?’”
“I tried all different avenues,” Riley says. “I researched things on the Web. I tried to have these brainstorming sessions with staff. And my anxiety rose a bit—I really didn’t want to do it. I think that was reflected in the content that we were providing to patients, because I have a tendency to get very medically technical.”
Riley thought that what he’d written sounded great. “And I think I’m delivering a good story to a patient, and then they get that deer-in-the-headlights look, like ‘What in the world did you just say to me?’”
“I thought people would respond to this stuff!” But actually, he admits, “No one really understood what I was saying.” (Except, perhaps, other chiropractors.)
Riley knew he needed help, and he turned to Shortcut Blogging.
“I’ll be honest with you, I was nervous about it,” he acknowledges. “When we first got started, I was worried about, ‘How do I get content?’ I was going to make like four or five of these a month, and I was like, ‘I have enough to worry about in my practice.”
But Riley followed the steps. Shortcut Blogging sent him “a fancy package” with a microphone, a set of instructions, and a step-by-step video to help him get a year’s worth of ideas outlined on paper.
“I just kind of did what I was told. I didn’t overthink it, and then I looked down and I was like, ‘Wow! I’ve got pertinent, relevant material and content that I think my patient base would be interested in.’”
“I was like, ‘There it is! I have it all essentially laid out for the whole year,’” he recalls. “And I felt pretty good about it. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought the experience was going to be, and the end product was something pretty special.”
Riley wasn’t the only one who went through the process—he also had every staff member at the clinic go through it as well. “I had the two PTs do it, one of the massage therapists—and then my office manager did it, and she actually provided some really relevant content related to billing and insurance, things that patients might have questions about. I probably got five or six topics just from her. And, obviously, quite a bit of clinical stuff from the PTs and the massage therapists.”
Tulsa Spine Uses Both Blog Posts and Podcasts
“I’d never done podcasting or any type of blogging before,” Riley says. So he had no idea what to expect. But one of Shortcut Blogging’s professional radio interviewers got in touch, and the instructions were simple: “‘Just talk. Just take the topic and just have a conversation,’” he recalls. “I’ve always been pretty good at talking. So in that first session, I spoke to the host. … Earlier that day I’d sent him an e-mail with the topics that I wanted to discuss.”
“So we got on Skype and got everything set up,” Riley recalls, “and he just said, ‘I’m on with Dr. Sean Riley, Tulsa Spine and Rehab. Why don’t you just tell me a little bit about your clinic and who you are?’”
“The host would jump in, occasionally, and ask me some questions that we had discussed,” he remembers. “And it was pretty darn seamless. I was really surprised.” By the end of that first brief conversation, they’d covered enough material to create their first three blog posts.
Riley had been concerned that creating content would cut into his work day, but in less than half an hour each month—on a lunch break—he’s managed to talk enough to create as many as five blog posts and podcasts a month. And he doesn’t have to go back and edit that material—it’s all done for him based on that one conversation.
“I have instant content,” Riley says. And since Riley chooses material that’s relevant for Web searches, his blog posts are built with SEO in mind.
“I’m just pulling these topics off what I did in that initial exercise, and I just talk, and we go back and forth, and then we set a date for next time. And that’s it! It’s a much easier experience than I thought it’d be.”
Listen to Sean Riley’s Podcast
Up Next: An E-Book
In fact, the clinic’s website is now so packed with information, Riley is working on organizing it into an e-book.
He describes the process as being something like an informal chat with a patient over coffee.
“It’s kind of a neat experience, and now I look forward to doing it,” says Riley, “because I’m talking about things that I’m passionate about, things that I think that my listeners and my patients want to hear. It’s relevant, useful information. And I want to be myself and create a following with these folks—and that’s what I’m starting to do.”
The Shortcut Blogging process lets Riley’s own personality shine through.
“When new patients come in, they’re like, ‘I feel like I’ve already spoken to you, because I listened to that talk on low back pain, and I’ve heard what you sound like. … And you sound exactly like you did when I was listening to your podcast!’”
“I’m doing something that no one else is doing in Tulsa,” Riley says proudly. “People are talking about it. ‘Hey, this Dr. Riley—he has this podcast.’ ‘What’s a podcast?’ ‘Oh, it’s this deal where you can get on his website and he’s got these topics that he talks about—stuff he can treat or things related to his office.”
“It not only provides all the relevant content and so forth, but it also brings more credibility to our office,” Riley explains.
SpineFit Radio in iTunes
His podcast, SpineFit Radio, is now available via the iTunes store. “I never thought that I would say that, but you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes!”
The podcasts have also been put to use someplace rather unexpected: They’re used instead of music on hold for people calling the clinic.
“We don’t have to do anything—the content’s already made,” Riley says. “And folks say to me, ‘Hey, when I was on hold the other day, I heard you talk about headaches.’” (He points out, however, that Tulsa Spine and Rehab prides itself on not keeping patients on hold very long.)
Now Riley is even talking with a local radio station about including his podcast as a segment on one of its morning shows—again, with no extra investment of time on his part.
Web Referrals Are Up
Of course, results are everything, and Riley has found that Shortcut Blogging delivers. He uses Web analytics and other measures to track how well the content is working—and it is working.
Though marketers had told him in the past that it could be eight to 12 months before a campaign starts to pay off, just five months into his partnership with Shortcut Blogging, Riley was already seeing more than a dozen Web referrals a month.
“At the end of each month, I can look back and say, ‘I had 19 Web referrals,’” he explains. “And I’m not doing anything! That’s the great thing about it. I’m having a phone conversation once a month for about 30 minutes about some things that I like to talk about, and that’s it!”
“The proof’s in the pudding—what it’s doing for my business,” Riley says. “The phone’s ringing—and more specifically, it’s ringing related to what’s going on on my website, the content and the podcasting, and I really don’t sweat it too much. It’s pretty easy for me. So I’m appreciative of what you guys are doing for me, and I’m excited about a long, long future with you guys.”
“Of course I would recommend what you guys are doing,” Riley says. “It’s been very beneficial.”
“Anyone in any kind of a service industry would be well suited for this,” he continues. Plumbers or electricians all might have similar services, and we all want to think that we provide a high level, but at the end of the day, when someone picks up the phonebook and looks for a plumber, they just see all these names—or on a website or whatever it may be.”
“So I think the people who would benefit from this are folks who want to tell a story about themselves, about their business,” Riley says. “You start to build that story around your business, and people kind of start to get it: ‘That’s Joe Bob, the plumber,’ and ‘Hey, he’s really good at doing some of these things, and he’s got this podcast that no one else is doing.’ People talk about that stuff.”
“So I obviously think service industries and businesses would do very well,” but also, he adds, “I think anyone who’s trying to tell a story about themselves, separate themselves, and trying to deliver fresh, relevant content on a monthly basis. I mean, it’s a no-brainer.”