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Getting More Publicity for Chiropractors & Wellness Facilities
Strategies that work, strategies that don’t work By Paul J. Krupin, BA, MS, JD, President of Direct Contact & Imediafax Publicity is perhaps on of the most important marketing tools a chiropractor can use. A simple article can inform the people in your market area that you’ve opened a practice An article about wellness or back pain prevention and treatment can drive prospects to your office. Done right, it’s an effective way to grow a practice and gain highly favorable recognition in your community. However, getting publicity for chiropractors is a gauntlet filled with landmines. It takes some special skills and specialized knowledge to navigate through the pathway to success. You want to learn what the risk-laden issues are and steer clear of the danger zones. In general, there are media taboos against giving free publicity to people unless the “news” has got some tangible and verifiable educational content or entertainment value. The media is very conservative. The will only publish trustworthy factual, and validated information. There is a clear and open agenda promulgated by the traditional medical establishment against chiropractors. There are self-proclaimed whistleblowers, and guardians of the public trust, like Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch. These people stand ready to criticize and attack anyone who they decide deceives the public with unsubstantiated health claims and practices. You do not want to attract this type of attention. There are certain areas, which are very risky to bring up when dealing with media. For example, to date, the verdict isn’t in on chiropractic nutrition. In fact, there are numerous well-disseminated articles and official and professional organization warnings that have been issued to educate the public on abusive and fraudulent chiropractic nutrition practices. Not everyone believes that proper urine and blood judicious use of food supplements or carefully selected vitamin regimes is valid science. You do not want to be labeled or grouped in this realm. Yet the media has an ever-increasing need to satisfy the public hunger for valuable and motivating information on health, fitness and nutrition. More and more emphasis is being placed on wellness and there are opportunities everywhere to get publicity that can help your practice grow. You can learn a lot about how to create bona-fide news in this article. The wisest course of action is to recognize what’s safe and avoid the topics and critical issues or hot buttons so as to derive the benefits and avoid the risks of bad PR. The first step is to do some quick online research and get familiar with what’s being published. Use News Search Engines to study published articles from other professional To establish a baseline for your knowledge, you can take advantage of the tremendous free online resources that are available on the Internet. In particular you can search the News Search Engines to get the most current stories each day on certain key words. Very simply, it’s a technology that allows you to identify how the media covers a particular topic. News search engines are specialized search engines that visit news sites from all over the Internet and use computer algorithms to select stories for inclusion. They then cluster the stories and photos into an online magazine format. As the news changes the news search engines keep you informed of the latest developments. They allow you to search the latest news stories from hundreds to thousands of news sources. Some of them also allow you to create special news alerts, which send you an email message every time a news story comes out on your special topic or keywords of interest. This is very powerful and useful technology and at least for right now, it’s free. More and more, however, media are charging a small fee to access their publications and archives. Let's explore these and find out how you can use them to get more publicity for your business. The Top News Search Engines include the following: < < < News < < < For each of these, create a list of the keywords that you can use to return articles and news stories of interest to you. Chiropractors & the field of chiropractic Physical therapists Dietitians and Nutrition counselors Wellness facilities and articles Medical doctors Health Fitness Using Google News to illustrate, search on the words: Chiropractor actor Or the words Chiropractic actic The stories you want to focus on are those that tell you how you can position your next news release for maximum exposure. These are stories that reveal how the media covers your topic. They tell you "Do this" and "Don't do that". These keywords bring back articles. The articles can now be analyzed. They are very instructive. They show how the media has covered your search topic in the past two weeks to a month. There is a range of articles. Study them. These articles very clearly tell you what you should write about and what you should not write about. They provide you with the ability to develop a public relations strategy for your key area of interest. There’s a neat way to do this quickly it’s called, … The 3 I Technique Use the following technique to leverage this critical intelligence. It is called “The 3 I technique”. It works like this: 1. Identify a success story 2. Imitate it 3. Innovate with your own information. Very simply, you must follow in the footsteps of those who have been successful with the media before you. Using the 3 I Technique allows you to identify other successful media coverage and leverage it for your own practice. Things you can’t do if you want publicity There are certain stories or news angles that to date, will almost certainly result in your news release being totally ignored. Like it or not, this is reality. The media has a sixth sense for certain types of behavior. These very specifically include: Making a health claims for food and nutritional supplements. The field of food supplements has been associated with health claims of a dubious nature in times past. This has resulted in a near total ban on news coverage when the subject of food supplements comes up. Note, that this is not the same as a professional offering correct and valid and recognized advice on how to deal with certain medical problems or describing the actual results of bona-fide treatment. Then there are other sensitive areas, which raise ethical concerns and the possibility of potential or even actual conflict of interest. A doctor prescribing vitamins to solve health problems is considered risky behavior. This is because of the basic position of the professional medical and dietetics associations that a proper diet does not require or need supplemental vitamins or nutrition. Proper nutrition is absolutely essential. But the proper source is normal food. The professional associations acknowledge that it is OK to recommend a single multi-vitamin. But it is not OK for doctors to prescribe and sell vitamins. This is viewed not only as an unprofessional practice but as a conflict of interest. What definitely doesn’t work There are certain news release behaviors that simply look more like advertising that news to most editors. Thus, while these commercial advertising elements generally may be great for direct marketing, they are generally are fatal when placed into a news release. Anything that resembles a request for free advertising. Free or discount spinal analysis or consultation in the office. Free counseling in the office. A news release that promotes a product. A news release that promotes a web site A news release that promotes a publication or e-zine. What you can do to get favorable publicity: What is very clear from daily analysis of news coverage is that chiropractors can get favorable publicity and that newspapers, radio and TV all over the country provide this coverage readily. The focus of the successful news articles is repeatedly on chiropractors who do the following: Advocate for healthy eating Advocate for healthy lifestyle Advocate for smart decision-making Educator of wellness topics Expert on specific problems Source of expert commentary Health coach for healthy lifestyle Great sound bites on request on hot topics Teacher of workshops/seminars & courses on key topics Office wellness Work wellness Sports injuries prevention and management Health Fairs/Nutrition Fairs Work with county and city government on wellness programs Work with companies & non-profits on wellness programs Safe Key Topics for PR: You must identify and emphasize human interest and place less emphasis on the technical and scientific. Families read newspapers. They are not generally written for people with advanced scientific degrees. Newspapers also focus on local people and characters. The safe topics almost always start with a real-life story and then address one or more of the following in an educational and entertaining manner: Natural health & fitness Natural bodybuilding Normal nutrition Holistic nutrition Health coaching on proper lifestyle choices Low-cost wellness programs Government & business wellness programs Exercise & fitness basics and essentials Good posture for kids, elderly Weight loss and diet basics and essentials Weight management essentials Smoking cessation Pain management options (objective) Stress management Wellness Decision making Insurance coverage for chiropractic care Celebrity wellness tie-ins Nominal topics and tactics for PR As mentioned earlier, news pegs that are more typically contained in commercial advertising do not sit well with media when you are looking for articles to feed your practice. Offers like the following should not be included in news releases. Free makeover Free bone density Free spinal tests or analysis Free nutritional analysis Free consultation Free newsletters These ideas just do not get media excited at all. They are incentives to buying a service -- commercial advertising elements that do not even belong in a news release. Once in a while, you’ll see an article that includes free or discounted offers for analysis or consultation, coupled with some sort of charitable cause. This is the only exception situation -- when this type of offer is done for free or at a substantial discount (with the proceeds going to charity) to support a needy organization, cause or group of people. However, the focus must be one of human interest, and not “chiropractor available”. Risky Topics for PR The media coverage to date observed in the following areas is very simply not favorable or worse, focuses on the negative aspects and consequences of illegal practices. Alternative health treatments Alternative therapies Food supplements Nutrition supplements Herbal therapies Spinal analysis Treating conditions or symptoms Pain management therapies (radical) Chiropractic adjustments & techniques Radical methods (Reiki or acupuncture) Alternative healthcare for animals Veterinary chiropractic care New medical treatments complimentary care methods including relaxation and meditation, yoga, tai chi and qi gong, art and music therapy, journaling. Newsletters These are topics that raise concerns to media or have been clearly identified as controversial by the media and oversight organizations. You may get some coverage. It may produce some interest. However, it may simply be the wrong type of publicity to grow your practice. You can invite media scrutiny and find yourself under attack. At the best you can simply be ignored. Techniques that Can Be Used Successfully to Generate Publicity There are a number of topics and techniques that can be used to get publicity for chiropractors very successfully. Particularly when the focus contains an emphasis on local human interest the following can be used very effectively. 1. Special health events 2. Opening new practice 3. Personal background/philosophy article 4. Timely analysis & critique of controversies 5. Practice expansion into new areas 6. Office relocation 7. Significant accomplishments or honors 8. Bona-fide case studies 9. Workshops/seminars/classes 10. Ongoing events 11. Support group meetings events/calendar section 12. Bona fide patient success stories 13. Problem solving tips & advice articles 14. Local Ask an Expert Column or feature 15. Wellness articles / Health coaching articles 16. Healthy food/recipes articles 17. Celebrity wellness events & situations 18. Celebrity case study/treatment success 19. Unusual emergency treatment of pain or injury in a highly public situation 20. Unusual political support of chiropractic profession (e.g. Arnold Schgwarzenegger) Targeting Your Media News releases should be transmitted via fax and email to custom targeted media lists that cover the geographic area of the practice only. The goal is to get publicity that helps you grow your practice. This includes getting coverage in the daily and weekly newspapers and on local radio and TV. You want to aim at feature story coverage and inclusion in calendar sections. You want to be in the health and lifestyle sections. Media kits should be available to support and satisfy media interest as needed. Imediafax will work with you to create your news release and transmit it to the custom targeted media list in your area. Noteworthy Sound Bites: You want to come across as someone who listens well and knows how to communicate to normal people under stress. You need to learn to talk in short clear sentences called sound bites. These are memorable and readily useable statements that can be used in media segments. They are called sound bites. Here is an example showing the sentence in the article leading right up to the very notable quote from the chiropractor. He said “the current low-carbohydrate diet craze is unhealthy, if not deceptive”. He used the recent fast-food campaigns for low-carbohydrate foods as an example. “Instead of giving you crap on a bun, they give you crap on a bowl,” he said. “A Whopper without a bun is not a well-balanced diet.” That’s what a great sound bite tastes like! Ideal Integrated Web Site It will help you if you have a well-designed and well-integrated web site that people can go to when they want to learn more about your practice. The best web site is one that is tied directly to a media web site, and integrated right into it. This is because the media will then constantly be promoting you. The best way to decide what your own web site should look like is to study the web sites of others, and identify the elements you like the best. Here are some examples of well-designed and well integrated web sites. WOIA AM radio feature. A Local ‘ask the expert’ feature of an am radio station. Web site with link from local radio station that is packed with problem solving tips articles. This web site is worth studying. Use it as a model. Checklists for Chiropractor news releases: Chiropractor offers Chiropractor open new office. Name of Doctor is excited to begin offering chiropractic care in his hometown of ___________. His goal is to provide the community with with a variety of chiropractic-adjusting techniques to offer an integrated health-care experience. injuries and treatment of chronic pain. A graduate of the and Hours are Call Photograph showing doctor treating patient hands on. Chiropractor Key statements: Why did you decide to locate here? What are the types of clients you specialize? Types of people you have worked on? Famous athletes or clients Famous events you’ve worked on Noteworthy accomplishments Special appointments (e.g., team doctor for famous team) Special practice features Noteworthy new technology? Unique practice? Special investments? Personal history (where’d you grow up, what you did in high school or college, Personal education, medical education, How did you learn about chiropractics and decide to become a chiropractor. Where you met your spouse, how you got married, when you had children. etc. What motivated you to become a chiropractor. How you got through the four years of school. Special sacrifices or events along the way. How do you like practice now What is special about being a chiropractor. Talk about special personal accomplishments or events or experiences. What else do you do with your time? How else are you involved in the community? |
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