Chiropractic Business Cards

Ever noticed how many chiropractors carry around low quality business cards? The card is more than a resource for your contact information. If it was just for informational purposes, why don't we just print it on paper? Before patients ever step into your office, your business card is your store front. Aside from you, it's the only tangible impression they have of your practice. So after passing out some cards over a dinner party. Hopefully, you made a good impression and they kept your card. Two months have gone by and now they're searching for a chiropractor. The memory of their chance meeting with you two months ago have faded, but they're looking at your business card. Their impression of you has faded, so the only tangible impression of your practice is your card!

I see chiropractors skim on their card all the time. This is espcially evident among new chiropractors, but it permeates among established chiropractors as well. I'm not even surprised anymore when I come across one.

Common faux-pas's:
1.Printing free cards from sites such as vistaprint.
2.Using inappropriate generic stock designs.
3.Printing on thin paper
4.Cluttered with useless information

Free Cards
Companies such as VistaPrint produce great cards. I've used them myself and I recommend them. But I would steer you away from their popular free cards program. There's no strings attached, and as they promised, no hassles involved. However, the "cost" of the free cards is VistaPrint will print their own ad on the back of your card and lets the reader know that the card was printed free at VistaPrint. So what sort of impression are you making? If a doctor isn't willing to spend $100 on business cards, it raises questions.

Inappropriate Designs
Some cards are clearly printed with generic graphics chosen among several templates. I advise staying away from common generic graphics unless you're absolutely positive they're appropriate. Graphics involving the spine, human body, chiropractic logo are acceptable. But what does a tree have to do with chiropractic? (Explanations I've heard range from "I like the greenery" to "Tree is synonymous with life".)

Thin Paper
Nothing says low quality like flimsy business cards. Remember, this is your temporary store front.

Cluttered Cards
I've heard this rationale many times: "You're paying for the card, mind as well fill it up with as much info as possible." This isn't a buffet plate. Quantity does not equal value. Start looking at ads and billboards. When you clutter your forum, you confuse your audience and your message is lost. Go grab a corporate executive's business card. Study the minimalistic approach. Understand that information overload is easily reached on a 3x5 card.

Trend-Spotting

I've been playing around with one of Google's new tools: Google Trends. It's one of their latest tools. You enter a term and it graphs how popular of a search term it has been for the last two years. You can easily see find the spikes in the graph indicating a jump in search. Correspondingly, you can click on a news article that was published around the time of the spike that might have contributed to the jump in interest.

You can use Google Trends if your patients inquire or comment on a condition or some recent health report. Use this tool to gauge public interest on the topic or simply find out what others are talking about. If there is indeed a surge in interest on a particular topic, then you'll know what topic to tackle on your next health-talk, newsletter, or any other promotional campaign.

On a side note, I changed the layout of the blog yesterday. I prefer the cleaner look that it has now. I actually spent too much time altering it by first "jazzing" it up with new graphics and color changes. I just kept playing around with the ideas of adding different things hoping to find the right combination, creating the right effect. Minutes turned into hours before I realized the best view is a plain one with a minimal of color. I settled on this current design hoping it's easier for the reader's eyes. As always, I welcome any feedback you may have, even your thoughts on my blog layout.

Blog Hunt #4

I try not to devote too many entries to this topic. I plan on doing one highlight a week. But I ran into a chiropractic blog today that I felt I must share. I thought about putting it off for a week since my last blog highlight was so recent. But I know myself. I will forget. So please check out this blog by Jolibois Chiropractic. The blog features personal writings by the doctor. They allow him to educate the public and breathes life into his persona. He even included a photos section. What really caught my attention was that Dr. Jolibois continues to post reguarly despite a major setback at his office (Hint: read his blog if you're curious on the nature of the setback).

I think this blog doubles as a website. What a clever idea! Now he saves on web design costs and hosting fees. Ingenious! Most websites are static sites, they simply post relevent content up to be browsed by visitors. In the case of chiropractic websites, contents typically include office hours, doctor biography, office location, contact information, and health articles. As Dr. Jolibois clearly shows, all this information can easily be incorporated into a blog.