The American chiropractic profession is ignoring the use of blogs, according to a new study by the social media research company, Kahuna Content. It’s a brilliant marketing tool, says Kahuna Content Principal Consultant Richard Telofski. The study revealed a high correlation between the average chiropractic patient and the average blog reader, yet this opportunity is not being exploited.
Plainsboro, New Jersey (PRWEB) May 20, 2008 –- The American chiropractic profession could benefit greatly by the use of blogs, reveals a new study by the New Jersey based social media research company, Kahuna Content. "American chiropractors should be jumping en masse into the blog marketing pool, but most won't even get their feet wet," says Richard Telofski, Principal Consultant at Kahuna Content. "How do we know this? Because less than one percent of American chiropractors blog and, of those that do, over one-third of chiropractor blogs are inactive and look like sad puppy dogs abandoned by the side of the road."
"Unfortunately, blogging as a marketing tool is not regarded seriously by America's chiropractors," says Telofski. "In fact, their absence from blogging is just downright astounding."
It's astounding because, per Kahuna Content, there is a high correlation between the average blog reader and the average chiropractic patient. According to industry statistics, males between the ages of 31 and 50 comprise a high percentage of chiropractic patients and an even higher percentage of blog readers. "If this isn't a perfect demographic alignment between a marketing medium and its target audience, then I don't know what is. It could be the perfect tool, or the perfect 'chiropractic assistant,' yet the opportunity is squandered by America's chiropractors."
Indeed, a serious, targeted marketing tool is needed by these professionals because of the way managed care affected their business over the past decade, reducing fees and patient rosters. Blogging seems to be perfectly situated to fit their needs and it's also a relatively inexpensive marketing medium to use, which in times of economic downturn or recession can help a practice become very competitive. Yet, chiropractors don't seem to understand this.
Based on its recent study of American chiropractic blogging entitled "The Back Blog Brief," Kahuna Content found that not only are less than 1% of all U.S. chiropractors blogging, but of the ones that do over one-third have effectively abandoned their blogs by not keeping them fresh and vibrant. Only 13% of chiropractor blogs post more frequently than once per week. "With that kind of irregularity and infrequency," says Telofski, "it's hard to develop and keep an audience. No wonder the chiropractor blog abandonment rate is so high. Their lack of commitment is breeding their own discontentment."
Indeed blogs, like other media vehicles, are dependent on fresh and regular content. Telofski said that from the research he got the impression that the chiropractors jumped into blogging without giving it much pre-planning. "I'm certain they wouldn't conduct other aspects of their business like that," he said.
Generally, the chiropractors use only a few of the many available blog tools. Even a blog tool as common as the omnipresent RSS chiklet, the link you click on to subscribe to a blog's feed, was hard to find on most of the chiropractor blogs. But there was one silver lining said Telofski.
"Of the blogging chiropractors that we did find, they mostly write short posts. We found that about 87% of blogging chiropractors keep their posts to 300 words or less. Generally, blog readers don't want to read long posts. So, this is a good thing, but I'm not sure if the chiropractic bloggers did that by design, or if it just worked out that way."
For additional information about The Back Blog Brief go to http://www.kahunacontent.com/site, click on "Learning Reports," then click on "Chiropractic."
Contact:
Richard Telofski, Principal Consultant
The Kahuna Content Company, Inc.
609-799-6490
http://www.KahunaContent.com
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