If You Have To Choose Between Blogging And Podcasting…
Much as it kills me to admit it, as a podcaster and medical director with 20:20 hindsight, I’d say that podcasting should be secondary to blogging for super busy medpros.
That’s a painful admission for a dyed-in-the-wool podcaster. I came to medical podcasting a year ago, and blogged as an afterthought (I thought quickie shownotes were proper blog posts). I love podcasting, but when putting on my director’s cap, there are time management realities about podcasting that are hard to overlook. Podcasting does take extra time and recording equipment to do, so assuming you’re time constrained…you may want to choose the alternative.
But thankfully, there’s a catch.
On the plus side, podcasting has unparalleled advantages over blogging that are almost unfair:
- As a medpro, you have daily practice doing an awfully good podcasting simulation (each patient visit is essentially an interview show), so the transition to actual podcasting can be surprisingly easy.
- The “subharmonic connotation” value of hearing your trusted, known voice cannot be overemphasized, adding immeasurable value to what might otherwise be dry or dreaded content (”We’re offering Botox next month,” or “Your blood pressure is increasing your stroke risk”).
- And there’s NO OTHER MEDIUM that can deliver your message to commuting or otherwise visually occupied patients.
On the debit side, blogging is necessary AND sufficient for practice promotion, though “sufficient” just barely:
- Updating content with a blogging platform like WordPress is simplicity itself, and being web-based, can be done from anywhere on earth with Internet access.
- Many busy patients prefer to skim read pertinent material, rather than listen to an entire podcast for desired content.
- It’s quite possible to update a blog daily, though it takes a bit of discipline and commitment. A daily podcast show would require an enormous change in workflow for the vast majority of even professional podcasters.
So if you had to pick a place to start, I’d say go with blogging, gag me with a spoon, now, please.
But, really, most of us don’t have to pick.
You can — and should — have both blogs and podcasts on your practice’s website.
You’re not likely to need daily content updates, for blogs or podcasts, unless you’re moving away from patient care as a primary focus. One new article a week and one new podcast show a month will likely be sufficient. Most of your patients won’t want to check your content more often than that, no matter how well you craft it, or how easy you make it to consume (you’re their healthcare provider, not their best buddy). If your colleagues are willing, you can rotate at least the blogging, and reduce your own writing commitment to just once or twice a month.
And writing may not be easier than podcasting for you. Medpros talk on their feet, confidently and on tough topics, dozens of times a day. Relatively few do any kind of regular real writing, however, much less writing that is compelling and fun to read. Writing is easier to do than podcasting, but only if you can write.
Think about offering both: like a good book, coming out one chapter at a time, and a good radio program. You could do just one, but what a tremendous one-two combination they both provide together.
2 comments
Peter:
Just is just me, but I grew up in a small town in the midwest where time flows really by the change of harvesting seasons rather than by the daily “what’s for lunch” desperation near noon of a workday. I also grew up in a time where people took time out to greet others, speaking face to face. Now we have EMR, staring at a computer all day. Even at home, I would spend on the average another 1-2 hours surfing the web, paying bills online, emailing, etc. My wife & I would often correspond each other via emails. Free time for loose association is a rare commodity, even at the dinner table. We are also more busy nowadays with modern technologies, talking less and less with each other face to face, signing off labs, reports, etc. Perhaps because personal interactions take more time than emailing and cellphone, and in our endeavor to be more efficient, more productive, more focused with shortened attention span, we prefer what’s more convenient, even if it’s less personal. No wonder at one recent hospital meeting one old timer doctor stood up and complaint why he feels so isolated as a physician nowadays, that no one is really talking to anyone, that the casual camaraderie was not there like it was 25 years ago. We’re just trying to become worker bees, cranking out patients in 15 minutes slots. We know our patient volumes more than we know our patient’s HbA1c, I feel at times. The only people, I feel, that sit and meet comfortably regularly are administrators and managers who are paid for their meeting time, and that’s sometime what they do all day. Ok, I feel that I’m derailing onto another talk. What I really had meant to say was that I have not caught up with blogging or podcasting yet because I’m still juggling a day’s full of technological demands, and trying to find free time to be personal and all…
Wow.
Thank you for your candor, Man.
Medical blogging and podcasting require a certain investment of time and thought, no two ways about it. But I sincerely believe that the investment is worth it.
The initial commitment is kind of like setting up a retirement plan that auto deducts from your paycheck - most of the effort is in creating the mechanism, and subsequent “contributions” are much easier - ideally, like dashing off diary entries. From that point on, it’s more a matter of how much thought you want to put into those diary entries.
Most medpros do *not* suffer from too little thoughtfulness; if anything, they think too much about certain things or more than enough about many topics. What they need is an *outlet* - one that benefits their practices, patients, and personal selves/families.
I’ll be posting on this shortly (I’ve long planned it as one of my “cornerstone” or “pillar” articles). But I firmly believe that by adopting the medium of podcasting and blogging, that ALL doctors and other medpros can benefit in the new healthcare era that is upon us. ESPECIALLY those that feel disenfranchised and deserted.
For besides stabilizing your practice by educating patients and increasing income, medical podcasting and blogging also generate social contacts and commentary - networking - that stimulates further thought and action.
Much like your excellent comment! Thank you!
Leave a Comment