One of the best ways to keep your dental practice in the minds of patients is to maintain a regularly updated blog. According to blogging platform WordPress.com, nearly 400 million people read 4.1 billion WP blog pages a month.

There are two lessons to glean from those numbers. One is that people still read blogs. The other is that there is lots of competition out there. In order to keep your blog fresh, entertaining and enticing current patients and prospects alike, you need a go-to list of juicy subjects to write about.

If you’re stumped when it comes to creating new titles, just turn to this list. The following twenty blog topics should be all you need to get those creative juices flowing again so that your dental practice can remain on top of the recently published list.

1. Industry News/Breaking News
When something newsworthy happens and you want to learn more, where do you turn? If you’re like most people, you might use your phone to check USAToday or The Washington Post, two authorities on the subject of breaking news. If something’s going down, you can bet they have the scoop.

You want your blog readers to think of your dental practice the same way. You are the authority, the person you want your patients turning to when they want the latest scoop as it pertains to dentistry and/or your business. Keep your readers informed of everything that’s going on and they’ll come to you; which means you won't have to go searching for them.

2. Top Five Things to do Right Now
People love blogs that inspire them to take action, particularly if the post lays out which actions to take in a manner that’s easy to follow. Be very clear about the actions you want your patients to take and ask for feedback or true accounts of readers who did take action.

You might use this as a pretext for a follow-up blog where you report the successes of your patients who followed your advice.

3. Aggregated Content
If you’re absolutely stuck on what to write about, use the efforts of other dental professionals to help you out. Start reading other dentistry blogs and pick out a handful of top blog posts for that day/week. Post these for your patients into a new blog with a short explanation of why you chose each post. This is a great way to link back to relevant blogs in the dental industry and it’s yet another way to provide valuable and relevant content for your loyal readership.

4. Video Blog
Don’t feel like writing today? Why not break out the video camera and film a video blog? A video is a great way to engage your patients and posting a video every now and again is a good way to keep your blog from growing stale. Just pick one of the other subjects on this list, press record and you’ll have an engaging video blog to post in just a few moments. For improved quality, spend some time editing the video to make sure it makes the most impact.

5. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Are you constantly getting asked the same questions from your prospects and patients? Wouldn’t it be great if you could just point them to a source that would answer all of their questions in an easy-to-read manner? A FAQ blog keeps your patients informed and each quality post will save you from fielding redundant questions from your readers, prospects and patients alike.

6. Case Studies/Latest Projects/Progress Reports
Keep your patients informed of your dental practice's goings on by posting regular progress reports. Did you recently help a patient recover from tooth loss with a set of beautiful implants? Post a blog about it and let your patients know just how successful your dental practice is at what you do.

7. How To/Step-By-Step (Instructional)
The search engines are used to getting queries that start with ‘how to’. If you regularly post instructional blogs that tell your patients how to complete easy, moderate and difficult tasks that are common to dentistry, you might steal some of that curious search engine traffic.

8. Infographic
Infographics are neat to look at, they present important information in a manner that’s easy to digest and high-quality infographics tend to go viral quite easily.

9. Innovative New Strategies
Do you have a new way of doing things that your patients might appreciate, such as brushing or flossing? Do you have a shortcut that makes normal processes much easier, such as taking care of a tooth that was recently knocked out? Take the time and write out a blog post to help your patients out. This is a great way to establish your authority over your industry and you’ll be giving your patients valuable information they can use at the same time.

10. PowerPoint to Slideshare
If you’re stuck on writing, why not take an old blog post and create a PowerPoint slide show out of it? You can then use that Slideshare as your latest blog post. You can do this with other PowerPoint presentations you may have created in the past.

This is called repurposing a blog. In this case, we are repackaging the blog altogether, but you can always change an old blog up and make it new again.

11. Repurpose Old Blogs
Just because you already published a blog doesn’t mean it can’t be updated. Take those old blogs, dust them off and make them relevant again. You might even go back and make corrections, clarify points and other techniques to make your old blogs fresh again.

12. Recaps/Summarizations
Did you just watch a video you want your readers to watch or did you just attend some event? A great blog post idea is to provide a break-down or recap of the video, event or other subject that is much easier to follow for the average patient. Instead of committing, they can just read your recap and go about their day.

13. VIP Interviews (Podcast)
If you have the opportunity to mingle with the top luminaries in dentistry, you might want to ask for an interview. Come up with a series of questions and record a podcast that you can then turn into an engaging blog post. If you can manage to ask the hard-hitting questions that make your patients stand up and take notice, your interview post is bound to get a lot of attention.

14. Answer Questions from Popular Forums
When browsing popular forums in dentistry, pay attention to popular questions that seem to get a lot of attention. If you have a unique take on the answer, create a special blog post around that question. This can also position you as the authority and, who knows, you might draw tons of patients from that particular forum.

15. Dental Product Reviews
Is there a particular dental product that your patients keep asking about? Product reviews make great blog posts because they let your patients peer into your mind. Your patients may want to know what you ‘thought’ of the products in question. Try to remain unbiased, be honest and ask for feedback after your patients follow your advice.

16. Top Lists
Top Secrets, Top Reasons, Top Mistakes – these blogs are great to turn to when you’re short on content and they usually get lots of attention. Lists are popular because they’re easy to skim and they’re usually entertaining. Try to be different so that your list is unique to your blog only.

17. Year in Review and Prediction
These blog posts are popular at the end of the year. A quick recap, maybe some lessons learned and then a few predictions for the following year will always make for a great blog post.

18. Debate/Controversial Blogs
These blogs are intended as a way to bring attention. Pick a topic that might be controversial or maybe take a stance that may not be very popular in dentistry and watch the readers and comments flow.

19. Story Blog
If you’re a good storyteller, why not write a story that pertains to dentistry, your dental practice or a particular patient (while protecting hat patient's privacy, of course). The idea is to be entertaining. Even if you’re not a good storyteller, give it a shot and ask your patients what they think.

20. Top Resources
A great blog not only informs and entertains, but it helps patients solve their goals. Your patients might appreciate a list of free web resources that will help them keep their teeth extra-healthy or you might create a cheat sheet or a checklist that helps to keep your patients on track with their dental care. These types of posts also have a tendency to go viral quite easily.

You now have plenty of blog post ideas to keep and your patients busy for quite some time. You can also ask your patients what types of blogs they hope to see. You never know, they may have all the ideas you need to keep your blog relevant and fresh for years to come.