Three blog posts a month, every month: what they’re actually for
A marketing contract crosses my desk every few months for a client who is reviewing an existing relationship. The line item is usually some version of “three blog posts per month, written by our content team.” The price is usually $600 to $1,200 monthly. The contract is usually a year long. The question of whether clinic blog posts are worth that retainer is rarely a yes or a no.
The question I get asked is: are these worth it? The honest answer is, it depends entirely on what those three posts are actually for. The agencies that sell this package frequently can’t answer that question. The clinics that buy it usually can’t either. So let me lay out what blog posts on a clinic site actually do, when the monthly cadence makes sense, and when you are paying for a deliverable that produces nothing.
What clinic blog posts actually do
Blog posts on a clinic site do three things, in roughly this order of importance.
Capture long-tail search traffic. A parent searching “is my toddler’s fever an ER visit” at 11 PM may not be ready to call your office, but if your blog post answers that question well, they remember the clinic that helped them. Six months later, when they need to choose a pediatrician, your name is the one they recognize.
Show clinical voice. A blog post written by the actual doctor (or strongly edited by them) tells prospective patients what kind of practice they would be joining. Tone matters. A practice that writes warmly and clearly attracts patients who want that. A practice that writes corporate boilerplate attracts patients who skim corporate boilerplate.
Give existing patients something to forward. Half the blog traffic on a typical small-practice site comes from existing patients who got the link from a staff member, a follow-up email, or a Facebook share. A well-written post about flu season becomes a tool the front desk can hand out for the next four months.
Notice what is not on this list. Blog posts do not, in 2022 or any year after, materially affect your overall search ranking for competitive head terms. You will not rank for “pediatrician Wellington” because you wrote 36 blog posts. You will rank for “pediatrician Wellington” because of your Google Business Profile and the basics of your local presence.
What the agency package usually produces
The typical agency-produced clinic blog post is 600 to 900 words, written by a copywriter who has never met your doctor, on a topic the agency picked from a generic “healthcare content calendar.” It uses the doctor’s name in the byline. It has a stock photo at the top. It is loosely SEO-optimized for a keyword nobody at the clinic chose.
These posts do exactly none of the three things on the previous list. They don’t capture meaningful long-tail traffic because the topics are too generic. They don’t show clinical voice because the doctor didn’t write them. They don’t get forwarded because nothing in them is distinctive enough to forward.
What they do produce is a green checkmark on the agency’s monthly report. The post is published. The cadence is maintained. The contract was fulfilled.
When three a month is the right number
Three blog posts a month, written well, is a meaningful cadence for a clinic. It is also a lot of work. The doctor (or someone close to them) has to be involved in the topic selection and the editing, because the voice is the whole point. The writing has to be specific to your patient population, your geography, your way of practicing.
If you have that, three a month produces 36 posts in a year, which is a substantial body of work. After two or three years, you have a small reference library that handles a lot of patient education automatically. Patients link to your posts in Facebook groups. Your front desk forwards your own URLs to common questions. The compounding value is real.
When zero a month is the right number
If the only thing producing blog posts is an outside writer with no clinical input, zero is better than three. The posts are not capturing traffic that converts. They are not showing your voice because they don’t have one. They are not getting forwarded because nothing in them is forwardable. The site has 36 pages a year that exist mainly to satisfy the contract.
Worse, that volume of generic content can quietly hurt you. Google’s algorithm has gotten better over the last few years at recognizing low-quality content farming, and a clinic site that publishes 36 generic posts a year looks more like a content farm than a five-page site that publishes nothing.
The middle path
The version that works for most small clinics I have advised is one post every six to eight weeks, written by the doctor or strongly co-authored. That is six to nine posts a year. Each one is specific, well-edited, and built around an actual clinical question the practice fields all the time. Each one is 800 to 1,500 words, with the doctor’s voice on it.
After three years of this cadence, you have 20 to 25 posts that genuinely earn their place. The site looks active without looking like a content factory. The posts answer the questions your patients actually ask. The doctor’s name is on writing the doctor actually wrote.
This is also the cadence where you can sustain the work without burning out. Three posts a month from a busy doctor is not realistic. One every two months is.
The question to ask before signing
If you are looking at a content contract right now, the question to ask is: who is choosing the topics, and who is writing the words? If the answer is “the agency, and the agency,” you are paying for green checkmarks. If the answer involves your doctor at any meaningful point in the process, the contract might earn its place. If you can’t get a clear answer at all, that is also an answer.
The other question worth asking: what does the agency’s reporting look like? If their monthly report shows “3 posts published, 12 keywords ranked” and never shows anything about actual patient calls or new patient signups, you are looking at activity metrics, not outcome metrics. Activity metrics keep the contract alive. They don’t grow the practice.
The right cadence for your clinic is whatever cadence you can sustain with real clinical voice. Three a month if you can. None at all if you can’t. Anything in between, on a schedule that respects how busy the doctor actually is, is honest work. The honest work is what compounds.
