How To Start Blogging On Health And Wellbeing
For every chiropractor, a blog can be a way of reaching out to your potential patients in a way that is both value-driven and demonstrates your expertise. There are many ideas floating around about the value of blogging, and while you might not be a natural writer, it can really benefit your online presence to keep and maintain a blog.
Some pros of blogging:
1. It makes it easy to demonstrate your unique point of view
A blog is a much more relatable, casual way to maintain a conversation with your audience online. Individuals everywhere like to look for information in the form of a relatable, easy to read, blog post. So take the opportunity to share information, ideas, and keep the conversation flowing, so your audience feels that your platform really provides the kind of expertise and answers they’re looking for. But also, use it to show the unique side of your practice – in a field full of chiropractors, the way you approach the articles and topics on your site can really set you apart from your local competition! Your approach, your particular skills, and your personality, will be what resonates most with your local community and will help in making the choice to make you their chiropractor an easy one.
2. You can interact with, and learn from your audience
It can feel like you’re simply talking into a void sometimes, when it comes to the online world. However, a blog is a great conversation starter. It gives your audience something to respond to, and a way to keep talking to you and demonstrating what it is they’re looking for from your practice. Take it as an opportunity not only to interact and inform your audience, but also to learn from them. Develop your business and grow your practice through listening and engaging online.
3. It is great for your search results!
Being found via search is a tricky business all in itself. If your website is a bit thin, with only a few pages, you’re not offering Google enough for them to rank you highly in search. Blog posts are a great way to beef up your presence and increase you trust online. It provides search engines plenty of text to catalogue and rank, so that if someone is looking for ‘chiropractors in Manchester’ your blog post that uses those terms will go a long way towards helping your practice come up first in search results. Help your physical practice be found through clever online content creation.
With every good idea, however, there are some downsides. Here are a few of the disadvantages of blogging – it’s important to know these before you get started!
1. It has to be regular to have a real benefit
Unfortunately, you can’t just do one blog post, forget all about it for 6 months and then hope to reap rewards! One idea won’t be enough. Content is something that needs to be done and maintained regularly. This leads us to our next downside…
2. You might not have time
It can be time consuming, coming up with new ideas and writing them all out beautifully for your audience. You also have to consider that visual images should be included, formatting takes time, and there is the matter of research and writing. Together, this can be a time-consuming pursuit. And, not to mention…
3. Writing and the technical aspects of blogging might be difficult for you
If you’re new to writing about health and wellness for the general public, it can be difficult. Here’s where we can help, not only with the technical creation of the blog posts (so they look and feel as professional as possible!) but also with the writing itself. We can help turn your voice into a slick blog post to sit on your website and keep maintaining this space so that you have a regular stream of value-driven content on your site.
Okay, we’ve covered the pros and cons! Now, what steps can you take to get started?
Step One: Summarise key topics you want to cover
Chances are, you know your topic pretty well already! Working in health as a professional, you’re able to learn from your everyday life on the job to determine what patients are curious about, what they should learn more about, or what else you think the world should know about health! But one thing that can really trip up experts is the desire to show how detailed and researched they are in their knowledge of a topic area.
Often, this only works if you’re talking to other professionals. For the average person who is curious about health, you have to be able to explain concepts as clearly and concisely as possible. So, take the time to think through how you can simplify the points you want to make so that everybody can understand exactly what you mean.
Step Two: Lay out key points under subheadings
Online reading is done in an F-shape. That means we tend to scroll, read subheadings first, then points within, if the subheadings are clear and interesting enough. Make sure you keep this format in mind when planning a post. Don’t just dump a thick block of text – this isn’t very screen-friendly for your reader! Use paragraphs, dot points and bolding very wisely.
Step Three: Write and edit
Here’s the hard part! Write a draft and edit your language carefully. Pay particular attention to your title, introduction and conclusion. Include a summary, if it helps, and a call to action if you’d like to keep your readers on your website or drive traffic to a particular action (like signing up to a newsletter or booking an appointment).
If you’re really struggling to get started on a blog, we can help create and maintain everything you will need for a bustling online presence that effectively communicates your practice’s message.
Help new patients find you online, demonstrate your particular expertise, and use your blog to help support other aspects of your online presence – such as your social media, or offsite content, like newsletters! It all starts with great content.