Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Team Blogging Success Tips for Wellness Clinics

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For healthcare practitioners and alternative therapists, blogging is a non-threatening way to attract clients, not chase them. A well-written blog post about a health issue that your ideal clients struggle with will highlight your expertise in that area, building your clients’ trust in you.

Blogging consistently keeps your website fresh and updated, which shows your visitors (and the search engines who direct those visitors to you) that your clinic is an active, thriving business and that you and your team have lots of valuable content to share.

Even more importantly, blogging will show these prospective clients how much you care about and understand them. Since blogging tends to be a less formal style of writing, they will see that you and your team members are real people who can provide practical, useful information in plain English they can understand.

Blogging is a team sport

Many-hands-light-work There’s a saying that “many hands make light work,” and the same is true for a blog. Instead of one person being responsible to post something new every single week, with a group blog you’ll have a whole team to share the task.

Top 10 Success Tips for Your Wellness Clinic Team Blog

  1. Appoint a blog captain – Have one person be responsible for keeping everyone on track with your publication schedule. This may be your clinic administrator or owner, a team member with good organizational skills, or you may choose to hire a blog editor/consultant (hey, we do that!).
  2. Edit, rewrite and polish – Ensure that your blog posts are free of errors or confusing language. Use a checklist, style guide, blog editor or any other tools that will ensure consistency and quality. After all, you want your blog to reflect the same high standards as your business.
  3. Publish consistently – Create a shared calendar (e.g., Google Calendar), where everyone can see the time line for upcoming publication dates. Remember to leave extra time for editing by setting each blog post’s due date a week before you actually want to publish.
  4. Meet regularly – Get the team together to brainstorm ideas, choose a monthly theme and get the power of your creative minds working together. Maintain your commitment to this valuable marketing strategy.
  5. Celebrate your diversity – Encourage each team member to blog from his or her own expertise, discipline and speciality. Tap into each person’s unique perspective and tone of voice.
  6. Produce good content – Apply these proven content marketing practices: write with your readers’ interests in mind, focus your writing into bite-sized pieces and address the most pressing problems your ideal clients are looking to solve.
  7. Suggest the next step – Create a unique call to action in every article, e.g., attend an event, sign up for your mailing list or call the office for more information. Remember that people will arrive on your site at different times in the relationship-building process.
  8. Keep in touch – Make it easy for readers to find out about your newest articles and events by posting a subscription form on every page of your website and blog. Then, in your monthly or bi-weekly newsletter, share one of your blog posts (plus links to all recent posts), as well as information about upcoming events, featured services or new team members.
  9. Shout from the rooftops – Ask every team member to promote the blog by adding the blog link to your email signatures. Share links to each other’s blog posts on your social media networks, online forums or email groups. And when you get a specific request for information on a particular topic, use the blog as your primary resource.
  10. Lead the way – Make it easy for blog readers to take the next step of getting to know you and your clinic. Either integrate your blog right into your website or add extra pages to your blog so they can take action right away.

If you need help to implement these ideas and manage your team blog, contact us today to learn how we can help!

Is Your Blog Design Too Cool to Read?

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As a blog ghostwriter, editor, consultant and trainer, my most important job is to take away whatever's getting between your message and its intended audience, whether that's:

Magnifying-glass-small-print Blog design is out of my jurisdiction – and rightly so! I'm the first to acknowledge that I don't have the skills (or patience) for design or layout. I know what I like, but only when I see it. I don't necessarily know how to make it happen, or even how to describe to someone else how to make it happen.

I also know what I don't like, and what I see as a hindrance to getting your message across.

If I can't read it, I won't get it

What makes your content harder to read?

  • Poor contrast between the background colour and the font colour (I find it particularly challenging to read white text against a dark or black background, or light grey text against a white background)
  • Font size that is too small to read comfortably, especially for older viewers or people using special screens because of accessbility issues

If I can't find it, I can't share it

What makes it harder to find specific information on a site or page?

  • Images, effects or clutter that takes too much attention away from the information your user is there to find
  • Navigation menus that change from page-to-page

Luckily, readers can address some of these challenges themselves by adjusting font size and colours in web browsers, but do you really want to put the onus on them?

Most of us are in too much of a hurry to get to our next task (and that's a topic for another post or maybe another blog). I know that I've clicked away from several sites recently when I couldn't easily read the text or a page wasn't loading quickly enough.

So before you add the latest cool tool, snazzy graphic or subtle tone to your blog, be sure you're not putting an obstacle between your message and your reader.

How to Make a L.O.V.E. Connection With Every Article You Write

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Blog-love

I’ve had readers who’ve become clients years after reading my blog updates, and others who’ve contacted me after one or two weeks. In general though, effective content marketing requires consistent publishing over time to help readers come to know, like and trust you enough to buy your products or services.

While everyone has their own natural cycle, here are some writing suggestions to help you make a quicker L.O.V.E. connection with your readers:

L is for Love: Love your readers – know, understand and care about their biggest challenges and interests, and write about those in your articles.

  • Know who they are. Write a profile of your ideal reader/client/customer. Then, imagine you’re writing each article just for that one person.
  • Write how they talk. How would they speak to a friend about their challenges, questions and situation? Use that language as you write.
  • Expect a connection. Write to your readers as if you’ve already had a positive interaction and this is a continuation of that conversation.

O is for Open: Open a door – create opportunities for two-way communication.

  • Ask for comments. Make it easy to comment on your blog or reply to you by email.
  • Respond to all feedback. Respond publicly to public comments, and privately to private emails.
  • Get it started. Ask direct questions to prompt your readers – sometimes the more provocative, the better!

V is for Validate: Validate their trust – make them feel good about their choice to follow your work.

  • Deliver quality goods. Do your best to provide answers to the specific issues your readers ask about and respond to the most.
  • Give social proof. Share stories and quotes from people you’ve helped. Connect your readers with each other.
  • Be human. Remind your readers that you’re traveling with them on this human journey, and maybe you’ve even had some of the struggles they’re having now.

E is for Express: Express yourself clearly – make it easy to understand and follow your message.

  • Be concise. Limit your article to one main point and a few supporting sub-points. Your leftover words can be the start of future articles!
  • Be spacious. Create lots of white space around your main point and sub-points – sub-headings and lists are two great ways to do this.
  • Keep it simple. Keep your language basic and conversational so your readers can grasp your ideas quickly. There is plenty of time to go deeper in other formats.

Content marketing is about more than keywords, search engine results and click throughs. When you take the time to make a L.O.V.E. connection with your readers, you will build long-term, trusting relationships that often lead to opportunities to provide solutions.

This article originally appeared on Karri Flatla's snap! web marketing solutions blog, but is no longer available at that site.

Read This Before You Set Up Your Blog: An Interview with Scott Gingrich of Piggybank Technology, Part Two

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Welcome back! We’ve been talking to Scott Gingrich. Scott owns Piggybank Marketing, a web design and marketing firm devoted to delighting their customers with marketing websites that deliver measureable results. In Part One of this interview, we discussed why a blog is the only website you’ll ever need.

Linda: Do you have any cautionary tales about the mechanics of setting up a blog?

Scott: Many. Here are two.

  1. We had one client who came to us about 4 months after they launched a simple WordPress site with an off-the-shelf template. Their plan had been to start simple and grow the site over time, which is a perfectly valid approach. However, now they wanted to do things with the site that would be really over-reaching what WordPress can do well. They incurred a substantial cost to remake their site with Joomla.Lesson: Understand the vision for what you want your website to be over the next couple of years and make sure the platform you choose handles that two-year vision, not just what you want to get started with.
  2. A client with a very popular blogsite had been hacked and there was malicious code throughout his articles and elsewhere. He had never thought twice about securing his WordPress site or keeping it updated. It was a very laborious and expensive exercise to rescue his site.Lesson: You may be able to install WordPress in a couple of minutes, but without securing it you may be looking at some extra costs and time down the road.

Linda: What advice do you have for someone who has an existing website and wants to add or transition to a blog?

Scott: We’re doing a lot more website conversions these days. Generally, it’s relatively easy to take an established website and put in a content management system such as Joomla.

We prefer to convert the whole site to be run on a Content Management System like WordPress or Joomla instead of tacking on a blog page to the site. Here’s why:

  • Once someone realizes the power in being able to add and edit pages themselves, they’ll want to do that for all pages of their website.
  • We can integrate the blog content into the rest of site, making it more dynamic and interactive (for example, by displaying the most recent blog posts in the sidebar of other pages).
  • You’ll get a consistent visitor experience across all sections of the website, which is better for the marketing flow of the site.

Linda: What are the pros and cons of having your blog integrated into your site versus on a separate site?

Scott: This is a big debate. I don’t think there’s one right answer that covers all cases. For most of my clients it comes down to one question: Can you afford to properly set-up and maintain two sites? The answer for most small businesses is NO.

Yes, it’s quick and easy to setup a blogsite. However, to set it up so that it converts visitors into leads (not just followers) is another story…a story that becomes trickier if we need to get visitors to a second site!

As I answer this, I am in the midst of planning a separate blogging site to act as a lead generator for our business and to expand our business model into new revenue streams. In doing this planning, we have considerations such as:

  • Building in lead capture devices (like email opt-ins and Facebook “likes”)
  • Keeping the brand consistent with our main site
  • Developing the “voice” for the new site

If you can handle doing two sites well, great. For most local small businesses, maintaining one is more than enough of a challenge!

Linda: Thanks again to Scott Gingrich, and his wife and co-owner Jennifer Gingrich. I really value the connection we’ve made since I moved to Barrie in September 2010. You do great work in helping local business owners set up a website right the first time, or rescuing them from situations where they had a bad start.