Blog Topic Ideas

8 Blogging Prompts for Wellness Clinics

August 3, 2016 By Linda Dessau

woman with blog post ideas — © Jacob Lund – Fotolia.com

Are you stumped for topics for your next blog post, or having trouble choosing between so many ideas? I know either can be an issue for both seasoned and new wellness bloggers.

Use these blogging prompts to choose and write your next post, or write all eight and you’ll be set for weeks!

Introduce a member of your wellness practitioner team. Focus on why they are passionate about their area(s) of expertise, and when/why they joined your team. As a call to action, invite readers to follow the practitioner’s profile or page on social media, or book an appointment for a treatment.
Recommend a product or tool. Describe something you and your team use to deliver your wellness services, or something you use personally for your own self-care. As a call to action, ask readers if they’ve tried the tool and to share what they like or don’t like – you can open up your blog for comments, but many bloggers have now moved their community conversations over to social media.
Reveal new details about a familiar face. Does your clinic have an administrative support person or someone else who works in the background to help your wellness practitioners deliver their services? Interview them about why they are passionate about your clinic and its services, and how what they do makes your wellness work possible. As a call to action, invite readers to come in and say hello. You can even offer personalized conversation starters such as, “Ask Jean about her kitchen renovation,” or “Ask Mary about her favourite way to cook Brussels sprouts.”
Offer season-specific wellness tips. Which health issues do you see the most at this time of year? What do you wish clients knew and did on their own before coming to see you? As a call to action, provide clear and concrete self-care tips people can do immediately on their own.
Recognize good work in your community. Use your blog to give back by highlighting the work of a community group or event. Share photos and stories of any personal connection with your business, e.g., if someone on your team has been touched by the issue, and/or if you’re doing your own fundraising or awareness campaign. As a call to action, provide links for online donations or to learn more, or invite people to visit your clinic to drop-off donations.
Equip your readers for healthy travelling. Business trips, family events, and vacations happen all year round, so this is a topic you can revisit. Interview members of your team for their most successful strategies and compile those into a blog post. As a call to action, ask readers to post travel photos, with bonus points if they show themselves using any of the strategies.
Debunk a myth (e.g., The truth about ______) or reveal a secret (e.g., 10 things you didn’t know about….). This is also a great opportunity to refer to relevant research, to show that you’re backing up your claims and keeping up with advancements in your field. Just be sure to leave out any jargon so it’s easy for non-professionals to understand. As a call to action, ask readers what surprised them the most in your post, or what was the most meaningful insight they gained.
Answer a frequently asked question (e.g., How to _____). The more specific, the better. If you find yourself branching off into related topics, let them go. You can always write more blog posts! As a call to action, encourage readers to try out your suggestions and ask them to let you know how things turn out.

Before you launch or re-launch your blog, make sure you have a solid blogging plan in place. Start here with my four-step wellness blogging plan workbook.

Keeping Readers Healthy – Tips from America’s Top Hospital Blog

February 3, 2016 By Linda Dessau

© WavebreakmediaMicro - Fotolia.com — © WavebreakmediaMicro – Fotolia.com

Cleveland Clinic is one of the top four hospitals in the United States (U.S. News & World Report, 2015), and has the #1 most-visited hospital blog in the United States.

Amanda Todorovich is their content marketing director, and I’ve had the pleasure to connect with her several times on the weekly #CMWorld Twitter chats, as well as in person at Content Marketing World conference in September 2015.

I was thrilled when she agreed to share her insights with us here.

Why create original health and wellness content?

In your 2015 presentation at Content Marketing World, you defined the Cleveland Clinic content strategy as “to engage users in daily conversation using health, wellness and clinical content that is unique to Cleveland Clinic.”

There is so much health information online today. Why do you think it is important to add to that stream with your own unique content?

There is a lot of health information online. There is also a lot of MISinformation online. It’s valuable to utilize the vast breadth and depth of expertise of Cleveland Clinic physicians and other experts to help provide actionable, accurate information that helps people make decisions every day.

Cleveland Clinic offers a unique model of medicine, and we want to help people take care of themselves and their families. Our content strategy supports that mission. We want to be useful, helpful and relevant to people all over the world – whether they will ever be a Cleveland Clinic patient or not.

Our content is conversational, approachable and helpful. It is NOT about what’s going on at Cleveland Clinic that day. It’s about the reader and helping them stay healthy, live with the conditions they do have, and giving content to them on the right channels at the right moment – just when they need it most.

Choosing which health topics to write about

You describe the purpose of your blog’s content as helping your visitors stay healthy, rather than just get them into your clinic. “We don’t get paychecks from [healing] colds,” you noted in your presentation, but since that’s the kind of content that really matters to your users, that’s the kind you produce.

How do you go about discovering which health questions are most important to your audience?

So many ways… we:

Ask our caregivers what questions patients are asking them
Mine our data to see what topics are really resonating
Monitor social trends
Monitor other health media sites
Ask our audiences directly for feedback
Utilize search information (what topics people are looking for most on our own site and also on Google, etc.)

Ideas for posts on Health Essentials come from all over our enterprise, and we collaborate with many different teams to understand what matters to their areas. We couldn’t produce this content without the help of our entire marketing division, and most importantly, without the collaboration of our physicians and medical experts.

Every piece of content we produce is reviewed and approved by a medical expert, and we publish 3-5 stories a day on Health Essentials. We have no shortage of ideas, and we have an abundance of enterprise-wide participation and support.

Mining the data for email newsletter success

You don’t just wait for people to discover or return to your blog; you invite blog readers to keep in touch with your Health Essentials E-News, available from the main blog page. You shared that your open rate is an enviable 40% and your click-through rate is 65%!

How do you account for the newsletter’s success, and what are your tips for other health clinics and wellness practitioners?

DATA. DATA. DATA. Every issue is an opportunity for optimization and improvement. We constantly test subject lines, different images, different headlines for each story. We have evolved our design based on data. We have chosen the content of the newsletter based on data.

Make your emails an enjoyable experience for your readers. Give them content that’s useful and actionable. Be strategic with the days and times you send. Test something. Test it again. Experiment every time. There is ALWAYS room for improvement.

Ignore all the “general rules” of email and consider what makes sense to your audience. Busy moms do NOT have time to read your email at 7:30am on a Tuesday. They are getting their kids off to school. Perhaps a late night send might do better. Test it. Try it. Experiment and find what works for your specific audience.

And put resources behind growing your list. Promote the newsletter. Consider win-back campaigns if your engagement has dropped off. Invite people to subscribe; never force/auto-add people to lists.

Your newsletter is a gift

Think about every email as a gift or package being delivered in their inbox. What does the wrapping look like? Will they want to open it? If they do, will they be excited and grateful or want to return it?

I hope you’ve been as inspired as I have by this glimpse into the leading hospital blog in the United States. How will it shape your efforts to keep your own blog readers healthy?

For more ideas and motivation, visit Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials blog or subscribe to one of their email newsletters!

How to Write a Curated Post For Your Nutrition Blog

January 26, 2016 By Linda Dessau

© Milles Studio - Fotolia.com — © Milles Studio – Fotolia.com

Blogging is a very effective marketing tool for wellness services such as nutritional consulting. Prospective clients need to see that you have the knowledge to help them, plus a style and approach they can work with and trust.

Yet it’s not very likely someone will hire you the minute they discover your blog, which is why you need to keep publishing new content on a regular basis. Does that mean you have to slave over a comprehensive full-length article every week? Absolutely not!

This is the third article in a series about four different types of posts you can cycle between on your blog, some of which will be much faster and easier for you to finish.

The first type we covered was the how-to post, where you do go into more depth with concrete information that allows your readers to take action. Next, we talked about how writing a more personal post will help distinguish you from the sea of nutritionists out there.

Today, we’ll look at how to harness the efforts of those other nutritionists or related experts with something called a curated post. A curated blog post is one that is centred around someone else’s content, such as a blog post, video, infographic or slideshow.

How to choose the best content to share

Just like when you’re planning your own topics, be on the lookout for content that fits the focus of your blog and the interests of your readers.

Be very selective here. Anything you share implies your endorsement, not just of this item, but its creator. Take the time to carefully review a few of the author’s other posts, their About page, and their social media profiles.

To find quality content more quickly, build a list of respected colleagues who often publish valuable blog posts, videos, or links to other gems from around the web. Schedule regular times to check their blogs and social media pages to find the newest content they’ve created or shared.

How to share content the right way

To respect copyright laws and the original creator’s hard work, never copy and paste someone else’s text into your own blog (or their images, for that matter). You can use a sentence or two as a quote, but then link to the original.

Always use the “permalink” (permanent link) assigned to that specific page. You can usually find the permalink by clicking on the title on a blog post. The permalink will be something like this: http://ionc.org/2015/12/how-to-start-a-blog-for-your-nutrition-business/ versus a link like this: http://ionc.org/blog/.

An exception is when you embed content into your blog so your visitor can view it right from your site. You do this by pasting in a special code provided by the original creator. Click these links to learn more about how to embed a SlideShare presentation, how to embed a YouTube video, or how to embed an infographic into a WordPress blog.

How to write a curated blog post

You always want to add your own text before and after the link or the embedded content. Ideally, you’ll have at least one paragraph at the beginning of your post, and another at the end. At about 200-250 words, this is way less writing than you might do for a how-to post or a personal post!

As an introduction, write a little about why you chose to share this resource and how you think it will be valuable to your reader. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your own knowledge and expertise, and express your unique personality.

You can offer a short bio of the author, explain how you’re connected with this person or how you discovered them, or provide a brief description of their company and what they do.

At the end of the post, ask what your reader thought of the content, or how they will implement the information. Then ask them to stay connected with you, whether that’s to read a related post, visit you on social media, subscribe to your email updates, or contact you with comments or questions.

A curated post is an excellent way to connect with other experts, and most of all to keep sharing valuable information with your readers and prospective clients.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

The Accidental Blog Post – How to Free Your Trapped Blog Content

February 17, 2015 By Linda Dessau

© learchitecto - Fotolia.com — © learchitecto – Fotolia.com

Charlie Gilkey shared a great concept with our BOOST coaching group the other week. He talked about how all business owners have a gold mine of “trapped content” – things we’ve already written for other purposes, then forgot about or left behind.

“How many times,” he asked us, “Have you answered a question in private that you could have answered in public?”

I liked the concept so much I used it as one of my five blogging tips for time-strapped business owners in an upcoming guest post for SteamFeed. I honed in on email, since that’s one of the main places you’re probably leaving this valuable content behind.

Let’s look more closely at the potential sources of your trapped content, how to spot it, and most importantly how to re-use it as blog posts.

Blog posts are hiding in your emails

Have you ever answered a “quick question” from a friend or family member who knows what you do in your business and asked to borrow your expertise? Did your answer take longer to write than you intended, and spanned four or five paragraphs before it was through?

Also consider the email responses you’ve written to clients, prospective clients, or blog or newsletter readers. If one person asked a question, chances are that others have wondered about or struggled with the same thing.

What you’ve already written could have the makings of a great blog post, once you fill it in with an introduction, conclusion, and other connecting thoughts.

Be proactive in mining for new content when people reach out to you by email. Even if they haven’t asked a question, when someone writes to thank or compliment you about something you’ve written, ask if there are any topics they’d like to read more about on your blog.

Social media messages disappear, but a blog post is forever

Do you find yourself with lots to say on social media but then stumped when it comes to blogging? Here are my suggestions for Facebook and LinkedIn. If you like to share quick tips and ideas on Twitter, you could compile those together around a specific theme and turn that into a blog post.

Similar to email, watch for questions people are asking. These don’t need to be directed to you personally. Search hashtags or other key phrases to find real-time questions and concerns about your topic. (Tip: How to use Hootsuite for social listening.)

What are others discussing?

Do you belong to or follow any online groups or forums? As you add your voice to those conversations, see how you could expand those thoughts into a blog post. You can also use the discussion as a jumping off point (this is one form of curated content).

For public groups, you can link to a group discussion as you would any other social media post (tip: here’s how to find the permalink of a social media post), or embed a post right onto your blog from Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.

For closed groups, you can write in general terms about the topic and your take on it, but do not quote anyone else without their explicit permission or paste any screenshots.

You can re-purpose a course, report or tutorial

As you’re creating a resource to share with current or prospective customers, consider making some or all of it available via your blog. You may be wondering, “Why would someone pay or sign up for something that’s available for free?” I addressed that concern in an earlier post.

The idea for the post you’re reading now came from my own accidental blog post. I was working on my blog planning worksheet and I realized that the section about social media promotion didn’t quite fit the style of the rest of the document. It was more of a tutorial than a worksheet.

Did I scrap it? No way! I turned it into Blog Post Promotion on Social Media – Five Key Ingredients.

Where is your own trapped content hiding? Free it up now to fill your blog with valuable content.

Get More Marketing Juice Out of One Blog Post Idea

December 8, 2014 By Linda Dessau

If you want to receive all of my latest posts by email, click here to subscribe to the Blogging Tips newsletter.

How To Spot A Good Series Idea For Your Blog

Why stop at one post when you’ve discovered a juicy topic that could help your ideal customers in multiple ways? In a guest post at SteamFeed, I reveal:

Five signs that an idea is suitable for a blog post series
Five steps for bridging the same topic across multiple posts
Five ways to position a blog post series for maximum readability and visibility on your blog and across the web

http://www.steamfeed.com/spot-blog-post-series-idea/