Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

How the One to One Wellness Centre Uses a Team Blog To Attract New Clients

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Photo of team at 121

When physiotherapist Nick Matheson first raised the idea of using a blog to promote the services of the health care practitioners in his wellness clinic, marketing consultants warned him against it.

I see their point. Many businesses start a blog with the best intentions, only to abandon it later. This not only counteracts any of the benefits of blogging, it can actually detract from the credibility of the business because it looks like you don’t finish what you start.

That hasn’t been an issue for Nick and his team, because “apparently, we have a lot to say!” In fact as weekly bloggers, the One to One Wellness team embody some of the best practices for group blogging.

They launched their blog in January 2010, although Nick Matheson started blogging in 2004 when his daughter was sick (it was a way to process his thoughts and cope with the experience). As a marketing tool, it appealed to him as “a way for us to have a conversation with people when we’re not there.“

The blog has brought them some media attention, including a profile in Process Magazine (Volume 18 No. 2, 2011) and a quote in an upcoming article in Canadian Living Magazine.

Nick says that the other benefits are harder to quantify, but they get a fair amount of positive feedback, and “a number of people check out the blog before coming in for an appointment.”

With eight contributors, each person only needs to produce a blog post every two months – that’s the beauty of team blogging! They have a central blog schedule, so everyone knows what’s expected of them. Nick goes in to edit, approve and publish the posts once a team member has submitted a draft.

I especially like how each post is clearly labeled with the name and speciality of the team member (like one by Nutrition Consultant Liz Manwaring) – no anonymous posters here (although I do see another word I don’t like)! Descriptive category names further organize their content, and there’s also a handy search box to find a particular topic.

Congratulations to Nick and the team at One to One Wellness Centre. And thanks for providing such a positive example of a wellness clinic team blog.

[Update November 24, 2015: This site is no longer active so I have removed all links.]

If you would like to start or re-start a group blog for your wellness clinic or other healthcare practice, contact us today to see how we can help!

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!

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.

Do You Want a Lot of Comments or a Lot of Calls?

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Do you ever gaze wistfully at the comments section beneath your blog post, wishing there were more? You might be missing the big picture.

I used to feel this way as well. While I appreciate (and respond to) each and every comment I’ve received, let’s face it, they tend to be few and far between.

I’ve learned to consider these three crucial questions when it comes to comments and community:

1. Who are the members of your target market?Shy-thumbs-up

Are they comfortable with technology? Are they confident about voicing their personal opinions publicly? Or do they prefer to express their support more anonymously?

2. What is the nature of your business or service?

Is it something people would naturally rally around and want to publicly declare that they’re a part of? One of the main reasons I transitioned the Content Mastery Action Club into the Content Mastery Magic Packages was that I realized people may not necessarily want to advertise that they’re using an editor and getting help with their writing.

Some businesses are more of a natural fit for building community, such as:

3. What results ARE you seeing?

Research from the inbound marketing specialists at HubSpot revealed that blog articles play a role in every aspect of the buying process. And while community and “social proof” is part of that, it’s only part.

In the end, what’s most important is whether or not you’re making the connection with the individual readers who are meant to become your clients. Are they calling? Are they emailing? Are they responding to your efforts to reach them?

And are you bringing in the funds you need to continue providing your helpful services to those who need them?

Is it nice to get a lot of comments? Definitely! Is it the only measure of success? Definitely not. So instead of judging your blog by how many comments there are, get your focus back where it belongs – consistently publishing helpful, valuable information to the ideal clients you are trying to attract.

P.S. Still bummed out because you’re not getting enough comments? Check out Michelle Shaeffer’s slide show, “Top 10 Reasons I Haven’t Commented on Your Blog (Yet).” Thanks to Melanie Kissell from Solo Mompreneur who shared this resource via Denise Wakeman’s Online Visibility Boost for Entrepreneurs group on LinkedIn.