Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

How to Delight Your Guest Bloggers and Yield Better Content

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© Rawpixel.com - Fotolia.com
© Rawpixel.com – Fotolia.com

I’m invited regularly to submit guest posts, and I’m grateful to have been featured in some of my industry’s top publications like Content Marketing Institute, {grow}, and Social Media Examiner, along with wellness-focused sites such as IONC, Canadian Chiropractor, and Massage Therapy Canada.

As a long-time user of WiseStamp, an email signature tool, I was excited to hear from Simcha Lazarus (social media and community manager), with a request to contribute to their blog for small business owners.

I noticed right away that I felt highly valued and well cared for during this process. I knew exactly what was required of me and by when, and that made it easier to plan and complete the task within my busy schedule.

Just how did Simcha and her team achieve this magical effect? I asked her to take me through how they manage guest posts.

1. Why does WiseStamp use guest bloggers?

Hosting guest writers is a great way to build relationships with bloggers and industry influencers and to provide your readers with content on a variety of topics by experts on those subjects.

And when you have other writers publish on your site your blog gets discovered by that blogger’s readers, which can give your traffic a boost.

2. How have your guest posting guidelines evolved over time?

Our guidelines are actually pretty new. Before we had them, we had been editing the guest posts that we were receiving, and repeatedly emailing our guest writers to ask them to add links or provide images. Finally we realized that it would be a lot simpler if we just wrote up a set of guidelines and provided them to anyone who wanted to write for us.

3. How do the guidelines help things run smoothly?

Having the guidelines saves everyone a lot of time and effort when we prepare the articles for publication. In the past we used to get a lot of articles that were too short or weren’t formatted in a way that’s easy to read. Now this happens a lot less.

Our guest writers know what our expectations are and can create the blog posts with those in mind. And the articles that we now receive are pretty much ready to go up, with just the occasional tinkering here and there.

4. How do you find your guest bloggers?

I usually start with someone that we already have a relationship with. This can be a WiseStamp user or someone who has written about us in the past.

Since they are already familiar with WiseStamp, and are probably a fan, they are likely to be interested in contributing to our blog.

5. How do you build and cultivate good relationships with your guest bloggers?

If I would like to invite someone to write for our blog who I don’t yet have a relationship with, then I will work on cultivating one.

I will follow them on Twitter and retweet and comment on their tweets. I will read their blog posts and comment on them (Simcha stopped by the Content Mastery Guide blog and commented on this post about attracting new clients without Google). I might also follow their Facebook page and comment on their posts.

After a while this person will become familiar with me and we might have engaged in a few conversations. I will then email them, tell them how much I enjoy their articles (which I do, because otherwise I wouldn’t want them writing for WiseStamp) and ask if they would be interested in writing a post for our blog.

And I was – thanks, Simcha! I’m thrilled to have my first guest post on the WiseStamp blog, How to Use Your Blog to Develop Valuable Relationships.

For a wellness practitioner or clinic, ideal guest posters might be other experts in your field, vendors (supplements, food products, mobility tools, spa products, body care products, etc.), retreat destinations, related charities, or local community partners. Here are more tips for who to feature and how to write about them.

Guest posts aren’t the only way to spotlight other people on your wellness blog. You can also publish Q & A interviews like the one I did with Simcha, or write about them in your own post.

P.S. How healthy is your wellness clinic blog? Subscribe to my free e-course to learn about the top 5 myths that may be sabotaging your blogging efforts.

Is it Risky to Let Practitioners Write on the Clinic Blog?

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© claudiovaldes - Fotolia.com
© claudiovaldes – Fotolia.com

One of the signs of a healthy clinic blog is a wealth of contributions from multiple practitioners. This original content helps showcase your team’s expertise and unique personalities to prospective clients (as it lightens your own load to produce all the content yourself!).

Blogging has many benefits for the practitioners as well, helping them build their own reputation in the industry, and develop ideas they can turn into learning materials and programs.

A Content Mastery Formula client recently told me, “I’d rather not have [other team members] contribute, because what if they leave the practice?”

Let’s address that concern, as well as two other potential risks associated with a multi-author wellness clinic blog.

Risk #1: The practitioner won’t participate

Depending on how your business is structured, your practitioners may be employees or independent contractors. Either way, blogging is probably not in their job description.

Some people are afraid to write, some will insist they don’t have the time, and others just don’t see the point of blogging.

For those who are afraid to write, see the next section for some resources and tips. If time is the issue (and it often is!), point them towards these 12 ways to protect your blog writing time.

Finding the business case for blogging is sometimes the biggest hurdle, and you still may not have crossed it yourself. Be aware that the more convinced and committed you are, the more effective you’ll be at energizing your blogging team.

Start by reading and sharing these nine ways that blogging helps your wellness clinic be both found and trusted as a reliable resource for online health seekers.

If the business benefits aren’t enough to motivate your team members, appeal to their altruistic nature by touting the healing powers of blogging.

Risk #2: The practitioner doesn’t write well

Blogging is a skill like any other; it can be learned, practiced and mastered. It’s a myth that you have to be a good writer to blog effectively. Blogging consistently will not only help your practitioners improve their writing, it will also help them improve their thinking and focus their ideas. So whatever their high school English teacher may have told them, encourage your practitioners to try writing and keep trying.

Does that mean the quality of your blog should suffer? No, absolutely not. You want to maintain a high level of quality on your clinic blog, to make a positive and professional impression on your new and returning visitors.

To give your practitioners the freedom and space to grow and improve as bloggers, put an editor in place (just make sure you don’t bottleneck the process!).

If someone truly has no interest in becoming a better writer, you can interview your practitioners as subject matter experts, instead of having them write posts themselves. That is one of the ways Cleveland Clinic keeps content flowing on their Health Essentials blog.

Risk #3: The practitioner leaves your clinic

In her primer for how to draft a social media policy, Toronto-based lawyer Vandana Taxali recommends that you “require customers and users of your website to agree to community blogging guidelines before they can blog or comment on the company’s website.”

Those guidelines should include what happens when a practitioner leaves your clinic. “When you ask [team members] to blog, let them know it’s your intention for the content to remain in your archive in future,” writes Sheila Averbuch on LinkedIn.

Why are those blog posts an asset to your business, even after the practitioner has moved on? “If a former employee continues to build a great reputation in your industry after she leaves, then that reputation continues to work for your content,” asserts Mark Traphagen in a Moz post called Why Your Brand Shouldn’t Fear Assigning Authorship.

With blog posts written by former team members, Averbuch recommends that you go back and review archived posts to make sure there is no call-to-action to contact someone who is no longer at your clinic. While you’re at it, check for invitations to past events, materials that are no longer available, or any other broken links.

(Tip: To be proactive with this, whenever you use a time-sensitive call-to-action, mark in your calendar to update it once the event or resource is no longer available, and draft an evergreen version you can paste in at that time.)

If you’ve chosen qualified practitioners for your team, sold them on the idea of blogging for your business, and you’re editing their work to reflect well on your clinic, you have nothing to fear about inviting your practitioners to blog on the clinic website.

P.S. How healthy is your wellness clinic blog? Let’s look it over together (for free!).

How LinkedIn Helps You Use Quotes to Pique Interest on Social Media

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© Clker-Free-Vector-Images, via pixabay
© Clker-Free-Vector-Images, via pixabay

While researching an upcoming blog post, I discovered a new LinkedIn feature that makes it easier to share great content with your network.

As I highlighted a sentence I wanted to quote in my post, I spotted an arrow that appeared in the margin.

LinkedIn-blue-arrow

When I clicked on the arrow, two options appeared:

LinkedIn-blue-arrow-dropdown

When I clicked the first option, the LinkedIn sharing box appeared, pre-populated with the quote and the author’s name. The author’s name was also automatically tagged, so if I were to share the quote she would be notified (this is a great way to make new connections!).

LinkedIn box with quote

I have the option to edit the text, so I would capitalize the word “when” at the beginning of the sentence. I also sometimes edit the blog post summary (next to the photo), making sure to stay within the character limit so there are no partial sentences.

When I clicked the other option, it launched a Twitter compose box, again pre-populated with the quote, as well as the author’s Twitter handle. NOTE: If the person hasn’t filled in their Twitter handle on their LinkedIn contact details, it will just say “on @LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn-tweet-compose-box

You can see that in this case I chose a shorter quote to stay within Twitter’s 140-character limit. Here I would also edit by capitalizing the first word of the sentence, and replacing the double quotation marks around that word with single quotation marks (since the entire sentence is surrounded by double quotes).

(Buffer users may recognize this feature from the Buffer browser extension, which behaves the same way if you highlight text on a website and then click the Buffer icon on your toolbar. But you have to manually find and enter the Twitter handle, and you cannot tag someone on LinkedIn through Buffer.)

Creating original content is important, but so is introducing your audience to new resources and ideas. You want to become their go-to source for the most timely and relevant information about your industry. Kudos to LinkedIn on a great new content sharing feature!

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

Social Media is Meant to Be Social – A Chat With Nicole Holland

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Nicole-Holland-text

Nicole Holland is on a mission to help experts grow their audience, impact, and influence quickly and easily by leveraging podcast interviews.

As host of The Business Building Rockstars Show, she interviews successful entrepreneurs about what it really took for them to reach Rockstar status. She also hosts The Business Building Rockstar Summit, a free online event for service-based entrepreneurs.

After Nicole and I started following each other on Twitter recently, I received this:

Then a few days later, Nicole got my attention and impressed me again:

When I replied with the news about my new free e-course for wellness professionals, Nicole was kind enough to share it with her audience.

In a recent chat I asked Nicole about her approach to social media, and some of the results she’s seen. Aside from building up an impressive 8,500+ followers on Twitter in just over a year, she’s also made important connections.

Social media should be social

Nicole and I also had a lot of fun comparing our social media pet peeves, which above all were people who used automation to be everywhere, without making any time or effort to actually engage with people.

Think before you post

Business bloggers and wellness bloggers often tell me how excited they are to discover tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and CoSchedule that let them promote new blog posts instantly across multiple social media platforms.

“Hold on there,” I usually say, because blasting the same message at the same time is not usually the best strategy. First of all, there are character limit differences between what you can share on the sites (Twitter is the most restrictive as 140 characters). More importantly there are cultural differences, e.g., a message for your Facebook profile might not work for your LinkedIn company page.

Here’s what Nicole had to say about automating your social media engagement across multiple platforms:

Batch the tasks, make the time

There’s no doubt that authentic social media engagement takes time. That’s why Nicole says she is most impressed when highly successful, influential and busy people still take the time for personalized – not automated – interaction.

I’m a big fan of templates, structures and processes that help me remember important steps and be efficient and consistent with tasks in my business, such as this template for blog post publishing and promotion.

Nicole batches tasks AND messages. For example, she included several new followers in her original message to me, but there was still a beautifully personal touch in how she added a visual message.

Once a week, she and her assistant identify and thank her new followers. This is a manual process, so they can weed out any fake accounts or others she wouldn’t want to be associated with. Then, they further hone down the list to people Nicole might particularly want to connect with, whether for collaboration and networking, to be a potential guest on her podcast, or some other reason related to her business.

That’s where Nicole’s own template comes into play – a list of 20 or so conversation starters she’s compiled in a Google spreadsheet. They don’t just rotate them automatically, though. They review the person’s Twitter bio (also making every effort to find the person’s first name, if it’s not in their Twitter handle) so they can match their question with the person’s background, business, and interests.

nicole--hollands-template
Listen as Nicole distinguishes carefully between using automation for putting content out, but never automating or outsourcing her own engagement once people respond to her.

Thanks so much to Nicole for the wonderful chat. Check out her podcast and upcoming telesummit for strategies and motivation for your own business. And if you want your own personalized welcome message, follow her on Twitter!

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

8 Blogging Prompts for Wellness Clinics

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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!

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.”
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.