Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Blog Post?

Do you have a blog or are thinking about starting one, but you’re not quite sure where to begin? As a health and wellness professional, blogging can be a powerful tool that allows your clients to get to know you, while also getting you noticed as an authority in your area of expertise.

Blogs are a great place to refer existing and potential clients to and give them information about health that they can implement into their own lives. Your blog can help you build trust with your clients, grow a following, and give a taste of what it would be like to work with you.

As powerful a tool as blogging can be, it’s often also a source of stress for many, especially with all the other tasks you have to juggle. In this blog post, we’ll help you navigate some common questions around blogging to help you assess if you’re getting the most out of your blog!

Blogging 101: What are the Types?

First of all, in health and wellness, there are four types of blogs that we most commonly see. Yours may be a combination of different blog types, which is also quite common.

• Food/Recipe Blogs: Typically, food/recipe blogs will be dedicated to healthy food and ingredients, healthy eating,using superfoods, and , of course, highlight your delicious recipes. This type of blog is for the health and holistic foodies!
• Personal Blogs: Personal blogs will have more focus on your own (health) journey and let readers in on what you tried, what worked and what didn’t. This blog type invites the reader along on the journey with you.
• Health News Blog: Health News blogs are a great place to dive into the latest health articles and studies.
• Lifestyle Blog: A lifestyle blog is a bit of a combination-type blog. These are often used to discuss health topics, clean/green products, environmental hacks, information on specific diets, health trends, recipes, personal stories and more.

What kind of blog do you write or are you looking to write? Here are four questions to ask yourself if you’re writing a blog…

Who are you writing for?

Who is your target audience? What topics interest them? What kind of information can help them?

Knowing your audience when it comes to blogging allows you to become a more effective marketer but knowing why you’re blogging for this audience will help you measure its success.

Take 20–30 minutes and do a brain dump of all possible topics that your audience may want to hear about. From that list, narrow it down and decide on the topics that will bring the most value to your specific audience.

When writing a blog you want to deliver content that your audience wants to read while delivering content that will benefit them. Give your clients information that they’re already looking for/interested in. Give them little gold nuggets of information that will help them solve a piece of the puzzle, get some positive results and keep them coming back for more.

Tips on finding topics that your audience will want to read:

• Ask them. If you’re unsure of what your audience wants to know about, don’t be afraid to ask them. You can make a poll in your Facebook group, send out a survey to your email list, or simply listen to what your clients are telling you during their sessions.
• Get inspiration from other people in the same space on pain points and topics that may resonate with your audience. Don’t just take their word for it, you’ll still need to do your research, outline what points you want to cover and, as always, make sure it is relevant to your audience.
• Join Facebook groups on the topic you’ve chosen as your niche to better understand your target audience and their recurring comments, interests and challenges.

How often should you be blogging?

A study from HubSpot shows that for B2C (business-to-consumer) companies in particular, the more blog posts lead to greater traffic. Another HubSpot study found that 90% of blog leads and 75% of blog views came from older posts. So, don’t underestimate the content that you’ve previously written. When you focus on good quality content, people will read it.

So how often should you blog? The number of blog posts you release is not black and white. The answer comes down to what you can deliver on a consistent basis. At a minimum, aim for twice a month, however, if that’s not yet sustainable for you and is more overwhelming than anything, adjust accordingly.

Here are a few things to consider, when deciding on how many blog posts you can commit to:

• Quality vs. quantity: Then endgame should be quality over quantity. If you blog everyday, but most of it is fluff, your audience might not care, but if you release a well-crafted, valuable blog once a week piece, then your audience will appreciate that much more.
• Length. Some research shows that 3,000- to 10,000-word content gets the most shares. Although that might feel like more than you have or want to say, the key takeaway is that long-form content is what you should aim for. Think around 1,500 to 2,500 words of compelling content for readers. Long-form posts create a perception of higher quality work. Break up your blogs into easy to follow sections and subsections to make your content easy to digest.

Once you’ve decided on a frequency you can commit to, get started with a content calendar and a backlog.

Schedule posts: Create a content calendar to help you organize your thoughts, your content and help keep you on schedule. Schedule out your blog posts for at least 6 weeks out so that you’re not waiting until the last minute. This will help you stay consistent so that you’re always refreshing your website content for search purposes and your audience will also know when they can expect to hear from you.

Build a backlog: In order to be able to schedule your content 6+ weeks in advance, you’re going to need to create a backlog of unpublished blog posts. Aim to have a backlog of at least 4–6 blog posts so you can take some of the stress of content creation off your shoulders and hopefully enjoy the process.

Write consistently: Choose a day, every week or every two weeks that works for you and put it in your calendar. Use that time to brainstorms write your next pieces. The important point is to make this scheduled time a non-negotiable and only focus on your blog writing during this time.

Is Your Blog Engaging?

This is perhaps the most important question you have to ask yourself. The point of writing a blog is to have your followers read it — all of it.

So you’ve written a great long-form article, but you wonder if everyone is reading the entire thing. Research published by the Nielsen Norman Group suspects that people will read just 28% of the words in your post.

What this tells us is most people will scan through your blog post, and look for headers, subtopics, and bullet points. These are things that attract the reader’s attention.

Here are a few easy things you can implement in your next blog to make your post more engaging:

• A bold and catchy title. Without an attention-grabbing headline, the rest of your blog post may not be read. It is the first thing people see and great for SEO purposes so you’ll need to spend some time to think about your headline. Using words that make people want to know, such as “best,” “the easiest way,” and “the quickest way to” are great examples of words that grab your attention. With listicle articles, they should grab attention with a number, while capturing intrigue, such as “4 Easy Ways to Help Clients Get Better Results.”
• Captivating intro. An intro is your opportunity to get readers excited about what’s to come. The title got people to click on the link, and now your intro will ‘sell’ them (or not) on reading the rest. Make it concise and interesting. Adding a question at the beginning of your intro can help readers connect to the problem you will solve and keep them reading to find the answer. The last part of the intro should summarize the topic and strengthens why the reader should continue reading.
• Graphics that draw you in. Your visuals lure readers and make your blog post more appealing. Include graphic illustrations, graphics, tables and graphs, screenshots, infographics, videos, and photos to make your post visually attractive. Get photos free from platforms such as Pixabay.com and Unsplash.com.
• Be authentic. Authenticity is a key component to engaging your content. Your audience is checking in to hear from you, not from someone else.
• Consider variety with your posts. When it comes to your health blog variety comes in the form of types of posts. The variety of the post will determine what the headline will be. Some variety could be: list posts, top 10s, ‘how to’ posts, case studies, etc.
• Use bullet points and subtopics to make your blog content less text heavy and easier to digest. Aim to keep your paragraphs five to six lines, where possible.
• Include sources in case your readers want to learn more. Sources at the end of the post and external links throughout the article help create credibility and provide valuable information for the reader. External links are also great for your SEO!
• Summarize and sign off. People remember a strong finish! Your short conclusion should bring things full circle. Ending with a question can be a great way to invite feedback, comments, and engagement.

Are You Using Language that Converts?

Use words that are intentional, have a purpose and that are good for your SEO. When done right, keywords can dramatically help increase the traffic to your blog.

What is a keyword? SEO (search engine optimization) keywords are words and phrases that describe what your content is about. These are also words people are searching for in search engines like Google. So, if you want people to find you on Google, you’ll want to be calculated with the keywords you choose.

• Short tail keywords are one or two words, and often have a high search volume, such as “nutrition” or “natural health.”
• Middle tail keywords are three or four words. They are also more specific, and have less search volume, “how to improve productivity.”
• Long tail keywords are four or more words, and are very specific, and search volume is even lower, such as “how to be more productive at work.”

Keywords can help you rank higher in search engines, therefore, driving more traffic to your website and to your growing business.

Here are some tools that you can start using right away to find the right keywords for your audience.

• Google Trends is a tool that analyzes the popularity of the top search trends for your niche in a Google search engine. It also shows you “interest over time” based news headlines and search volume. Some of the keywords in the “queries” section are considered potentially lucrative keywords you won’t find Google Keyword Planner.
• BuzzSumo can also help you come up with keywords and boost your SEO. In your BuzzSumo search look for keywords that frequently show up over and over. This tool also shows you what content is highly shareable, and this can give you ideas for what content may do well for you.
• Soolve.com is another free tool, but this one shows you keyword suggestions from popular websites people search for things, including Wikipedia, Google Suggest, Amazon, YouTube, Bing, Answers.com, and Yahoo. What’s good about this tool is that it gives you keyword ideas that your competition likely overlooks.

One final question…

Blogging can be overwhelming if you’re not clear on who you’re blogging for, why you’re blogging, when you’re blogging and how to get the most out of your blog. Use some of the tips above and make yourself a plan that you can stick to. That being said, what will your next blog post be?

Sources:

Kolowich, L., “How Often Should Companies Blog? [New Benchmark Data],” HubSpot; https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks, last accessed March 29, 2019.

Vaughan, P., “It’s the End of the Month. Do You Know Where Your Blog Leads Are Coming From?” HubSpot; https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blog-lead-generation-analysis, last accessed March 29, 2019.

Moogan, P., “How to Generate Content Ideas Using Buzzsumo (and APIs),” Moz, June 3, 2015; https://moz.com/blog/generate-content-ideas-using-buzzsumo-and-apis.

Hollingsworth, S., “What’s the Ideal Blog Post Length for SEO?” Search Engine Journal, June 6, 2018; https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ideal-blog-post-length-for-seo/255633/.

Nielsen, J., “How Little Do Users Read?” Nielsen Norman Group, May 6, 2008; https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/.

Scott, R., “3 Types of Blog HEadlines That Will Get You More Traffic,” Hub Spot; https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/types-of-blog-headlines, last accessed April 1, 2019.

“How Long Should Your Blog Articles Be? {[With Word Counts for Every Industry],” Neil Patel; https://neilpatel.com/blog/long-blog-articles/, last accessed April 1, 2019.

“The Ultimate Guide to Writing Blog Post Introductions,” Neil Patel; https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-blog-post-introductions/, last accessed April 1, 2019.

“Keyword Research: The Complete Beginner’s Guide,” Blogging WIzard; https://bloggingwizard.com/keyword-research-guide/, last accessed April 1, 2019.

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