7 Steps For Writing a Great Blog Post as a Therapist
Writing a blog post isn’t always as simple as sitting down and typing away, especially as a therapist.
On one hand, the topics you want to share about may feel heavy or difficult to write about and, on the other hand, you are already juggling so many tasks that adding a blog can feel overwhelming.
To help ease the overwhelm, we’re going to help you nail your next blog post by sharing the exact steps we take to write an attention-grabbing, readable, and enjoyable post that will keep your readers coming back for more.
But first, a formula for success
There are many different formulas out there that are designed to help you write impactful and helpful pieces of writing, and one in particular - the 4 Cs - is really simple to keep in mind when setting out on your blog-writing journey.
Clear
Concise
Compelling
Credible
If you can remember these and analyze your work through the lens of the 4 Cs - “Am I being concise?”, “Is the information I’m providing clear?”, “Will my reader be compelled to keep reading?” and “Are my sources credible?” (your source can be your own knowledge as a trained therapist) - you can be confident that you’re creating great posts for your audience to read.
1. Nail your topic and niche
First and foremost, you need to have a specific topic you’re going to write about. Not only will this help keep your audience more interested, but it will also help with your SEO. Search engines love specificity so that the person who’s looking for your exact information can find it easily. While you probably have hundreds of topics you want to write about, especially if you’re new to blogging, try to keep each blog post as simple as possible with regard to the amount of information you’re sharing. You can, of course, interweave other information and we definitely recommend cross-linking by mentioning and hyperlinking other articles you’ve written.
As well as nailing down your topic, and possibly more importantly, you need to know who you’re writing for - what is your niche? Writing as a therapist for other therapists will likely be very different from writing for the general public. Will you be able to use the same language if you’re writing for people who aren’t already experts in what you do? What information might you not need to include? Would the tone of voice be different when writing for the general public or other therapists? These sorts of questions will help you to identify who you want to write for, and therefore how to write it.
2. Headline - hook your readers
Once you know what you want to write about, coming up with a front page-worthy title is another key component. You don’t always have to know what this will be before you start, sometimes the title of the blog post will come to you when you’ve finished, but one thing a title definitely needs is the SEO component - what is it that your target audience would type into their search engine to find the information you’re going to share?
This is what you want to use so that you can catch all those searches and get them to your site. It’s definitely worth doing some keyword research for this as you don’t want to pick words that rank too high in competitiveness, so use a tool such as Google Keyword to help you out.
3. Consider your ideal client’s pain point (your audience)
This is a really important step that will help ensure that your reader stays interested. Without addressing some sort of pain point, unless you are blogging in more of a daily update style, it’s likely you’ll be left with a high bounce rate with people leaving the site pretty sharpish. We are, as humans, pretty selfish creatures who need to have something in it for ourselves to hold interest! Pain points are motivators - motivating away from something negative - so as a therapist, think about what it is your reader is trying to ‘fix’ or overcome.
It’s also important to think about the goals of your audience - what are they’re trying to achieve and how will your information help them achieve their goals? This information will likely come from your niche research, looking into the specifics of what your audience is working towards, and this will help you tailor your blog posts and advice to them. The more you can help people actively achieve a goal they have, the more likely they are to keep coming back to engage with your content.
4. Research
It’s no good simply regurgitating information you’ve picked up from other blogs or websites, but research is crucial in ensuring a well-rounded and informative blog post that your readers can rely upon to give them good knowledge. If you fluff out your posts with too many filler words, or if you give incorrect information, then you will likely never see that reader on your site again.
Readers want blogs and blog posts that they can reliably revisit in order to learn or be entertained - so make sure that if you’re trying to impart knowledge that you’re doing it from solid foundations. There is no shame in bolstering your own learning by researching topics for your posts - it only helps you become more of an expert and more confident in your writing.
5. Create an outline -“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”
This infamous quote from Benjamin Franklin sums it up nicely - it’s always good to have a plan. Starting off with a blank screen can be daunting so, instead, it’s best to have your topic in mind and write down as many of the aspects of this topic as you might want to share with your audience. Write them down as a list or in a table - however you like to work - and once you’ve got the ideas down, then you can start formulating a structure. This doesn’t have to take a long time and it doesn’t have to be concrete - a rough outline that helps give you guidance will ensure that your post has a good flow and pace while making sure to get across all of the most important information for the topic at hand.
Tick off each part of the topic as you go so you can ensure you’ve included everything and then you can get to work filling the rest in with sentences and paragraphs to create your post.
6. Plant calls-to-action throughout your post
In particular, placing a call-to-action (CTA) at the end will ensure your readers have somewhere else to go once they finish reading, rather than having no incentive to stay on your site. However, it is also beneficial to have at least one other CTA further up the text as, unfortunately, it is estimated that the average reader spends just 37 seconds reading a blog post (if you’ve made it to this point in this article you’ve been reading for approximately 3 ½ minutes!), so including a CTA in the first third of the article will mean your readers are much more likely to follow through with them.
CTAs can include links to join a Facebook group, follow you on Instagram, join your mailing list or sign up for your freebie, among many others.
7. Stick to a schedule
Not strictly under ‘blog-writing’ but under ‘blog success,’ having a regular posting schedule will really help you to gain traction with your blog. Search engines love regularity and your readers will also really enjoy knowing when there will be new posts up for them to read. Don’t underestimate the power of routine.
If you’re passionate, your readers will know
Most importantly, if you’re writing about something that you’re passionate about, then your readers will be able to sense this, so pick topics you love, write from the heart and put yourself in your reader’s shoes. If you get bored halfway through your blog post then it’s likely they will too! Inject your personality (as much as appropriate) and use your blog space as a way to communicate with your audience.
