Digital content strategy for wellness blogs

I had the pleasure of speaking with Megan Boitano from RD2RD this week about how to create a digital content strategy for health & wellness pros.

When your blog is the centre of your digital marketing strategy:

• you own your intellectual property (it’s not floating around in random social media feeds),
• your messaging on all platforms is consistent (because it flows out from one source), and
• your blog becomes your (rather impressive) business card that grows your “know, like, and trust” factors.

Spoiler Alert: If you’re starting out, my top two tips for creating this strategy are:

1. Have awesome blog content to begin with (even if it’s not weekly), and
2. Proudly share and promote it a lot. It’s valuable content you created to help your ideal clients for free – what’s not to be proud of?

Here’s how.

1 – Have awesome blog content to begin with

When it comes to blog posts, think about it from your audience’s perspective: When someone lands on any one of your blog posts, what will they think? Does it help them to “know, like, and trust” you more? Will it show them that you know WTF you’re talking about and how you can help them?

Or will they say, “meh” and move right along???

PRO TIP: The best way to double your blog post quality without doubling the time you spend on it – update your old posts! It will help you save time by not creating one from scratch, and also help keep your message consistent while improving the impression you’re giving. Here is a complete strategy on how to update your old posts.

Need ideas on what to blog about? Here are 60 wellness blog ideas you can create in 60 minutes.

Have lots of blog post ideas, but aren’t sure which one to choose first, click here.

No time to blog, but need awesome content? Here are four main strategies to get blog content.

2 – Proudly share and promote it – a lot

The main opportunity to attract more ideal clients to your website is to share and promote your blog content more. Be your own biggest cheerleader. Try to help as many people as you can with your valuable free blog posts.

The Content Marketing Institute says:

You need to spend much more time in promoting your work than on creating it. (ref)

Seriously! If you’re not already, make this a priority for 2019 and beyond.

For all the deets, here is the full interview:

• 4:00 – Health Writer Hub (courses)
• 4:10 – Serious Bloggers Only (mastermind)
• 7:11 – Robin Sharma
• 9:21 – Update old blog posts
• 11:15 – Do keyword research yourself (or outsource it)
• 16:28 – Blog vs newsletter vs social media
• 16:28 – Chart of digital content strategy with your blog in the centre (also below)
• 17:19 – Newsletter software
• 19:18 – Social media scheduler for blog post promotion
• 31:28 – Social media scheduler for blog post promotion
• 35:28 – Maximize your health content
• 45:53 – Work with me

Digital content strategy starts with your blog

Your blog is the centre of your digital content strategy. It’s a curated collection of your best personal intellectual property all located on your internet property.

Here’s my strategy:

1. Create an awesome blog post (or vlog, or podcast, or infographic, or slideshow, etc. – some kind of content).
2. Send it to your newsletter audience with a personal intro with some subscriber-only tips and inside info.
3. Schedule nine social media shares of that post to go out throughout the year (assuming the info is going to be relevant for a year). I create nine unique FB & Tw (and soon, Pinterest) posts to go out to my social media followers on days 0, 3, 7, 14, 30, 90, 180, 270, 365. Of course, this isn’t my entire social media strategy, I still need to be “social”. 😉
4. OPTIONAL: Before you create/update a post, do a bit of keyword research and try to optimize your post for that keyword. It’s like a slow-cooker – do the work upfront, turn it on, wait, and eventually see your traffic increase for that post. (Oh, and in a year or so, update it to include even more awesomeness and make it even more keyword optimized!). Then re-publish as a new post with the new date.
5. OPTIONAL: Paid ads can include boosting posts that have done well on social media. (In addition to this, paid ads can be totally separate from your blog, creating unique ads leading people to a landing page – that’s why the arrows are grey).

Resources mentioned

• Health Writer Hub
• Serious Bloggers Only (mastermind) SmartBlogger (blog)
• Problogger
• Copyblogger
• Content Marketing Institute

Conclusion

When your blog is the centre of your digital marketing strategy you own your intellectual property, your messaging on all platforms is consistent, and it becomes your business card. Everything can flow out from your blog posts.

Signing off and toasting: To saving time, having a consistent message, and attracting ideal clients to your website.

Over to you

What do you think? Is blogging (and your newsletter) another thing you feel like you “should” do, but aren’t? Do you prefer social media or search engines or paid ads? Will you be doing something new or different with your digital marketing strategy for 2019?

I’d love to know (in the comments below)!