blog writing guidelines
Hi all,
becky sent this helpful guide to encourage our clients to write write write!
here are ways to create a useful blog post that will add pages to sites and quality content:
Guidelines:
- Should be 600 words, minimum
- Have a curiosity-provoking title
- Should be categories is 1 category (2 at the most)
10 Types of Blog Posts for a Therapy Website
• Instructional – Instructional posts tell people how to do something. Tips posts are generally the ones that are among the popular both in the short term, but also in the longer term (ie one of the reasons people search the web is to find out how to do things and if you can rank highly with your tips post you can have traffic over a length of time).
· 5 Steps to Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems
· 3 Ways to Decrease Your Anxiety at Night
• Informational – This is one of the more common blog post types where you simply give information on a topic. It could be a definition post or a longer explanation of some aspect of the niche that you’re writing on. This is the crux of successful sites like wikipedia
· This form is great for handling FAQs
· What is ADHD, exactly
· Can ADHD be Treated in Psychotherapy Without Medication?
• Reviews – Another highly searched for term on the web is ‘review’ – I know every time I’m considering buying a new product that I head to Google and search for a review on it first. Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every product or service you can think of. Give your fair and insightful opinion and ask readers for their opinion – reviews can be highly powerful posts that have a great longevity.
· Reviews of Books (i.e. new books on parenting, managing mood, etc.)
· Reviews of Movies – and why you think potential clients should see them or not
• Lists – One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list. Posts with content like ‘The Top Ten ways to….’, ’7 Reasons why….’ ‘ 5 Favorite ….’, ’3 mistakes that parents make when….’ are not only easy to write but are usually very popular with readers and with getting links from other bloggers. If you start with a brief list (each point as a phrase or sentence) and then develop each one into a paragraph or two you might just end up with a series of posts that lasts you a few days.
• Interviews – Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an interview. This is a great way to not only give your readers a relevant expert’s opinion but to perhaps even learn something about the topic you’re writing yourself. One tip if you’re approaching people for an interview– don’t overwhelm them with questions. One of two good questions are more likely to get you a response than a long list of poorly thought through ones.
• Case Studies – You can’t use real client stories, of course, but you can illustrate, via a case-study-like post, how a couple resolved and issue, or how a client can transition from problem to solution. Here are some examples of this type of writing from a psychologist. He gets a lot of traffic from these types of posts:
• Profiles – Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus in on a particular person. Pick an interesting personality – perhaps someone how suffered from bipolar or depression — and do a little research on them to present to your readers. Point out how they’ve reached a functional place in their lives. This can illustrate the working with issues is possible.
• Link Posts – The good old ‘link post’ is a favorite of many bloggers and is simply a matter of finding a quality post on another site or blog and linking up to it either with an explanation of why you’re linking up, a comment on your take on the topic and/or a quote from the post. Of course adding your own comments makes these posts more original and useful to your readers. The more original content the better but don’t be afraid to bounce off others in this way.
• ‘Problem’ Posts – I can’t remember where I picked this statistic up but another term that is often searched for in Google in conjunction with product names is the word ‘problems’. This is similar to a review post (above) but focusses more upon the negatives of something. For our purposes, this could include
· The Problem with Seeing a Life Coach When You Really Need a Therapist
· The Problem with Grounding Your Kids Every Time They Violate Your Rules
Don’t write these pieces just for the sake of them – but if you find a genuine problem with something problem posts can work for you.
• Contrasting two options – Life is full of decisions between two or more options. Write a post contrasting two approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice. In a sense these are review posts but are a little wider in focus.
· The Differences Between EMDR and Brainspotting
· The Differences Between Supporting and Enabling
Davina van Buren is discussing. 
Becky DeGrossa and 
Juan Villegas are discussing. 
Davina van Buren 12:25 am on March 28, 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Very informative! I will be using these tips on my own blogs:-) Thanks!