Does your health and wellness website have a blog? A consistently updated blog provides a variety of benefits, including:
- Improved website search engine optimization (SEO)
- Increased opportunities for internal linking to help keep readers on the website longer
- Enhanced expertise and credibility
In our new series, we take a look at different healthcare industries — health and wellness, medical devices, women’s health, and pharmaceutical — to share our expert tips on how to create an effective healthcare blog.
Blogging Tip #1: Understand Your Health And Wellness Audience
The health and wellness space can be quite diverse, ranging from brands like Nike (apparel) and Peloton (fitness) to Shiseido (skincare) and Whole Foods Market (grocery store). That being said, one of the best ways to create a compelling blog for your brand is to focus on your audience. Who are your customers? What kind of information are they looking for? How do they typically consume content (e.g. short-form social media posts, long-form articles, videos, etc.)?
By understanding your brand’s core customers, you can start to create a shortlist of content ideas to feed into your blogs.
Here’s an example: Shiseido, a skincare and makeup company, uses its blog to cover relevant topics, such as exploring the differences between mineral and chemical sunscreen, or skincare tips for oily skin. All of their articles are not just on-brand, but product-relevant, allowing them to insert product links where appropriate without it seeming too promotional.
Contrast this with Nike’s blog, which is less educational and more aspirational. The company wants readers (potential customers) to put themselves in the shoes of the athletes featured in the blog articles. Consider your health and wellness audience to determine what tone you want to set for your website’s blog.
Here are some questions to help you get started with your healthcare blog:
- Who are my target readers? Are they existing or future customers? Are they healthcare providers?
- What are the demographics of my audience?
- What platforms do my readers use to access healthcare information?
- What topics are readers and potential customers interested in and can I make a direct connection to my healthcare brand? In other words, does it make sense for my healthcare brand to talk about a particular topic?
- What type of content do they prefer (educational articles, personal stories, expert interviews, Q&As, etc.)?
Blogging Tip #2: Provide Value To Your Readers
Yes, we purposely said “readers,” not “customers.” That’s because your blog isn’t the best place to share overly promotional or salesy content. Leave that to your paid ads!
Continuing with Shiseido as an example, take a look at its Mineral vs. Chemical Sunscreen article. The majority of the article is focused on explaining the topic — what makes a sunscreen “mineral” or “chemical,” and the history behind these categories. The article includes mentions of the brand and links to products, but that’s not the primary focus. Instead, the focus of the article is to share educational content. This type of informative blog helps educate readers, allowing them to feel empowered when making a purchasing decision.
Another way to provide value to readers is to incorporate your existing customers. Case studies, testimonials, customer stories, and before-and-after cases are just some ways to tell your brand’s unique story. By doing so, you’re building a strong community around your brand.
Ultimately, your health and wellness articles should offer readers at least one valuable takeaway. In this article you’re reading right now, the “value” you’re getting is insights from a digital marketing team that works with companies in the healthcare space in the form of three tips. The value you provide may be a “listicle” similar to this, or it could be a different format. Examples include an infographic with stats, an interview with a doctor, or an in-depth analysis.
After you’re done writing your article for your health and wellness website, ask yourself, “What has the reader learned?” This can help inform more value and insights to your article.
Here are some questions to help you get started with your healthcare blog:
- What are my audiences’ pain points or goals, and how can my healthcare article support their needs?
- What unique perspectives or expertise can I provide?
- How can I ensure my content is evidence-based and trustworthy?
- What resources — owned or third-party — can I share with readers?
- How can I make my content easy to understand and engaging?
Blogging Tip #3: Optimize For Search Engines and Shareability
It’s not enough to create thoughtful and engaging content. Optimizing your health and wellness blog content for search engines is crucial! This helps ensure your posts rank in search engines like Google, helping your content become discoverable by a wider audience.
At the start of this article, we mentioned that a consistently updated blog can help contribute to website SEO. This is because search engines prioritize fresh content. For many brand websites that don’t have an online storefront, the majority of their site’s pages aren’t frequently updated. That’s why blogging is so effective in keeping your website active.
Adding new insightful articles to your blog also allows you to tap into keywords. For example, if you want your site to show up in Google search results for “healthy foods for diabetics,” you may want to consider writing a series of articles that incorporate this phrase.
Knowing which keywords to incorporate into your website and article copy requires keyword research and analysis. This is a process that we engage in for our clients, which helps them understand the keywords that are hard to rank for (i.e. there’s a lot of competition for that particular keyword) and keywords that are easier to rank for (i.e. keywords that competitors aren’t using a lot which could be beneficial to our clients to use throughout their website).
Here are some questions to help you get started with your healthcare blog:
- What are the most relevant keywords for the topic I’m writing about?
- How can I encourage readers to share this article or interact with it?
- What are ways to write eye-catching titles without being clickbaity?
- How can I incorporate website features — such as share buttons and a comment section — into my blog?
- What analytics tools can I use to track blog performance to optimize future content?
Are You Ready To Start Blogging?
We shared our thoughts on creating and maintaining a blog, but what are some of the downsides?
Bogging can be time-consuming. It takes a lot of effort to research keywords and topics, write and edit articles, and promote them. Generative AI can help healthcare marketers research ideas, but the technology is still in its infancy and there are issues with inaccurate responses. Especially in the healthcare space, marketers must be absolutely confident that the content they’re sharing doesn’t include any misinformation. Trust is paramount!
One solution is to partner with experienced content creators and healthcare marketers who can help launch your blog and promote it as well. If you’re looking to start a blog on your website, click the button below and learn how blogging, social media, and other digital marketing strategies can strengthen your brand’s online positioning.
Stay tuned as we share our expert tips on blogging strategies in other healthcare spaces, including pharmaceuticals, women’s health, and medical devices!