Planning a Blog Post: Lactation Professionals
Blog Posts seem to really overwhelm a lot of lactation professionals, and they shy away from this valuable means of sharing their expertise and connecting with their potential clients. Think of this post as a general care plan to help make this process less painful so that you aren’t missing out on these opportunities.
Topic: What are You Writing About?
The first step to writing any blog is to pick a topic! I suggest starting with topics you are extremely comfortable with until you are more confident in your process. So, consider starting with a topic for which you can rattle off facts confidently and write without having to spend a lot of time researching and fact checking. Those posts are necessary and great, too, but you will learn quicker if you start with the softer topics that require less prep work.
Example Topic: Nipple Infections
Sum It Up in 50 Words or Less:
This is actually a trick a professor taught me in college when writing essays for a test. Write a quick blurb of what you are going to say to help focus the writing. The 2-3 minutes this will take you will help make sure you don’t end up wasting time going on tangents and ending up with a different post than you intended to write.
Example 1: Nipple infections are a common source of breast and nipple pain, and they are often misdiagnosed and under treated. Understanding how to better identify and manage nipple infections results in less maternal pain and increases the likelihood of the dyad continuing to breastfeed by removing pain as a barrier to continuance.
Example 2: Thrush is a commonly diagnosed nipple infection, but newer research shows it is wildly over diagnosed. Most cases of suspected thrush are actually more consistent with oral restrictions and tongue ties and their impact on the breastfeeding dyad. Misdiagnosing thrush delays the breastfeeding dyad from getting the skilled lactation care they need to actually address the issues and risks premature weaning due to maternal pain.
Both of these examples fall under the example topic, but the purpose and aim are entirely different. The issues that will ultimately end up being discussed are different. The SEO keywords will be different. The same person could write two blogs using these planned focuses and end up with two fantastic, yet, different resources, even though they technically fall into the same category.
Intended Audience:
Who is this aimed towards? Parents? Other professionals? Lactation consultant hopefuls?
Your intended audience will greatly shape the tone of the blog post as well as the writing style. Are you writing a post aimed at a frazzled new parent who needs to know help is just a phone call away? Maybe your tone will need to be simple and straightforward to connect in an accessible manner. Are you talking to other lactation consultants? You might need to speak a bit more professionally and formally, or you might want to just talk like you would to a co-worker depending on the topic. Are you writing a post aimed at lactation consultant hopefuls to steer them towards something you are offering like a training? You would be speaking differently than you would if your intended audience was lactation consultants already practicing for several years. Knowing your audience and defining what you want to say based on that will help you write a blog post that really nails it to get the eyes on your blog that you deserve.
Intended Purpose: Are you educating? Selling a product? Acknowledging an experience? Selling a service?
Blogs work best when you are direct about the purpose of the blog. Are you aiming to educate a parent about something they might be seeing with their baby? Are you trying to get someone interested in taking your class? Are you trying to help someone solve a problem? Be clear and direct so your audience doesn’t click away before finishing reading. If they came for the recipe, give them the ingredients and the how-tos - not your life story.
Resources to Link:
Are you going to include outside links? Which links do you want to include here? Do you need to acknowledge specific references?
References and resources may be great add-ons to your blog post and can help set your blog up as a reference for other lactation consultants to share. Make sure your links work, that they go where you think to lead to, and that they are relevant to your intended audience.
Call to Action: What do you want the person reading to do? How will you convey this to the reader?
Is there something you want the reader to do when they are done reading this blog? Do you want them to book a consultation? Do you want them to check out a product you are selling? Do you want them to consider a training you are offering? Do you want them to check out another resource or set of resources you have to offer? Do you want them to join a mailing list?
This is referred to as a Call to Action, and you have to clearly define this for your intended audience! This is not the opportunity to be subtle. If you aren’t direct, and your call to action isn’t easy to find and execute, you will lose out on potential clients/potential future clients.
SEO Keywords: What keywords or SEO terms are you looking to highlight?
SEO is how the search engines identify your blog as relevant to a particular search, and they determine the exposure your post is going to get. I highly recommend investing the time and energy into learning about SEO and how to do it right for your business. I don’t even pretend to be an expert on this, but I know one you should certainly check out! There are lots on online short courses to help you learn SEO, and some even geared towards your website host to show you exactly where you need to look to create and update your SEO as needed.
Highlights: What are your main topics going to be?
Hint - These will be the subheadings in your blog post, and they are great places to target your keywords for SEO. I personally prefer reading (and writing) blogs that clearly delineate when they are changing focus with strong subheadings. I find this to make for an easier to read blog that clearly stands out as different than reading a more academic article.
Graphics/Pictures Needed:
Are you going to need to find certain pictures? Take certain pictures? Create certain graphics? Do you need specialty pictures, or is this a blog where stock photos will do to add to the visual interest for the reader? Always be sure that if you are using photos from clients you have their written permission!
Why Do The Prep Work and Write Out The Plan?
Because blogs aren’t easy to write for most people! They can be time consuming, stressful, and they are easy to toss aside if things get busy. Blogs may drive clients to me to some degree, but not having a blog on a topic isn’t actively costing me business in my opinion. I tend to write blogs in spurts when I have the emotional bandwidth to do so, and I’ve learned the hard way that a blog left half written without a clear plan is often an unsalvagable project. If you write out the plan, which should honestly take only a few minutes in reality, then, if you abandon it for any reason, it will still be waiting for you. Your future self thanks you for not leaving half-finished-no-plan to be found projects lying around.
How long should writing a blog take?
I actually sat down and calculated about how long it takes to to write a blog based on the blog length, and it is about 10-15 minutes of writing per minute of finished blog read time. The more technical the blog, the longer it may take to write. The biggest investment in time for creating a blog post is not the part where you are actually writing it. The biggest investment is the time you spent researching the topic, and then the time formatting and editing what you have written. This is exactly why I recommend starting with the easier topics where you can get the experience you need in writing, formatting, and editing before attempting a large, heavily researched blog post that is more like a small term paper than the average blog post. If it is taking you longer than this to write the post, the issue is likely your planning stage was insufficient, which would be like trying to pack for a vacation before you did the laundry.
Stop Procrastinating and Start Writing!
The first step towards writing a great blog post is to start writing. Once it is down on paper, we have so many options to polish, edit, and marvel at its sheer genius. But none of that is possible until you just start writing.
