Writing Professional Blogs for Breastfeeding Families

Private Practice

Mar 6

Blogs are a fantastic way to add an educational component to your website and give potential clients a chance to get a feel for what you are all about. Blogs are also an opportunity for you to showcase yourself as an expert on a particular topic.

On the flip side, it’s an opportunity for you to come off as wildly unprofessional, unapproachable, or to make readers question if you are even someone they should be taking seriously. Just throwing words up on a page is not going to result in potential clients throwing themselves at your feet to get the opportunity to work with you. It just doesn’t work like that.

Some blog posts will be widely popular and you will end up routinely having people view and share your posts. Other blog posts will sit in purgatory on your website until some tired parent ends up searching your other posts. And finally, some blog posts may be written not as a means of sharing with potential clients, but to create a resource to answer a question you are asked frequently.

Why should you listen to me about writing blog posts?

In the span of a year, I wrote 30 blog posts that have now been viewed 20,000 times. I took my practice from slow going to being booked out 2 weeks on average. I am getting clients who book me after reading a blog post. Are there people who are having more success with their blogs than I am? Certainly! Are there successful lactation consultants not writing a single blog post? Yep. I am, however, not even the slightest bit embarrassed to say I am really good at writing blog posts that connect with my desired clientele, and I can help you learn to do the same thing.

I am still in the early stages of my practice and just now truly entering the growth phase! If you want to be looking back on your website a year from now staring at numbers you were only dreaming of though, you need to read this article and incorporate these tricks for yourself. Until every family who wants to breastfeed is getting the support that they need with each and every baby, I want to see every lactation consultant out there find their voice and shine online! Potential clients are out there just waiting for someone to be able to answer the questions they have in a voice, tone, and style that connects to them.

How do you write a blog post that is going to work for your business?

Try to follow this basic blog format.

Make sure your blog is going to answer a question that parents (you know, our target market) are asking!
- Where can you find the questions parents are looking for?
  - I recommend starting with the parenting Facebook groups for breastfeeding support, particularly the ones runs by non-LCs who are not providing the best of advice. You aren’t going into these groups to provide support, and you aren’t there to correct the misinformation or market yourself. You are there to do first hand research on what parents are currently asking. Always check the rules for these groups and make sure you aren’t violating them - that just looks tacky, and the goal here is to end up benefiting your business by creating blogs parents actually want to read, not to make yourself known in a negative light. Pay close attention to the wording parents are using, those are the keywords they are going out and searching. Those are the keywords you will want to target with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
You make sure the blog is written for your intended audience.
- Oftentimes the parents who are going to read something we write and immediately book a consultation are tired, exhausted, frustrated, and have already encountered lactation support that did not connect well with them.
- This is not the time to showcase all of your fancy book learning. This is the time to write a post exactly how you would explain it to a parent sitting with you during a home visit. Our job is to bring them evidence-based information in a manner that doesn’t shame them for having misinformation, and presents the information in a fashion that is easily digestible. You can certainly add in all those super cool facts we all know, but make sure we also make it relatable and accessible.
Proofread. Then proofread again. Then a third time. No really, proofread.
- The occasional error may not hurt your image, but if your blogs read as if you were careless and not attentive to details, it doesn’t reflect well on your business. If you are not great at proofreading, find someone who is! I no longer proofread my blogs because I can’t figure out how to properly use a comma to save my life most days. So I hired someone to proofread.
Consider NOT making yourself the focus of your blog (unless your experience is relevant to the question you’re answering)
- A lot of lactation consultants end up in the lactation field based on their personal experiences, and there are certainly times your experience is 100% relevant. Just make sure it’s really one of those times.
- A written-out experience may be cathartic for you, but your audience may not feel the same.
Make sure you are checking your own personal bias.
- We all have them, but we are all choosing to work in a field where our biases can absolutely harm our clients if we are not being mindful.
- I haven’t met a single LC yet that actually intended to do harm, but it happens. So be mindful, and if in doubt, get a colleague to take a read before posting.
- Better to grow with a colleague helping you check yourself versus harming your potential clients and your reputation.
Be authentic!
- If you can’t stand doing a certain type of consultation, or handling a certain issue within the realm of everything we do in lactation, don’t make that something you write about.
- Lactation land is full of incredible professionals who specialize in particular areas. No one has to specialize in them all. It’s okay to have particular areas of interest and to focus your writing on these topics. It’s also okay to not write about a topic because you are just not that into it. This will show in your writing 100%., so go where your interests and passions lead, and let your amazing qualities shine through. This is how you attract the clients you want to work with, and will love working with, and that, at the end of the day, is the whole goal.
Make sure you take the opportunity to make it clear you are a LACTATION PROFESSIONAL and you are available for support.
- Putting yourself out there is really hard to do, and all too often these incredible blogs say nothing about being able to work with the awesome author.
- If you are running a lactation practice, you are running a business, and opportunities missed to appropriately promote your business affects your bottom line. Missed opportunities ultimately affect your longterm ability to keep your practice running.
- Keep it classy for sure, but make sure the opportunity to get your expert support is just sitting there one click away from this potential client.
Make sure you use good SEO!
- Good SEO is how search engines find your awesome blog posts, so make sure you put in the time and effort to make this right! If you don’t understand this, take the time to learn about it so you can maximize the chances of your blog post reaching it’s full potential.