Launch your counsellor blog with these 10 steps

Launch your counsellor blog with these 10 steps As a therapist, you may not have a sale or special offer to advertise. But you do have plenty of knowledge. A counsellor blog could be the ideal platform to share what you know. A great counsellor blog can help you stand out by showcasing your expertise and professionalism. Engaging content can also resonate with readers and help you establish a relationship with prospective clients. Here are 10 steps you can take to launch your counsellor blog. 1. Identify your target audience. 2. Research counselling blog topics. 3. Write your blog posts. 4. Include calls to action. 5. Proof your writing. 6. Optimise your counsellor blog for search engines. 7. Add pictures to enrich your blog posts. 8. Upload a new blog post each week. 9. Promote your counsellor blog. 10. Update published blog posts. 1. Identify your target audience Before you write a single word, make sure you know who your counsellor blog audience will be. If you try appealing to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one. First, decide who you’re writing for. If you run a private practice, you may have already identified your target audience. Is it families, young professionals, or couples in need of relationship counselling? Perhaps you specialise in ADHD, postpartum depression, or bereavement? Next, figure out your ideal client’s demographics. Get a grasp on the challenges they may face and the advice they may be searching for online.  2. Research counselling blog topics You’ve identified your target audience: now it’s time to decide what to write about. Perhaps you already have a long list of ideas for your counsellor blog. If you don’t, there are two main sources we’d suggest you use to generate counselling blog topics: Your client base. Keyword research. Whenever you answer a client’s question relating to mental health or emotional issues, you could turn that information into a blog post. (It goes without saying that all information you share on your counsellor blog should remain anonymous.) Perhaps you’ve shown your client a breathing technique or offered them advice on coping with a difficult life event. You can guarantee that other people are seeking advice and information on the topics your clients are speaking to you about. We also recommend you do keyword research to inspire counselling blog topics. Keyword research can help you discover what words and phrases people are putting into search engines like Google. When someone searches for ‘seasonal affective disorder symptoms’ or ‘what is gaslighting,’ Google shows them countless articles and blog posts. By harnessing keyword research, your counsellor blog posts can appear alongside these results. And if you do some search engine optimisation (more on this later), you’ll improve your chances of appearing near the top of the results. 3. Write your blog posts You can’t launch your counsellor blog without writing (unless you hire a blog specialist to take care of that for you). So, step number three is to write your blog posts. As a qualified therapist, writing is probably a skill you’ve honed through years of work and training. This should set you in good stead when it comes to launching a counsellor blog. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that writing blog posts isn’t quite the same as writing research papers or reports. The skill of commercial writing is creating content that engages the reader and delivers a message. Some tips for creating good content include: Writing simply. Your counselling blog topics might be complex, but your writing should be easy to read and understand. Writing conversationally and empathetically. Welcome the reader in and show them you know what it’s like to be in their shoes. Using subtitles and bullet points to break up walls of text into clearly labelled, bite-sized information. Keeping sentences and paragraphs short. Your content should be as easy to consume as possible. Plus, shorter paragraphs mean more white space. Big walls of text can overwhelm readers. 4. Include calls to action You’ve worked hard to attract a reader to your counsellor blog. You don’t want them clicking away immediately once they’ve finished reading. That’s why it’s important to include calls to action (CTAs) in your blog posts. Effective content convinces the reader to perform some kind of action. That might be clicking through to read more of your blog posts or filling in a contact form. It’s up to you to decide what that CTA is and what action you want readers to take. To avoid decision fatigue, we suggest using one CTA per blog post. 5. Proof your writing As a counsellor, you’ll understand the importance of effective communication better than most. Proofreading your blog posts means you can: Improve clarity and precision. Avoid obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Avoid misunderstandings (this is especially important when discussing sensitive topics). Making sure your blog post is free of errors goes hand in hand with maintaining your professional image. Typos and spelling mistakes may seem like small issues, but they can erode trust in your services. Plus, errors like including someone’s surname could lead to an accidental breach of confidentiality. After writing and editing your blog post, wait until the next day to check it one last time. You’ll often find a missed comma, spelling error, or phrase that you could clarify before you hit ‘publish.’ 6. Optimise your counsellor blog for search engines Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a vital step in launching your counsellor blog. You may have written the most insightful, valuable content ever. But if you don’t optimise your blog posts for Google searches, it’s unlikely anyone will find them. There are plenty of practical ways to optimise your blog posts for search engines. Choosing a focus keyword is a good place to start (this is where your keyword research from earlier can come in handy). Select a focus keyword for each blog post and include that keyword with a density of 1-2%. For a blog post of 600 words, you’d want to make sure…