Question: A patient of mine who is pretty web-savvy has been repeatedly telling me I should start a blog. Should I? What would it consist of, given my profession as psychotherapist and marriage and family therapist and trauma specialist? Dr. Barbara Nadel, D.C.S.W., Ph.D. www.drbarbaranadel.com
Your patient may be right. She could be urging you to start a blog because she believes that you have something to say that would be valuable to people. I can imagine that you could help a lot of people by sharing what you learn in your practice.
Your blog can be your place to voice opinions, give advice, answer questions, post videos, and anything else you can think of. But blogging is mostly sharing information.
Don’t know if you have anything to share? Then ask yourself a couple of questions:
1. Who is your audience? Is it your current patients, your colleagues, your friends, all of the above?
2. What are the benefits of having a blog?
There can be a lot of benefits to writing a blog, and many of them are incidental. Here are just a few:
- Credibility: your blog gives you a platform from which to set yourself apart from others in your field.
- Visibility: your blog can help you become more visible when people are looking for you online because search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) love fresh content and look for websites that are regularly updated.
- Supports Word of Mouth: For me, this is a biggie. Let’s say someone refers you to a new patient. Your blog, more than even your website, allows that prospective new patient to find out who you are before he or she calls.
- Fun: Your blog gives you the opportunity to share your successes and tell stories that are meaningful to you. And, that’s a lot of fun! (see my post about co-writing a bloghttp://tinyurl.com/mdv7lr)
Once you identify who your audience is and what the purpose of your blog will be, it will be a lot easier to figure out what the content should be. Get your inspiration from reading other blogs (this is a list of blogs about psychology for you to peruse: “40 Superb Psychology Blogs”http://tinyurl.com/kmgp8u)
Plus, I recommend that you write some blog posts even before your blog is setup. Just to get a feel of it and see if blogging is something that you want to do. Then when your blog is ready (or when you are ready to publish) you will already have some content to upload. I recommend this wonderful eBook: 31 Days to a Better Blog to help you find your “blog voice”.http://www.problogger.net/31dbbb-workbook/
In Social Media, a blog is often where everything else revolves: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many other social network channels can be set-up so that your blog posts are automatically fed into them and that people who are your followers, friends and fans, can see what you are saying.
Want to know more about blogging? Just ask me a Question!
