Looking to start a blog to help promote your dietetic private practice? Blogs are a great resource for keeping your clients educated and informed. Outside of just helping your clients, blogging can also be a great way to keep yourself writing and actively engaged in the latest health and nutrition news. In this ever-evolving field, blogging can be a great answer in keeping yourself up to date! But did you know, blogging is also a great way to meet new clients?

While the internet might seem like a big and scary place where people from just about anywhere and everywhere can read your writing, that also means that your following can come from just about anywhere. It also means that if someone likes what you have to say, they may actively seek you out to work with you.

If your practice has integrated tools like telehealth, this can make meeting them especially easy. Otherwise, a reader who happens to realize that you’re located nearby may just decide that’s the added to push sign up for a consultation, even if they hadn’t originally been looking to start seeing a dietitian. When you become an authority and a trusted name, clients value your expertise and are much more likely to seek you out individually when they decide to look for nutrition counseling services.  If you’re Interested in transitioning your practice to telehealth, click here to learn how you can set up an account with Healthie’s EHR + telehealth platform by clicking here.

Here are 4 steps to starting a nutrition blog to help boost your business:

1. Choose a platform to host your blog

It can be WordPress, Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, Tumblr, or possibly a function that can be added to your current website.

WordPress is probably most notable and recommended for blog hosting. This powerful platform comes with a large range of blog templates and plugins, allowing you to find a theme that is professional and works well with your brand. Even more, WordPress works with SEO plugins that make it easy to optimize each blog post for SEO, increasing it’s visibility for search engines. For this reason, most developers will strongly recommend bloggers to use WordPress as a first choice.

However, it’s a great idea to check out every different option to see what will be best for you and your business.

2. Find your niche

If you’re in private practice, we’re sure you’ve heard this advice a million times. While you may be interested in working with all kinds of clients, establishing your niche by targeting a very narrow and specific clientele actually helps attract a larger variety of clients. It’s all about branding and establishing a brand identity. Blogging works the same way. When you’re just starting out, you may not really know what you want to blog about. You don’t have to know right away, but the quicker you figure it out, the quicker your blog can grow!

Try to blog about something you can realistically talk about often and don’t tire of. For instance, if you’re a foodie, talk about food! Products you’re trying, the health benefits or shortcomings of it, recipes you love, recipes you’ve invented, swaps you’re trying, what’s on trend to try, and so on. The more your blog fits with your personality, the more fun you’ll have with it. On a blog, don’t be afraid to get personal. You can be a bit more casual and share a little more of your life than you normally might with your clients. With that said, do keep in mind that clients – or potential clients – are reading its.

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3. Choose a name for your blog

You may want to name your blog after your practice, or something related to your practice. This is especially helpful if your practice has a unique name or pre-existing branding (say, from social media). If your practice has a location-related name, that may be especially useful to use. It shows your readers where you’re from and it also acts as a draw for readers from the region.

If your business name is your name as the dietitian, while it’s definitely not a hard and fast rule, you may benefit from creating a separate name just for your blog, even if it includes your name.

For instance, if Erin Smith happens to have her own private practice, fittingly called Erin Smith M.S., R.D., C.D.N., while that’s a fine name for her blog, she may want to draw out the theme of her blog a little more. We’ll say she’s a foodie. Erin wants to write educational articles here and there, but she loves food and wants to share her thoughts on new products and trending dishes she’s trying. She may consider naming her blog something along the lines of “Erin Eats!”

One last time to keep in mind, alliterations are fun for titles. “Dining with Diane” has more of a ring to it than “Dining with Cindy.”

4. Create a blogging schedule

While it’s a great idea to start a blog, way too often, that’s all that happens. Blogging is a serious time commitment. While it sounds easy to post every day, it’s not.

Writing short and quick blog posts once, twice, or even three times a week may be your solution to creating a schedule you can stick to. Figure out each week when you’re going to have time to maintain your blog. Setting aside an hour or two for it once or twice a week is a great way to stay committed.

Blogging consistently also helps set an expectation for your readers. You can even write on your homepage or about page when you update your blog to keep readers returning. Readers will only come back so long as they know that there will be new content, so setting the expectation where it will be appropriate will help you to build your following in the long run.

If you’re truly looking to grow your nutrition business, Healthie’s practice management platform can help through client retention strategies, facilitating partnerships and more.