Blogging is a great way to build your online presence:
• It’s low-cost (or even free)
• It’s easy
• It’s effective
• It’s an ethical marketing strategy that benefits both you and the public
Blogging is Cheap
To set up a blog you don’t even need a website. You can get a free blog at blogger.com, and be up and running in minutes, no technical knowledge required.
Blogging is Easy
Blogs are not only easy to set up; they are also easy to update. To add a blog post you simply log in to your blog’s editing window, type whatever you want and click to save. You can also add images and links with a couple of mouse clicks.
Blogging is Effective
One important advantage of blogging is that you can get dozens of listings in the search engines very quickly. Each time you write a blog post, the search engines treat that as a new web page. If you write 30 posts (even if each is only a couple of paragraphs) that’s 30 new listings in the Google search results.
Why is this important? 2 reasons:
a) When someone Googles your name and sees a long list of results, you look more professionally credible than if you had few or no hits.
b) When someone searches for a specific topic, and you’ve blogged about it frequently, your blog will rise higher in the search results. Thus, you will be more likely found and viewed as an expert by web searchers.
These search engine listing propagate very quickly – usually within minutes. (Great for those of us who crave immediate gratification!) And when people start linking to your blog your listings will multiply exponentially.
Blogging is Ethical
Blogging is an ethical way to market your practice. You are already familiar with writing educational pieces, so it’s within your comfort zone and doesn’t feel too commercial or sales-y. Each blog post constitutes a sample of your expertise. If you write frequently about a topic, people will eventually associate your name with that topic.
In other words, simply by blogging about what you know, you can establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field.
The public benefits as well from your blogging. As a trained mental health professional who abides by a code of ethics, you publish only quality work. It’s important for people to get the truth about mental health topics from licensed and certified professionals.
Otherwise they may fall into the hands of hucksters who try to sell them products and services that are not only ineffective, but also potentially harmful.
For blogging tips and a brief video of how to set up a blog at blogger.com, see this previous post, Easy Blog Setup
