The Ins and Outs of Blogging for Dietitians
If you’re a Dietitian and you’ve been thinking about starting or growing your blog, you’ve come to the right place! There are SO many reasons why blogging is great for not only your business, but your current and potential clients, and also for you.
Today, we’re diving deep into the what, why, and how of blogging for dietitians. Our goal: convince you to make one of the best decisions you could possibly make as a business owner— and then help you turn that decision into an easy-to-execute plan of attack!
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Reasons to blog as a dietitian
If you’re a dietitian, you can’t afford not to have a blog for your business! A nutrition-focused blog serves both you and your clients so well. It’s an excellent educational resource, it helps answer reader questions, and it helps to establish you as an expert online.
Establish yourself as an expert
One of the best reasons to start a business blog is to establish yourself a go-to source for your ideal client. As you answer client questions, you turn yourself into a reliable, trustworthy person for your ideal audience to turn to online. This way, instead of clicking into random articles hoping they find something true, they can go directly to you.
Answer FAQs quicker & easier
Be honest… aren’t you a little sick of answering the same question over and over again? Even if you love serving your audience and try to make yourself available, repeating yourself gets tiring!
Next time you get asked an FAQ, instead of typing up that same email reply for the hundredth time, write a blog post about it! It’ll take a bit longer than a quick email reply, but it will save you hours in the future when you respond “Great Question! Check out my blog post on the topic” with a link directly to it. Plus, it gives you solid blog content on a topic that you already know your clients are interested in.
Want to save even more time? Batch-answer FAQs with blog posts! Brainstorm all the FAQs you get asked, and create one blog post for answering each one.
Find new clients searching for answers
When you have a question about something what do you do? We bet you turn to Google– and your target audience does too! If you write content about the questions they have, your blog can be where they find their answers.
This gets your website in front of new potential clients who are looking for an expert just like you. We will say that ranking for popular search queries is easier said than done, and it requires Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You may need the help from an SEO expert to rank for some competitive searches, but you can absolutely get started and see some traction all by yourself with some easy-to-implement tips (which we’ve outlined below!).
Related: Is SEO a priority for your blog? Wondering if you can DIY it or if you should consider hiring an expert? Read our blog post on When to DIY and When You Should Hire an SEO Specialist.
How to start a nutrition-focused blog
Starting a nutrition-focused blog is a simple process that we’ve broken out into four easy, super tangible steps. And, to make it even easier, we made you a free Content Planning Template.
Do yourself a solid— Make a copy of the Content Planning Template and open it in another tab before you keep reading!
Step one: identify your content pillars
Content pillars are the biggest possible “buckets” that your content topics will fall into. To identify yours, brainstorm the 5 or 6 broadest possible category labels that can hold all of your content. Pillars should be large enough to hold several subtopics, but not so broad that you can only come up with one.
Think of it like this: “nutrition” is too broad, “vegan recipes for 4-month-olds” is too specific, but family nutrition, vegan recipes, and baby-friendly recipes are just right!
Content pillar examples for dietitians
- Recipes
- Nutrition Tips
- Lifestyle
- Family Nutrition
- Sports Nutrition
- Anti-Dieting
- HAES
- Intuitive Eating
- Endometriosis-friendly recipes
Replace the values in square brackets on the Content Pillars sheet of your Content Planning Worksheet with your content pillars. You can also add sub-pillars where it makes sense.
Pro Tip: Check out your competitors and see how they’re organizing their content for inspiration! Most blogs have categories or tags to organize their posts which can give you an indication.
Step two: brainstorm blog topic ideas
Now, on the Content Planning sheet of your Content Planning Template, list a few topics in the ‘keyword’ columns for each pillar.
Example: If your pillar is “Family Nutrition,” some blog topics that belong under this pillar could be:
- Favourite 30-minute dinner recipes
- Tips for parents of picky eaters
- How to talk to kids about nutrition
- Meal planning for families
- Cooking activities you can do with your toddler
- Lunch packing tips
- Crockpot meals for busy nights
- Healthier sports team treats
Step three: do keyword research
Now that you have some blog post topic ideas, it’s time to do a little keyword research and fill out the rest of the pink columns on your Content Planning sheet.
Creating content usually has two main goals. The first is serving your audience, and you’ve got that one down! The second is to help you rank on Google, we can help you here!
If your goal is to create content that ranks in Google (and ultimately drives new traffic to your website) then you should focus on writing content that answers questions people are already searching in Google. Doing keyword research will help you figure out what these questions are.
Not sure where to start with keyword research? Our post on how to do keyword research will help! You don’t need to be an SEO expert to pull the basic information. For each topic idea (or keyword) find the Search Volume and the SERP Competition and add it to your Content Planning sheet.
How to pick the best keywords to blog about
Not all keywords are created equal— some are much harder to rank for than others! With so many websites creating content, overly broad or generic keywords like “vegetarian recipes” are going to be almost impossible to rank for. Especially if your competition is made up of websites that are more authoritative than yours.
That’s why choosing the right sized keywords is key! Instead of wasting time trying to rank for unwinnable keywords, cherry-pick longer keywords that you actually have a shot at ranking for. Yes, these longer keywords will have less search volume per month, but that’s okay! Overtime, as you build up website strength, you can start going after the bigger keywords.
Pro tip: more specific keywords will be less competitive
The keyword “healthy vegetarian recipes” has 12,100 monthly searches in the US, but the top listings in the search results are for massive websites that a new blog or small business could never outrank. Keywords like “healthy vegetarian recipes for diabetics” and “vegetarian family friendly meals” have smaller search volumes, but they aren’t dominated by massive, established publications. So the odds are in your favour!
Step Four: Decide On a Content Creation Workflow
Before you start blogging, ask yourself how often you want to post. In other words, how much content are you going to create each month?
Based on SEO benefits, we recommend at least two posts per month, each one ranging between 700 and 1,200 words . But if you’re feeling keen, go ahead and do more posts and/or longer ones!
Next, decide on a content creation workflow. In other words, how often you’re going to create your content.
Which content creation work flow is best for you?
- Quarterly Batching: Block off two or three blogging days in a row where you get in the zone and write up 3 months worth of content at a time.
- Monthly Batching: Block off one day each month to write blog posts for the month ahead of you.
- Weekly Blogging: Write one blog post every week (or two).
Block out the time in your calendar in recurring appointments specific for blog writing & publishing. On that day, pour yourself some coffee, and get ready to write!
Dietitians Who Do Blogging Right
Food Heaven
Why we love Food Heaven: They have a podcast, so each blog post ties back to the key information shared in an episode. This lets them focus on their podcast but still get the SEO benefits of a blog. (This is also a great way to repurpose high-value content and give yourself more content to share on more platforms in less time.)
They also do a great job of creating both brand-building posts that aren’t SEO focused but are have tons of personality, like How to Feed Kids Without Losing your Mind, and posts that drive SEO & organic traffic, like Intuitive Eating During the Holidays.
Alissa Rumsey
Why we love Alissa Rumsey: Each blog post has a strong keyword that it’s centred around. She also uses a really clear heading structure within each post, so busy readers can skim to find exactly the sections they’re most interested in. (As much as we’d like to think people will hang on every word we write, it’s important to remember that people have short attention spans and busy lives!)
Mama Knows Nutrition
Why we love Mama Knows Nutrition: Okay, we’re a little biased here. Kacie was a long-time client of our copywriter, Kira. But, her blog is the bomb so we had to feature her here!
Kacie uses her blogs to answer FAQs from her (super massive) Instagram audience. She also uses them to shed more light on topics that can’t be condensed into an Insta post or story alone. And, she uses her blog to boost her SEO and rank in Google, so that new people (those who don’t know her from IG) can still find her. (High 5 for not putting all your marketing eggs in one basket, Kacie!)
Ready to blog?
Heck yeah, you are! And if you don’t believe us, don’t worry. We’re in this with you.
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