There are many elements to blogging that are the same across all niches. But there are some parts to writing blog posts about health and health-related topics that are unique. Whether you want to learn how to be a health blogger or you’re looking for tips on how to take your health blog to the next level, I hope that this post will help you succeed. I’m going to share my tips for planning your health blog post, as well as the research that you need to do when writing a post about health.
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How To Write a Health Blog Post: Planning
I’m going to share 4 guiding questions that I would ask yourself when you are planning a health blog post, as well as why you should ask yourself these questions. Ready? Let’s go.
What topics do people want to read?
This might seem like a “duh” question, but make sure to find a post idea that people are actually going to want to read. This is for a couple of reasons, but they all boil down to not wanting to spend time writing a post that no one wants. Maybe you think people want to read about this, maybe there’s a topic that you think “I’m sure someone wants to read this.”
Yeah, there probably is someone who wants to read a post about your topic. But if you’re on the fence, and you don’t feel connected to a topic, I suggest leaving it alone. If you’re really interested in a topic or idea, then write it anyway! But if you’re not, then I suggest not doing so.
Now that I’ve talked about ideas that people don’t want to read, let’s talk about how you know what ideas people do want.
One idea is to actively ask your followers what they want to read. I ask regularly on Twitter and Facebook (and even Instagram) if people have post requests. If there’s a suggestion for a post that I haven’t written yet, and it’s one that I feel like I could write, then I add the idea to my running list of ideas. If I have already written the post, then I’ll send them that link.
Another idea is to type into Google a word of phrase about your general idea and see what auto-populates. For example, when I type “arthritis,” two suggested searches that pop up are “arthritis in hands” and “arthritis pain relief”. Since these are two phrases that people are searching for, they’re things that people want to read about.
Another idea is to search a word or phrase and see what the suggested searches are. When you search “arthritis in hands” in Google, when you scroll down you’ll see this:
Again, these are things that people are searching for. You can either use them as prompts for your posts or you can use them as jumping off points. What from those results inspires you? What do they make you think of? This brings us to our next question.
What topics are people searching for?
This is about SEO, or search engine optimization. The goal is to optimize your site for search engines to find you. In individual posts, I choose keywords that fit the topic I want to write about.
Do you want your blog posts to be found online? Do you want them to be found on Pinterest? If the answer to one or both of these is “yes,” then you should care about SEO. The big thing for me personally is Pinterest. Yes, Pinterest is a search engine! Over 50% of my blog traffic in the last month came from Pinterest.
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I have a Google Sheet (aka like an Excel sheet) where I keep track of possible keywords to use. I not only track possible keywords, but also the volume of searches per month, how competitive they are on a scale of 1 (not competitive at all) to 100 (extremely competitive), and whether or not I’ve used those keywords.
I try to use a bunch of similar keywords in each post to increase the likelihood that my post will be found – and clicked. I also try to use keywords that are searched for somewhat regularly – aka not only 10 searches per month – but have a competitive level below 50. That way people are likely to look for what I’m writing about, but my posts are also likely to show up. The goal is to show up on the first 3 pages of search results, but ideally to show up on the first page.
I use Ubersuggest to find SEO keywords to use. Not only does it give you keyword suggestions, but you can also find related keywords, long-tail keywords, questions, prepositions, and more. It will tell you what the search volume is for each keyword, as well as how competitive it is so you can choose the most successful keyword. And so much more.
You can get a basically unlimited amount of info if you sign up for a subscription, but a free membership still gives you 3 searches per day. And you can use your Google account to get a free subscription.
Another awesome free tool to use if you have self-hosted WordPress is the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin helps rate your blog posts’ SEO and their readability by using a stoplight system (red, yellow, green). It also gives you concrete things you can change in your post so you’re not just hoping for the best. You can write the meta description that will show up on search engines instead of the first few sentences of the post, and so much more. Yoast does have a premium version, but it really isn’t necessary.
What is a topic that you would want to read about?
Having an “ideal reader” is a good idea for all bloggers. An ideal reader is “Your ideal reader is a construct designed to represent your audience. If you’re writing a blog about frugality and budgeting, your ideal reader might be a single mom in her thirties. Alternatively, your ideal reader could be a high school graduate heading off to college” (x). So this is someone who represents your ideal blog readers, whether that be patients or loved ones of patients.
My ideal reader is me when I first developed symptoms and/or was diagnosed. 2010 Kate was thrilled to have a diagnosis, but she felt so alone. Social media in that day was basically Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, and I was only on Facebook then. Instagram didn’t exist until October 2010, and past-Kate didn’t learn about it until 2012 (x). She knew that there were other young people who were chronically ill – I’ve been symptomatic since 2001, after all – but she didn’t know how to find them. There weren’t that many people writing blogs like this one, and there really weren’t many chronic illness social media accounts. Again, I felt very alone.
I write this blog for her and for others in similar situations. She is my ideal reader, and for a lot of chronic health bloggers, their previous selves are their ideal readers. So what would you want to see?
A lot of us start blogging to help others like ourselves, and a lot of advocates know that the stories that connect with others the most are personal stories. But just because you share some things about your health and experiences doesn’t mean that you have to share everything.
In fact, you shouldn’t share everything. Keep some things back. Draw a line for yourself. And maybe that line moves over time – I never expected to talk about my period when I started this blog, and it was in fact something I explicitly wanted to never talk about.
But then I developed endometriosis and discovered that while endometriosis affects 10% of people with a uterus worldwide, it takes an average of 6-10 years to get an official diagnosis (x, x). I still don’t talk about my period much, if at all, but I wanted to use my platform to advocate for other patients, so I started talking about my reproductive system, which was more than I ever expected happening.
Finding where your line is matters for a couple of reasons.
One is to keep yourself safe. Sharing too much on the Internet, whether it be private medical information or your address, always comes with some kind of a risk. While we now order strangers on the Internet to pick us up at our homes (aka use Uber or Lyft), which is something that would horrify people from the 90s or early 00s, safety is still important. Especially when it comes to your website!
Another reason is to not feel like you owe people out there information about yourself. You don’t owe anyone any information! I don’t owe people the reason what happened when I had a medical issue. Keeping a line of where you do or don’t share information is good both so you don’t feel like you have to share things about yourself but also to make sure other people don’t feel like you owe them information.
So if you’re going to write a blog post featuring information about your health, figure out what you are and aren’t comfortable sharing. If you want to write about a topic but you don’t want to share your experience, you don’t need to tell your audience, “Hey, something happened to me.” You could say, “A recent experience inspired this post,” but you don’t have to. The only thing is that if you don’t want to share your arthritis diagnosis story, don’t make a blog titled My Arthritis Diagnosis story 😉
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How To Write a Health Blog Post: Research
So you’ve got your post topic! If you’re writing a health blog post, you also need to use a bit of research in your post. Let’s talk about how to do that.
Find sources to back up everything that you’re positing as fact
Again, integrity is very important as a blogger! So I try to find sources for everything that I say, especially everything I’m stating as a fact.
Earlier in this post, I mentioned that I wasn’t going to talk about my reproductive system at all until I developed endometriosis. I also included statistics on how common endometriosis is in the world and how long it takes on average to get diagnosed. I found sources for both those pieces of information.
On the one hand, I couldn’t remember how many people had it, so I wanted to find that statistic so I could be as accurate as possible. Since I was looking for that, I would find a) the answer and b) a reliable source for that statistic at the same time.
The other thing, though, was I wanted to find a source for how long it takes to be diagnosed. Off the top of my head, I remembered hearing that it takes 10 years to be diagnosed on average. The thing about that statistic is that it’s so outrageous that I knew no one would believe me unless I had proof, so I Googled it. That’s when I saw the Speak Endo page that stated it takes 6-10 years on average to be diagnosed. So it turned out that that statistic is updated now from the last time I looked it up. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t Googled it looking for a source, showing another reason why you should source everything.
Now that we’ve covered why you should do this, let’s talk about how.
The first strategy, as you probably can tell, is just Googling the fact you want a source for. I would not suggest searching the fact as you remember it because then you might just find a source backing up what you want instead of the correct fact. For example, I Googled “how long does it take to get an endometriosis diagnosis” instead of “it takes 10 years to get an endometriosis diagnosis.”
Sometimes I Google things like “rheumatoid arthritis definition” if I want a source for a thing I already know. And yes, I know what RA is as I have it, but I want an official definition that I can provide a credible source for. This is much better than someone later telling me that I’m wrong about RA and having to send them my source after the fact!
Homework is better than make-up work, in my opinion.
Use reliable sources
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you have nothing as a blogger without integrity. Integrity is crucial because you want people to believe you, and they can’t believe you if they can’t trust you. One way to gain and maintain that integrity is through using reliable sources.
Sadly, you can’t quote yourself as a resource unless you have a medical degree and specialize in the thing you’re talking about. The only exception is if you are referencing something that happened to you.
Reliable sources for health bloggers include:
- results of studies, and you don’t need to subscribe to a journal to read the abstract
- hospitals or other medical centers
- health organizations like the CDC, WHO, or NIH
- health foundations like the Arthritis Foundation or Dysautonomia International.
Basically, you’re looking for places that have their integrity at the center of their existence. I mean, we would all be in trouble if the WHO started sharing incorrect information, right? I try to avoid using individual doctor’s practice’s websites as my sources because they don’t have the same potential issue if they’re lying or wrong that a larger organization does.
So how do you find reliable sources for your blog? I always start with a Google search like “how many people in the US have arthritis” or “arthritis statistics”. I might narrow my search if I’m not finding the kind of statistic that I’m looking for, but that doesn’t mean “trying to find research that matches my opinion.” What I mean is that if I’m looking for how many women have arthritis in the US but all I’m finding is details about how many people in the US have it or how many women there are in the US, then I need to be more specific.
Put a disclaimer before sharing anything that could be viewed as advice
This is a legal thing. All bloggers need to protect themselves legally, but it’s a bit trickier for health bloggers. Because people might be taking health advice from you, if you’re not a licensed medical professional you need to say this in any posts with health advice.
A Self Guru, who is a lawyer, says that disclaimers “limit your liability surrounding the content that you create […] a proper blog disclaimer lets your readers know that the information you are providing is for informational and educational purposes only and includes language in there to reduce your legal liability in case of harm to the other person” (x).
My go to disclaimer is: “I am not a medical professional. In this post I share my personal experience. Any advice from medical professionals is described as such.” It’s straight and to the point!
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Make it clear when something is your own opinion and/or experience
This is especially true if you’re writing a post about products that have helped you or are sharing information about a condition. One, making it clear that something is your opinion helps legally, like as was mentioned in the previous point. But two, this is why people go to a blog instead of WebMD or something: they want real people’s experience and advice.
If you’re writing a post that is mostly story-based, then you just need to say, “This is how I was diagnosed with arthritis,” or “in my case, I have seronegative RA” and then get into your story. It should be pretty clear anyway, but if you’re in the middle of a sentence that also has a medical explanation, then this will help.
If you’re writing a post about products that help you, the phrase “in my experience” will be your best friend. Using the word “I” a lot will help regardless, but this is where you want to be crystal clear about your opinion or experience. And never use the phrase “I promise x will help you” because nothing is guaranteed to help every single person.
Like this post? Share it! Then check out:
What Blogging Platform Should I Use?, The Dos and Dont’s of How To Get Your Blog Noticed, Why I Switched to MailerLite from MailChimp for My Email Newsletter, Why Isn’t My Blog Getting Traffic?
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
Wish I could have read this when I was first starting out! It would have saved me a lot of trial and error. I especially like the emphasis on a disclaimer, using reliable sources, and distinguishing between personal experience and effects.
You have so much experience with all of this, I am so glad you are sharing about it!
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