No matter where you are in building your practice, you have valuable information to share with your clients, neighbors in your local area you may not have met yet, and people on the internet who are looking for solutions to the problems you know how to solve.
One of the most damaging things you can do — both for yourself and for the people you want to help — is to withhold the knowledge you could be disseminating right now!
I’ve found that quite a lot of practitioners actually like to write articles! Some people have written at length about a variety of topics, while others focus their efforts in one area. Either way, after you’ve expended the effort to write your piece, take advantage of all the ways you can use it.
Here are several ways you can use article-writing to build your practice and awareness of the way you think about the problems your clients are trying to solve.
- Submit your articles to the local newspaper. If they have a regularly-featured health, health living or lifestyles section, they will often welcome articles from local practitioners. You might even get a regular column!
- Post your articles on your blog. Send traffic to them from other social media site you belong to. (In fact, every time you create a blog post, let your contacts know about it through all your social media accounts.)
- Regularly let your newsletter subscribers know that you have new content. You can give them a “taste” of your article and a link to your site to read the rest of it. Or, you can summarize what it’s about and then link to the article so they can get the conclusions!
- Give your articles to clients as a way of understanding the work they do with you. You could give one article after every session in your package, or create a “Welcome Package” that included a selection of your writings that are pertinent to the reason your client is seeing you.
- Bring several copies of your most recent article to local networking events. Give them only to the people who are express interest in knowing more, and make sure you contact information can be easily found!
- If you give a talk, give a relevant article to the people in your audience. Find out in advance how many people will be present, and make sure you have one for each person. You can include the article with your evaluation, as a “thank-you” gift for giving you valuable feedback.
- Give copies of your articles to clients who want to refer their friends. Often, people don’t know what to say about you, and having something you’ve written can give them a way to introduce you without stumbling over the reasons they think their friends should get in touch!
- Combine them into an e-book. Once you’ve written a series of articles, you can bring them together into one convenient e-book that you can sell, or give to a new client as a bonus for signing on for a series of lessons with you.
There are so many ways articles can be used to increase your visibility as a practitioner, and to raise awareness of our work! If you love to write, don’t wait to get started… your clients are looking for you, and articles that speak to their problems are a great introduction to your work!
It was tough picking just 10 ways… oh, right! I didn’t give you 10, did I? I only gave you 8 because I want you to tell me 2 more ways you can think of to use articles! Chances are that you’ll be much more committed to doing something that’s your own idea than the ones that come out of my brain!
Leave a comment below with your ideas (and don’t feel compelled to stop at two more!)
Action Step:
Set aside time this week to brainstorm ideas for articles you’d like to write. Once you have a list, ask your clients which one they’d like to read about, and write that one first — then give them a printed copy to thank them for helping you launch your article-writing adventure!
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