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Blogs: How To Use Them & How They Can Help You

Wow have times changed! We are no longer in the age of picking up the phone receiver that is attached to the long windy cord that was attached to the wall in the kitchen. Most of us have been there as kids hoping your brother or sister did not pick up the other phone and listen in. Or hearing the tell tale click as they hung up. Our only options used to be communicating in person, by snail mail or over the phone

Wow have times changed! We are no longer in the age of picking up the phone receiver that is attached to the long windy cord that was attached to the wall in the kitchen. Most of us have been there as kids hoping your brother or sister did not pick up the other phone and listen in. Or hearing the tell tale click as they hung up. Our only options used to be communicating in person, by snail mail or over the phone Now we have an abundance of ways to communicate to each other and the public. Changes indeed.

Not only have the modes of communication changed but also where we give and receive that communication. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, email, Pinterest, blogs, forums, and many more provide all kinds of opportunities to communicate. Instead of worrying about getting disconnected, we have to figure out how we can get connected and the best way to make that happen. Not only to get the latest news but to contribute to that news.

With the recent changes to email communication, it’s harder than ever to reach out to a new large audience. Especially those new clients that are so important to growing your business. By writing a blog, you can distribute the content on your website, social media platforms and use it for an email campaign to your current clients. Don’t forget to encourage them with a call to action to share the great info your providing and to sign up for future blog posts.

Here are 3 of the more popular free blog platforms:

WordPress

This is friendly to all operating systems and is full of great themes, plugins, and widgets to use and personalize your writing platform. Despite the steep learning curve with WordPress, you can take advantage of all of the wonderful features and posting is by far the easiest task to utilize on the platform. While WordPress does provide a lot of value for a free blog platform, I’d suggest having a look at the paid option that allows you to create a personal blog address. Nothing says professional like having your own blog address.

Tumblr

Tumblr, known as a microblogging site, is backed by Yahoo and known for its simplicity and ease of use. It has great layouts for artwork and photo’s as well as post options for text, links, music, video and quotes. Tumblr is known for its high visual content so if you have a lot of great photos or videos to share, then this is a strong site to be on. You can also use this site to promote blog content such as archived emails or newsletters.

Blogger

Backed by Google, this blogging tool has been around for over a decade. It is really easy to set up via your Google account and less tech savvy users can navigate their way easily through this. (I got my 66 year old Aunt to start blogging on this platform and she found it easy to use). The neat thing about this is that you can team blog. Blogger supports up to 100 users on one blog and this helps to expand editorship and make getting content up and out much faster. Bloggers’ strong integration with Google allows users to interact via their Google+ accounts which makes pulling pictures or videos over to your blog fast and easy.

So here we have 3 different blog platforms, with each having unique features to look at. If you have a multifaceted health care business it might benefit you to have the team blog so all of your practitioners can use this to expand the awareness of their practice. Each platform can accommodate as much or as little blogging as you’d like to do. Just remember – if nothing’s there, noHealthy Body will look.

If starting a blog still seems like a huge challenge, then by being a HealthLocal.ca member you could become a content contributor and have your blogs syndicated through us. All you do is write your blog and email them in. Our editorial team will do all the rest.

Life is all about options and there is so much out there that is free to utilize as a business owner. As we’ve mentioned, it’s easy. Get out there and blog to your hearts content!