The wellness industry is no longer just “booming” — it’s becoming part of the collective consciousness, impacting buyers’ purchasing behaviors towards everything from food and clothing to housing and travel.
According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global health and wellness industry is now worth $4.2 trillion. Let this number sink in for a second. You’ll realize the massive growth potential your company has. However, it also means fierce competition.
Whether you own one gym (or an entire chain), you’re selling wellness products or run health retreats, thousands of other similar brands will be vying to do the same.
What can you do to ensure your slice of the multi-trillion-dollar market pie is bigger than theirs?
Start blogging. Blogging isn’t dead, but effective blogging in 2021 looks very different than it did a decade ago.
In this blog, you’ll learn no-nonsense strategies to build a social media following, strengthen brand awareness and sell more.
1. Don’t just write - Engage users with memorable videos
Gone are the days when blogs were storybooks of text and images only. People need variety and excitement, which is exactly why video is becoming so popular.
Engaged customers bring in 23% more profits, so incorporate videos in your blogs whenever possible.
You don’t need to have a professional filming crew or advanced on-camera presentation skills in order to be successful. The only requirement is displaying authenticity. A Bloglovin consumer survey on the “Global Power of Influencers,” found that 61% of women don’t engage with inauthentic influencer videos. Record yourself and your team talking about something that you know and love without focusing solely on conversions.
Take a look at Ziva Meditation, a renowned meditation company catering to high-performance leaders. Their blog posts usually include a short video in which their founder, Emily Fletcher, educates readers on wellness topics. It’s not until the last 30 seconds that she sends them off to a resource page to learn more about the brand and enjoy free tips and meditations.
2. Swap traditional blog posts for infographics
Encapsulating all your information into an infographic is a different, shorter - and sometimes more effective - type of blogging. A well-researched and visually appealing infographic can help boost the traffic to your site by up to 12%.
Use free or affordable image editing tools like PicMonkey and Canva to create infographics based on industry-specific data or numbers from your own reports and case studies.
The benefits of incorporating infographics in your blogging strategy extend far beyond website traffic. Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media, which makes infographics a great tool for expanding your social following.
Health Rally, a digital health platform that helps people manage their employee benefits, relies heavily on this type of content. The brand has a knack for summarizing complex information into eye-catching charts and promoting them on their Twitter page along with regular, text-based blogs.
3. Leverage email automation to target your ideal audience
You can’t monetize your blog unless you have an email list. These two statistics speak volumes about the effectiveness of email marketing.
- 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention.
- 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
It’s not enough to publish a new blog and email it to your list. In order to drive conversions, you also have to employ email automation and segmentation tactics. This is a fancy way of saying that you need to automatically send tailored messages that make readers feel like you’re having a one-on-one conversation with them. Marketing automation tools like HubSpot allow you to segment customers based on criteria such as purchases, feedback and engagement.
The Hollis Company, a wellness brand that serves both B2B and B2C customers, has mastered the art of segmentation. The company’s blog features a wide range of articles catering to an audience of busy, ambitious moms, which are later promoted via personalized emails. The conversational and authentic language plays a huge role in boosting the emails’ click-through-rate (CTR).
4. Invite experts to guest post
Save time and resources while still gaining web traffic by offering guest posts to experts in your industry. When your contributors’ posts go live, ask them to promote those blogs on their social media accounts and websites. This will guarantee you backlinks, which are one of Google’s “top 3 ranking factors.” Search engines see backlinks as trustworthiness stickers and reward websites that acquire the most quality backlinks.
Start by setting up a page on your website with clear submission guidelines and forms for guest posting. Be extremely selective with the writers that make the cut.
Two golden rules to follow when accepting guest posts:
- The writers should have a proven record of expertise. Make sure they own a site, they wrote for other high-ranking online platforms and they have a substantial social media following.
- The articles are original and didn’t appear anywhere else. Originality is key and the topics must be relevant to your audience.
You can also be proactive and reach out to influencers. BuzzSumo and other similar tools can help you discover high-authority experts and content creators.
Physique 57, a health and wellness company, does a good job of alternating their own pieces with guest posts from experts such as fitness instructors, athletes, and more.
5. Upgrade your copywriting skills
Great copywriting is foundational for any successful website, but it’s especially important for wellness blogs that aim to educate and inspire.
According to a study conducted by Chartbeat, about 40% of visitors leave a page after less than 15 seconds. The good news is that viewers who read an article for three minutes return twice as often as those who read for one minute. These findings confirm the “mere-exposure effect:” the more we get familiar with something, the more we like it. In business, the “liking” part translates as “converting.”
Here are a couple of ways to hook readers past that one-minute mark:
- Use persuasive, descriptive language that triggers a strong emotional response in your readers. Take a look at this list of “power words” compiled by Smart Blogger.
- Write long-form pieces, but be concise. The rule of thumb is that each sentence should introduce a new idea.
- Steer clear of jargon and buzzwords. Your audience shouldn’t need a dictionary to understand your message.
- Check your grammar and readability. The Hemingway App can help correct and simplify your writing.
Building a profitable wellness business blog in 2021 is not a linear path. It takes commitment and perseverance.
At Americaneagle.com, we have both. We also possess a Digital Marketing team that helps with brands like yours reach their full blogging potential. From copywriting to editing and email campaigns, our services cover everything you need to become the next big wellness brand.
