Creating Quick & Effective Blog Posts: The Template Approach

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Welcome to this episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Sullivan, with Propel Marketing & Design.

Now, I am super excited to share with you this handy tip for creating quick and effective blog posts. And, spoiler alert, it's not gonna be to just hand it over to an AI system.

Today, I'm gonna be sharing with you a strategy that I know is going to help you save time, energy and, hopefully, help you avoid getting a headache when you are trying to create blog posts.

Are you ready?

It's pretty simple. I want you to create blog post writing templates. I suggest three to five templates that you have on rotation. Then you're able to sub in specific topics and create blog posts with ease.

So, we're gonna look at some examples, but we actually have templates that people are currently using. In fact, they're part of our Ready .Set. Rank! Program. Under Ready. Set. Blog! We have over a dozen templates.

Plus, we have a bonus where we did a live walkthrough of how to template out a single video and turn it into an SEO-friendly blog post. And while you can totally use ours if you've purchased the Ready. Set. Rank! Program, you don't have to.

You can actually create your own, or you can use the ones inside Ready. Set. Rank!, if you remember, and alter them to make sure that they're customized specifically for your client.

So, what you wanna do if you are gonna create your own is look back at older blog posts that seem to perform well, or if you don't have any that you think are really performing well, look at what other people in your industry are doing for blogs, how they're formatting the specific blog post.

And when I say formatting the blog post, we're looking at everything from the headers that they're using, how they're sectioning up the blog post.

All of those are key elements. And I wanna give an example- I think we've all before been online, and we've searched for a recipe, and you realize that all of the recipes that are usually in the top part of the organic search section have a really long description and content that's included before you get down to the recipe. Right?

Like, it's like, “Oh well, let me tell you why it’s so good for you before we jump into the fact that it's an ingredient.”

Well, there are reasons that the top blog posts under recipes are oftentimes longer, and they usually follow templates. Now, I'm not suggesting that you follow a recipe template if you are not creating a blog post about recipes.

I use that as an example because I think we've all seen those before, and sometimes people get hung up on this idea that they want their blog posts to be super short and simple, which, if you wanna do that, again, we have a template inside of Ready. Set. Rank! for taking a single video and turning it into a simple blog post; I think there's a way to do it that way.

But you wanna make sure that you've got this framework, these templates, and these templates really help you scale. You'll see a lot of the big companies follow this method, and you can relate it to your clinic or business as well.

So, let's look at some examples. So, let's say that you're a chiropractor, and people come to see you for four main reasons: back pain, neck pain, headaches, and shoulder pain.

Well, you can create a couple of templates and then rotate through the conditions that people are suffering from into those pieces of content. So, let's just say that you had a blog post that ranked really well and performed really well, and it was on five ways to quickly relieve back pain.

And you look at its formatting, and you're like, okay, well, it has an introduction, and then it's got a header too, for the first way that we can relieve pain, and then it's got a chunk about this, and then it's got this for the second one, the third one, the fourth one, the fifth one.

Then there's a section on how our chiropractic clinic handles things differently associated with back pain, and then there's a conclusion. You can take that template and then use it for other blog posts, and we can use variables here.

So, we said five ways to quickly relieve back pain. Maybe we say this is the template that we're gonna call X-Ways to Relieve Pain or specific type. Well, then we can change it up.

So maybe for neck pain, we do–because we don't wanna just do 5 Ways to Quickly Relieve Neck Pain because we just did 5 Ways to Quickly Relieve Back Pain– maybe we switch it up to Pain in the Neck: Three Ways to Get Fast Relief.

And you can see here how you can start to use something that you've already defined as working and work it into your overall approach.

So, as I mentioned, I suggest that you have three to five templates that really work for you, and you can, again, fill in the variables. Then, you can go to an AI tool and plug in your idea of what the title should be and let it really get creative with some ideas.

So, a lot of times, we see chiropractors, again, for example, or physical therapists, doing videos about stretching and doing blog posts about specific stretches or exercises. So, let's say one of your templates was X (for the number) Stretches to Help You Fill-in-the-Bllnk.

And, in this case, we're gonna say–we're gonna go back to back pain–and we're gonna say that you have three stretches associated with it. And, again, from the template, maybe you realized before it worked really well when you did the title of the stretch, you embedded it from YouTube, and then you gave some descriptions and steps with it.

Again, you know what templates work best for your company once you start to kind of dive into this.

Well, again, you can then take it to an AI solution, for example, ChatGPT, and I said to ChatGPT: Give me 10 variations of how to say “three stretches that help with pain.”

And you'll notice that I always like to ask ChatGPT or any other AI solution for more than just one answer when it comes to what it suggests as a creative title, and in this example, I asked for 10.

This helps you, kind of like, get a better idea. I don't suggest you always take exactly what they say because, goodness knows, they're probably suggesting the exact same thing or something very, very similar to somebody else out there.

But let's look at just a couple of examples of what it spit out:

Ease Your Spine: Three Essential Stretches for Back Relief.

Another one was Back Pain: Three Stretches You Need to Try Today.

Another one: Got Back Pain? Three Stretches That May Change That.

Another one, I kind of like this one: Stretch, Relieve, Repeat. It's actually stretch, comma, relieve, comma, repeat: Three Ways to Tackle Back Pain.

Here's another one: A Trio of Relief: Three Stretches to Combat Back Discomfort

So, you can see there are a ton of ways that if you pick three to five templates and then work in variations depending on either a condition that's common that people come see you for, or it could be solution-based.

So, for example, maybe you have a template that you put together on Can a Chiropractor Really Fix Fill-In-the-Blank? If that was, Can a Chiropractor Really Fix Neck Pain? Maybe another one would be, Should I See a Chiropractor After an Auto Injury?

And you work in the same template that you've already proven works. You can also do other variations in other templates, like a step-by-step guide, or, again, look at what has worked before for you and what works for other people in your industry.

Last summer, we did a whole series on blogging, and there's a really good blog post/podcast that you'll find on propelyourcompany.com on The Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post.

If you're really interested in this concept of creating these templates, that's a really good one to start with because it walks you through the anatomy, some of those template elements that you might want to include when you put together some templates.

Well, that's it for today. Happy writing, my friends. I hope that this concept of pulling together three to five templates that work for your blogging style in your company helps you blog more efficiently and effectively.

Well, hey, before we head out, I want to invite you to join in on a free masterclass I put together on the Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads. You can find a link to sign up for this free masterclass in the Show Notes for this episode or by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn.

During this workshop, we do a deep dive into strategies to help you improve your online presence. Including your Google Business Profile, that's what used to be called the Google My Business listing and what controls the Google Maps section, along with how voice SEO plays a big role in today's search and where you should be focusing your efforts online for the biggest impact.

All right. Well, that's it for today. Again, you can join the masterclass by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn. And if you have a topic that you would like to hear on an upcoming episode of Propel Your Practice, please send it in by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/podcast-topics or looking for the link in the Show Notes.

Thanks so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.