Content Marketing for Your Counseling Website

Build Authority

Authority may not seem directly measurable in terms of profit, but it is a major component in attracting and converting leads. If your brand is an authority in its niche, that means people regard it as highly reliable and trustworthy. Other websites may reference your brand when citing information. Readers will be more apt to share your content. Visitors will be loyal to you because they know they can always trust the information they find on your blog.

You can gain an instant authority boost by utilizing content writers who are professionals in the counseling industry, as that will make readers trust your content more while also ensuring content accuracy. However, you can gain authority even without licensed counseling writers by checking your content against the best practices, facts, and latest studies in the industry.

Another way to build authority is by offering high-value original content, such as case studies, to bring traffic to your site. For example, conducting your own research study would produce a unique white paper with statistics that people can't find anywhere else. This makes for authority-building content that many people will reference and look up to, helping build a name for your brand as a reputable and reliable figure.

Increase Engagement

How often have you clicked on a search result only to hit the back button? If you have a high "bounce rate," that means many of your visitors are doing that exact same thing. The biggest reason is that they couldn't find the answer at-a-glance. Great content features subheadings, images, bullet points, and other elements that break up the wall of text and help users quickly see the value in your content.

When you build a content strategy, you're able to boost engagement across the board for one simple reason: You've done your research. In the above example, your content offers them what they want at-a-glance because you did the digging to know who your audience is, what they're searching for, and what their pain points are. Because of your research, you know exactly how to title your content, what sub-headings to use, what questions to answer, and so on.

Another way your content strategy helps you increase engagement is by allowing you to publish consistently across platforms. Not only will the voice and tone be consistent and resonate with your audience, but the frequency and quality of your content will be consistent, too. Now you're starting to get visitors to come back to your blog all the time because they can anticipate new content. On social media, you'll see better engagement for similar reasons.

Grow Your Following

As you increase engagement across platforms, you're going to see a major uptick in the size of your following. Whether that's likes on your Facebook page or the amount of organic traffic your website is getting each month. By growing your following, you're automatically increasing the number of leads you have to target. Whether you're converting them to newsletter subscribers or convincing them to get a free consultation or something else, the size of your following is directly connected to your profits.

With that said, don't envision your content as a stream that pushes all of your readers into a pond where you have to fish them out. Instead, think of your content as a waterfall with multiple tiers. When created based on a content strategy, your content will help nurture and qualify readers as they go from one article to the next, meaning that every piece you publish has a place in the conversion funnel and ultimately produces qualified leads for you. So, instead of having to fish good leads out of a pond of everyone, your best leads are sorting themselves out.

Profile Your Company

Calling back to the example of Mary DiOrio's website, it's crystal clear when content is backed by a strong, well-defined branding strategy. As such, before you spend any amount of time crafting content or even planning it, it's essential that you look at your brand and ensure it is distinguishable from the rest.

Creating a brand book will help you define your brand for internal purposes and will also give you an easy guide to give to writers and anyone else you outsource to, ensuring your brand is represented consistently by everyone. When profiling your company, think about how you want to make readers feel, what makes you stand out, and the keywords you'd use to describe your brand's "personality."

Create Your Customer Personas

Once you have defined who your brand is, you need to define who your customers are. Creating your customer personas is a major step in the process, as knowing who your audience is will impact what you write about and how you present it. Beyond knowing the basic demographics, you need to know details like the platforms your audience spends time on and the type of content they like to consume.

By getting to know your audience, you'll gain an understanding of their pain points and the obstacles they need to overcome to ultimately become a lead for your business. Knowing these things will enable you to effectively address them through your content, which makes it possible for your content to nurture and convert leads on autopilot. Use tools like Google Analytics, along with other dedicated services, to help you take a deep dive into who your audience is.

Select Your Platforms

With information about your audience, you can begin to evaluate where your brand should be publishing content and what that content should be. For instance, if you know that your audience spends a great deal of time on Instagram, that might be a platform worth pursuing. Behind-the-scenes photos, motivational quotes, and other relevant imagery may be appropriate, depending on your brand image.

Ideally, you'll select just 2-3 social media platforms to start in addition to your blog. You can add more platforms later, but it's best to start small so you don't stretch yourself too thin. Once you're able to post consistently on these platforms, see if your audience might be interested in seeing you on any other platforms.

With your list of platforms in hand, you can also define the types of content you're going to publish. This will be constrained by the type of content your audience often interacts with and by your budget. For instance, even if your audience loves watching YouTube videos, that doesn't mean you have the budget to produce them regularly, so it's best to shift focus elsewhere.

Build Your Strategy

With all of the preliminary research complete, you can now put all of the puzzle pieces together to create your content strategy. This means looking at the types of content you want to publish across platforms and organizing that information into a content calendar, which defines how often you'll publish what. With your content calendar in hand, you can then begin filling in keywords and topic ideas.

Of course, most people think that finding topic ideas is the hardest part of creating a content strategy, but it isn't. In reality, the blog posts come easy since you know your target audience and what they're searching for by conducting keyword research. The tough part is putting your content strategy into action once you have it all laid out.

Even if you can handle the on-page SEO yourself and you know a bit about SEO strategies, getting someone to link to your site or earning a featured snippet isn't easy. In general, most website owners find it is highly cost-effective to outsource their content writing to the right professional.