Types of Blog Posts to Explore for Your LNC Blog
Types of Blog Posts
There are several types of blog posts. This post describes some of the common types.
Content curation
First, there is a blog post called “Content Curation.” In this blog post, you pull together information that other people wrote.
When you curate content, you collect articles, images, and brief descriptions of the post and link to the original article. For example, you might find three or four articles on a specific topic, such as nursing home abuse and neglect. “Content Curation” means you found that information for your reader and put it together in a post.
Your role is to find the articles, comment on them, and provide a little analysis. You are pulling the information together, but also offering your thoughts about the content in the article.
Continue adding articles. You might have three, four, five, or whatever number you find appropriate. Do a quick summary of the article with the link if your reader wants to read the original article.
In this type of blog post, you are not writing these articles yourself. You are commenting on them, but you are gathering them for the reader and making it easy for them to get information on that topic.
Reactions
The next type of blog post is created by explicitly putting in information from different media. You will see a pattern here. I suggest you offer your reactions to information that other people have written.
Overall, these are immensely popular types of blog posts.
When you go to YouTube and look at a video, there is a share button. You’ll get code you can insert into your blog post, and then the video will play inside your website.
In the reactions type of blog post, you might embed a video and then analyze the video. You do not need permission to share a video from YouTube because people put videos on YouTube to share them. That is the purpose of YouTube.
You can also embed an infographic and then offer reactions to that. These are all reactions and analyses of somebody else’s material, but in this case, I am referring to visual materials, specifically a video or an infographic.
Interview
Interview people in person, on Zoom, or send them questions and ask them to answer those questions. If you are talking to a group about a particular topic, you have a specific question you ask each person and then share the answers the person gave you.
One of my most viewed blogs featured interviews I did with my clients about their criteria for picking nursing expert witnesses. I wrote up their answers to those questions to form a blog. The attorneys’ names I put in bold, which pleased them. It was a compelling set of testimonials about my skills.
I got almost immediate responses from the attorneys on my mailing list reacting to this article because they read their colleagues’ comments about the value of using legal nurse consultants and expert witnesses. It was not me talking about my services.
You could interview an attorney about their opinion or their description of a successful resolution of a case.
There is no limit to the topics you can cover in an interview blog post. It requires time to connect with people, ask them questions, record their answers, and write them up. You are borrowing from other people’s credibility, and you are also enhancing your credibility at the same time.
Consider how you could record an interview series of attorneys. You could ask different attorneys five questions, create a series of videos you post on YouTube, and then embed it into your blog. Develop five questions for attorneys, but do it for different segments like personal injury, nursing home, nursing malpractice, etc.
See my Legal Nurse Podcast with Lisa Wade, who did just that with attorneys who joined her LinkedIn group. Watch it at LNC.tips/LisaWade.
The “how to” types of blog posts
In the “How To” blog posts, take a problem that one of the people in your target market experiences.
Share how you solved that problem. You can take common issues faced by your target market (attorneys in your client base), and then explain how you would address that problem.
For example, I wrote a post on my legal nurse consulting blog about a friend of mine who is a speaker. He was stuck figuring out how to organize information to write his next book.
As I understood his problem, I determined where he was blocked and saw the parallels between drafting a book and writing a report for attorneys.
I took those steps that I followed and then laid them out to show how you organize your work product.
Video Types of Blog Posts
Another type of “How To” post is to take a video; it does not have to be yours, a video you find on YouTube. You take that popular YouTube video that walks through a process step-by-step. You then use little screenshots of it and explain the steps.
In one blog, I added a video that I found on “How to Organize Medical Records.” It was produced by a woman who was organizing her medical records. She put them in a binder and used tabs to put them in sections.
We LNCs do as part of our business. There were thousands of views and positive comments from people who watched the video who said, “Thank you for giving us a step-by-step process. I never knew how to organize my medical records.” They were enthralled with the information that she shared.
Video Type of Blog Posts Example
In this blog post structure, write a headline, a little introduction, and then add screenshots describing each step. You cannot easily get a screenshot of something that is moving. You can only get a screenshot from something holding still. Otherwise, you would have a blurred mess. Pause the video to be able to get that screenshot.
In Windows, if you go to the “Windows Programs,” there is a section called “Accessories” and a tool called the “Snipping Tool,” which enables you to cut out a portion of your screen or all your screen and save it as an image.
TechSmith makes a tool called “Snagit” that I use as well. Snagit offers more features than the free program that comes with Windows. Snagit enables you to save that image. You can put borders around them, add a jagged bottom or blur the edges.
Every Mac comes with a “Grab.” It is easy to grab an image and it is free. You can save it as a JPEG and do anything with that image in Pages.
The Top Tips
Offer “Top Tips” to tell a story with the lessons learned. Some of the most popular blog posts I have written have been when I shared some significant mistakes in my practice as a legal nurse consultant. People responded to my vulnerability of saying, “I wish I hadn’t done that.”
You can take a current event and discuss how it would apply to your field. When you write about a current event, people searching for information about that topic are more likely to come across your blog because you included those keywords. That is another way to get more people to view your blog and become aware of your services.
Conclusion
Tapping into the type of blog posts that speak to you and your audience is a winning formula for successfully executing a popular blog that people love to read.
Learn how to create your LNC Blog with my book, “Blogging for Legal Nurse Consultants”. Get it here.
Pat Iyer is president of The Pat Iyer Group, which develops resources to assist LNCs in obtaining more clients, making more money, and achieving their business goals and dreams.
Pat’s related websites include the continuing education provided on LNCEU.com, the podcasts broadcast at podcast.legalnursebusiness.com, and writing tips supplied at patiyer.com.
Get all of Pat’s content in one place by downloading the mobile app, Expert Edu at www.legalnursebusiness.com/expertedu. Watch videos, listen to podcasts, read blogs, watch online courses and training, and more.