It’s hard to think of a more competitive space on the web than the beauty, lifestyle, and health space. Really.
More than most, your industry has a lot of players. That means if you want to stand out, you have to have good content. It’s non-negotiable.
But that isn’t as easy as it should be — at least as easy as Verblio believes it should be!
And if you’re here, you likely know just how hard it is to create the high-quality content you need.
To help you better understand the issues you’re facing, we collected insights from experts in the health, beauty, and lifestyle industry. Hopefully their advice helps you learn something new, or gives you a fresh perspective on how to overcome your own challenges!
1: Accuracy With Niche or Sensitive Topics
“One of the biggest challenges in creating beauty and wellness content is the idea that anyone can write about it. While it doesn’t require the same level of specialized knowledge as law or medicine, a knowledgeable reader can immediately tell even from the vocabulary whether a writer knows what they’re talking about.
A good solution is to hire for passion above writing experience. Writing can be edited and coached where as a genuine interest in the subject matter is difficult to duplicate.”
Evan Weiss—Co-founder of Dapper Confidential
“When it comes to content creation for the medical niche, one of my priorities is to have the facts straight. There is so much misinformation and information taken out of context out. The struggle is to create accurate content that is easy to read by non-expert readers.
To be able to create such content, there needs to be a collaboration between the doctors and writers. It’s of utmost importance that all health-related content gets checked by the doctors. Sometimes, this slows the process down, and the content production is slower because it takes time to verify the medical information. This delay propels the writers to send the content on their own without the verification—which can get risky, especially for the content written to be outsourced.”
Madison Smith—Content Marketing Strategist at Best Company
“When it comes to having content written, I have run into a few frustrations. First, almost everyone says they are a content writer so it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Secondly, you can’t just give them a topic and say “write about this” because you’ll get lackluster results.
I’ve found that I have to personally take the time to write a thorough article brief for the writer and then cross-check their work. As you can imagine, this takes time. I’m considering hiring a service to just handle this for me because I don’t have the time to manage the process so it gets done on an irregular basis (if at all).”
2: Finding Writers Who Write Authoritatively & Simply
“Writing unique content that’s easy to understand.
Health-related content is usually challenging to write for several reasons.
For starters, the concepts and procedures are difficult to comprehend. Hence, this poses a challenge to us as writers when we have to write in a simple yet professional manner.
To get our message across effectively, we have to use vocabulary that’s familiar to our audience as they are most likely not experts in these topics.
Avoiding jargon and finding appropriate synonyms to replace them can help make your content more understandable.”
“Content marketing is a huge part of our strategy, whether we are boosting a client’s SEO or advertising them on social media. I personally oversee all the content production, and I’ve had a lot of frustration dealing with poor quality content writers who provide a lot of “fluff” or simply don’t understand how to speak to the right audience. I would often end up rewriting everything myself, and felt like it wasn’t even worth my time to hire copywriters.
I realized the best way is to go step by step with them through the content creation process in a very automated way. For example, I give them the concept, very clearly, and ask them to come up with an outline for a ‘Top Ten’ story. I give them links to other examples of content for inspiration or guidance. I then review the outline and give edits and suggestions. I give the outline to a special freelancer I have for infographics and another freelancer who works on slideshow videos. Then, I outline the introduction and conclusion myself, and ask them to fill out the piece.
This results in a first draft I don’t have to spend too much time editing, and then we have great infographics and a video to go with it.”
3: Writer’s Block
“The biggest challenge I face while writing content is writer block, often due to a lack of ideas or feeling unable to write anything — meaning I lose confidence in the end.
In these cases, brainstorming is very crucial. It decides the future of my content and whether or not it will work. Research is also helpful, but sometimes it doesn’t work if the topic is niche or under-researched.
If I’m in a bad bind, I try to solve my writer’s block by doing another work to refresh my mind, then after 5-10 minutes I’m able to think and research new ideas to write.”
Muhammad Noman—Fan Jackets
“You feel challenged or frustrated with content creation? Writer’s block on beauty and lifestyle?
Stop the chaos and drama in your brain. Become the world’s observer. Make it fun instead of a chore.
Sit in a cafe, an airport, a department store. Talk to sales reps, ask questions, speak with the person at the counter, record it on your phone so you can have great conversations in storage for later and build your content calendar. All topics are around you! Do you want to bring solutions, being the curator? You better know what the problem is to be of value. Treat it like a conversation, just like when a friend is asking for your advice or your opinion, your response is based upon knowledge and experience, you simply answer with your instinct. Do the same and you will see how easy it is to be inspired again! Make it simple.
Your content is written by clients?
Pure laziness on your part. Your clients are your most precious commodity, your invaluable resource. Let them ask you questions, things which for you are obvious or not interesting but yet the solution they are seeking. Remember the conversation concept ? Time to apply it. Communicate. Inquire. Ask.
Struggles with in-house team to create content?
Work as a team. Although obvious, the real challenge is ego. Ego is the block. Drop it. Stop secretly thinking—’I am better than her, so much smarter than him, I am always the one who comes up with best ideas”, Even if true… who cares? Exchange, brainstorm, inspire and get inspired. Your creativity will rise and content will flow!
Relax into the process. Find your passion. Be yourself.”
4: Understanding The Audience
“One of the biggest challenges as a content marketer working with clients in fully understanding the customer profile. Too often companies want to be very broad in targeting, saying things like, ‘All women want younger looking skin.’ While it may be true, the nuances between a thirty-year-old and fifty-year-old’s desires are very different. The solution is often to do the work for the client and show them content that is focused on specific target groups.”
Kimberlee Leonard—Owner of Sensible Copy and Consulting
5: Creating Multi-Purpose Content That Can Rank
“Without a doubt, pairing written content with original multimedia is one of the biggest challenges content marketers will face after Google’s recent update.
For the greatest chance at hitting page one and SERP, Google wants authentic content across all text, image, and video. Free stock photography has been used by so many websites, it won’t have the power of original photography, and the same goes for video.
Posts also have to be long-form. At least 2,000 words in the competitive lifestyle and travel niches to even have a chance to rank well. On top of that, just the sheer time investment required to produce both original imagery and video means a singular post that has ranking potential could take days, even weeks, to publish.
Striking a balance between consist posting and long-form, multimedia-driven content is going to be a delicate one, indeed. And, with Google RankBrain becoming intelligent enough to bridge the gap between short-tail and long-tail keywords, going hyper niche for long-tail keywords may not yield results in the very near future.
The age of content being produced as fast and as consistently as Instagram posts is very much over. Now, high-authority, long-form, multimedia-driven content is the aim of the game for content marketers. And that’s going to mean heavier investments of time, money, and resources.
For independent content creators that don’t have a team, this is going to be a huge challenge.”
“A huge challenge is the need to craft unique content that sets us apart from other sites. Most topics have already been covered in almost every way possible. Therefore, a lot of effort needs to be put into thinking of a fresh content angle to ensure that our work is distinctive and different.
An excellent way to make your content stand out is to add value to it by obtaining professional insights from an authority figure. Hence, our content marketing department works very closely with our dentists and practitioners to craft first-hand expert content. This elevates the reputability of our brand as a reliable source. “
6: Deciding What To Write About
“As a lifestyle blogger, there are so many topics that we can write about. These include travel, food, shopping, parenting and beauty. Therefore, it’s always a challenge to decide on which area to focus on and what topic to write about.
This causes the decision making process to be confusing and disorganized. A lack of knowledge in any topic will also cause the research and writing process to take longer.
There are 2 solutions to this:
First: hire writers that specialize in different areas. When hiring writers, you should specify in the job title whether you’re looking for a “Beauty Content Writer” or “Travel Content Writer”, for example. This allows you to hire experienced writers who are passionate and knowledgeable about the subject.
Second: have a content calendar. A content calendar ensures that a constant flow of articles are published on schedule equally across each topic.”
Bernice Quek—Chief Content Writer at Bumble Scoop
Looking For Health & Beauty Writers That Avoid These Issues?
Creating content for the health and beauty industries can often be full of intricacies and potential pitfalls — we get it!
But that doesn’t mean you have to solve these problems on your own. In fact, we highly encourage you not to!
Let’s get real: Verblio has dedicated, expert writers for the health and wellness industry. We’ve put them through our intense vetting process so you don’t have to (did we mention only the best 4% of writers who apply write for us? Yeah.).
We can help you create high-quality content for your niche without the added hassle.
Want to see more? Check out a sample here:
Or if you want to learn more about how our process works for you, you can read more here. Talk to you soon!
