This blogging tutorial for wellness bloggers covers a framework you can use to align your content with your target customer’s needs, ensuring to address them and solve their problems, leading to a relationship based on trust. Your target customers will see you as an expert in your field, and the law of reciprocity will kick in, leading your target customers to buy from you. Some marketers refer to leveraging reciprocity as “reciprocity marketing”. You can read more about reciprocity marketing in this article by B2C.
Here’s why you should align your blog with the hero’s journey.
Using the Hero’s Journey as an outline for your blog gives you a script to stick to,
aligning your buyer persona’s problems with blog posts,
so you have a solid strategy for your content.
You provide more value for your customers when you focus your content.
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com
The Hero’s Journey is a valuable tool for wellness bloggers because it aligns your content with your target customer’s needs. By addressing their needs over time, you will create a relationship built on trust; your target customer will view you as an expert who can solve their problems so you can convert your readers to customers. Moreover, following this outline allows you to help more people.
In this post, we’ll answer the following:
- What’s the difference between the hero’s journey and the customer journey?
- What is the hero’s journey?
- Why is the hero’s journey important for wellness bloggers?
- How can I use the hero’s journey to outline my blog?
**And you’ll get to see the process from start to finish, while I demonstrate how to plan your content using an example of a Reiki blog for people with permanent injuries.
*If you read my last blogging tutorial, you might be wondering why this post is covering the Hero’s Journey, instead of the Customer Journey. Embarrassingly, I used the wrong term. While both are important, here’s the difference.
Hero’s Journey vs. Customer Journey
When blogging, we use the hero’s journey to understand what our prospect is experiencing, so we can metaphorically meet them where they are. We use the hero’s journey to solve our customer’s problems.
On the other hand, we use the customer journey to plan the customer’s journey through checkout. From determining they have a problem to deciding to purchase from you, your customer takes a journey.
For example, your customer journey might start with bait in Pinterest that takes your customer to your Instagram page, where she finds your quick tips. As she progresses, you inevitably sign her up as a coaching client or patient.
But, the customer journey also includes processes following the initial purchase. You’ll plan to continue providing value, and you’ll determine what your customer needs now. Then, you’ll repeat the product creation process as you scale your wellness brand.
Now, let’s get to the topic of our discussion- the hero’s journey.
What is the Hero’s Journey, and Why Does it Matter?
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, was the first book about the hero’s journey released. Campbell studied ancient myth and literature and discovered a pattern that all stories followed. The Around the Campfire YouTube channel describes the hero’s journey in its simplest form: The hero travels to retrieve something and returns.
Around the Campfire reminds us that, although some writers perceive the hero’s journey as a highly restrictive rulebook to be followed to the T, it is more of a guide for creating a story that:
- Makes readers feel comfortable with the author
- Lures the reader with familiar tropes that are ever-present in the genre.
- Surprises the reader and delights her with its twists and turns.
What is a trope?
In literature, a trope is typically a metaphor or phrase commonly used in a genre. Study.com explains tropes in this video. Check it out if you want to dig deeper into the topic of tropes. In the video, Study.com uses the trope example- “Stop and Smell the Roses.”
Around the Campfire identifies tropes as an asset to a writer. Without knowing the usual tropes in a genre, the content is missing the piece that makes the reader feel at home with the story. When a story includes familiar phrases and metaphors, the reader becomes comfortable with the content because they have repeatedly heard the term or analogy.
The three main phases in the hero’s journey.
- Departure
Starting out, everything is normal for the main character.
Then there is a call to adventure, which the character initially refuses. Enter the mentor or sage, and the protagonist crosses the threshold from known to unknown.
- Initiation
In the marketing world, this is where the transformation occurs. The main character faces challenges, including the belly of the beast- the most challenging part of the protagonist’s journey.
- Return
In the return, the main character faces the ordeal, reaps the rewards, heads back to share his story with others, and is redeemed.
Below is an example of a hero’s journey.
Buyer Persona/Hero: Pam-A woman with permanent injuries.
- Departure
Everything is normal until a permanent injury leaves Pam devastated. She can no longer live the way she is accustomed to living.
Challenges:
- Mobility is severely impaired.
- Pain medications complicate the woman’s life. She no longer feels like she thinks clearly, and she worries about the lifelong consequences of strong medicines.
- Her mental well-being is poorly affected by her new physical and cognitive limitations.
- Call to adventure
Pam meets a woman who received Reiki treatments that improved her lifestyle after suffering the devastating effects of her permanent injury. She tells Pam that her Reiki practitioner is taking new clients and suggests Pam make an appointment. However, Pam is reluctant because she is unsure if it works, and she isn’t sure if it will work for her (these are common obstacles for your clients).
- Initiation
As Pam’s friend continues to see results from her Reiki treatments, Pam falls into despair over her limitations, and she loses the sense of self she once had. Then, things get worse, and Pam is now addicted to pain medication. She is devastated and feels ashamed that it’s come to this!
She resolves to face and overcome her challenges, so she makes an appointment with her friend’s Reiki practitioner. And the seeds of her transformation are planted!
- Return
Pam continues making appointments with the Reiki practitioner, Bob. Bob works with Pam on resolving her mental and physical health problems. And he enlists her in a Reiki program for clients who are addicted to pain medications but don’t know how to live their life without them.
As a result, Pam’s mobility increases. When she first started seeing Bob, she couldn’t even do her grocery shopping. She couldn’t handle the walk around the store, and her weight restrictions made it difficult to pick up and handle items.
But, after just a couple of treatments, Pam can use her grocery shopping as her weekly long walk. Then, she adds a short walk to her schedule three times a week. Then, four, etc. The distance she can walk gradually increases, and she notices that her joints feel less stiff. And she is feeling better!
Her mental well-being improves through Bob’s prescribed meditation exercises and her new-and-improved mobility. But the most critical improvement Pam experiences is that she breaks free of her chains to prescription pain medications. She no longer needs to take them all day, and her addition of Reiki and meditation to her routine helps her work through the energies surrounding her addiction.
Once Pam sees these results, she starts spreading the word about Reiki. And the hero’s journey begins again with a new hero.
How to Use the Hero’s Journey to Answer Your Prospect’s Questions
Using the hero’s journey to answer your prospect’s questions allows you to:
- connect with them
- solve their problems
- build rapport by offering an intriguing and high-quality blog
- convert the prospect to a client.
Since most literary work applies the hero’s journey, we know that blog posts can benefit from it- especially if you use it to help your client solve her problems.
Here’s how I would align Pam’s hero’s journey with a blog. After reading this, you’ll have an inkling of how to align your buyer persona’s hero’s journeys with your blog.
- Blog Post #1: Address the challenges Pam experiences in the ‘departure’ stage.
- Write blog post #1 about mobility challenges and how to overcome them.
- Blog Post #2: Continue addressing the challenges Pam experiences in the ‘departure’ stage.
- Write blog post #2 about pain medications and their cognitive effects. Additionally, this post should offer Pam consolation for what she is experiencing and offer solutions.
- Blog Post #3: Continue addressing the challenges Pam experiences in the ‘departure’ stage.
- Write blog post #3 about the lifelong consequences of various pain medications. Be sure to include reliable sources of research and statistics in every post that supports your claims. Also, remind your readers that they should always follow their doctor’s advice, but that doesn’t mean they cannot ask the doctor for options other than medication.
- Offer solutions for two scenarios- those who want to talk to their doctor about their options and those who wish to continue taking their medications while adding unconventional therapies, like Reiki, to their treatment regimen.
- Blog Post #4: Continue addressing the challenges Pam experiences in the ‘departure’ stage.
- Write blog post #4 about Pam’s mental wellbeing. Research has repeatedly linked one’s physical health and cognition. Addressing mental well-being while addressing the other characteristics of Pam’s suffering can boost your client’s treatment efficacy. A recent study by Cronly et al. screened 147 people in Ireland for depression and anxiety to ascertain and promote well-being and positive mental health. The study’s authors found a significant correlation between wellbeing and positive mental health. They concluded that promoting wellbeing and positive mental health helps patients in many ways. One of which is improving mental and physical health and health-related quality of life.
- Plus, remember that Pam needs to know that she is not a freak- everything she is experiencing, others have also experienced. If you want to provide an even more significant impact for Pam, draft some anonymous stories about clients you have helped. Include stories that start with as many of the problems that Pam is experiencing as possible. Focus on stories with the most remarkable improvement, and your customers will feel empowered and motivated to improve.
- Blog Post #5 is where you might move on and address the ‘call to adventure’ stage.
- This is where you introduce your product or service as a solution to Pam’s problems. The best way to do this is to share a customer success story with a hero like Pam, who overcame her obstacles. Add medical research that supports your claims. Doing this allows you to address one of the common obstacles clients face– does it work?
- Blog Post #6, 7, and 8: Address the ‘call to adventure’ stage.
- Keep authoring stories of how your service addresses Pam’s problems.
- Blog Post #6: Address one of the challenges and include a success story.
- In the case of a Reiki blog, one might write about how Reiki helped someone with their pain. This allows Pam to compare herself to others and addresses another common obstacle clients face- will it work for me?
- Blog Post #7: Write about how Reiki solved someone’s mobility issues.
- Once again, use one of your customer success stories. If you are new to your practice and don’t have any customer success stories, search for stories from a reliable online source. For example, a Reiki practitioner might include a story from one of the Reiki informational sites with a high authority score.
- Blog Post #8: Write about how Reiki healed someone’s addiction to pain medications.
- Ensure to remind your client of the cognitive improvement they will make once they are not a slave to pain medication. Offer support. You can do this in your call to action.
- Blog Post #9, 10, 11, and 12 could be grouped as a series.
- In this example, you might choose to write a series about guided meditations infused with Reiki.
5 Tips and Reminders for Using the Hero’s Journey to Design Your Blog
Always have a call to action!
A call-to-action can be as simple as asking a question at the end of your blog post. Or it could be inviting your prospect to a one-on-one call. Remember, your prospect’s degree of commitment is likely to increase the longer she reads your content.
A recent study by Sánchez-Garcés et al. proved the correlation between a prospect’s number of engagements with a brand and the prospect’s probability of purchasing. Further, the study results show how the authors led their customers through the customer journey, in which social media and other online mediums were used to communicate information to the prospect regarding the product. They observed 1088 internet users in their pre-test period and 1450 users in their post-test period.
The results of the study included:
- A 36.25% efficiency increase relevant to customer conversions per session.
- A 46.43% increase in visits to the channel
The study authors concluded that using digital channels to communicate information to prospects allows brands to receive feedback throughout the customer journey. The ability to participate in two-way conversations with prospects allows marketers to nurture the prospect
Note that you will continue addressing Pam’s initial challenges until you are well into your content “season.”
Like a television show, I like to group my blog posts into seasons. I got the idea when I recorded my first podcast season. You can check out my Meditation for Marketers Podcast to see what I mean if you need a visual.
If you choose to group your blog posts into seasons, follow these tips to simplify and improve the efficacy of your content.
Each season has 12 weeks.
This allows you to create pillar content that answers the most frequently asked questions your target customer has, so you can update and upgrade it every season.
Or you can use your seasons to hyper-focus on specific topics, like meditation.
Write at least one post per week.
Since you will need to use social media as well, you could write a blog post per week and add some other form of content once a week that makes your brand stand out. For example, a podcast provides the choice of reading or listening.
The essential thing to do for the last four blog posts is to switch it up.
Stay on brand but break the monotony a bit by adding challenges or something like them to engage your audience. Challenges have been all the rage lately, and they are inherently effective at moving people through the customer journey.
Pedro Adao, deemed the King of the Modern Challenge by his peers, is one marketer who leveraged challenges for success. Once he found the best template for challenges, he started sharing it with other marketers.
I had the pleasure of watching Pedro at the 2020 Traffic and Conversion Summit, and he made a lot of good points. I urge you to check out Pedro’s bio, linked above, and explore how challenges can make or break your brand.
If, by blog post #9, you are comfortable adding podcasting or a YouTube channel to your blog, do it.
Podcasts and videos are great for clients who don’t want to read, and it gives your clients options. According to Vyond, video can increase your marketing ROI. Your prospects are watching around 16 hours of videos online every week. It captivates them, engages them, and boosts your SEO.
If you chose to add a podcast, you could use the last four episodes of your blog season to ease your audience into your podcast as an alternative to a blog post.
In conclusion, using a hero’s journey as a guide for blog creation is a great idea. It enables you to solve your customers’ problems, which builds their faith in you. The further you can get into your client’s mind, the better you will understand their hero’s journey, resulting in targeted content that gets results.
If you like this post, you should check out this post
- Blogging Tutorial: How to Use the Hero’s Journey for Blog Post Creation
- Blogger Tutorial: How to Design a Content Creation Guide for Your Blog
The above is a blogging tutorial that walks you through
- creating the map of your website using Answer the Public’s keyword research tool. That way, you get more eyes on your blog and help more people!
What’s next?
My next wellness blogger tutorial will address:
Specializing in Building Rapport with Prospects
Content and Coaching by Della 