There are numerous mistakes nurse bloggers and medical writers make when they first start working.
Identifying these mistakes early on allows you to succeed quicker and remain motivated throughout your career.
Building a successful blog/portfolio takes lots of time and energy.
However, you’ll stand a much better chance of achieving your goals with the proper focus and approach.
This article provides a basic understanding of nurse bloggers’ and medical writers’ mistakes.
As a result, you’ll improve your blog/portfolio early on so you can focus on what’s essential and get the most value out of your time.
1. Big Words and Complex Explanations
When finding your voice as a writer, big words and complex explanations may seem like they make you sound more intelligent and convincing.
There are numerous instances where explaining topics requires complex terminology and examples.
However, you’ll want to avoid making your content more complicated when a simple explanation will suffice.
It’s crucial for nurse bloggers who educate new readers on essential topics to explain things as simple as possible.
The more you make your content easy to understand, the more likely you will attract readers and get your content read.
Readers value their time and want to grasp your concepts quickly and easily without needing a dictionary or thesaurus.
If you think back to when you were in college, the most popular teacher was the one that made studying enjoyable and easy to understand.
You also remember teachers that made studying a nightmare, especially when there were easier ways to solve various problems.
As a blogger/writer, you are the teacher, entertainer, and informant people want to follow.
As a result, you must make it easy for them to learn and understand your content.
Those working as medical writers for medical journals, publications, or research institutions determine their expectations to ensure you follow their best practices.
Some publications prefer big words and complex explications even when a more straightforward answer may sacrifice.
2. You Don’t Add Enough Value
Being a successful nurse blogger/entrepreneur or medical writer means making sure your readers value what you’ve created.
You don’t need to reinvent the content wheel, but you must find new ways to make content unique and valuable.
For example, if you write an article, “how to land your first nursing job,” you’ll notice numerous articles discussing the same topic.
Rather than just writing another article, find an angle that isn’t covered or provide unique examples other writings are missing.
You can even discuss a phone call or email interview with a recruiter to create original content and add more value.
That way, you go into more depth about getting hired than other articles that only answer common questions.
Finally, you can cover topics like how to dress, answer interview questions, or the body language to use during interviews.
It helps you create a compressive resource and stand out by adding value in numerous ways.
Find the missing gap for your readers, so they don’t have to go elsewhere to find what’s missing.
3. You Think More is Always Better
On the flip side of providing valuable content, you don’t want to create a lot of fluff or unnecessary information.
Adding value is extremely important for giving readers what they want.
However, it’s also essential to understand when content doesn’t belong in the article or on your blog.
If you add more words to an article to make it longer, you won’t improve the value of your writing.
You’ll only make it longer and more confusing.
As a result, you should remove repeated information, unnecessary fluff, and off-topic writing.
A big part of keeping readers’ attention and focus is keeping things exciting and moving forward.
Don’t write long articles simply for word count or search engines if the content doesn’t add value to the reader.
4. You Don’t Have a Particular Purpose or Goal
What’s the purpose of your nurse blog or medical writing career?
Determining your goals early on helps you decide what you’ll focus on for the next several weeks, months, or years.
And don’t worry, you can always change your goals or purpose if what you are doing isn’t working after giving it a good try.
Coming up with goals may require lots of thought, time, and energy, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
Experiment until you find your stride and grow from there.
However, give yourself sufficient time to set clear goals and focus on them before giving up and moving to the next goal.
That way, you’ll be sure it isn’t right the right fit before you change your focus or destination.
If you keep changing your goals too quickly, you may never reach maturity and figure out whether you’ll be successful.
Common Blog/Writing Goals and Purposes
- Make a living by providing education, products, or services
- Discuss topics that are meaningful to you
- Grow a community of like-minded individuals
- Provide a resource for a particular nursing career/specialty
- Create more job opportunities
- Share your story with other nurses, family, or friends
Once you have a goal in mind, you can set metrics to track your progress and pivot when necessary.
Setting goals or having a purpose is motivating, whereas a lack of a vision/destination often leads you in circles with no progress.
Even if you don’t end up where you want to be, you’ll make more progress having clear goals than if you don’t.
5. You Don’t Carefully Proofread and Edit content
It’s easy to overlook writing issues for new and experienced bloggers.
After you’ve finished writing your article, it’s crucial to proofread it at least once.
That way, you can check for grammar mistakes, confusing sentences, and content that doesn’t match the article’s purpose.
You don’t have to be perfect, but you need to ensure the content is clean, dramatically correct, and easy to understand.
Even the best bloggers make grammar mistakes, so don’t expect to catch everything.
However, you don’t want your writing to be full of them either.
You also don’t want content that starts well but goes off-topic, ends up repetitive, or feels overwritten.
Fortunately, software like the Grammarly app provides high-quality content audients to ensure you’re writing effectively and efficiently.
For bloggers, plugins like SEO Yoast also provide readability ratings to help writers produce non-complex, easy to read articles.
Finally, there are numerous online websites to improve your writing or hire proofreaders/content editors.
Accordingly, they ensure your content is high-quality, on-topic, and precise.
6. You’re a Perfectionist
Believing you have to write the perfect article before publishing it can be a massive crutch for growing your blog.
It can also lead to procrastination, continuous re-editing, and content production issues.
It’s easy to give up when you believe your blog or content will never be perfect.
Fortunately, you don’t have to write the perfect article to attract readers.
You have to add value, make it easy to understand and write about topics that interest your readers.
Consider using software like Grammarly premium and other similar tools if you’re concerned about your writing.
That way, you’ll cover the basics and ensure your content is dramatically correct with clear and concise sentences.
You can also follow content writing blogs like Copyblogger, Grammarly’s blog, Creative Writing Now, and Jane Friedman.
They provide lots of practical tips, tools, and writing advice to help you become a better writer.
Finally, word processors like Google Docs, Evernote, Ulysses, Hemingway App, and Microsoft Word make it easy to organize and track your writing progress.
Giving your blog a sense of personality goes a long way in helping you be more successful over time.
Focus on being human, not being perfect.
Not everything you write has to resonate with everyone, and every article doesn’t have to be a blockbuster success.
In the real world of blogging, most of what you do isn’t going viral or getting read by millions of people, so don’t worry if it’s not perfect.
7. False Audience Expectations
Understanding your niche, competition, and determination before blogging helps you set realistic expectations and goals.
If you write in a small niche, it’s essential to realize your blog may reach a limited audience.
Suppose your goal is to make a livable income or get hired as an expert in a particular field, but your niche has a small following.
In that case, you need to research your niche to ensure it’s possible to achieve your desired outcome in a realistic time frame.
You’ll also need to set specific goals to ensure you’ll make sufficient money or acquire that dream job with a limited readership.
That said, many businesses thrive with a dedicated audience of just 1,000 loyal fans.
If you have 1,000 loyal fans paying $100 yearly for your course, products, or services, you can make $100,000 per year.
However, if your goal is to spread ideas to a broad audience or influence the general nursing field, a small niche may not be the right fit.
Whatever your expectations are, make sure you can achieve them before putting your effort into a niche that can’t reach your goals.
One of the biggest misconceptions new nurse bloggers and medical writers make is that if you put something out, everyone will see it.
It’s unlikely others will know you exist when you first start writing.
Most bloggers and medical writers aren’t an overnight success.
It takes months or even years to grow an audience or get paid well for medical writing, and you’ll have to hustle as a nurse to get there.
Therefore, you must work hard, develop your marketing skills and find ways to attract people to your blog or writing services.
8. You Spread Yourself Thin
Using SEO, social media marketing, guest posting, and networking is very effective when done right.
However, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin when you start.
Writing is time-consuming, and managing your time is essential as a nurse blogger or medical writer.
You don’t want to overcomplicate things by marketing yourself on numerous platforms too quickly.
It’s best to develop your understanding over time and pick one or two ways to grow your audience rather than jumping into every possible strategy right away.
It reduces burnout, provides time to understand the ins and outs of different audiences, and allows you to get good at growth over time.
Once you’ve most one or two strategies, you can move on to others and continue your growth.
I love learning about SEO as a blogger and content writer.
It allows me to focus on providing valuable content to my audience and get lots of readers via Google and other search engines.
However, the most effective strategy for you depends on your content and your target audience.
As a result, you’ll want to research others in your domain to see their strategies to obtain medical writing jobs or grow their blogs.
9. You Drain Yourself Mentally
As with most things in life, you’ll find it hard to write if you aren’t having fun continually.
Therefore, keeping writing entertaining and pleasurable ensures you’ll remain engaged in the long run.
Researching, exploring, and writing new medical topics allows you to expand your knowledge and provide unique content.
However, it’s essential to focus on topics you understand well when you aren’t mentally capable of researching new subjects.
That way, you remain consistent with your writing and provide value to those you’re educating.
Most successful bloggers struggle at some point to keep writing because they’re tired of a topic or need a break.
Even if you love writing, you’ll need a break at some point to reset mentally and emotionally.
If you need to take a break from your blog, you can write a content batch and schedule content to post at specific times.
That way, your website looks continually updated when you aren’t around.
You can also hire a writer, collaborate with someone or allow “the right” people to guest post on your website.
For medical writers, consider secondary work to recharge your battery when taking a break from writing.
10. You Don’t Know When to Quit
Finally, some nurse bloggers and medical writers don’t know when to stop, reevaluate their progress, and pivot when things aren’t working.
If you write topics that don’t match your goals or resonate with your audiences, you’ll never get to where you want to go.
Whatever your goals are, make sure they align with your writing and audience.
Otherwise, you might find yourself spending more time than you need on things that won’t get you closer to your goals.
Set clear goals, reevaluate your progress, continually learn and use effective strategies to succeed.
Most importantly, learn when to quit and move on, but don’t give up.
Change your blog’s focus or your writing topics until it fits your vision and audience to achieve your goals.
For medical writers, take some low-level freelance jobs.
It helps you build your portfolio and gain recognition, so you can eventually become an expert in your field.
Also, consider taking writing courses and starting a blog to show your work, practice your skills and market yourself more effectively.