Despite their recent growth in popularity because of people’s need to find an alternative to modern healthcare, people still regard homeopathy and holistic practices with suspicion.
However, holistic medicine has been practiced in Eastern cultures for millennia with great success. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, believed in holistic practices and treating the whole person. True, he also tasted his patients’ urine to aid in diagnosis and believed in the balance of bodily humours theory of medicine, but he was an observant and caring physician.
For practitioners of yoga, psychotherapy, aromatherapy, energy therapy, massage, Chinese traditional medicine, and chiropractic therapy, among others, breaking down the walls of suspicion can be hard.
The good news is that you can use the Internet as your platform to relay your message and exponentially expand your reach.
Here are some writing tips to help boost your credibility:
1. Offer some proof. It doesn’t have to be hard evidence because natural medicine and homeopathy don’t really have a mountain of proof. But anecdotal evidence and testimonials would be a good start.
2. Don’t fabricate facts. No matter how tempting it is, the moment people discover that you are manufacturing facts out of thin air, your credibility is destroyed. Nobody will believe you anymore.
3. Be purposeful with your words. One trick is to always use the active voice when writing—“Holistic doctors believe”, not “It is believed by holistic doctors”. This will not only make your sentences more concise, but it will also make you seem authoritative. This also helps avoid miscommunications and relay your message more clearly.
4. Watch your grammar and those typos. Let’s face it, we judge people’s intelligence by their command of the language. If your blogs are riddled with errors and grammatical mistakes, you have less credibility even if you know what you are blogging about.
5. Join community forums. Write reviews for and share your blog in community forums and answer questions from members clearly, succinctly, and politely. Invite them to your website if they want to learn more. Avoid being pushy, especially if you receive some opposition, and don’t be defensive if people don’t believe you right away or call you names. You are not there to pick a fight.
6. Practice, practice, practice. This is the only way to improve your writing skills. Join writing workshops if you like. With enough experience, you will find your voice. If your skills aren’t up to it, hire a ghostwriter or open your blog to guest submissions. Ultimately, you must hone your skills to make your advocacy more sustainable.
If you are really serious about promoting holistic practices and building your credibility, you must do the grind. This means that when you read articles on natural medicine, critique their work: the words they use, the structure of their sentences, how the article is organized, and if there are any factual errors.
Be as hard on your own blog posts before you publish. Don’t give skeptics and naysayers an easy excuse to dismiss your arguments out-of-hand.