How not to provide clinical care in your newsletter

When you’re writing a newsletter to build your 1:1 practice, the idea is to serve your readers and demonstrate your own work, philosophy, and/or vision so that folks who are potentially interested in working together can decide if you’re a good fit.

It’s easy to then think that you should demonstrate your training and expertise by making clinical suggestions such as “here’s who should take XXX herb/supplement and what dose to use” or “10 [herbs, supplements, foods] to consider if you have XXX condition.”

I don’t recommend doing this in most cases, for a number of reasons.

• First, you likely do not have the time or space in your newsletter to provide enough information for your readers to make an informed decision on their own. Ethically, it’s a gray area to make blanket recommendations without providing a full list of contraindications, interactions, indications, etc.

• Second, the people you’re writing to are your potential clients. These are typically not people who are trying to DIY their healthcare. The people who want to work with you are those who value and want guidance from someone with training.

• Third, it takes forever to do this well. You are not a professional newsletter-writer. Your value is not in your encyclopedic knowledge of herbs, supplements, etc. You aren’t the Natural Medicines Database or Wikipedia. Writing textbook-style essays isn’t a good use of your time and doesn’t showcase your particular approach to healing and clinical care or build relationship with your readers.

How can you avoid crossing the line and providing medical/health advice in your newsletter?

The easiest way to make sure you aren’t accidentally giving advice to your newsletter readers is to ask yourself one question after you’ve written your draft (or, better yet, before you write your draft):

⭐ What is the point of this piece? ⭐

Summarize your main point in a single sentence. What do you want the reader to take away from what you’ve written?

Idea 1: Get more granular

If your answer is: “Consider taking echinacea to support your immune system” (or something similar) then you may want to rework things. This is clinical advice and also not a point that can be made in a newsletter-sized piece of writing.

Instead of centering your thesis around a large topic and blanket clinical advice, can you illustrate a smaller, related point?

For example, if you want to write about echinacea, consider writing about variations in quality of echinacea products and why it matters. Tell a story about the time you sampled your friend’s 10-year-old echinacea tincture, which tasted like grain alcohol, and why it probably wasn’t doing anything for her.

The main idea of this revised essay might be: It’s important to buy or make high-quality preparations or you’re likely to waste your money and not notice any results.

Or, it might be: Here’s how to tell if your echinacea tincture is any good. 

Idea 2: Motivate or stimulate thought rather than educate

Another question to consider: Is your goal necessarily to educate? It’s sometimes more helpful to encourage or motivate readers, or to ask questions rather than provide answers.

If your original topic was why magnesium can be an excellent supplement (clinical advice!), could you pivot to a discussion of how it’s easy to rely on supplements and bypass more profound changes to food and lifestyle? Or discuss the fear that comes up when we read about how nutrients are being depleted in the soil, and how you navigate this both personally and with clients?

Bring it back to a) what will be of value to your readers and b) what you can reasonably accomplish in a short, mostly disposable piece of writing.

Take care,

Camille

p.s. I am very curious to hear what you think about this topic. Please share your thoughts in the comments 🖤