American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the professional blogger's program?

AAPH provides a platform for our members, who are professional hypnotherapists, to have their own blogs. Our blogging system is easy to use and free to AAPH members. Your blog posts will also appear on the AAPH web site, so your writing will get wide exposure, indexed by Google, and more.

Why should I blog?

Blogging has quickly become the 21st century way to create and maintain relationships with current and potential clients. It gives readers a chance to "get to know you" while learning things that are valuable to them.

Ever wonder how to keep clients coming back for more? A blog is a perfect way to be in touch with your clients on their schedule. A past client who finds your blog interesting will remember you more readily when he or she is interested in new sessions or reinforcement and follow-up.

Would you like an effective way to gain trust and rapport with new potential clients even before you meet them? A blog is a fabulous method. Readers can get many of their questions answered by reading your blog. They also get a feel for the kind of person you are. It is well-proven that if someone has a choice between a service provider they feel they know and service provider they don't know anything about, they will choose the provider they know more about.

It is common for regular readers of blogs to report that they feel they know the blog author, even if they have never met. Blogs create feelings of connection and comfort. They are very effective way to attract new clients and keep in touch with past clients.

What should I blog about?

Blog posts should be short and to the point. Generally, somewhere between 100 and 1000 words is fine. The first dozen or so posts on your blog can be the bits from your standard introduction speech about hypnotherapy and sessions. Answer the same questions and give the same information you would to a new client, focusing on one question at a time.

Next, you may consider writing posts about your specialty. If you specialize in past life regression, for example, you may want to do five or ten posts about the common questions about PLR, or a few of your success stories, or stories about your own experiences in PLR. You can also recommend books, movies, or web sites and videos on the topic. Remember, it's best to be more than 100 words but less than 1000, and only have one focus topic item per post.

You can post your comments on news or sports items (having to do with hypnotherapy), your own new programs and research, other self-help topics related to or supported by hypnotherapy (and how), and any other topics related to hypnotherapy and your services.

In general, blog readers will return again and again to a blog that provides them with interesting, relevant information.

What should I not blog about?

Of course, never blog about clients in any identifiable way. And avoid negativity - keep your posts positive. Avoid shilling, even for your own web site or book. If people perceive that you are blogging as an advertising channel, they won't return.

A professional blog isn't at all like a diary or personal blog. Clients aren't interested in what you had for lunch, who you are dating, or which political candidate you support. They want to know about the topic of the blog: hypnotherapy and your practices of it. Keep things on that topic.

When talking about current events, it is best to be of the "observe and notice" perspective rather than delving into your feelings of the moment. For example, you might feel upset and personally affected by a tragedy, but commenting on your feelings about it with no meta-view or relationship to hypnotherapy makes it an unprofessional post.

Something to keep in mind about blog posts is that they will be recorded on the Internet forever. You won't be able to take them back or delete them (after Google scans them, for example, they are stored on Google's servers, which you can't edit). So don't write about transitory things that won't age well (like your feelings of the moment, politics, etc.) Instead, post things that will be good "evergreen" content: things that will make sense and be attractive to new readers two years from now as well as your clients from last year.

Professional blogging is a skill, and it isn't easy sometimes. Nothing worthwhile is easy. You can learn about specific professional blogging methods from many books, classes and web sites, and AAPH will be offering more materials on this in the future.

Any tips on how to really captivate people and gain high readership with my blog?

Remember that people are story-machines. We love stories. If you write each blog post as a little story, you'll find people can really relate and remember it.

How often should I blog?

Regular blog posting is powerful in a number of ways: it gains you higher rankings in search engines, it keeps your readers in touch and engaged, it establishes you as a reliable industry leader (at least in your area) and it means that over time, your blog will appear in more search engine results.

Posting a new blog entry once a week is a great pace for professional blogging. It's easy to maintain, and yet you won't run out of topics too quickly. If you miss a week here and there, it's okay. It's also easy to post anytime during the week, but you may want to set aside a specific day of the week for your posts, just to keep you in the habit and on the calendar.

If you are especially excited about a topic, or things are really flowing and you find yourself writing enough for three blog posts one day, don't try to post them all at once - save some of them on your computer and use them in the weeks ahead. It's more important to be regular than it is to post volumes of material. Save a few entries for those weeks when you can't think of something to write.

How long will all this take?

In the first month or so, it may take you as long as two hours to write your blog entry of 1,000 words or less. As you get used to it, though, and practice, you'll find that a usual entry will take maybe around 30 minutes.

30 minutes a week to establish a widely-searchable web presence, create an identity as a friendly, knowledgeable and competent professional, and to connect with new potential clients as well as previous clients is a pretty good deal. It is one of the most important business skills and practices of the new information age.

How do I get started?

Under your member's menu in the left panel, you'll see a link: "New Blog Post." Click that. Fill in the title and the body text of your entry and click "Submit." You've just blogged!

One good blogging practice you might want to adapt is to write your blog entries in a word processor and save it to your hard drive. This serves several purposes: it allows you to spell-check your entry before you post it, and it provides you with a back-up copy of your post in case you experience an Internet glitch while posting. This technique also makes it easy for you to post the same blog entry on blogs in other places. (Some people have more than one blog, or you might want to post it on a social network you use, etc.)

Your AAPH blog entries will appear on your profile page, so when people search our directory to find you, they can also read what you've written. Blog posts will also, for a time, show up on the front page of AAPH, in reverse chronological order, and all member's blog posts will show there.

(Your web account must have "Member" status in order for the "New Blog Post" option to show up. If you are a current member and you don't see this option, contact us at the AAPH offices and we'll get your account status updated.)