As personal blogs proliferate across the internet, one category of blog is steadily becoming more popular: the mental health blog. Many WordPress website owners are using their blogs as a tool to help their own mental health, in turn also helping others with similar issues, increasing public awareness of mental health issues, and aiding medical professionals learning more about mental health.

Many WordPress bloggers have experience with a loved one suffering from a mental illness. Blogging about these relationships and the feelings and hardships they cause is widely recognized as a healthy and productive activity, helping reduce negative feelings on the part of the blogger and ease tensions in the relationship. These blogs can range from detailed examinations of personal issues to unfiltered venting. They can also help readers who might be experiencing similar issues in their lives.
Mental health professionals have embraced blogging as a useful educational tool, as well as a potential source of research data. Widespread knowledge of mental health issues leads to greater public understanding of the challenges facing people who suffer from them, and reduces the stigma of suffering from mental illness or seeking help for it. WordPress blogs can also serve as an easily documentable record of public mental health issues, leading to advances in treating and mitigating mental illness.
Perhaps the most popular form of mental health blogging is personal journals about one’s own experience with mental illness. WordPress blogs can be a valuable tool for self reflection, helping a person either accept their challenges or understand that they need to seek help. Multiple studies have shown strong evidence that short-term writing about emotions can diminish anxiety, increase immune responses, and lessen the impact of sleep disorders. Long term blogging is shown to even out blood pressure, reduce inflammation that leads to arthritis and asthma, and significantly reduce racing thoughts and symptoms of depression. Many therapists encourage their clients to keep a blog, which makes it easy for the therapist to follow the patients’ writing and more quickly and accurately diagnose and assist the patient. 

Blogging also has many social benefits, which lead to better mental health. Reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and improved understanding of personal issues are all observable effects of keeping a personal mental health WordPress blog. Blogging about physical health issues can also help writers connect to other people with similar issues, leading to an improved sense of community and access to medical resources and information.

There are some potential downfalls to using a blog as a mental health journal. Public commentary can be useful, but it is also potentially abusive or harmful. It is important to recognize that a blog is not a complete substitute for therapy with a professional, just a useful accessory. There are also negative communities across the blogging sphere that can amplify negative thoughts and harmful ideation, or even provide dangerous techniques that follow some mental illnesses. It is important to seek professional help with any severe condition.

Blogging about mental health issues is a useful tool from many angles. Shared experience helps both the writer and the reader, and simple safety guidelines coupled with professional guidance can result in a valuable asset for the individual and society as a whole.

There are hundreds of millions of blogs on the internet, so directing traffic to yours can seem like an impossible task.  Lack of traffic can make a blog seem like a waste of time. There are, however, many tried and tested methods for significantly increasing the exposure of your WordPress blog. The time you spend promoting your blog should be at least equal to the time spent writing it, if not considerably more.

Keyword optimization is the paramount concern in getting more traffic to your site. WordPress blogs can use keywords to ensure that the major search engines, such as Google, return their site as a result when users search for terms related to the subject of your blogs. Identify words and phrases that are relevant to your audience, relatively uncommon, and then use them frequently throughout your blog, including in the header and descriptive parts. 

Featuring a guest blog post from a peer is an excellent boost to both bloggers. Seek guest blogs and write blogs for other WordPress sites to engage your overlapping audiences and build your reputation in your field. Social media is a good aid for finding people to share posts with. Start by leaving comments on others’ blogs to establish a relationship before contacting other authors about possible guest blogs.

Social media is also an excellent way to promote your blogs for free. Regularly linking your blog to your social media profile and posting about new blogs are useful ways to attract new viewers. Engaging with your peers’ posts is a good way to build professional friendships that can increase your professional reputation and help direct more people to your own work. Facebook groups are a good way to find new ideas and material for your blog. Quora is also useful as a source of blogging material relevant to your WordPress website and as a tool for finding others in your professional community. Billions of people visit social platforms every day, it’s easy to capture some of that traffic for yourself.

Posting new blogs on a frequent and consistent schedule is key to maintaining readership. Nobody likes an abandoned blog, or one that feels inconsistent. Regularly having new content  will keep users coming back and engaging with the contents of your WordPress website on a continual basis. It’s also important to interact with readers in the comments section of your blog, which can serve as a useful promotion (people will return much more often to a blog where they are involved in a conversation) and answer any questions users might have about your work. 

Holding a contest or giveaway is a great way to push a large volume of traffic to your website. People love the idea of competing on the internet, and the possibility of getting something free can drive impressive numbers of people to your WordPress site. Decide on a prize (even if it’s just bragging rights), establish the rules and conditions, set a deadline, and then use the techniques above to publicize your contest or giveaway. 

WordPress is an excellent platform for your blog, and using easy and free promotional methods like these can grow your blog (and the impact it has on your website) quickly. Clockpunk Studios looks forward to helping you grow your blog and brand.

When you are deciding what you want your WordPress website to look like, it can be helpful to know about the skills and disciplines that go into visual design. Graphic design, UI design, and Visual design are all commonly used terms describing the process of website building. Here I will examine the actual definitions of these terms as used in the industry, and how they influence the success of your WordPress website

Graphic designers have been around since the beginnings of commercial publishing and print media. Traditionally, they worked with printed promotional materials, such as brochures, business cards, and advertising posters. As digital media has expanded, the role of the graphic designer has also grown to include digital assets such as logo design, creating interface icons, and, of course, website design. Graphic designers have a solid background in visual art skills, such as color theory, visual composition, and typography. They are also responsible for creating visual assets, such as logos, and ensuring that those assets are consistent across a brand. Graphic designers who work with WordPress are also skilled at applying these methods and practices to the design of WordPress sites.

UI, or User Interface, describes the overall look, feel and functionality of the website as it is experienced by the user. All the skills of a Graphic Designer are needed. A UI Designer is responsible for selecting colors, applying fonts and typeface, and arranging website and menu layouts. They create an online experience that is both aesthetically pleasing and functionally easy to navigate. The UI Designer works on a more technical level than Graphic Designers, and requires extensive coding knowledge to translate the visual medium into a digital product. Specialists in WordPress UI design can utilize the framework of WordPress to very quickly produce a website that attracts users and engages them with its contents, helping your brand grow.

A Visual Designer incorporates many aspects of Graphic Design and UI Design, but is more responsible for overall brand management and communicating the concepts and focus of a brand. Visual Design is a newer concept in the world of publishing, and is rarely associated with print media. Web Design is a subset of Visual Design that is focused solely on website management and design. A skilled Web Designer can create a website for you that clearly expresses the message you want to communicate, and can work with you to effectively build a WordPress site that will draw in your users and keep them immersed. 

Using a professional WordPress crew like ClockPunk Studios gives you access to in-house talent that can ensure the quality and reliability of your website. Experienced Graphic Designers, UI Designers and Web Designers can translate your vision into a concrete product that can attract new customers or readers, market products to a much wider audience, and firmly establish a public brand. Utilizing a professional is a necessary step in having a professional quality web presence, which in the modern world is needed for any business or author.