How to Write Health Newsletter Articles

How to Write Commercial Copy

How to Write "Article Marketing" Articles





© 2010 Ugur Akinci

Doctors, hospitals, clinics, insurance and all kinds of health-care companies send health newsletters to their clients and patients to keep in touch and maintain a good business relationship. Such newsletters need a constant stream of fresh health related articles that would appeal to a layperson who is not a medical specialist. The trick is to write a 500-800 word article on a topic that would interest millions of people but yet would be easy to read and understand.

The following sample topics would make a great article for such newsletters:

• Kidney stones
• Psoriasis
• Heartburn and digestion problems
• Arthritis
• Sleep disorders
• Hazards of alcohol and smoking
• Circulation problems
• Etc.

Let’s take one of these topics for illustration purposes and develop it into a health newsletter article.

TITLE: How to Cope with Your Kidney Stones, or , Solutions to Kidney Stone Problems.

FACT: Open your piece with a “hook”, a hard fact that would generate instant interest.

For example: “Every year over 500,000 Americans end up in an emergency room with kidney stone problems.”

SYMPTOMS: Then proceed by listing the symptoms of the illness.

For example: The symptoms of kidney stone include one or more of the following:

* Colicky pain in the groin area
* Nausea and vomiting
* Blood in the urine (Hematuria)
* Pus in the urine (Pyuria)
* Burning sensation (Dysuria) when urinating and, in are occasions, passing the stones
* Difficulty in urination due to blocked urine canal

WHY? Next, try to explain why the condition arises. Try to do it in a language that anybody with a high-school education can understand.

Try this: “It’s not well known why some people develop kidney stones and others don’t. Dietary habits as well as genetics are suspect. One thing is clear however: when a person (mostly male) develops kidney stone, he or she is likely to develop other types of stones as well, like gallstones.

Another thing: doctors have found out that over 70 percent of people with a rare hereditary disease called renal tubular acidosis develop kidney stones."

PREVENTION and REMEDIES. Try to give the reader a solution, a light at the end of the tunnel, if possible at all.

For example: “Since kidney stones are calcium oxalate, some doctors suggest not eating foods rich in oxalate like rhubarb, spinach, beets, Swiss chard, wheat germ, soybean crackers, peanuts, okra, chocolate, black Indian tea, and sweet potatoes.”

“Treatment options include surgery, changing lifestyle, pulverizing them by sound waves and then passing them out through urine, and removal through urethra.”

RESOURCES: You may choose to end your article by a list of books, media products, doctors, phone numbers, web sites for the reader to pursue the inquiry further.

If you follow this general formula you can develop a specialization in this niche which will always be around as long as there are doctors and patients on planet earth.

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