When Health Consulting Businesses are Legally Responsible

One thing the internet is infamous for is being a source of advice for our health and well-being.

It doesn’t matter where we turn there is someone with a website telling us what to do to lose weight, slow down ageing or treat our illnesses.

We all do it. We aren’t feeling well so we type our symptoms into “Dr. Google” and voila, thousands of results telling us we have everything from a common cold to 6 months to live. We then take our results in hand to our doctor and tell him what we have.

Sadly, professionals in the health care industry, doctors, therapists, dieticians and nutritionists all have an everyday fight with misinformation that is provided on the internet.

If you are a blogger and have some experience with health-related issues, you may want to share this information with the world.

Or, you may be a professional with some education on certain health-related subjects and want to use that information to boost your business online.

Either way, you have to be very careful to follow the rules when it comes to providing health and wellness website information and advice to the masses.

Legal Responsibilities for Providing Health-Related Advice

So what are the legal issues for health consulting and coaching businesses when providing health-related information on a website?

There have been more than a few lawsuits in past years that have stemmed from sharing of health and diet advice with others on the internet.

In a recent lawsuit in North Carolina, a blogger changed his life and had experience with managing his Type 1 diabetes through use of the Paleo diet. He blogged about his efforts and when successful, he took his blogging a step further and began to share his meal plans and exercise regimens.

Eventually, he began providing one on one sessions to advise his readers in the ways of his experience for a fee.

In North Carolina, there is a misdemeanor law that makes it unlawful to practice dietetics or nutrition without a license. This blogger was charged with breaking this law and North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is now threatening him with prison.

Research All Governing Bodies’ Rules & Regulations

When providing health and wellness information online, you must ensure you are following all the rules.

Each governing body has separate rules on what information you can and cannot advise the public with regarding their health.

Canada and the United States both have specific federal laws and then each province and state also have their own separate laws.

If you are going to provide information, then you must look up those laws according to where you live and where you are doing business from. And to take it even a step further, you then you have to consider the audience you are targeting.

A good guideline to follow if you are providing information on your health-related website is to ask yourself, are you being specific to a particular personal health situation. The blogger in the North Carolina lawsuit was doing OK with providing his personal experiences with the Paleo diet.

His suggestions for exercise regimens or providing his personal diet plans on his health and nutrition website may even have been OK with the law but as soon as he started consulting one-on-one with individuals and providing advice, he was beyond sharing his personal experience and fell into the realm of providing medical expertise in an area where he was not legally certified to engage in.

Remember, giving your opinion about a health-related subject or telling about your specific experience is one thing but if you are claiming to be an expert in anything on your health and nutrition website, you could be held accountable by the boards who are responsible for governing the public education on the subject and run into legal issues.

You must not in any way claim or pose as something you are not if you are going to provide reliable health information.

If you are handing out health or wellness advice you need to be very clear about what your education and expertise are and also be very careful of the legal issues surrounding any advice you do give.

This is where working with a professional web development firm could help steer you in the right direction and ensure you are not posting anything that could cause you legal problems while operating your business. Consulting a lawyer who is well versed in these matters would also be very prudent.

There are dozens of popular e-commerce platforms to build an online store and it makes choosing the best one for your website difficult. I work in an e-commerce web design company in Chennai, and I have often seen many clients who want to build their online store on the particular platform even though it may not be the best for them.

The reason the clients stick to one platform is they might have read or heard somewhere that particular platform is the best compared to others.

But the truth is there is no single best e-commerce platform. The best one would vary based on the unique requirements of the final websites.

In this article, I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of some popular e-commerce platforms that we use in our agency. The description of why we each platform will help you choose the best one for you.

WordPress + WooCommerce

We can integrate online stores to WordPress websites using the WooCommerce plugin. Since WordPress is the most widely used CMS for building websites, WooCommerce also became a popular choice among e-commerce platforms.

The benefit of WooCommerce is that both WordPress and WooCommerce are available for free and we don’t have to pay for that.

When we use WooCommerce, we get all the benefits of WordPress.

Moreover, since most businesses websites are already on WordPress, we can integrate an e-store to it easily which helps to reduce a lot of development cost.

The demerit of the platform is that its features and functionalities are not the best. There are other platforms offering more advanced e-commerce options.

Shopify

Shopify made building e-commerce websites a lot easier. Anyone can set up a nice online store even without technical knowledge.

The benefit of this platform is that it is extremely user-friendly. Moreover, it is a paid platform, so we get dedicated support.

The demerit of the platform is that is very expensive. At the same time, customization is minimal.

Magento

This is the platform we use for most e-commerce websites. It allows building custom e-commerce solutions with advanced functionalities.

We can build highly powerful e-commerce websites with high end functionalities and features. Magento is the best option when it comes to advanced features.

Moreover, Magento is highly flexible which makes it easier to build highly customized e-commerce websites. This is why even the best e-commerce development company in Chennai prefers Magento platform.

Content Marketing

In this digital age, content marketing has become one of the most powerful tools for connecting with your targeted customers. Inbound marketing combines search, and social media services to exhibit your insight so as to draw more audience to your website. Top enterprise brands rely on content marketing agencies for their marketing strategies to execute on a global stage and stay organized.

Many content marketing companies have sprouted up the marketing strategies to help brands educate and earn the trust of the audience. That’s why more than 80% digital marketing professionals advise business owners for strategic marketing in the year 2017 that will help increase sales and growth.

Why Content Marketing Strategy.

• Less expensive
• Enhance brand awareness
• Generate traffic to your website

Content marketing is a process that requires regular, consistent delivery of focused content to increase your visibility and demonstrate your expertise. It’s important to document your marketing strategy that should include your goals, research, tactics, and metrics to get useful results.

Below there are some points to go through that will make your content as the center of your digital marketing strategy.

1) Make an authentic brand story

Create content about your product or services that meet your customer interests, needs, and expectations. It is the most important part of content marketing strategy that helps to connect with your potential clients.

A brand story must be real, authentic, and honest that describes your company existence, product description, brand names, titles, and taglines.

If you don’t have a brand book or formal rules for preparing a brand story, begin by looking into similar brands over the Internet.

2) Build brand awareness

You can build brand awareness by highlighting the features and benefits of your product through marketing contents and promoting it on social media sites and other business sites.

Writing fresh contents on your website or blog, creating infographics content, videos, animations, etc. are some of the practical ways that can drive-in traffic or convert the visitors on your site.

3) Effective content marketing formats

While creating content, you should know the topic to write, and the format to use for business success. The content marketing formats contain the full range of contents used to resolve the customer issues at each stage with detailed information.

Some of the marketing formats like blog posts, articles, reviews, video contents, newsletters, whitepapers, eBooks, etc. are very helpful in attracting new customers and closing leads.

4) Monitor your sales performance

Without appropriately measuring outcomes, you can’t know whether your marketing strategy for content is working. You can’t see the mix-ups, and can’t even recognize your chances.

There are several content marketing metrics to focus on like website traffic, links, likes, shares, comments, sign-up, downloads and lead conversion.

By measuring the right metrics on-and off-site content, you can easily set your objectives and desires and see the content marketing results.

5) Paid Content Promotion

Paid advertising platforms allow you to promote the content to a particular group of audience, qualified drive-in traffic, and leads, and develop your customer base. Paid ads are expensive and help you generate high ROI.

Some of the paid advertising methods that used for promoting contents are Facebook advertising, Google AdWords, LinkedIn, Twitter, email newsletters, events, etc.

Promoting your content via paid media or ads can help the targeted audience to notice your contents that result in better conversions.

Conclusion

Marketing will see a change towards being more customer centric rather than conceptual. People are getting hammered thousands of times a day by marketing now, and we need to make it accurate and relevant for them to take interest as well as actions. We are looking to find the niche market our customers are in rather than focusing on only what we do. These are some of the content marketing strategies that can help your online business presence.

The best internet marketing company will know the current digital trends which are being used to achieve online success. Whether you are a new start up company or a large corporation which has been running for years, you need to know the latest digital trends which can help you see results in the coming months, just in time to reach your targets for the end of the year.

That being said, if you are handling your own online marketing campaign, then you will want to have ample time on your hands along with good internet marketing knowledge, so that you can achieve the best results. Remember an internet marketing company will have a team of professionals who do this type of work daily, which means that they have the knowledge and they are updated on the latest trends, so you always receive a current and up to date service that you can trust.

The first thing you are going to want to concentrate on is your content. Your content should be rich, brimming with valuable information and provide your readers with the information that they need to know in order to make a purchase, whether you are selling a product or service. Your content should be carefully thought out, using the respective keywords or key phrases to ensure you reach your audience, to increase your ranking and enjoy continued success moving forward.

Ideally have your content written by a professional. The best internet marketing companies have their own writing teams who can write your web pages, your articles, press releases and even your blogs. They will provide you with rich content that you can trust, aimed at your audience to ensure that they get the information that they need to make an informed decision.

Data is your best friend, so rely on the data available to you. You should be conducting keyword research, competitor research and customer research on a regular basis. This will help you understand what your clients are searching for along with the keywords or key phrases they are using. Using the data readily available will help you structure your campaign to achieve the best end result.

You will want to focus some of your efforts on your mobile users. Mobile searches and purchases has increased exponentially over the past few years with more people using smart phones and tablets than every before. Though bear in mind that a traditional website is not going to be easy for a mobile user to search, in fact it can be rather frustrating. Therefore you are going to want to have a mobile website that will increase your ranking in search results and provide a more enjoyable experience for your clients.

Social media is another big thing to focus on. The social media platforms today enable you to regularly engage with your customer base, you can reach and educate your audience and you can ensure you remain in the forefront of their minds. That being said, social media can be time consuming, so also bear this in mind. You will want to do Facebook updates a couple of times a day and Tweets more than that, this exclusive Pinterest, YouTube and other platforms which are ready to help you grow your business.

Search engine optimization must never be ignored and should be used in everything you do online. Ask the best internet marketing companies and they will tell you that SEO is something used on your web pages in your blogs, your YouTube videos, your social media marketing and more.