Ultimate Guide To Mindfulness, Spiritual & Yoga Content Writing

These are my top tips for the best mindfulness, spiritual and yoga content writing, based on my experience as a freelance writer for hire.

If you’re interested in working with a yoga writer for hire, contact me via the menu on this site. I would love to get to know about you and your work so I can deliver exceptional writing that meets your objectives.

Over the years, many people have asked me for my top writing tips. And I would love to share them with you.

As a yoga marketing expert, I’ve worked in so many different forms of writing:

• Online yoga copywriting and yoga website copywriting such as for blog posts
• WordPress
• Business letters
• Article writing
• Sales copywriting
• Marketing copywriting
• SEO copywriting
• Whitepapers and business reports
• Email newsletters
• Direct marketing campaigns
• Social media posts

But what I’ve learned as a a freelance spiritual writer for hire is that there are some rules of writing that apply to absolutely everything.

Whether you choose to hire a freelance copywriter or write your own copy, there are rules for effective writing that apply every time. And even though I’ve been hired as a freelance writer for everything from business writing to blog writing to writing obituaries, these rules always remain the same.

When you know the rules for effective writing you can nail that sales copy, online copy, email newsletter copy, or whatever it is you’re working on.

In this tutorial I’ll share the most important writing techniques I’ve used as a freelance yoga and mindfulness writer for hire in Hamilton ON—techniques you can use to write effectively every time.

My Top 15 Tips As A Freelance Yoga Content Writer In

As a professional writer for the yoga industry (as well as an editor and proofreader) the following techniques and strategies help me to perfect every piece of writing I work on.

#1: Have a clear message and meaning

Listen. This is the single most important writing tip: have a message and a meaning.

Through my years as a yoga writer for hire, I’ve found that the very best thing you can do for your writing is to decide very clearly what it is you’re writing about. Your message and meaning should be immediately obvious.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s for article writing, blog writing, or sales writing, you need a clear and concise message.

As a yoga writer for hire the first thing I always ask is: What’s the point?

What’s the meaning of this writing?

Write your message and meaning at the top of your document or notepad. Stick to it. And if you are hiring a freelance writer, make sure they know the end purpose of the writing before they start working on it.

The more you nail-down your message before you start to write, the better your writing will be.

Regardless of what type of writing you’re doing, it has to have a purpose.

Here’s what to do:

1. Write down the topic you’re covering
2. Write down why this piece of writing matters to you
3. Write down the points you must communicate (the bare-bones details)
4. Write down the benefits your reader will get from reading your writing
5. Write down why this piece of yoga copywriting is different to other pieces on the same theme
6. Write a list of ways you will make your writing achieve its purpose.

Here’s an example of this writing tip in action.

Let’s say you want to write a direct marketing campaign for you yoga studio.

1. We’re writing about the yoga studio
2. This writing matters because it will make people call the company to book a yoga lesson
3. This direct marketing campaign must show the phone number, the company name, and tell people that they can save money on their bills.
4. This piece will benefit the reader by making them aware of a potential problem  (e.g. that they are practising yoga incorrectly).
5. This piece of writing is different to everything else because it makes yoga look more fun / more spiritual etc.
6. This writing will achieve its aim by being: funny, concise, showing the vital information very clearly, and having a design that immediately draws attention.

Writing Rule #2.  Always remember your responsibilities as a writer

Different types of writing create different responsibilities for the writer. That’s one thing I’ve definitely learned as a yog content writer for hire.

It’s your job to know what these responsibilities are.

For me as a yoga freelance writer for hire, my main responsibility is to you, the client.

If you’re writing articles yourself (not hiring a professional writer to do it),  then you will still have certain responsibilities.

Consider:

• If you’re writing an industry white paper, your responsibility is to write factually and to substantiate your every claim (e.g. when writing about yoga you can refer to articles on the National Institute of Health and yoga masters like Patanjali)
• If you’re writing a novel or poetry, your responsibility is to have a meaning to your work and to have the guts to say something heartfelt even if it is risky.
• If you’re doing online copywriting, your responsibility as a copywriter is to write for Google (SEO) and for your audience at the same time.

You must know what your responsibilities are as a writer, and you must stick to them. That means that if you’re doing creative writing you must say something personal and meaningful because the style of writing demands it, even if you would never say anything personal in a white paper.

When you hire a freelance writer, you should discuss their responsibilities with them before they start working.

Writing Rule #3: Speak your audience’s language  

Writing means reading. And reading means an audience. In essence, good writing is writing that communicates effectively to the reader. Naturally you’re writing yoga articles for other yogis or for people who might be interested in taking yoga lessons.

One of the first things I ask myself as a yoga writer for hire is: Who’s the audience?

Take a moment to consider.

If you’re writing articles for a science magazine (for instance) you will need to use formal writing because that’s the style that will communicate effectively with the audience. But what if you’re writing a speech to be given to under-educated people? Then you will need to write in a very simple fashion.

Too many writers (even professional freelance writers) make a mistake here. Writers have a nasty habit of forcing their intellect down their audience’s throat (this is particularly true of amateur writers). They use long, complicated, technical terms that many people do not understand. They use unnecessarily long sentences and paragraphs. They drown their readers in superfluous facts and details. Then they wonder why no one read past the first page.

Sure, if you’re doing article writing and your audience is a group of scholars, be scholarly.

Imagine if you’re writing articles to kids, or to readers for whom English is a second language, or readers who simply do not have very broad vocabularies. Then your writing will be worthless.

Today there is also the possibility that part of your audience will be a robot: namely, Google.

When writing for the internet, part of the “audience” is the group of spiders that crawl your website. Sure, these aren’t technically readers, but they can be thought of as such. To succeed online you will need to speak both your human audience’s language, and the language of bots (SEO).

I find today as a yoga and mindfulness writer for hire, I’m constantly speaking to both people and machines (via SEO).

Write to your audience. Period.

• To learn more about this I recommend reading Act-On’s guide.

Writing Rule #4: When it comes to your first draft, just get it written 

Some people are surprised when the professional freelance writer they hire is able to spit out a first draft in a day. Truth is, the freelance writer knows a secret. Since I became a spiritual for hire I’ve written thousands of first drafts. And I always follow the same principle.

When you’re writing your first draft, the only thing that matters is that you get it written. Too many writers get bogged down in their first draft because they wrongly thing it has to be perfect. Newsflash: There’s a reason it’s called a first draft. Just get it written. Go nuts.

As a freelance yoga writer, when I’m hired I get the first draft done day one, two at the latest. The rest is editing.

Sit down at your computer and type, even if what you are typing seems like garbage. 90% of writing is editing. All that matters in the first draft is that you get the core ideas, arguments, facts and points onto the page. The real artistry happens thereafter.

Writing Rule #5: Lovingly edit your yoga content

Every professional freelance writer knows that good writing is good editing. The more you edit, the better your writing will be.

When it comes to editing yoga content you should feel free to be brutal with your own work.

Here are a few tips for editing:

• Stick to your argument / premise
• Cut long sentences in two
• Replace overly complicated words with simpler ones
• Use adverbs sparingly
• Delete unnecessary punctuation
• Turn negatives into positives
• Check for personality
• Reduce prepositions
• Use strong verbs
• Use active voice, not passive voice
• Remember, people are “who” and objects are “that”
• Which uses commas, that doesn’t
• Never mistake there, they’re and their
• Don’t split infinitives
• Know your its from your it’s
• Please! Stop! Using! Exclamation! Marks! So! Much!

Writing Rule #6: Organise your thoughts

Writing yoga content is basically the orchestration of thoughts on paper. Whenever you write, you are taking ideas, thoughts, facts, and stories and communicating them in an organized way on the page.

The easiest way to do this is to organize your thoughts before you write that spiritual blog post.

The more you understand your thoughts (or the arguments, ideas, facts and opinions of the piece) the better your writing will be—and the easier it will be to write.

Ways to do this include:

• Using apps like Evernote
• Using post-it-notes
• Writing your first draft then cutting it up and organizing it into sections
• Organize your thoughts and arguments by themes and use these as headings / subheadings

This is especially true for long-form writing. For instance, when writing articles or writing blog posts of several thousand words, you will save a great deal of time by organising your thoughts.

As a spiritual content producer, post-it-note sales in my city have basically gone through the roof just off of me alone.

Writing Rule #7: Know your writer personality

Readers subconsciously analyze the writer’s personality as they read. This is true of all writing. Sure, when writing novels and poetry the personality is inherent. But article writing and blog writing also have personality. Even if you’re writing a technical interpretation of the Yoga Sutras, your article will still have a personality.

When you hire a freelance writer you must make sure they understand the personality required.

As a meditation writer for hire, one of the first things I ask myself when working on you (my clients’) writing is this: what personality am I communicating?

What does your  writing say about your personality and (for marketing) the personality of your yoga studio? Read through your writing and check  it is communicating the ideal personality for you, your yoga studio, and your company.

Remember, your readers, customers, and clients will judge you and your yoga studio on your writing, so it is imperative that your writing communicate the appropriate personality.

This is especially true when copywriting marketing assets such as direct marketing campaigns, email campaigns and social media posts. Here, you are intentionally creating a relationship with your readers, and the strength of that relationship will be determined largely by how your brand personality matches the demographics and psychographics of your audience.

If you hire a writer for marketing or sales, make sure they understand your brand personality before they start working.

• I recommend Untamed’s guide for learning to write with personality.

Writing Rule #8: Simplify, do not overcomplicate 

Want to know the number one way novice writers let themselves down? They try to sound super-intelligent and come across stuffy.

This is even true of the freelance writers you hire for their professional writing services: they still make this cardinal sin.

The chief cause of this is using unnecessarily complicated words. Some writers call an animal by its Latin name, or use words like “expeditious” instead of “fast”.  This does not make the writer sound intelligent, just comical and superficial.

Cut out needlessly long words.

One of George Orwell’s tips for writing is “never use a complicated word when a simple one will do”. Good advice.  Of course, if you’re writing to an audience of scholars whose number one passion in life is the Oxford Dictionary, you can ignore this tip. Otherwise, stick to it.

This same advice also applies to sentences, paragraphs, arguments and other areas of writing copy.

Use these tips to write in a simple, effective way:

• Cut short sentences in half
• Avoid unnecessary technical terms (unless writing exclusively to readers who are experts in the subject)
• Choose shorter words over longer ones
• Write your arguments in a simple and coherent fashion
• Write in the way your audience speaks (unless it is technical writing)
• Use headings and subheadings so your content is easy to scan
• Consider a contents page, if that’s an option for the type of writing you’re working on
• Get to the point

Want to work with a Hamilton Ontario writer for hire? Contact me today

Writing Rule #9: Write scannable content

Create writing that is easy to scan. Online this is especially important. Your yoga blog content should be easy to scan.

There is a particular way in which people scan, and you should take advantage of this.

The simple way to do this is like so: Put all important information at the beginning or end of a sentence, paragraph, and of the overall piece of writing.

Example:

“Write scannable text because it is easier to read”

Instead of:

“Because it’s easier to read scannable text, write it that way.”

Important information should be placed:

• At the beginning of the writing
• At the end of the writing
• At the beginning of the paragraph
• At the end of the paragraph
• At the beginning of a sentence
• At the end of a sentence
• Alternatively, place important information in standout sections, such as in graphics or bullet-points.

These writing tips will help readers. And they are particularly important when writing a blog post.

Writing Rule #10: Research everything 

By researching everything beforehand, and by writing an exhaustive list of facts, figures, data, and so on, you will have so much valuable information that your writing will be all but guaranteed to succeed.

Go nuts researching.

This is as true for creative writing as it is for a whitepaper. Of course, your business whitepapers need facts, but so do other types of writing, such as novels (for instance, if your story is set in a specific city you will need to research that city before you write).

The more research you have going in to the project, the deeper your writing will be.

Note that when hiring a freelance writer for academic work (such as health articles or lengthy, niche-specific blog posts) it is completely reasonable for them to ask for a research fee to cover the time they spend researching the subject.

Writing Rule #11:  Read it out loud 

Something fascinating happens when you read your writing out loud: it becomes real.

By reading out loud we can hear our writing in the same way reader would hear it when they read. This is a classic tip that you may have heard about at school, and it works.

Try reading your writing out loud and see if you notice anything different about it that you didn’t notice previously.

It is easier to find grammatical and spelling errors while reading out loud, and it is easier to hear the personality of the writing too.

No matter what type of writing you’re working on, read it out loud. Of course, this is doubly true if you are writing a speech.

If you do not intend to hire a professional writer, make sure you do this tip for everything you write.

Writing Rule #12: Make everything positive and active 

Here’s a writing technique that will give your writing personality: make it positive and active. This is important for most topics but is especially important when writing yoga content, spiritual content, and meditation content, because readers in these niches want to feel positive.

Also remember that writing communicates personality. You want your meditation studio or yoga studio to sound positive so it looks like your brand have a positive personality.  One way to do this is by using active voice.

Here’s an easy way to use active voice:

• Take your subject and put it at the beginning of the sentence
• Use a verb after the subject
• Use the object at the end of the sentence
• Turn negatives into positives (especially in marketing and business writing):

Examples of positive active voice:

Example 1:

“The computer was broken by me”

Becomes: “I broke the computer”

 Example 2:

Our company doesn’t have much money so our yoga studio is cramp and kinda empty

Becomes:

You’ll love our yoga studio, renowned for its cosy atmosphere and minimalistic simplicity. 

What positive, active writing does:

• Makes your readers more likely to act (i.e. to convert—a big deal if we’re talking about writing marketing materials for your yoga studio)
• Gives your writing more energy
• Brings your writing to life
• Presents a likeable personality

Note: Active voice may not be ideal for some scientific and academic types of writing.

Writing Rule #13: Your Writing IS Your Yoga Studio

Writing is even more important than most people realise. Why? Because to the reader, the writer is their writing.

Think about it.

Many of your readers will never have been to your yoga studio before. Your marketing copy is their first impression. So, 100% of their impression of your yoga studio is from the marketing content.

To make a good first impression, write effectively in a manner that is attractive to your audience. That way, your excellent writing will give people a good impression, not just of your work or your product or your brand, but of you.

Writing Rule #14: Be your own worst critic   

In every type of writing it is important to a) critique yourself, and b) cover opposing arguments.

Let’s say you’re writing an essay on yoga and you fully believe that yoga is better for mental health than meditation.  But some of your readers will feel the other way. You will not win the argument by ignoring all evidence that is contrary to your argument. To appease all your readers and to win them over, you must cover both sides of the argument.

This is true for all types of writing—even if you’re comparing yourself to a competitor you will still benefit by being upfront about the ways the competitor is superior. Doing so will establish trust in the reader, which is worth more than gold when it comes to writing.

This is even true in fiction.

Many writers think “Fiction does not have to be truthful, so I don’t need to explore all angles of the story.” This is a mistake. Master novelists write a novel around a premise (a central argument or idea) and they explore all angles of this. A brief example: The premise of Romeo & Juliet is ultimately love triumphs over hate. But to do justice to this premise Shakespeare had to examine the counterpoints, even going as far as to have Romeo and Juliet die. Only that way could he cover the premise in depth, leaving us with one of the absolute masterpieces of literature.

In all writing, fully explore both the argument you are in favor of, and the alternative. Tear into your own argument so you fully understand all aspects of the subject / theme / debate, then steer your writing to your conclusion.

Copywriting Rule #15: Hire A Proofreaders (Professional, preferably) 

Did you know that even the best writers in the world have their writing professionally proofread? Truth is: different readers notice different things. You will always benefit from having a fresh set of eyes look over your work.

If it’s an unimportant piece of writing, you’re probably fine having your spouse or a friend read it for you.

If it’s a valuable piece of writing, you will benefit from hiring a professional proofreader.

If it is marketing content for your yoga studio, you would be a flipping idiot not to have it proofread by a professional.

Consider how much more confident and relaxed you will be knowing that you have had your work read by a professional proofreader. When you hit Publish or Send you will know that the recipient(s) will be impressed with the quality of your work.

Writing SEO Content for Yoga, Mindfulness & Spiritual Businesses

Above we looked at the basics of good content writing for yoga, mindfulness and spiritual business. However, there is one other important aspect that we must cover: writing SEO content.  The best way to do this is with some careful planning.

Let’s face the music: The average blog writer isn’t William Shakespeare. We can’t just grab a blank piece of paper and scrawl a masterpiece in ten minutes. We have to have a concrete plan for a blog post if that post is to succeed.

When writing blog posts for SEO for your yoga studio you need to consider:

• How does the blog post fit into your content structure?
• What makes this blog post unique to other content on your blog?
• What keywords are you aiming for?
• Oh, and you’ve considered your backlink strategy, right?

For a successful mindfulness or yoga blog post, plan ahead.

12 Best Practices For Excellent SEO Yoga Content Production 

*Open a Word document so you can work through each of these steps in turn. At the end you will have the best blog article plan.

1. To start writing yoga blog posts, define your purpose

At the top of your Word document write “Purpose:” This is where you are going to determine the overall concept and purpose of your yoga blog post.

Your yoga blog post should have one very clear idea that is unique to it. In other words, it should be an idea you have not done before.

In all my years as a professional meditation and yoga writer for hire, I find this tip one of the most important, and one of the easiest.

Example:

My concept for this very blog post is this: Create a tutorial on how to write a blog post.

So, this is a brief summary of the point and purpose of the article. E.g. “To create the best article on planning a blog post”.

2. Check your concept fits in with your overall yoga studio’s content strategy

Before you begin to even plan a blog post, you need to check that it fits into your content strategy from an SEO perspective.

Hopefully you will have an optimised blog structure, and you can use that to help you with this step.

Here are some things to consider:

• Has the subject been covered on the blog before?
• Does the subject match the theme of the blog?
• Where will the blog post fit in terms of link structure?
• What posts will link to this one?
• What other blog posts will this one link to? (in other words, consider your internal link strategy)
• Will readers be interested in this idea?
• Am I likely to rank for this idea? Is it too competitive?
• Is there enough interest to generate organic traffic?
• Is this something you actually want to write about?

3: When writing your blog post headline, rewrite it, a lot

One thing I’ve learned as a professional yoga content producer is that you can always improve your blog post headlines.

On the next line of your Word document, write “Heading ideas”.

Writing a heading is one of the most important parts of writing a blog post. The heading tells readers what the blog post is about, and it also has a massive impact on your organic traffic because ultimately, people will only ever read your article if they click on the headline in the search results.

Write a list of at least ten headlines. Your headlines should take into account keywords as well as subjects and themes.

Here’s a great guide on how to write effective headlines.

4: When writing blog posts for SEO, remember you keywords and synonyms (LSI)

On the next line of your Word Document, write “keyword and LSI”. Use this section to research your main keyword and LSI keywords.

As you may be aware, keywords are vital to ranking in SERPS, as are synonyms (alternative words with the same meaning). Ever since RankBrain became a thing, LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Keywords) have been of huge importance.

It’s best to have a list of keywords and synonyms to include before beginning. Akshay Hallur has written a great guide to LSI Keywords here on GoBloggingTips.

5: When writing yoga blog posts, consider different angles

Writing yoga blog posts for SEO is one thing. But when it comes to writing blog posts for SEO you’ve got to consider copywriting too.

Writing blog posts for business is similar to writing articles for magazines. And as any good journalist will tell you, it’s all about choosing the right angle.

The angle of your blog post is essentially the manner in which you will cover your idea.

Writing for Daily Post, Krista Stevens say:

Your angle is the precise way you choose to tell your story — it’s the element that sets your story apart from all the rest. Let’s look at how to identify your story’s angle and how to build on it to create engaging, original prose. [continue reading this here]

Brainstorm different ways you could write the post. Then select the best one. Write a description of your angle on the next line of your Word document.

6: When writing yoga SEO blog posts, utilise subheadings 

Writing blog posts for SEO requires skillful use of subheadings.

By organising your page into subheadings you make it easier to read. This will increase your scroll depth benchmarks.

You will want to consider different subjects to cover in your blog post.

We already know our main topic (for this article, the main topic is “writing a blog post”), but what other sub-topics will we cover? For instance, this post also covers editing as a sub-topic.

When writing blog posts for SEO, the different subjects should match-up roughly with the LSI keywords you wrote down in step 3.

Write down the subjects you will cover.

Now list these under “Subheadings” in your Word document.

7: When writing spiritual blog posts, consider story and personality

People are attracted to stories and personality. And this is crucial when writing blog posts for business.

As a professional blog writer in Hamilton Ontario I find my most artful skill is telling a story through the blog post.

The most obvious (and arguably best) way to do this is to recount a time when someone needed to know the information detailed in the post. If you’re writing about the perils of not taking drinking enough water in yoga class, recall the time when a student (at a different studio) didn’t drink any water and ended up passing out.

On your Word document, write ‘Personality / Story’ and choose the personality for your post and how you will express it.

Note that for established yoga studios and businesses, the personality of the blog post should reflect the personality of the brand persona.

Sven has written an excellent guide to writing blog posts with a business’ personality on Userlike.

8: To write an effective yoga blog post, have a loose idea of the conclusion

When writing blog posts for business it’s good to have an idea of how your conclusion may go. Your conclusion may very well change while you write the article. That’s natural. At the planning stage, blog posts should include only a loose idea of how the conclusion will work.

Know the direction your article is heading in before you write it. This will also help you create interesting arguments.

Enter this information on your Word document.

9: When writing blogs posts for SEO, include a list of sources

Some topics demand hours of research. That research should ideally be completed before you begin to write the blog post. It’s a smart idea to list your sources while you conduct research.

Plus, mentioning other people and sources in your blog post is a good way of planning your backlink strategy. Who will link to you and why?

This is vital when writing blog posts for SEO, especially since Google introduced new rules for YMYL content (Your money or your life content). Yoga is in the health field so will often be considered YMYL content, so you will definitely want to include authoritative sources.

10: Remember your readers

What demographic are you aiming at? Do you know your psychographics? Do you have a clear idea of who your readers are and how your blog post will draw them in? this is essential when writing blog posts for business.

As a professional blog writer in Hamilton Ontario I find psychographics help me write to the audience. Write a description of your demographic on your Word document.

The best way to research your demographic is with Facebook Audience Insights.

Read SproutSocial writer Alex York’s guide to this.

11: Include emotion 

To write your best blog article you’ll need to make it emotional. If you want to earn social shares you need to know which primary emotion your article elicits in the reader.

• Joy?
• Hate?
• Love?
• Sadness?

Choose one primary emotion and a secondary emotion (for instance, happiness that something good happened, and gratitude for the people who made it happen). This will significantly increase social shares.

Note that positive emotions perform best on social media (read about this on SEOPresser)

On your Word document, note the dominant emotion of the piece.

10: Choose a social media marketing strategy

Your best blog article ever should get lots of share, right? So how do you get them? To start with, make sure that the blog post reflects the beliefs and opinions of the reader.

Next, give motive or incentive for the person to share it. For instance, if you’re writing an article about the immortality of animal testing, include a line asking reads to share the article because we need to change the way animals are treated. Such a line can result in a dramatic increase in shares.

11. Plan for conversion optimisation.

As a freelance yoga writer for hire, one of my core responsibilities is making sure the blog post is optimised for conversions, for instance, that it actually gets people to go to yoga class.

Let’s look at an example of converting site visitors into email subscribers. To do this you will need to create motivation for readers to subscribe. Subscribing requires different motivations to sharing. Readers will share an article just because it elicited an emotional response.But a subscription means the reader sees continued value in your work, or that they are interested in seeing how things develop.

Good ways to attract subscribers are:

• Offer a free download
• Have a great personality
• Produce valuable content
• Get them hooked on your story
• Offer content they cannot get anywhere else

On your Word document, write a reason why people will subscribe.

And that’s how to write a yoga blog post for business and SEO

As a Hamilton Ontario blog writer for hire, I’ve tried to share my top tips with you in this guide.

You now have the perfect blog post plan. And if you have been following along with the Word document, you also have the perfect blog post plan template.

This blog post plan covers all angles of the writing process, from SEO to content strategy to good old fashioned actually writing a good article.

With this blog post plan, you will be able to write your best blog article ever, an effective blog article for business and SEO.

If you would like to work with a professional blog writer in Hamilton ON, contact me today.

Oh, and: