5 Crazy Blog Writing Tips That Will Motivate Anyone

Are you in need of some blog writing tips? Ever wished that you write the perfect blog post that gets for your audience?

None of us is born with the ability to make something perfectly the first time. However, it is by failing that we get better and improve things.

The same rule applies when it comes to blogging. I am yet to meet a blogger who get it all right when they first start a blog.

Many bloggers continue to struggle with failure because there is a belief that failure is a bad thing.

The truth is that as humans we learn more from our mistakes compared to our successes.

It was Thomas Edison who said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

I am not sure if you, as a blogger, need to find 10,000 ways that blogging will not work, at least I hope not.

In this post, I spent some time interviewing Megan. I believe that Megan may have found some peculiar blog writing tips and many ways that her business works to reach out to potential clients.

Join me as I spend time chatting with Megan.

Who is Megan?

Hi, I am Megan Whitaker, I blog over at goingcrunchynotcrazy.com. I’ve had it since 2015 when my first daughter was born.

I was a registered nurse and I love health and wellness but I was not super happy with the medical model and I really wanted to stay at home.

So, I decided to quit my job and I pivoted into natural health and wellness. I have been blogging, speaking and writing ever since.

Megan Whitaker

What exactly do you do?

The area that I talk about is very specific. My focus is really on environmental detoxification of the chemicals around your home and body.

Before I was a nurse I had an autoimmune disease. Nursing is something I did in the hope that I was able to figure myself out.

As expected, I fell down what I call the crunchy rabbit hole where I started with herbs and roots and that helped a little bit and somebody suggested that I take out plastics and things.

That helped a lot. Professionally, I was a makeup artist before I went to nursing school.

My job involved using a lot of products, a lot of chemicals, I had the worst diet and over the course of 5 years, I completely detoxified my whole house, environment and all of my products.

After going totally chemical free, I’ve had no pain, no medication, nothing like that for six (6) years.

So, I really focus on educating specifically moms and younger families. How to go about switching over all of your products and your environment.

Getting rid of the chemical burden that we have in our homes.

I think that there is a big fear that people have that it is too much to do, it is too expensive to do or they can’t possibly learn all these things.

That’s why I’m here. It took me 10 years and two degrees and I don’t know how many other educational opportunities to get all this knowledge and I like to share it.

My blog specifically works on science. The nursing part of me still really likes research and science.

So, I like to break down good research, science and wellness and kind of bring it together.

I talk a lot to pregnant moms, new moms, moms with small children that have little bodies to take care of.

I like to give good facts and make the science easy for them. A lot of home detox has to do with the air and water and stuff like that.

A lot of science and research studies have shown that the air inside your home is about 1-6 times more polluted than the air outside because of all the stuff we have in our homes.

All our furniture lets off gases. It lets off formaldehyde and chemicals, flame retardant and things.

All that stuff comes off your furniture, the floor and food. It is also in the air and it is really hard to get rid of so open your windows.

Why do you do what you do?

It started off with my own journey. It took me so long to figure out all of the science. To decipher what was real and what was fake news.

It was hard for me to find good sources when I was a nurse the thing I loved about health and nursing was patient education.

Being able to help a patient take control of their own health and get educated about their own health.

So often it is not that a patient don’t want to be healthy. It is just that they don’t know a good, easy way to do something.

My blog was a way for me to get that information to whoever needed it. I think everybody says, “if one person reads it, then it will be worth it.”

I really want as many moms as possible as well as many young women to know where to go to get safe information.

My why is that I want to protect our women.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?

I am a talker, I love my blog and I use my blog writing tips to do other things. I’ve used my blog as a platform to get freelance writing jobs to get paid to write on sites like Healthline.

I’ve written for Romper which is a parenting site and I’ve also used my blog to speak at major conferences.

Recently I flew across the country to speak at a parenting conference. I like having a platform where people can come, learn about me and know me.

They can also get to know me and my journey then I could then get to go out and meet people in real life and talk to people.

I love connecting and hearing back from people. So, my blog, the thing that I love most is the communication with other people.

How can one be sure which furniture is non-toxic?

There are a few places where you can go to get furniture and appliances that are non-toxic.

That is one of the areas/problems. Sometimes you need someone to come in and say, I have resources for this.

Mattresses are a big one right now. There are a couple of dozen companies that are focusing on organic, non-toxic mattresses and people don’t know.

They are not that hard to find. You can get a wool mattress. Wool does not need flame retardant.

So, it does not have to be doused in chemicals. It’s pretty easy if you know where to look and I want to be that place for people to come.

What did you want to be as a child and who inspired you to take that route?

When I was growing up I wanted to be on Broadway. I was this theatre kid and I went to the theatre all the time.

When I was in college I kind of stepped off stage and started doing makeup. I did makeup and special effects.

I made zombies, monsters and I used plasticisers, moulds, all kinds of foam and all kinds of things.

So, that took me too Los Angeles and I worked in film for a few years and that’s when I got really, really sick.

Realising that I was so sick, I couldn’t work. Moving back home is what I had to do and I went to Nursing School because I always liked health.

An interest in health is something I always had but I was so creative I thought I couldn’t be a nurse. Since I was so creative and I ran off to L.A.

My ability to work was hampered as I was so sick and I was on a lot of medication and I went to Nursing School and slowly got better.

Once I had a doctor who suggested that I try a herbal remedy because the medication that I was on was so strong it was eating a hole through my stomach.

He gave me this ginger-turmeric tea to coat my stomach so that I wasn’t in so much pain.

That led me to Google as you know you fall down the Google hole. I found a few really prominent health and wellness experts.

Crazy diet

Specifically Weston A. Price Foundation which is like, the call themselves a diet, it is not really a diet. It is like the original paleo diet.

I found a few doctors and researchers that was so into science. It was so interesting there were facts and graphs and scientific studies on this crazy diet.

For me, I really fell in love with that and I think that is what did it. It intrigued me as I discovered that there were such amazing scientists in this crunchy world and I never went back.

It occurred while I was half-way through nursing school, my now husband who was my boyfriend at the time, I told him that I was going to quit nursing school.

The inspiration was so strong I was like I want to do this. I love talking about this stuff and this is so crazy. Thankfully, I was feeling better and I wanted to be part of that.

He said, you should finish nursing school, the worst thing you’re going to have is a good education and he was right.

I did work as a nurse for a couple of years and I got a good education in traditional medicine. I could kind of show the other way.

There are so many good people, the area that I’m in like chemicals, water, bathroom, kitchen. There were multiple people who are experts in those areas that I was reading.

What is the best advice you’ve received to date?

I think the best advice is not to do something for the money. Really follow your passion.

I’m glad I have my nursing education. I went to nursing school because it was “the smart thing to do”.

I couldn’t do my creative artsy thing anymore and everybody was like its time to settle down and ‘get your real job’.

That was my second college degree so it was great to have my medical knowledge. I knew going into it that I did not want to be a full nurse for the rest of my life.

Everyone around me was like but you like medicine, but you like educating, this is what you do.

This is what you do when you like talking about health. You go down this set path where you make decent money forever.

I’m glad I have the education I just would not be a nurse for 30 years.

What has impacted your life to date?

I think that going to nursing school and knowing immediately that I shouldn’t be there and sticking through it and everyone around me saying, just get an education was right.

I do think, obviously in America it’s terrible because our education is so expensive. For everyone else in the world, the more education you have the better, no matter what field you are in.

Always continuing to learn got me to where I am. I went to college and got a degree and I decided to study more.

I went to LA and took courses in composition and plasticides and I was able to do special effects work.

Then I went to nursing school, next I studied environmental health. I am always learning and people around me have high education levels.

Everybody around me has multiple qualifications and college degrees that is super important to people around me.

So, no matter what I have done everybody has always said if you want to do that go get a degree or go do a class.

I think that is always a good idea. You can never be too educated and no one can ever take your education away from you.

In this landscape of blogs, social media and people making money online. They think that it is a work around to education.

It is not entirely true. You don’t need a college education to have a job. Education is not necessarily a college education either.

I do think no matter what you do continuing an education is probably top priority. Because if you happen to be good at building a website that is great.

However, using that instead of going down the path to get more education is not really a good idea.

Tell me about your blog writing tips?

I started my blog around 6 months after my first daughter was born. Now, I have two little girls. Since the inception of my blog, I always had an infant.

I really think I do my blog differently compared to most bloggers. I publish a post once a month or so using some unique blog writing tips.

Sometimes it is not even that much as I have had periods of postpartum time, where I’m nursing all the time.

I focus on doing one or two really good, in-depth, scientific posts. I don’t do filler stuff. I’m not necessarily worried about quantity.

For the first year and a half, I was just piddling around. My very first post was a deep dive into chlorine and taking your baby swimming and how to protect your infant from chlorine.

It wasn’t fluffy by any means. I also did not have a ton of time. So, I really focused on doing a really good thing when I could.

I didn’t throw money at it for the first year. I learned everything myself, I built the whole thing myself, I did everything myself.

So, it took a good two years before I was seeing big numbers and seeing big traffic in return after implementing these blog writing tips.

At this point, I said my blog is running on auto now so a friend came in and helped me make my blog better and faster.

Then I was able to reach out and say now I’m going to start a podcast and now I’m going to do other things and drive people other places.

I don’t worry about publishing a ton of posts. If you come on my site and only read 3 posts, all 3 of those posts are worth reading. There’s nothing filler on the blog.

Instagram

My Instagram account is where I go talk and show little things. I do Instagram stories all day.

I post on Instagram regularly. I’m on there talking to people a lot. I really see my blog as more of a site.

It’s not like daily life blogs or the thing that I did today or yesterday. It really is, I have this awesome piece of information that I want you to learn about.

If you want to talk to me about other stuff and see my kids and see my natural hair dye that I used and my process for cooking that’s Instagram.

When I get on the podcast, this is where I go to talk more about my business side. I go into people’s homes and I go over on Zoom and video Messenger.

Usually, I go in and detoxify their homes and things like that. I do a lot of speaking engagements and I actually go now as I am a consultant.

Consulting

I will go into your bathroom and look at where mould will be or look at what products you need to switch.

Go into your kitchen and get rid of the Teflon and get rid of the non-stick and test your water that things like that.

My podcast talks more about things like that. To be honest, at this point, having two small kids, the podcast has been easier to keep up.

It is because I can just talk during that time with the blog I’ll want things to look nice.

I do drive a lot of Amazon affiliate traffic through my blog so it is generating an income that way.

If people want to buy the products that I talk about they can do so easily. I don’t do lists and things but I do healthy gear guides.

I talk a lot about the easy switches you can make and all those things are linked. There is some more coming through my site as well.

To me because I have young kids, I’ll be outside playing with them and someone can ask me a question on Instagram and I can just answer them.

So, its a really good way to be in touch with the people that I want to and I can just answer questions and kind of share.

I share my real, my blog is called, Going Crunchy Not Crazy, so I share the weird crunchy, crazy things that I do during my day on Instagram.

My blog is more bigger ideas and bigger things.

How did the name originate?

It may be an American thing. Being called crunchy comes from being a hippie. Back in the 60’s people called themselves granola to be a hippie.

Then that became a crunchy granola hippie. That got dropped and now people just say that they are crunchy hippie.

When I started this I was working as a registered nurse in an office and everyone thought that I had lost my mind.

I was trying to tell them no there is a science behind this so it became that I was crunchy and not going crazy.

What blog traffic methods did you implement?

Even from my very first blog post I made an image and put it on Pinterest. It is the worst image. It is a very bad picture.

It’s funny, there are a few blog posts that were early blog posts that did pretty well. It is still being re-pinned with that awful image.

Every time I see it I wish that I could go back and switch that image on Pinterest.

I did focus a lot on Pinterest because my demographic is like 25-35 year old women. That is who I’m aiming at and that’s a lot of Pinterest.

I’m not a big Facebook user, I’m just not. Facebook is used a little bit to find really good Pinterest groups but in general, I did not worry about Facebook engagement.

Facebook groups or pods or having people like my pins is something I don’t worry about. My focus is on finding other boards and building out my boards.

You will find that I don’t have hundreds of boards, I don’t have millions of pins but I have 300,000 monthly views on Pinterest.

My total Pinterest view count is really good even though I just don’t pin that much I’m only pinning the best things I can find.

When I switched to Tailwind recently and I did a lot of research into how people are using Tailwind and I watched a lot of videos and courses and things.

What I noticed is people batch pinning 100s and 100s of pins. To be honest, I don’t need to have huge, full boards. If you’re coming to my profile or if you’re following me on Pinterest.

I’m going to pin stuff that my people want to see. I think that helped me a lot.

Pinterest Strategy

My pins don’t get lost because I don’t have thousands of blog posts, I don’t have thousands of pins.

In total, I have 30-40 pins from my blog. My strategy is that I don’t want them to get lost among other people’s hundreds of pins.

Re-pinning my stuff regularly is something I do but it is not a ton. My goal is to only put up stuff that really fits and that people want to see.

Pinterest has definitely been my main source of traffic but doing good SEO and going back and doing lots of links has helped.

I’m getting a significant amount of organic traffic from Google search. That has been increasing every month. I’m getting more from organic search.

I get 3 times traffic from Pinterest compared to organic search. I get a lot of Pinterest hits, it’s funny as there are days where things are great.

It is hard to say what my average is month to month. In the last year, I’ve had between 5,000 and 12,000 page views a month. Which is a big differential.

A few weeks ago I had a pin take off and I had 2,000 page views in one day and it goes back down.

Pinterest has been my main driver just because of those huge spikes. I don’t have days when Google suddenly sends me lots of traffic.

How can one identify if they need your services or not?

I am of the school where everyone needs to detoxify their homes. We live in a world where in the US alone there are 88,000 chemicals registered to be used in everyday products.

Only 8,000 of them have been extensively tested for safety. You don’t have laws to get manufacturers to test products before they are used.

Our laws say that if it looks like later on that it caused something horrible then they have to go back and test it but that is not the first round.

We have things, I’m not sure everyone is aware of it but in Flint, Michigan, there is a water crisis.

An entire town’s water has been poisoned with lead and it has been going on for months and months and months.

We have hundreds of thousands of people that have lead in their water at such high levels that it is dangerous.

Lifestyle Factors

  1. I think that everybody should be aware of the possibility of toxins and do easy switches to keep things like that from happening.
  2. We also live in a world of skyrocketing levels of autoimmune diseases, cancer and things like MS and Parkinson’s. All of these diseases did not exist in high numbers 100-200 years ago.

I think a lot of research is showing that it is from a number of factors. It is a lot of lifestyle factors. Specifically things like how we are eating and how we are living.

Our bodies do detoxify naturally, that is what the kidney and liver do. However, we can only take so much and we do have a cap.

Everyone has a level to where they just can’t take the amount of toxins we are putting on. The average woman puts on 230 chemicals every day in their beauty products.

Once you get to the level where your body is not functioning as well because of the toxic load, like if you are not sleeping well, obesity, coranary fluctuations, hormone levels like PCOS and thyroid issues.

A lot of the chemicals in beauty products are estrogen mimickers. It tells your body there is estrogen in it and we think it is a hormone and we react accordingly.

So, we have hormone problems, when you have these chronic illnesses it will be really good to go through your house and detox. Ensure that you have the lowest toxic burden that you can so your body can heal.

Obviously it worked for me. It is great especially for women who are pregnant, have small children, thinking of becoming pregnant soon, take care of little ones.

Just keeping the toxic load down as much as possible. Because we are only adding more chemicals to our daily lives.

For people who are already diagnosed with Parkinson’s, MS or other similar diseases is it too late for them to detoxify their homes?

Well, it worked for me. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

They also said it was looking like I could also have Lupus and I am no longer classified as having either of them.

I was 22 and caught it pretty early. I don’t think there is ever a point where it’s not helpful.

As long as you are still alive. If you continue to eat and drink and breathe chemicals it is going to compound the problem.

If you are reducing the chemicals it is going to give your body the best chance to be as healthy as possible.

The amount of sugar we eat and the amount of chemicals we use all these things started at the same time.

It’s a lot of compounding factors. Sugar is definitely a huge inflammatory factor. I do tell people to stay away from white processed sugar as much as possible. Sugar is on my bad list.

What are your long term plans?

I do get some traffic from Instagram and I am working on my first ebook it should be ready in the next few weeks.

It is so hard when you have little kids and we are moving in 3 months. So I’m a little panicky about getting this all set up.

I have not worried so much about my email list and that’s my this year’s plan. I’m going to be putting out an ebook and working on some landing pages.

Also, some things for opt-ins and things like that to capture more emails and to drive a little more traffic to the blog.

I think that with some of the analytics and the issues happening right now with Pinterest and Instagram changing their algorithm all the time.

It is really important to focus on SEO and organic traffic to capture emails. I love my Pinterest traffic but there is a much lower rate of return compared to my organic traffic.

So, that will be my focus for the next year, returning traffic and email capture.

On the topic of moving to a different house, do you detoxify the house before you move in?

We are moving to student housing, my husband is in graduate school as he is going to get another graduate degree. It is all about education over here.

Our family is on degree number 3 with my husband so we are going to be living in married student housing.

I’ve done deep dive research about the building that we will move into. It is 5 years old which is not ideal but it is not terrible.

It is not pre 1970s which means asbestos and lead risk is low. As it is only 5 years old there is a lot of off-gassing issues.

I have a lot of resources to deep clean the carpets, steam clean the walls. There’s actually special paints that you can get to seal and paint.

I have a WiFi and electromagnetic field reader so I actually have like a Geiger counter like you would have in a radiation zone.

I want to see how bad the WiFi and radiation are as I might seal the walls. There’s a lot you can do in an apartment.

I think people assume that you need to own your home in order to detoxify it because they believe that you’ll be tearing down walls and ripping up carpets. That’s not true.

I’ve been living in apartments doing this for years. I’m passionate about living in a super healthy apartment that I can’t physically alter.

The biggest things would be getting a water filter on all of our water sources including the showers.

I’ll be making sure that all the carpets and walls are off-gassed and I’ll be cleaning that really good.

I might be sealing the walls with a special paint depending. This is the line where people say okay I think she is crazy.

I do offer a service where I go into a home and detoxify it. I’ve only done it a couple of times and it is fun.

New house issues

The biggest problem with a new house is making sure that there aren’t any hidden mould issues.

If you’ve lived in a house for a long time you can recognise the air change. Mould is the thing least talked about as a home health issue.

Mould is very dangerous. We all live is these dry wall homes and mould loves dry wall because it is sealed on the outside and open on the inside.

So, you can have a huge mould problem and not know about it until it is out of control.

It is easy to test, you can get a mould air kit pretty easily.

Did you invest in any courses or tools that helped with your success?

The biggest money that I’ve spent would have to be Tailwind, apart from that I haven’t really spent money.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a good friend who is a website designer who was able to walk me through a lot of the basics of how to set up my site.

Because I’m doing the ebook I’m going to be doing the Click-funnels course to set up my funnel.

Everything else I’ve learned myself. Thank you Youtube.

5 Tips for Blogging Success

  1. Don’t post fluff – you want your visitors to stay longer on your site.
  2. Don’t over-pin on Pinterest – keep it really specific.
  3. Know your niche – really spend time getting to know your avatar so well and speak to them directly with your content.
  4. People are really focusing on getting backlinks and writing on other blogger’s sites (guest blogging). I don’t think that is a great way to grow. If you are a great writer and you have great blog posts and a lot to offer you should either be paid for that by one of these sites like Problogger or reach out to online websites. I’ve written for Healthline, Romper, The Week and I now publish for magazines. Some of these sites have paid me a lot of money to do that. Get paid for your work.
  5. Don’t partner with a brand just to partner with a brand – It’s so exciting when someone reaches out to you to send you a product. Don’t fall for being an affiliate of 75 brands because they are going to let you. Reviewing the Nerf gun because they offered it to you. Those things will come you don’t have to take them all. Focus on those things that are really specific to you.

Where can listeners find you?

On my website goingcrunchynotcrazy.com, on Instagram.com/goingcrunchynotcrazy and on my podcast Going Crunchy Not Crazy.

Conclusion

It was amazing spending time with Megan on this episode of the podcast where we not only learned about her peculiar blog writing tips but about detoxifying our homes.

Like I said during the podcast I will never look at the furniture and appliances in my home the same way again.

I even tried to get out side more this week. It is amazing what a little bit of knowledge can do to your perspective on life.

If you did not get a chance to visit her website then you should as there is a lot of helpful scientific information on there.

5 Crazy Blog Writing Tips That Will Motivate Anyone

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39 thoughts on “5 Crazy Blog Writing Tips That Will Motivate Anyone”

  1. I love writing, which is part of the reason I started a blog. It is always nice seeing other people and their writing tips and how they have managed to create their blog.

    • Tara, it is so tempting as a blogger to get attention from brands to just say yes to everything. The fact is that we need to know our value and focus.

  2. I find her niche to be very interesting. I have been trying to change towards a more healthier life and also towards a plastic free life, but it’s been so hard. Everything is plastic these days.

    • Joanna, you are so right. What worries me more is that plastics contributed to her autoimmune disease.

  3. I like to take a varitey of products to diversy my site for more than one group. However, it does strech me a tad bit thin.

  4. Your tips are very easy to follow. I have a friend who writes for a living and what a difference this stuff makes.

  5. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this interview. I’m a new blogger and I’ve been looking for ways to market my blog!

  6. This cannot be more accurate. I can relate to many of it actually. In the end, I still learned many things from this.

  7. I have been a blogger for 10 years now. Every now and then I also face questions like this. You have penned it down beautifully.

  8. This is really interesting to me. I have been wondering how much all the chemicals have to do with the rise in autoimmune diseases.

    • Rachel, I was so surprised myself as I was unaware of being able to detox your home of chemicals.

  9. I agree focusing on a few things is so much more important than trying to do everything at once. Blogging is an uphill climb with so much to learn. Improve the few things you can at a time and don’t try to focus on all social media at once.

  10. Thanks for sharing your blogging interview with Megan! I’ve had my blog for just year now and it’s sometimes hard to find things to write about. I don’t want to just post random things, but then need more content!! I’m glad I’m not the only one!

    • Patty, I’m glad that you are celebrating your one year anniversary in blogging. It does take some strategy and planning to create content for your blog.

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