There are many opportunities in healthcare journalism for thought leaders to contribute content. Healthcare reporters are continuously soliciting bylined articles from healthcare industry thought leaders and experts to keep up with the content demand of digital media. As a healthcare focused public relations agency our goal is to amplify our client’s thought leadership platform and we see the byline article as one of the greatest ways to do so as they enable experts to directly communicate their insights and expertise in their own words to their desired audience. In general, contributed content – like a bylined article – is an excellent way for the client to control their message and eliminates opportunities for outside biases and perspectives. That said, publications and editors often have very specific criteria and sometimes unspoken expectations that contributed content must adhere to. Below we’ve shared the top three best practices to consider when drafting a byline or any other kind of contributed content.

For 25 years, Michael Dowding has pursued the twin passions of writing and education as a freelance writer and professor at Boston University’s College of Communication. In addition to thousands of content-writing projects and several ghostwritten books, his BU classes on media writing and popular workshops for the PR Club of New England have helped him devise and refine the writing principles that he loves to share. Following his guest lecture for Aria Marketing, we caught up with Michael to get his latest take on the current state of professional media writing.

Every so often we like to use our blog to highlight our amazing partners. One such partner is our go-to freelance writer, Maggie Van Dyke. We’ve worked with Maggie for years to produce compelling content for our clients, which has appeared in a number of top-tier publications. We asked Maggie if she could provide our readers with some tips to combat something we all struggle with in this industry at one time or another: writer’s block. Please enjoy these “insider tips” provided by Maggie, and another one of our star freelance writers, Jeni Williams: