4 things you need in a Psychedelic Content Writer
Content, as they say, is still king. Psychedelic-themed content will soon become an essential resource as the market for psychedelic products for both therapeutic and recreational use grows and matures. The thing is, not everyone can write psychedelic content. Determining who can is highly relevant for organizations or entrepreneurs in the psychedelic sphere who want to reach and engage audiences. This post will cover why this content is so essential and provide 4 attributes to look for in potential psychedelic writers.
(Spoiler alert: finding the cheapest blog writer for hire on Fiverr or Upwork who claims to have psychedelic experience is not on the list.)
Why is Psychedelic Content Important?
Psychedelic-themed content is just cool and edgy, right? Well, it's still that, sometimes at least. But since the psychedelic renaissance and sudden influx of investor capital seeking therapeutic and biotech opportunities in the field, it's become much more.
High-quality content is a significant part of any well-rounded SEO strategy and overall marketing plan, whether as information pages, landing pages, or blog posts. If search engines can't find your great content because it doesn't exist, then neither can potential customers or potential investors. In 2019, an analysis conducted by Backlinko showed that only 0.78% of Google searchers clicked on any result from the second page. If you can't get on that front page for relevant search terms, nowhere near as many people are ever going to see your website.
It's the same story with backlinks. Good, trustworthy, engaging content is vital for any backlink strategy. I'm not saying it's the whole story. But if you want people to link to your site, you need to give them something worth linking to that they can't find anywhere else. A lack of backlinks compounds any SEO issues you might already have. Backlinks are essential if you want your site to appear anywhere near the first page of results, especially for high-volume search terms.
4 things you need in a Psychedelic Content Writer
1. They need psychedelic experience
Writing about psychedelics requires at least some experience of utilizing them for altered states. There are a couple of reasons for this.
The most important is that people can tell when you write about something that is supposed to be factual but haven't personally experienced it. Readers who are psychedelic-naive might not detect the lack of authenticity. But a lot of potential customers and investors are not. Likewise, essential allies in other organizations such as harm-reduction charities will likely have psychedelic experiences of their own. A lack of authenticity will stand out and create a poor impression for these people.
On a related point, a good psychedelic writer also understands that their experience of non-ordinary states of consciousness might not be the same as someone else's. This epistemic humility helps guard against bias and overgeneralization and allows writers to bring depth and nuance to their work.
As psychedelics move from being outright illegal to sitting in legal gray areas, decriminalization, or even legalization, it's increasingly helpful to have writers with practical experience that is psychedelic-adjacent. This knowledge feeds into a whole range of practices, not least around education and harm-reduction. Can they graft a Trichocereus bridgesii cactus or make a brew with it? Do they know why taking a spore print is crucial for correctly telling Psilocybe subaeruginosa apart from dangerous look-alikes? Will they include advice on using drug-checking services or test kits when writing about LSD or MDMA? If someone misread the label on a block of Golden Teacher psilocybin chocolate and ate too many squares, would they know what to do or whom to call?
If the person writing your blog post can't answer those sorts of questions, their work will lack texture and depth. More importantly, this how-to content forms an integral part of SEO strategies. If you want to attract search traffic around psilocybin, you can't just keep writing the same thing over and over again. Broad real-life knowledge helps create and flesh out a more comprehensive range of topics. As psychedelics become popular, people want to know hands-on practical information. These articles can carry many long-tail terms that align with search intent, leading to better chances of conversion.
Dragonfly on Tricocereus hybrid ( Trichocereus scopulicola x Trichocereus peruvianus). Copyright: Psychedelic Overground 2021
2. They need a sound working knowledge of the basics of psychedelic science
A good understanding of psychedelic science and general scientific literacy is essential when crafting high-quality content. Imagine that your company wants a blog post answering the question, "Can psychedelic mushrooms help with depression?" A good psychedelic writer can explore the topic based on up-to-date research and community experience and do so in an appropriate way to your target audience.
Writers need to know how to find and discern what's relevant to the brief and client needs. For some topics, this is relatively easy. For example, there's not as much research on 5-MeO-DMT as other psychedelics, so there are not as many go-to peer-reviewed journal articles.
For other substances, it's not as simple. There are many LSD and psilocybin studies, and not all of them are directly applicable in every situation. So if you wanted a post on the potential of psychedelics to treat pain, your writer needs to find specific research amongst everything published. Then, they still need to understand what's in these papers and whether or not it applies to your context. Does a study that shows 20 micrograms of LSD can increase tolerance of discomfort fit with what you need? Or are you waiting for the results of the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative (PHRI) at UC San Diego clinical trial on psilocybin and phantom limb pain?
Scientific knowledge also contributes to making sure content has relevant harm-reduction information. What medications are dangerous to take with different types of MAOIs? Serotonin syndrome is a serious thing, and you wouldn't want to miss out on including a detail that can help keep the people using your website safe. Likewise, while classic serotonergic psychedelics are relatively low-risk, related plant medicines such as Iboga have a very different list of potentially dangerous interactions and precautions.
3. They need to be connected to the community and know who's who
Nothing kills community engagement and trust quicker than content that is out of touch with community expectations, practices, and knowledge. How does a writer know what will land well and come across as authentic? By being connected to their prospective audience, that's how.
Knowing the work and reputations of critical figures in the community has a range of benefits too. Part of this is avoiding promoting or citing people who've perpetrated harm on others within psychedelic communities. It might be a contentious point for some, but there are good ethical and pragmatic reasons why your business would not want to feature someone like Octavio Rettig, Martin Ball, or Gerry Sandoval.
The other benefit of knowing the territory is understanding organizations and how they relate to each other. Someone connected to psychedelics would know not to expect explicit public support for decriminalizing psychedelics from Mind Medicine Australia because their focus is "wholly clinical," but that they may not get the exact same response from people associated with the Mind Medicine Institute. They'd understand that Mimosa Therapeutics and Compass Pathways founders have very different ideas of the ethics around patent strategies and that the founder of Tam Integration loves memes.
Knowing this sort of thing should be necessary for all your key employees, not just the writers you contract to generate blog content. But in their specific case, having an idea of who is who allows them to see which organizations align with your own and predict what will land well with your prospective audience. E.g., if you're hoping to cultivate a similar following as Mimosa or wish to enter a partnership with them, you don't want a blog post singing the praises of the Compass legal team.
Finally, if a writer knows other people in the psychedelic communities, the chances are that someone else knows them. Rather than being an unknown quantity, they'll have a good reputation and existing clients in the industry. This knowledge gives you more ability to see if they can provide the content you need and gives you more reason to think that they're trustworthy and will care about the work they do for you.
4. They still need to be good writers!
Content needs to be correct, as close to the first time as possible, as often as possible. Quality of product and service is where spending a bit more pays off. For example, you might balk at paying $500 for a 1000-word blog post. (Yes, this is how much good specialized content can cost.) Discomfort with this price is understandable, especially for startups where cash is tight. So, you decide to pay much less for your content. Great, you think to yourself, I'm saving $400 on every blog post we publish.
Maybe that's true.
Or maybe your head of content, whose salary costs the company upwards of $50 an hour, has just spent two hours editing a single post. Now you've only saved $300. And while they're doing that, they're not working on something else. So they take another two hours to catch up on lost time. That's another $100 of "savings" gone. If any of the time lost has flow-on effects on other staff, the remaining $200 you think you saved will evaporate exceptionally quickly. E.g., it took three employees who report to your head of content an extra hour to finish their tasks because they couldn’t get the advice they needed. This meant someone in your social media team had to scramble to find or write something to post about this week, as the blog content they were expecting wasn’t published when should have been.
And even when you've fixed the grammatical and factual errors, is the content engaging? When readers get to the end, are they ready to subscribe to your newsletter or click that "Learn more" or “Buy Now!” button? At least you saved $400. Except you probably didn’t.
Of course, all of this begs the question: Why wouldn't you send the substandard work back to the author for improvement? Was it because you knew it wouldn't get any better? Or did the cheaper content option not include any revisions in their contracts?
So when I say "good," understand that I don't just mean skill; I'm talking about professionalism. Even very talented writers won’t get it right 100% of the time, especially with new clients. But if they don’t, you’ve got much a better chance of them being able to revise the content in a timely and constructive manner.
Summary:
Finding the right writers or content providers is a big deal, as you need the right content to reach people via searches and backlinks. If a writer has psychedelic experience, a good grasp of the science, understands the communities and their key players, and is a skilled professional, you'll ultimately get a better ROI on any content you buy. If you want psychedelic blog or website content, and the person writing it doesn't have these qualities, the chances of it meeting your needs or the needs of your organization are far less.
Do you need unique blog or web content for your psychedelic business that is fit for purpose, accurate, engaging, and doesn't require enormous amounts of in-house editing? If you do, please reach out!
