The biggest challenge that all content marketers face is creating a steady flow of compelling content that attracts and retains customers and prospects at every stage of their buying cycle. (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ MarketingProfs)

The problem is that there is so much competing content on the Internet that it’s difficult for content marketers to cut through the noise and say something interesting that will cause people to stop and take note.

In this insightful article by Heidi Cohen of Content Marketing Institute, she introduces 7 ways to develop content that will pull in those prospects, meet their content needs, and do so at exactly the right time that they’re ready to receive it! Heidi understands completely the road-blocks that content creators face on a day-to-day basis and she offers valuable solutions to this universal problem.

Find out how to make this happen for you by reading the full article…

Please share these valuable insights by re-tweeting this article

There’s three things that you should understand about your searchers on the Internet:

#1.They are impatient! They will not waste time wading through pages and pages of results after their first query. They want the best results in the shortest amount of time.

#2. Generally they don’t go beyond the first page of the SERP. They would much rather refine their search than go through more pages of less relevant results.

#3. They search for content in three different ways:

Navigational search

A navigational search has a very specific query

Your searcher is expecting only one result and their query has a very specific and targeted intent. They’ve visited your website before or they know that your organization exists. And so they go straight to your website by entering the url e.g. ‘bmsi.org’ or they Google the term ‘baltimore medical system’.

Informational search

Here your searcher is doing some kind of research (e.g. for high-blood pressure treatment) and is not sure exactly what they will find. Their query might produce articles, drug information, images, video clips, and a variety of other content. Your searcher may or may not find all this content relevant but will still wade through some of it as he tries to determine what he needs.

Transactional search

Your searcher is looking for some kind of interaction on the Internet. He may want to buy a book, join a discussion forum, or find directions to your facility. In this case the searcher is looking for a very specific kind of interaction and is willing to take the time to explore different sites until he finds it.

How search engines respond

In all three cases, the searcher has an idea of what he is looking for and he has some expectation of the kind of content that will satisfy him.

On the other side of the equation is the search engine (Google), whose goal is to find the most relevant content for your searcher’s query. Search engines understand that people want the latest news and the most recent content.

As they set out to determine the most relevant content for a person’s query, they analyze and measure the updating activity on websites across the Internet! The more frequently a website is updated, the more often the search engine checks back to see what’s new.

Sites such as Yahoo!Health and WebMD are analyzed continuously because they’re updated constantly. Hence the frequency of attention from search engines reduces as website content remains static. To the search engine this is a sign that the site is irrelevant - like an old abandoned house.

A static website with old content is as relevant as an abandoned house

In this list of the Top 15 Most Popular Healthcare Websites – Feb 2012, notice that every site on the list is updated daily.

How you should respond

This is really good news for you as a healthcare marketer because your searchers are telling you what they want. They want you to:

• update your website often;
• create engaging content that is relevant and interesting to them

Your job is to engage your audience with every piece of content that you produce and to do so consistently.

Key takeaway

All this creates the need to develop a content marketing strategy that attracts and retains the people that you want to reach (or the people that are looking for you online). With your content strategy you should be able to pre-empt the queries that your searchers have and to create content around those search terms. In other words, you need to create engagement and relevance.

Over to you: Are searchers finding your content online? If so, how are you creating engagement and relevance through your content?

With 81 percent of internet users, or 61 percent of all adults, searching online for health information*, doctors and healthcare systems should take advantage of the growing number of “e-patients” – a new generation of internet-savvy patients eagerly participating in their health care through various online avenues. *Source: Pew Internet Research, 2010

Healthcare marketing going social

Two of Cincinnati’s largest healthcare systems know this well, and have launched advertising campaigns ranging from television and radio, to YouTube and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Trihealth's Facebook page is an intentional effort to court e-patients

They include Tri-health which operates Good Samaritan and Bethesda North hospitals, Queen City Physicians and Group Health Associates doctors groups, Hospice of Cincinnati and several other health care units.

Also Mercy Health which operates six hospitals in the region, a doctors group and several long-term care facilities has already experienced a 6% increase in inpatient admissions in their fourth quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.

This is a sure and growing trend that consumers can expect to see more of in the coming months and years. It is a realization on the part of healthcare marketers that today, nothing is more powerful in terms of attracting new patients as an effective online presence.  That means having an engaging website and interactive social media conversations.

Over to you: Does your healthcare organization have a strong online presence? What social platform has been most effective in attracting new patients?

Content Marketing is all about engaging a well-targeted audience with valuable, helpful and compelling content that solves their problems and persuades them to do business with you.

There is a strategic approach to creating valuable content, but assuming you’re already doing that, here are 10 easy tips to embellish the content that you are currently producing:

Tweak your Email Signature

Below your email signature line, attach a link to a helpful & relevant blog post from your website to encourage email recipients to explore your site.

Attach a link to a relevant blog post to your email signature

Solve problems

Focus on the core problem that your business solves. Then put out lots of content, enthusiasm, and ideas about how to solve that problem. (Put content on your blog, other people’s blogs i.e. guest blogging, e-books or white papers, webinars, Google Hangouts, audio podcasts etc.)

Do a Competitive Analysis

Analyze your content in light of your competitor’s content then identify opportunities to be different or better. But DO NOT copy your competitor’s content!

Add Comment Luv

Add ‘Commentluv’ plugin to your WordPress website. With this plugin, every time you comment on someone else’s blog, a link to the most recent article that you wrote on your blog is embedded in the comment. It literally spreads your content across other sites!

Comment Luv WP-plugin spreads your content to other sites

Curate!

Curate! Curate! Curate! It’s not lazy – it’s good neighborliness.  In fact there’s business value in collaboration and besides sometimes other people can explain it better than you!

Tell all

Want your blog to get noticed? Start creating content about those industry ‘secrets’ or how-to tips that none of your competitors will touch!

Do a Content Audit

Review your website and all blog posts often and inspect for ROT. ROT stands for Redundant, Outdated and Trivial content. If you find ROT, weed it out!

Review content for ROT

Be where it matters

You don’t have to be on every single social media network that exists. You just need to ‘be where it matters’. Find out where your customers and prospects are located (online) and focus your content distribution through those channels!

Be a journalist

When you write an article use a journalistic approach – Most important content first [who, what, where, why, when, how]. Next, provide important details, then other supporting background information last. You should end of with an inverted pyramid type of content structure.

Engage, Convert or Die!

Last but not least – every piece of content on your site should be doing either one (or both) of these things: ENGAGING or CONVERTING. If it is not doing that, get rid of it!

Over to you: What did I miss? Any other content tips that would like to share? Please do so – I’d love to grow this list to at least 50 items!

In social media we usually associate success with numbers – ‘number of followers or fans‘, number of times content has been re-tweeted, shared or plus 1′d and number of subscribers. This is called social proof but it’s not always proof of a job well done.

Sometimes your numbers may be small, but the size of the problem you’re solving is huge. I came across Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), a small healthcare provider serving rural Alaska.

ANTHC website features a strong focus on social media

The organization was created in 1997 to manage health services for the Native Alaskan people. Their success has been phenomenal. ANTHC has not only contributed to the near eradication of hepatitis A among Alaska Natives, but also made this population’s rate of disease go from among the worst to the best in the U.S (quoted on their website). Now there’s a story worth telling!

Inspired by their story, I set out to find out how they’re using social media content to achieve some of their goals.

ANTHC Website Content

No blog (yet!) but a visually interesting site that supports a unique brand message of ‘leadership in life-care’. Their site show-cases content that is interesting, useful, relevant and problem-solving – all key elements of quality web content.

Also interesting is the organization’s vision (which could also be their unique value proposition),”To promote wellness, eradicate disease and to make Alaska Natives the healthiest people in the world”. Very well said!

ANTHC on Facebook

ANTHC has a Facebook ‘Like box’ displayed well above the fold on their site, and for a small page it’s great to see that a lot of their content is being shared or liked by fans – which means that fans find it useful and relevant.

ANTHC on Twitter

ANTHC has a fairly young Twitter page (383 tweets as of this writing) featuring tweets that are mostly educational or informative. I think they will experience better interaction with followers when their content becomes a little more conversational in nature.

ANTHC on Vimeo

The Vimeo channel showcases some great life stories of challenges and opportunities within the Native Alaskan communities. However the video content is not always consistent with their branding. In some cases for instance, instead of featuring brand-specific content, they show clips from other brands, even non-healthcare brands. So if there is an important message here, it’s easy to miss.

ANTHC on YouTube

On YouTube ANTHC has a variety of great brand-specific content  - patient stories, hospital culture, health tips and so on. Again, not a huge number of hits, but they’re putting out content that tells interesting stories about their brand and their communities.

Key Takeaway

Here’s what we can learn from ANTHC - Any healthcare organization no-matter how big or small CAN solve their community’s problems and touch lives by using social media content. It’s not always about social proof and it doesn’t mean you always get it right. It’s about finding new innovative ways to reach people and to solve their problems.

In an industry that doesn’t trust social media, ANTHC has embraced it, they’re experimenting with new platforms, starting conversations, and touching people’s lives. And that is a great story.

The use of social media and content marketing has exploded in all industries across the U.S. But healthcare has been very cautious in adopting, largely because of unique risks that they face in the area of online communication.

Physician online engagement risks can be minimized

Some of the risks include:

•  possible violation of patient privacy
•  possible violations of (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) HIPAA
• State laws and other legal pitfalls

To address these risks and offer tangible solutions, AMA [the American Medical Association] published a policy on physicians’ use of social media in 2010. This policy is equally appropriate for hospitals and other healthcare organizations as well. AMA’s general recommendation is to ‘tread with caution‘.

AMA’s six social media policy suggestions

1.  Physicians should be extremely sensitive to patient privacy and not post any information online that could identify a patient.
2. Understand that once information is made available on the Internet it is there permanently. Physicians should monitor their own personal and professional information and ensure that it is accurate and professional. E.g. use privacy settings where applicable but remember that they are not fool proof.
3. Physicians who choose to interact with patients online should maintain appropriate boundaries consistent with professional ethical guidelines.
4. To help keep those boundaries in the patient/doctor relationship AMA suggests that physicians separate their personal and professional online content.
5. Physicians who observe inappropriate or unprofessional content posted by a colleague should bring it to the attention of that colleague. If the content is serious enough to significantly violate professional norms then the observing physician should take the matter to relevant authorities.
6. Be cautious on the Internet. Content posted online could negatively affect your reputation which in turn could have an impact on your medical career, and undermine the public trust in the medical profession.

Social Media benefits outweigh risks for healthcare

AMA provided these guidelines because they understand that the benefits accompanying these risks are tremendous. More patients are flocking the Internet for information regarding every area of their lives, including health advice.

Benefits of social media for healthcare could outweigh risks

Physicians and healthcare organizations can take advantage of new media (social media, content marketing, and digital content) to reach consumers who they might not otherwise be able to communicate with.

Key Takeaway

It is possible to minimize the common risks that physicians and healthcare organizations face in online communication. Every physician or organiziation CAN benefit from the use of social media by applying these guidelines and ensuring that they use smart content in their websites and profiles.

Over to you: What did I miss? Do you have other suggestions to minimize the risk that physicians face with social media?

 Source: ECRI Institute, Healthcare Risk Control Report, November 2011.

Historically, medical care has been primarily physician-centric — “take the doctor’s orders”; however, more recently, patients are playing a more active role in their treatment.

social media is transforming the patient-doctor relationship

At its very core, social media is a driver of a patient-centered model, promoting two-way continuous communication between supportive community networks, health care providers and patients through the most current, transparent, and immediate information available.

Here are 3 ways in which social media is transforming the  health market and what it means to the future of patient-care. Read full article here.

This is such a great article I wanted to highlight it on this blog and hopefully bring more attention to it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Do you think social media can actually improve the relationship between doctors and patients?

With a few exceptions healthcare websites are plagued by content that is dull, difficult to understand and fuzzy on the value proposition.

Online readers don’t have time for this. In fact studies show that readers will leave your website within 10 seconds unless your web content communicates a clear value proposition to the user.

Websites have 10 seconds to show consumers what they want to see

Compare and contrast

Take a look at United Healthcare which provides a clear value proposition. Users get that UHC provides healthcare plans that are simple and easy to understand. In addition consumers can quickly navigate the site for specific links to:

• various insurance plans
• employer plans
• doctors in the network
• and other healthcare resources

UHC’s clean and clear site is visually appealing and inviting to visitors.

United healthcare shows a clear value proposition on their site

In contrast look at Assurant health which is poorly designed, cluttered, uses a very small font size, and shows no clear value proposition to consumers.

The point is that healthcare consumers are browsers. They visit numerous web sites looking for answers to their problems – and they want those answers fast. Every healthcare organization should be able to capture consumer attention by providing content that is valuable, engaging and easy to read.

Here are 9 ways that healthcare organizations can make their content more compelling and enhance consumer experience on their websites:

Important content above the fold

Healthcare consumers are looking for quick information to help them solve their problems. They will not read your content word for word. Make sure that the most important information is ‘above the fold’ i.e. the point at which users have to scroll down to read more. The more they have to scroll down, the less they will read.

Create appeal

Because healthcare content tends to be intense and difficult to read, create more appeal by adding colorful images, call outs, bulleted text and interesting illustrations.

 Speak their language

Healthcare content is notorious for big scary words. Don’t use jargon, abbreviations or difficult words. Keep your content at a middle-school reading level. If you must use scary words, explain them in clear, simple language.

 Highlight key words

This is not news. But in addition be sure to link relevant anchor text to other content on your site so that users are encouraged to explore more of your website. E.g Link the phrase, ‘low-sodium diet’ to a previous article on your site titled, ‘How to live a low-sodium lifestyle’. Avoid attaching links to non-specific words or phrases.

 Find interesting stories

If you don’t have them, get them from someone else. By licensing content from third-parties you can engage consumers with interesting stories from patient communities (e.g. Cincinatti Childrens Hospital does this well); from other healthcare experts and researchers (e.g. Mayo Cllinic does this well).

 Don’t explain everything

Sometimes you should let users experience it instead. Providence St. Vincent Medical Centre in Portland, Ore.,  helped create this compelling video for breast cancer awareness. Notice that it received over 13 million hits!

Invite conversation

Add discussion questions at the end your content to invite users to comment on your blog articles. But make sure that users understand what is expected of them. By displaying your blog commenting policy they will understand the rules of engagement.

 Make your content social

Create sharable content such as blog posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, infographics and so on. Again, be sure to create social media guidelines for your brand’s online conversation. If you’re not sure how to do this please hire someone who can help you.

Focus on users

Brand your content from your users’ perspective not from your own marketing perspective. Ask yourself, ‘Does this content provide a clear value proposition to website users?’  If you give visitors what they want, they will see you as a valued resource not just another service provider.

 Key take away

As a healthcare organization, your number one priority is to establish your brand as an authority in your category. Authority leads to recognition, opportunities and more sales. However consumers will be attracted to your website if it is educational, engaging and adds value to their lives. If you haven’t already, be sure to review your website and perform a content analysis to ensure that your brand is giving users a valuable experience.

Over to you: Have you noticed any healthcare organizations that are providing consumers with compelling and engaging content?

WebMD suffered a serious blow this week. But whether it will cripple the company or not remains to be seen.

WebMD the health-information website

It turns out that highly commercialized content is one of the charges leveled against the health-information website. Critics and users alike have complained that the company is a ‘drug pusher’, putting out content that steers consumers towards drugs manufactured by advertisers such as Eli Lilly.

But social media also hurt WebMD:

Although they receive over 107 million unique visitors each month, and total traffic of 2.24 billion page views in the third quarter of 2011, WebMD revenues fell about 10% to  $20million. Experts and trend strategists suggest that consumers are turning to other sources for medical information i.e. social media.

WebMD’s content malfunction

Despite having some great resources such as symptom checker, a medical dictionary and Pill Identification Tool there are some content issues that make it less user-friendly:

•  The site has become tougher to navigate. Numerous ads and banners make for a more noisy and distracting environment.

• Too much content makes it confusing for users to quickly find what they’re looking for. E.g. Searching for a migraine solution is like searching for a needle in a haystack – should one start with symptom checker, Health A-Z or Health Conditions?

• The site desperately needs to be re-designed so that it is more focused on consumers rather than advertisers.

• Outdated content is an issue. Case in point – on the Expert blog ‘Recent Posts’ are dated October 2011 (as of this writing).

• Given that more people are using the Internet to gather information about their healthcare needs, I think not having a live doctor online to answer questions and give general advice is a missed opportunity.

Healthcare marketers take note

Given the high expectations that consumers have for relevant and engaging content, healthcare organizations have to think long and hard about the way they communicate on their websites.

Providing relevant and easily accessible content is no longer an option. Healthcare marketers will need to review and analyse their website content to figure out if their sites are meeting visitor’s needs and offering applications and features they add value to users.

What are your thoughts? Do you think WebMD’s content is showing signs of poor health? Speak your mind

It’s no secret that healthcare organizations are still wondering how to engage online without getting into trouble.

For instance by October 2011 only about 20% of US Hospitals had some kind of social media presence.

The healthcare industry has been slow to adopt social media

Some of the most pressing concerns preventing a greater adoption of content and social media marketing in this industry include:

• Privacy and security issues
• Professional code of ethics
• Malpractice liability and other concerns

However organizations such as Mayo Clinic are not shying away from online conversations. Instead they are leading the way in developing compelling content created by:

• physicians and researchers telling stories about their research
• patient communities sharing their experiences
• physician specialists discussing patient care, innovations, and new treatments
• students of Mayo Clinic Research Center sharing their perspectives
• other Mayo Clinic professionals discussing the future of healthcare and wellness.

Here’s a quick analysis of what their content looks like:

ROT (Redundant, Outdated and Trivial content)

Not too much ROT here. Usually a Twitter feed doesn’t add any value to a web page unless the feed is ALWAYS fresh and relevant – I’m glad to see that Mayo Clinic’s Live Twitter feed contains recent, and relevant content (Keep in mind that a live Twitter feed is hard to control since it contains a lot of user-generated content).

However I didn’t ‘get’ the need for a calendar. What is it supposed to do? Every piece of content on your web page should either engage or convert prospects. The calendar is just taking up space.

Usefulness and Relevance

Here they get a full five star rating. It’s really remarkable that Mayo Clinic has the vision, the time and resources to create eight different blogs each focusing on content that attracts different niche audiences. That’s really taking it to the next level. We should all be taking notes.

Influence and engagement

Mayo Clinic has over 72,000 Facebook fans as seen on their website’s Likebox – talk about social proof!

Mayo Clinic's Facebook Likebox illustrates serious social proof

I didn’t have time to analyse each blog in detail, but a quick overview showed that some blogs generated more engagement than others. ‘Sharing Mayo Clinic‘ blog (where the patient community shares their stories and experiences) showed a good number of comments on many articles. It’s also the hub that links to their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube profiles.

I wish they would use a Twitter button with a counter to demonstrate their content’s popularity. However their Facebook ‘Like’ button for content-sharing provides the missing evidence.

Voice, style and intended audiences

Generally Mayo Clinic Blogs are very open and transparent environments as indicated here:

Mayo Clinic encourages open communication on their blog

Again each of the eight blogs have completely different styles and tones since they are intended for different audiences. For instance the ‘Physicians Update Blog’ is by doctors for doctors and so the tone is very dry and academic (though I’m sure they understand each other). But a quick listen to the ‘Mayo Clinic Podcast’ exposes you to a very compelling, yet very brief (one-minute) radio program bursting with great advice and educational content.

Usability and findability

Lastly I wanted to see how findable their content is on the Internet. A search for ‘cancer patient stories’, ‘healthcare patient stories’, and similar phrases ranked Mayo Clinic very high on SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Mayo Clinic ranks highly for several long-tail key phrases

Key Takeaways

Mayo Clinic is a perfect example of healthcare content marketing done right. Despite the challenges that limit the nature of the conversation, Mayo Clinic has taken the opportunity to talk to their various audiences in bold and non-traditional ways. They have demonstrated that innovative thinking in a highly regulated environment is usually all it takes to open doors that would otherwise remain closed.

Over to you: What do you think of Mayo Clinic’s content marketing approach? Do you think the healthcare industry could learn from them? Speak your mind