7 Healthcare Content Marketing Hubs We Love

#1 University Health’s HealthFocus

With a streamlined navigation that allows users to filter stories by topics or services, University Health’s content marketing hub draws you in quickly. Whether you’re looking for stories related to a specific service or a topic, or want to search by keyword, you can easily find what you’re looking for.

Their unique patient stories catch your eye with engaging photos of real people. Those photos are given center stage with the photo-heavy design of this hub. They also seamlessly integrate graphics and visuals in their articles and stories.

University Health also has a sophisticated cross-linking strategy with providers, locations, and service lines. That allows users the option to explore more in-depth without getting to in the weeds and distracting from the topic at hand.

#2 Northwell’s The Well

Northwell’s fun approach to content marketing takes their hub to the next level. Sometimes funny, always engaging headlines paired with unexpected visuals make the content hub fun to scroll and entice you to dive deeper.

Northwell doesn’t shy away from less traditional topics, with their content hub featuring everything from ingrown hairs to boogers. They even touched on marijuana safety when their home state of New York voted to legalize it for recreational use.

This straightforward approach can pay off. Patients are talking about these topics, whether or not you are. If you give them helpful and engaging information, they’re more likely to share with their friends and family, but they also might remember you when it comes time for their care. It’s clear that this approach is drawing readers. A glance at their trending filter shows that articles on marijuana, weight gain, and bodily functions are resonating with their readers.

#3 North Mississippi Health Services’ Connect


A nice blend of timely and timeless topics, North Mississippi Health Services’ content marketing hub, Connect, is updated regularly and hits a wide variety of topics.

While the name is a play on their tagline (“What connected feels like®”), it is fitting for a variety of reasons. For example, most articles are written by clinicians, so they can address questions they hear frequently and provide the information their community needs.

North Mississippi Health Services offers filtering by topics and services, and they also have a hub-specific search, making it easy to find information on the topic you want to read about. They also make their articles easily shareable across all social platforms, as well as through email and ability to print.

#4 Adventist HealthCare’s Living Well


An eye-catching header with easy-to-access filtering helps make the Adventist HealthCare content marketing hub easy to navigate. With a mix of topics, from recipes to giving birth during a pandemic, Adventist HealthCare does a great job of addressing the needs of their communities.

Adventist HealthCare also does a nice job including links to relevant service lines and including CTAs on their posts, so if you’re interested in exploring a service after reading something, it’s intuitive and easy.

Read the full case study on this content marketing hub and see some of the impressive results.

#5 Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials

It isn’t a roundup of content marketing hubs without a mention of Cleveland Clinic. This hub is renowned, even beyond the healthcare industry, and there’s a lot to learn from their approach. Cleveland Clinic hits on relevant topics in a timely manner, allowing them to lead the charge on topics that healthcare consumers care most about.

We also love the section devoted to COVID-19-related articles. COVID-19 is still very timely and developing, so featuring it makes sense, and they’re still creating fresh content to inform their site visitors.

#6 ProHealth Care’s Healthy Directions


Impactful visuals make ProHealth Care’s Healthy Directions engaging to scroll and click through. With a variety of topics and audiences, it can be tricky to find engaging photos that connect with your headlines, but ProHealth Care makes it look easy.

The opportunity to share natively once again stands out for ProHealth Care. Once again, hub-specific search helps you find the topics that interest you most. ProHealth Care’s content tackles popular topics, like the Mediterranean diet and gardening. And share functionality on every page makes it easy for users to email a favorite article or post it to a social media site.

#7 Johnson & Johnson


With a focus on topics that matter for both their brand and their customer base, Johnson & Johnson has an interesting perspective when it comes to content marketing. They have been leveraging their spot as one of the vaccine providers in the U.S. to up their content marketing game, especially around COVID-19.

In fact, Johnson & Johnson has several distinct hubs, all linked from the main one. While it may not be as intuitive of an approach as having filtering, for a group like Johnson & Johnson – who has extremely different audiences – it makes sense. This approach allows healthcare consumers to go directly to health and wellness or COVID-19 content, while shareholders can choose an experience that targets their interests and concerns.

Ready to up your content marketing game?

Get the inside scoop with Behind the Scenes of Successful Healthcare Content Marketing — where our experts discuss some best practices to give your content marketing the love it needs.

Feeling overwhelmed with your content marketing efforts? Our experts are eager to help you engage with your audiences – contact us to find out how.

4 Reasons Healthcare Marketers Should Run Digital Audio Ad Campaigns

4 reasons digital audio campaigns work for healthcare

Digital audio campaigns are a great opportunity to spread the word about your healthcare organization and services. It’s also called programmatic audio advertising, which means the platform uses an automated selling and insertion of ads into audio content, much like display advertising. This means digital audio ads allow you to easily target the right listeners at the right time and place.

Here are the top four reasons your marketing team should be investing in digital audio ads.

#1: Broaden your exposure to valuable audiences</h3

Digital audio listeners are an important target audience who is only consuming more online audio. Consider these stats:

  • Podcast listeners typically have university-level education, are employed, and earn a household income above $100k per year. (Edison Research)
  • Millennials and Gen Z, who are becoming key healthcare buyers and have a big lifetime value, are a demographic that considers digital audio a top channel. (Edison Research)
  • The time US adults spent with digital audio recorded an 8.3% growth for a total of 1 hour, 29 minutes per day. (eMarketer)
  • Digital audio accounted for 11% of total media time per day for US adults in 2020 (eMarketer)

#2: Access to hyper-targeting

Like other digital channels, digital audio lets you use similar advice targeting parameters, including location, demographics, and online behavior.

With programmatic audio, you have the option to fine-tune your targeting even further. You can use data from audio partners like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeart Media to target specific genres, niches, and demographics. This allows you to target your campaign to complementary genres or topics.

#3: Improve recall

According to Neilson Media Lab audio ads have a 24% higher recall rate than traditional ads. Which makes sense — listeners typically aren’t engaging with other media, which means they won’t be distracted when they hear an ad. With their undivided attention, the ad will have more of an impact.

Combine that with the fact the vast majority of audio ads can’t be skipped, your ads will have a higher rate of exposure, getting the most out of your campaign budget.

#4: Easy to track

Digital audio advertising gives you the opportunity to measure reach, impressions, listen through rate, and click through rate in real time.

Unlike traditional radio ads, where campaign performance data is limited, potentially inaccurate, and typically not available until a campaign has ended, you can easily analyze, adjust, and pivot audio ads as they are running.

An immersive media that pays off

Thanks to streaming audio’s ability to be highly personalized and dynamic, 43% say the audio ads are more relevant to them. (Pandora) If your organization is focusing on delivering more personalized content and ad experiences, digital audio is a channel worth considering.

If you’re unsure how to get started or want to run a test campaign, our team can help. Check out some of the results our team delivering for Wayne UNC Health’s digital audio campaign, and then let’s talk about how we can do the same for your health system.

Is Your CMS Working for You?

This white paper will help you evaluate if your CMS is helping or hurting your digital initiatives by sharing the five most common obstacles healthcare marketing teams face with their current platforms. Get guidance to help you move forward with these obstacles in mind.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Know if you’re stuck in a broken upgrade path and what to do about it
  • Assess if an overabundance of web properties and different platforms is holding you back
  • Determine if you need to invest in the team or the technology
  • Get your technology and business strategy in alignment

 

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The Impact of YouTube’s Advertising Updates on Your Healthcare Video Content

YouTube Monetization Policies

YouTube Advertising is something that many have experienced but few, besides marketers, think about. Marketers use YouTube ads to reach new, potential audiences. Meanwhile, YouTube watchers may only consider ads the cost of watching free videos. For video creators, YouTube ads are often not even a thought unless the video creator are prolific enough to share in advertising profits.

Many in the health industry find themselves in the final group. Health systems across the country use YouTube for their patient testimonials, surgery preparation and information, facility walkthroughs, marketing materials, and scores of other topics. Some of these videos are embedded on a hospital website, some are shared on social media, and some solely live in the YouTube account.

This has worked well for some time, as it offered reliability and ease of use and no advertising interrupting important content. For years, YouTube has only put ads on the videos of their partner accounts (those who share revenue) or videos containing a partner account’s content (for example, a video that features another person’s copyrighted music).

However, that may all be changing soon.

Update to YouTube’s Terms of Service

In November of 2020, YouTube updated its Terms of Service for the United States. One of the updates they made concerns monetization:

Right to Monetize

You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within content or charging users a fee for access). This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments. Starting November 18, 2020, any payments you may be entitled to receive from YouTube under any other agreement between you and YouTube (including, for example, payments under the YouTube Partner Program, Channel memberships, or Super Chat) will be treated as royalties.  If required by law, Google will withhold taxes from such payments.

Essentially, YouTube has given itself the right to run ads on any video uploaded onto the platform. They can do so as they please, and that does not entitle you to funds or revenue unless you have a specific agreement or partnership with YouTube. If you have one of those partnerships, those payments will be considered royalties.

What does this mean for your user’s video experience?

As the video creator and account owner, YouTube does not need to alert you that they are running ads on your videos. And these ads will be visible on your videos on the YouTube platform, when they are shared on social media and wherever you have them embedded. That means that a user could be clicking through your website and view an embedded video that is multiple years old and see an ad before or during its runtime.

Effective June 2021, YouTube has rolled out this Terms of Service globally, and this is a scenario that may become increasingly common.

Solutions in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP)

Luckily, there’s an option to either disable advertising on your videos or control the verticals of ads running on your videos and share in the revenue. To do this, you need to look at the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP).

The YPP exists primarily to help content creators control their copyright, access the Creator Support Team and collect revenue for their videos. As a part of this last item, YPP members can control what types of ads run on their videos. This control extends to demonetizing (disabling ads) the channel as a whole. These options only exist through the YPP.

How does my healthcare organization join the YPP?

To join the YPP, you must qualify for the following requirements:

  1. Follow the YouTube Monetization Policies
  2. Live in a country or region where the YPP is available (the entire USA is an included region)
  3. Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months*
  4. Have more than 1,000 subscribers*
  5. Have a linked AdSense account

*To check your public watch hours and subscribers, visit Studio.YouTube.com, click on the Monetization link in the navigation column. On that page, will be two meters to let you know if you have passed these requirements.

If you pass the requirements, you can apply for the program and, if/when YouTube accepts you, you’ll then have access to the advertising/monetization settings for your account. Typically, this review process takes one month.

What if my organization doesn’t meet YPP requirements?

If you don’t currently meet those requirements and are concerned about advertising on your healthcare organization’s videos, you may want to work towards qualifying for the YPP requirements to avoid ads entirely. It is unclear how widely YouTube will be running ads on non-YPP videos, and it may never become a problem. But if it does, if staying on YouTube is a priority for your organization, the only way to disable ads altogether will be through the YPP.

Need help?

Video marketing continues to grow in use and effectiveness for many healthcare marketing teams. If you’re a Geonetric client and need help navigating your video strategy, we’d be happy to help – reach out to your client advisor or account strategist. If you’re not a client and your current agency isn’t supporting you, we’d love the opportunity to work with you. Contact us to talk about your needs!

Behind the Scenes of Successful Healthcare Content Marketing

When done well, it can help you build brand awareness and loyalty ahead of critical healthcare decisions. Join us for this webinar and learn how to leverage the right strategies for your content marketing plan, from research to writing and promoting. You’ll walk away with ideas and strategies to create content your audience wants to engage with.

Main Site vs. Microsite

As a healthcare marketer, you’ve probably faced the question of whether your main site or a microsite is the best way to highlight a specific part of your organization. This is especially true for organizations that are making the move to a system, or are merging or acquiring new hospitals or medical groups. In some cases, marketing teams worked hard to bring disjointed sites under a system umbrella but you still have certain service lines or departments asking to keep their business separate or move their business from the main site to a separate microsite.

This white paper can help you answer their questions and learn:

  • When microsites are the answer
  • What are the hidden risks of microsites
  • Why user research can help you decide
  • How to keep stakeholders happy regardless of which approach you take

 

Download our White Paper


Is It Time to Redesign My Healthcare Website?

Common Triggers for a Full Redesign

There are a number of reasons it could be time to redesign your website, from internal shifts in strategy, to external changes in consumer behavior.

Common triggers fall into two main categories:

  1. Changes in business context or strategy: These are changes in the way your organization does business. This includes changes in organizational structures, mergers and acquisitions, or a rebrand. It could also mean that your organization is facing new competition or reacting to changes in the industry, such as shifting payer models. These changes impact overarching strategy, which in turn impacts your overall website design or the way you are using your website to engage different audiences.
  2. The realization the current site isn’t producing results: When change doesn’t come from the top down due to organizational shifts, it usually comes from the recognition that the website in its current state is not producing results or is not efficiently maintainable. Symptoms include: low on-page conversions, low user-engagement numbers, poor rankings on search engines, or the fact it’s become hard for your team to maintain.

Across the two categories, the most common reasons healthcare systems decide it’s time for a full redesign is that the current site isn’t meeting some or all of these core elements:

  • Acquisition and/or rebrand: It is imperative your site matches and aligns with the total brand experience intended from an acquisition and/or rebrand. From the visual brand identity to consolidating information on all of your facilities, providers, and services into one experience. Part of this also might be updating an outdated look and feel to move into modernity. With a modern design, your website will promote trust and brand recognition amongst consumers, which is why a website redesign can do wonders for your brand-building initiatives. At the end of the day, first impressions matter and they are 94% influenced by your site design.
  • Strategy: When there is a substantial shift in organizational strategy re-evaluating how your website supports that is key. Often that alone can push you into a redesign. For example, to align with digital transformation initiatives or access to care endeavors, a full redesign maybe be needed.
  • Technology and infrastructure: Your technical foundation needs constant attention and care. Technical debt over time hurts both the internal and external user experience and therefore forces you into a full redesign.
  • Accessibility: No longer are you able to provide or assume a one size fits all user experience for your website. That’s where inclusive design comes in. If the current website is not accommodating all of your users, including those with disabilities such as color blindness and hearing loss, that can be a driver of a full redesign as developing inclusive digital experiences is not only the right thing to do when we put people first, but, it’s the law.
  • SEO and Content: A well-designed website also means good SEO. If your current site was built without SEO and content in mind, a full redesign might be the best path forward to get the user and search-optimized experience in line with current best practices.
  • Navigation and Information Architecture: The core goal of your website is to get site visitors the information they need in a convenient and efficient way. If your site’s structure and navigation is hindering your users’ ability to find information, a full redesign with a thoughtful content strategy may be needed.
  • CMS/Platform: What you use for your platform matters – not only in terms of the internal experience for your marketing and I.T. teams, but also the external user experience in terms of what features and functionality is available to site visitors.

As you can see in the below chart, at the center of everything is customer experience. Building a convenient and easy-to-use web experience delivers business value in the long-term. In fact, Becker’s Hospital Review noted each loyal customer represents $1.4 million in revenue to a hospital over their lifetime. When looking at everything through the lens of delivering an optimal customer experience, your website is under more pressure than ever before to deliver real business value.

Image showing top reasons to consider a website redesign

The dependencies between these triggers are also important to note. The work behind one of them is often so great it makes sense to evaluate all the others at the same time. For example, if your current site doesn’t represent all of your facilities due to an acquisition, you’ll likely need to redesign. If you are going to redesign, you might as well evaluate everything from the CMS to content to navigation.

Another option: Iterative design

A full redesign isn’t the only option on the table. If you find your site is still performing in those core areas – it represents your brand and strategy, the technology foundation is strong, and it’s delivering on SEO, accessibility, navigation and content, you might be in the market to take a more iterative approach to redesign.

When taking an iterative approach, you focus on making improvements in smaller iterations and on the highest value targets, such as top business-value areas (think: appointment requests) or top pain points as identified by real users (think: searching for events).

Learn more

Want to learn more about healthcare site redesigns and whether you should consider a full redesign, an iterative redesign or maybe even a re-platform? Download the popular Is It Time for a Redesign white paper and get more helpful guidance on how to determine if it’s time to redesign your website and how to get started if a new CMS is in your future.

As always, the team at Geonetric is always ready to help you with any upcoming site redesign or help you pick the right platform for your team.

Web Writing for Healthcare

All your top content questions are answered in this eBook. You’ll learn the fundamentals of writing good content for the web and how to develop a successful content marketing strategy. You also benefit from updated insight given that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted expectations of healthcare marketing.

In this eBook, you’ll learn how to:

  • Define voice and tone
  • Attract new website visitors
  • Tell your story and build relationships
  • Lead visitors to take the next step
  • Promote your services
  • Manage content with inventories and audits
  • Structure information architecture
  • Leverage the right call to action

 

Download our eBook


Web Content Management: Trends that Matter for Healthcare

Finding a platform that will support both the user experience needs of today and the complex digital transformation efforts of tomorrow isn’t easy. Join us for this webinar and learn the state of website management technology inside and outside of healthcare. You’ll walk away with the insight you need to find the right path for your hospital or health system.

Web Content Voice, Tone, & Style

Voice, tone, and style may sound like the same thing, but they’re not. They work together to define what your brand sounds like and how it’s perceived. So what’s the difference?

  • Voice – Consistent brand personality your organization uses in its communications, includes word choices, pronouns, punctuation, and more
  • Tone – How you communicate and the attitude you convey depending on the topic or situation—similar to your speaking tone—and the impression it leaves on your visitors
  • Style – Guidelines to ensure you present a uniform brand experience using defined language choices and writing mechanics

If you already have a voice, tone, and style guide, make sure you use it consistently because these elements make a difference in a user’s engagement on your website. They help your organization’s content connect with your website audiences by:

  • Making you stand out from your competitors
  • Building trust through shared values
  • Delivering relevant messages that convey your understanding of their needs

Discover & Use Your Brand Voice

Voice is your health care organization’s brand personality. Your voice helps you establish a relationship with your website visitor and should be consistent. If you don’t have a documented organizational voice, you can start discovering it by examining your brand standards. Don’t have brand standards? Then consider your organization’s mission, values, and key messages. These provide the foundation to guide you and your stakeholders as you create a well-defined voice that connects with your audience.

Hospitals and health care systems often use variations on authoritative, conversational, or supportive brand voices.

    • Authoritative – Formal language that carries a sense of professionalism, experience and persuasive thought leadership.

Benefit Health leads the Midwest in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. You can trust our cardiac and vascular teams—composed of highly trained heart, vascular and thoracic specialists, nurses, and technicians—to provide comprehensive care.

    • Conversational – Informal language with a more natural, familiar approach that seems caring, informative and respectful.

Stay close to home while benefiting from exceptional heart and vascular care. At Benefit Health, you gain access to highly trained specialists and the same advanced treatments available at the nation’s most elite medical centers—all in a caring, comfortable community hospital setting.

  • Supportive – Casual language filled with personality, enthusiasm, willingness to help, and sometimes slang that seems relaxed, like talking to a trusted friend.
    Put your heart in our hands. If you need a heart care doctor, call on Benefit Health’s heart and vascular specialists. You’ll have access to the latest technology and experienced staff who will be with you every step of the way.

Review these three organizations to see the impact of voice on content about the same condition – depression.

  • Mayo Clinic – Uses an authoritative, somewhat formal, matter-of-fact voice in its health information to describe depression. Content functions similarly to an encyclopedia entry. Even though the content is written in second person (“you”), it’s serious and projects little personality. The advantage of this type of voice and defined structure is that it’s easy to create and update. The disadvantage is that the voice may seem too clinical and detached for the readers looking for a more personal, compassionate touch to patient care and health information.
  • WebMD – Reflects a casual magazine-like feel. Depression content is straightforward and respectful, but written in second person for a more conversational and personable voice. The advantage of this type of voice and content is that it’s credible, but with a more casual approach that invites the audience to develop a relationship with the organization. The disadvantage is that to achieve the brand voice, the writing style must maintain a careful balance between communicating information that’s medically accurate and understandable to a patient audience. This consistent balance can be hard to achieve.
  • Health.com – Adopts a supportive voice with sympathetic and friendly content. The depression information is informal, yet courteous, avoids jargon, and answers consumers’ questions about the condition. The advantage of this type of voice and content is that it’s enthusiastic, warm, and encourages interaction. The disadvantage is that this voice may sound too casual or unprofessional for some readers looking for a more formal voice.

For many health care brands, a conversational voice written in second person is appropriate because it can convey empathy and respect, and it’s able to be more or less enthusiastic or emotional as needed for the subject. Decide which voice best conveys your organization’s personality and then commit to using that voice consistently across all communications.

Your Tone Matters

Tone is a part of your brand voice. Voice, however, stays the same in speech, while tone changes naturally depending on the person or situation. It’s the same principle for written communication—your tone may differ depending on the type of message you want to convey. Tone is more than just words. It’s the way your organization communicates about what it does and who it is. If your tone is right, it can influence patients and prospects to feel the same way you do about your health care brand.

Just how important is tone to creating valuable content? Consider an experiment by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG), a leading user experience research group. NNG found that “different tones of voice on a website have measurable impacts on users’ perceptions of a brand’s friendliness, trustworthiness, and desirability. Casual, conversational, and moderately enthusiastic tones performed best.”

The experiment’s findings also suggest that those perceptions “significantly influence users’ willingness to recommend a brand.” That means the tone is important.

Put together a brand identity with a well-defined voice and tone, and you have a powerful message. Here’s an example of these elements working together:

Benefit Health Brand Messaging:

  1. Together, we’re taking good care of you.
  2. The right care, in the right place, at the right time.
  3. Access to high-quality care close to home.

Voice

  • Approachable clinical expert

Tone

  • Straightforward, warm, welcoming, easy to understand

Sample Copy
As the largest employer in the region and its leading healthcare provider, we interact every day with people we know and care deeply about—neighbors, friends, and family. The thread of Benefit Health is woven through the fabric of eastern Iowa. Our patients feel the personal connection and extra compassion from being cared for by a neighbor or friend.

Now that you’ve seen what voice and tone can add to your copy let’s look at style.

Why Do We Need a Writing Style?

Content represents your health care organization best when written with a consistent style. Your writing style guide helps your team use your brand voice, tone, and editorial style uniformly across all communication channels. This consistency can aid your organization in becoming an identifiable, credible leader in your health care market.

Your organization’s writing style guide should include:

  • Reference to a preferred common style manual, such as The Associated Press Stylebook or another resource, and dictionary along with notes about your organization’s exceptions
  • Industry-specific terms, for example, do you prefer robot-assisted surgery, robotic-assisted surgery, or robotic surgery?
  • Organization-specific terms, such as department or location names
  • Voice and tone, with examples of sentences that do and don’t match it
  • Formatting guidelines, such as when and how to use bold text and bulleted lists
  • Guidance on meeting accessibility and readability standards
  • Web writing practices to help maintain user focus and engagement

Document Your Brand Voice, Tone & Style

If your healthcare organization does not have a voice, tone, and style guide, it’s worth your time to develop one. You’ll benefit from creating and using brand voice, tone, and writing style because it makes it easy for anyone working for your organization—internally and externally—to communicate consistently with your website visitors. These standardized elements will help your team:

  • Align messaging in all content
  • Increase productivity as they find answers to their questions quickly
  • Produce quality communications with fewer drafts
  • Strengthen your brand through content that engages your audience

Make sure you’re helping your patients and prospects get to know your organization’s personality, so they feel comfortable getting services from you. Use your voice, tone, and style guide consistently across all communication channels.

Need Help?
If you need help shaping your organization’s voice, tone or setting up style guidelines, contact the writing experts at Geonetric. We’re here to work with you!