Advantages of Virtual Birth Care Education

When you provide your birth care classes and tours online, your health system and community will benefit from the convenience and flexibility of this format. Find success with online courses that let your patients learn from you where and when they want. Learn how to create virtual classes that are timeless and impactful.

1. Become Adaptable

In a public health crisis, being adaptable is critical. The COVID-19 outbreak makes in-person maternity classes impractical, or even impossible, for an unknown period of time. The ability to change to meet the demands of your environment keeps you relevant and enables you to make a positive impact in your community during a difficult time.

Be an adaptable healthcare system by being resourceful. Use your website to deliver the knowledge of your maternity experts to your patients — instead of asking them to come to you.

2. Think Long-Term

Make videos that will outlast the COVID-19 pandemic. To produce effective and timeless videos:

• Avoid time stamps – Do not reference current events, dates, or fads. Stick to the core purpose of each video to preserve your videos.
• Avoid trends – Encourage your instructor to dress in a classic style that looks professional now and will still look professional 3 years from now. Avoid patterns, logos that can become outdated, and fashion statements.
• Focus on your messaging – Follow the topics you typically address and answer questions that come up the most in an in-person class.
• Break it up – Grab and keep your viewers’ attention by putting the most important information first. Then cover one topic at a time. Keep each point short and simple.
• Accommodate your viewer’s pace – Use titles in your videos to allow people to easily pause and rewind as needed.
• Keep it simple – Speak using an active voice. Use words your audience understands and explain any technical terms.
• Use visuals – Help your audience understand and remember by demonstrating best practices. Encourage your viewers at home to give each exercise a try.
• Make it accessible – Include closed captions to accommodate all audiences.
• Include a call to action – Invite your viewers to continue engaging with your healthcare system by giving them a relevant next step after they finish a course.

3. Build an Engaging Online Library

You do not have to create online options for all of your classes at once. Prioritize the classes that fill up first. Progressively build your online library to allow people to explore topics that are relevant to them. Assemble a collection of courses to cover:

• Advice for grandparents
• Breastfeeding benefits and tips for success
• Cesarean birth
• Comfort measures, including breathing and relaxation techniques
• First aid for newborns and infants
• Newborn care
• Navigating the first year of parenthood
• Postpartum care for mother and baby
• Tips for expectant parents
• What to expect during labor and birth

Virtual Maternity Tours

Offer a virtual tour of your birthing center to build trust and awareness online. Make your video memorable by showcasing why families should choose you for their delivery. Create warmth by using happy families holding their babies with supportive and compassionate nurses nearby. Use images that help people envision themselves or a loved one having a positive experience at your center. Include a step-by-step look at everything families may experience, including:

• What to bring to the hospital
• Where to go when you’re in labor
• Your care team
• Birth center amenities
• Maternity rooms
• Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and team
• Breastfeeding services
• How long families can expect to stay
• Going home with your baby

In your video, include testimonials from families that can serve as ambassadors for your hospital. Include clips from your care team on why they love what they do.

4. Promote Your Online Library

People are continually searching for a source of information they can trust. Get the word out about your online library and encourage people to visit it by:

• Featuring your classes in your blog
• Playing clips of classes in the offices of your OB-GYNs
• Promoting online courses on your social media platforms
• Running a digital ad campaign
• Sharing it with your internal team
• Using email marketing

Continue building awareness by including ways to promote your videos each time you revisit your marketing plans.

5. Connect With Your Viewers

Create a place for people to submit questions and comments. You will gather valuable insight from your viewers by reaching out to them directly. You may learn:

• Common questions your videos are not addressing
• Concerns families have
• Parenting trends
• Resources people are looking for
• Topics that interest expecting parents
• What sets you apart

Use this feedback to iterate your existing materials or to create more videos and resources.

Make an Impact

Stand out as a resource people can turn to anytime they need information. Focus on what people need to know and how you can best provide that information to them through your virtual classes.

1. Understand Your Community’s Concerns

Start with research. Reach out to your call center, frontline staff, and infectious disease specialists. Monitor local news outlets. Check social media and local online forums, like your city’s local subreddit. Look at Google Trends, your own internal site search, and other tools that reveal what people are searching for in your area and on your website.

These tools can help you get a handle on the questions, concerns, and potential misinformation in your community — so you can deliver the information people need.

2. Categorize & Organize Your Questions

Make it easy for readers to find information. Group questions by topic and place them under clear and specific subheadings — for example, “Protecting Yourself and Others,” “Local COVID-19 Testing and Care,” and “Hospital and Clinic Policies During COVID-19.” This makes your FAQ page easy to scan and navigate. No one wants to weed through all your content to find the answer to the one question that brought them to your site in the first place.

To keep an FAQ page from growing unwieldy, address the questions of just one target audience. For example, you may have one FAQ page for external audiences, like patients and community members, and another for your employees and physicians. Put employees and physician FAQs in place that makes sense for this audience. In some cases, that might be your intranet. If your intranet isn’t easily accessible for some staff or nonemployed physicians, choose a section of your website dedicated to healthcare professionals. Learn more about internal communication during a healthcare crisis.

As a crisis progresses and the questions you uncover in your research become more specialized to specific situations, you may want to segment your audience even further. For example, consider targeted FAQ pages to address the COVID-19-related questions of pregnant women, cancer patients and their families, people with respiratory conditions, older adults, and other groups. Consider the needs of your audience and the specialty programs, services, and expertise at your organization as you determine your approach.

3. Be Concise and Straightforward

Make questions and answers easy to read and understand by using plain language. Be clear and specific. Use short sentences and paragraphs. Speak directly to the reader. Use the active voice. Choose everyday words. Learn more about creating readable healthcare content.

When writing questions and answers, vary your opening phrases. Eye-tracking studies show that readers tend to look at words toward the beginning of a line when they scan a page. That means if every question starts with “What should I…,” your readers may struggle to find the information they’re looking for.

4. Prioritize Usability, Accessibility, & Inclusivity

During a public health crisis, everyone needs access to reliable, trustworthy health information — especially those who are most at risk. Choose an FAQ format that’s easy for everyone to use.

According to user experience leader Nielson Norman Group, the best format for short and medium FAQ pages is a question list followed by the individual questions and answers.

If you choose to use accordions to condense your content, make sure they comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Same for in-page links, also called jump links.

The subheadings you used to organize your questions also support accessibility for people using screen readers and other assistive devices.

If your service area includes large populations whose preferred language is something other than English, consider translating your FAQ page into the most commonly spoken languages in your community. A professional medical translator gives you more control and confidence in the accuracy and quality of your translated content.

5. Connect to Related Content

Avoid duplicating your content by connecting users to other areas of your website for additional information. For example, if you’re telling patients to use virtual visits for some healthcare services, cross-link to your virtual visits service line page.

During a far-reaching crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak, take advantage of resources from national or international organizations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offer easy-to-read COVID-19 fact sheets in multiple languages and syndicated public health library content.

6. Update Your FAQs Regularly

Keep your FAQ page relevant and up-to-date as the crisis evolves.

Do continual research on your community’s needs — the questions they have tomorrow or next week may be completely different than the questions they have today.

As news breaks, recommendations are updated, or policies change, revise your FAQ page so your visitors get current information. Consider including a “last updated” or “last reviewed” date on the page to help instill confidence and trust.

Putting it all Together: FAQ Page Examples

Check out these examples of clear, purposeful, well-organized COVID-19 FAQ web pages for a variety of audiences:

• Aetna — What You Need to Know About The Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• CDC – Information for Healthcare Providers: COVID-19 and Pregnant Women
• Children’s Hospital Colorado – FAQs for Healthcare Professionals: What You Need to Know About Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Cleveland Clinic – Frequently Asked Questions about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• Cone Health – Social Distancing FAQ: How It Helps Prevent COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and Steps We Can Take to Protect Ourselves

After the Crisis

When the crisis passes, remove the FAQ page from your website. While FAQ pages can be useful in a time-sensitive situation, they aren’t ideal for long-term website content. Instead, work relevant information about ongoing care or new policies into your foundational content.

With these approaches, you’ll create a timely, purposeful FAQ page with factual, unbiased information that can help ease anxiety and stress, reduce call volume, protect your community’s health, and even improve brand trust and loyalty today and going forward.

Communicating Internally During a Crisis

Healthcare marketing and communication professionals are working diligently to reduce confusion and worry, as well as stop inadvertent spread of misinformation by implementing a solid internal crisis communication plan. As we’re learning with COVID-19 right now, creating and following a plan becomes even harder when information changes day-by-day, and even hour-by-hour. Flexibility is key.

As you implement your crisis communication plans, knowing the answers to these five questions will help reduce chaos and provide your organization with accurate and timely information.

#1: Who Needs Information?

Ideally, you have time to assess the layers of communication you will need before you need them. Even if the crisis has begun to unfold, understanding the groups of individuals needing information can save you crucial time. Your internal audiences may consist of:

• Individuals working on campus during the crisis
• Individuals working off site during the crisis
• Staff who are expecting to come into work
• Team members who will not report to work
• Physicians with privileges at your health system
• Board members
• Vendors
• Volunteers

#2: What Do They Need to Know?

Not all of your internal audiences need the same information. You’ll need a plan for both essential and nonessential staff.  Determine what to tell your team and how to balance privacy and disclosure. Ask your managers what questions or concerns they’ve heard from staff. Address those questions on a large scale. Anticipating the information your teams need to know allows you to communicate proactively — so you can prevent problems or miscommunication.

Activate your incident command center to coordinate communications during an emergency. Rely on your command center to organize communications coming in from your local emergency response teams, government, and your staff. Use your command center’s strengths to build a hierarchy of responses about operations, logistics, planning, and support in a logical and efficient way.

Initial Communication

Your internal team will need to know about:

• Benefits – Notify your teams about what they can expect regarding pay, previously planned time off, and related information.
• Community resources – Share information that can help your internal teams’ well-being to keep them safely at home or safely report to and from work
• Working expectations – Clearly state who you expect to work on site, who should work remotely, and who should not work. Explain why these policies are in place and how long you anticipate they will last.
• Staff protocols – Communicate your process for individuals who get sick. Do you expect them to stay home or work? What steps or processes do staff need to follow before returning to work?
• Patient care protocols – Ensure everyone on your team knows your health system’s protocols regarding patient care. Eliminate confusion since each state and facility may have different rules for testing or patient care.
• Public messaging – Be transparent about what you’re communicating to the public through your website and other digital platforms as well as what you’re communicating to the media. This helps your internal team share correct information with the public. Your internal teams will value hearing from you first, not from news stations or social media.

Ongoing Communications

As your messaging continues to evolve, be sure to communicate:

• Action plan – List what your organization is doing to ensure the safety of your internal team, patients, visitors, and community.
• Building changes – Keep your internal team up to date by communicating facility changes, such as temporary testing sites or rezoning of departments
• Census updates – Share your patient volume and capacity with individuals who can use this information to improve patient care and make the appropriate staffing accommodations.
• Staffing updates – Inform your team on what they can expect during the crisis. How long with their shifts be? What can they expect when they arrive to work? Define roles and how your team members can make the most significant impact while protecting their own health.
• Supply status – Communicate your current resources, so people know what is available. Clarify items you need to improve patient care and how to best allocate supplies that are low in stock. Tell your team if and how you’re working with neighboring hospitals to improve patient care in your community.
• Your success – Remind your team of your mission and purpose as a health care system. During a crisis, it is important to celebrate your progress to continue the positive momentum and cohesion amongst your team.

#3: How Will They Receive Communication?

Evaluate your platforms for communication. What technology is in place that you can use during a crisis? If your technology becomes unavailable, what is your backup plan? Successful ways to communicate with your internal teams include:

• Overhead announcements – Use your facility’s public address (PA) system to make quick statements that everyone needs to hear.
• In-person updates – Work with managers or designated communication teams to provide verbal updates to front-line staff.
• Group text – Use for short, concise messages that need to go out quickly.
• Phone tree – Create and use a phone tree to efficiently relay brief messages to a group of people. Create a script to help people pass on accurate information.
• Email – Securely communicate updates that are important but do not require immediate action.
• Intranet – Dedicate a page or section of your intranet to crisis communication. Many people do not have time to sift through emails, especially when emails can quickly become out of date. Your intranet is an effective, searchable channel to communicate changes to a procedure, visiting hours, or staffing to all internal teams.
• Website – Share public updates on your website, check out these resources for crisis communications on your site.
• Social media – Shape the message you want to communicate through social media and set clear policies and procedures for your internal teams to follow. Make sure your social media team knows where to send inquiries and how to best address the questions coming in from your community.

#4: When Will They Get Updates?

Prioritizing what information you need to share and how frequently to share it helps establish a process for when a course of action is necessary. Depending on the length of your crisis, consider communicating:

• As needed – Relay urgent information immediately
• Hourly – Communicate critical information that impacts patient care and staff
• Daily – Send a daily recap to all internal teams by email. Consider having separate distribution lists for your different internal audiences. This can help you craft and communicate information relevant to each group. Update your intranet each day to include information for all internal audiences.
• Weekly – Summarize the week, concerns, and need-to-know information for the upcoming days and weeks.
• End of the crisis – Inform your team of the impact of the crisis, acknowledge their sacrifices and teamwork, and share your recovery plan.

#5: Where Can They Go to Get Answers to Their Questions?

Questions will arise even with the most informative communications in place. Use your intranet as a tool to help people submit questions and get answers promptly. Save time by creating a page on your intranet that provides correct messaging to questions your front-line teams hear frequently.

Evaluate & Evolve Your Communication Plan

Once the crisis is over, take time to review your process. Identify areas you would iterate on in a future event. Continue updating your plans as your health system changes and evolves.

The Web is Your Most Valuable Communication Tool in a Crisis

When you need to communicate quickly and update messaging to keep up with rapidly changing events, your website is a valuable tool. It’s always “on.” It’s available to the masses. It’s accessible in a second. And, most importantly, it’s quick and easy to update.

Stay Updated

Staying on top of rapidly changing information might be hard for your team, but do the best you can to follow a few reliable sources, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or National Institutes of Health (NIH) to share with your web visitors. As a team, evaluate new information you hear inside and outside the organization to ensure you’re providing the most relevant information to the public.

If resources and time are tight, link to those organizations or your own state health department, which are constantly updating their own sites with public-facing information.

Focus on Consumer Needs

Keeping consumers at the forefront of your communication strategy is always important. In a crisis, it’s essential. Before you post a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) FAQ or a press release, ask yourself whether it’s the right content for your audience.

Consider what your audience needs to know.

• What’s already been shared in the national and local news? What questions are people still asking?
• What common concerns and questions are your staff hearing from patients, visitors, and others in your community?

Common Questions During a Healthcare Crisis

Questions your community may have for you during a healthcare crisis include:

• What is your organization’s plan to handle this crisis?
• How are you monitoring patients coming to your hospitals and clinics?
• What should I know about this illness/crisis? What are the symptoms? When do I need to see a doctor? How will I be treated?
• How can I protect myself and my family?

Create Readable Content

Only 12% of adults in the United States have a proficient level of health literacy, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). That means most people have difficulty understanding and using health information to make informed choices and access medical services. In times of stress or anxiety, even people with high levels of health literacy may face challenges. Why? Because intense emotions impede our understanding of complex words and phrases.

So, when communicating about a healthcare crisis, it’s even more important to create readable healthcare content:

• Aim for a reading level of 9th grade or lower
• Consider alternative formats, such as infographics and videos to help reach more people
• Speak directly to your readers
• Use plain language and words that people without a medical degree will understand
• Use subheadings and bulleted lists to make content easy to scan

Examples of Ways to Communicate & Educate

As of this publication, the COVID-19 outbreak is sweeping headlines. You have a recognizable and trustworthy brand that people in your community look to for relevant, timely, and accurate information. See how other healthcare marketers like you are using their websites to communicate and educate.

Connect People With Reliable Information

In early March 2020, Cape Cod Healthcare used their editorial brand, Cape Cod Health News, to publish an article titled “Who can you trust for coronavirus information?”.

During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Parkview Medical Center created a frequently asked questions list for visitors to read and share, answering questions about Ebola treatment, symptoms, and care.

Engage Your Experts

Cone Health shared COVID-19 information through their editorial brand, Wellness Matters. A Q&A with infectious disease specialist Cynthia Snider, MD, allowed a conversational approach to sharing information on the virus, its symptoms, and prevention.

In Texas, University Health System’s Health Focus SA shared a video with infectious disease specialist Jason Bowling, MD, answering frequently asked questions.

Leverage Outside Resources

Cone Health also published a list of reliable sources for COVID-19 information, such as the CDC, World Health Organization (WHO), and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. UNC Health did something similar, but with links to up-to-date news releases on cases in their state.

Altru Health’s webpage on the coronavirus connects website visitors with trustworthy sources, including the state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Partner With Local Media

Reach out to local media, such as newspapers and TV stations, to talk about the crisis and what people in your community can do to be safe. Work with the media to direct people to your website for additional information and updates.

What Did We Learn?

When the crisis is over, reflect on the experience and what your team learned. Ask yourselves:

• What was the feedback from the community?
• What went well? What was challenging?
• How can we improve crisis communication in the future?

Getting through a healthcare crisis is a major milestone. Use this opportunity to build a plan, establish confidence in your employees and community, and learn how you can better communicate with your patients to keep them healthy and educated.

Your Tools for Stellar Content Marketing

Many elements go into crafting an effective content marketing strategy. There are also a variety of tools that can help you find success with your efforts.

These six are necessary for data-driven, measurable results that are trackable and help you meet your goals.

#1: Personas

Before you begin to write – or even plan – content for your content marketing effort, you need to know who you’re talking to. That’s where personas – representations of your ideal customers – come in.

Use market research and data about real people to discover your target audiences’ goals, values, problems, and more. Once you’ve completed your research, create a document you and your team can reference to help you keep your persona top-of-mind throughout the editorial process. Hubspot’s Make My Persona Tool lets you build visually appealing and easy to read personas for free.

#2: Patient Journey Maps

As healthcare marketers, we often focus on reaching people at the moment they’re making a decision about medical care. Journey maps help us see beyond that decision point, providing insight into consumers’ thoughts, actions, goals, and interactions with our organization before and after they schedule an appointment. That’s why journey maps are such a great resource for content marketing.

Content marketing helps you build awareness and trust with your audiences before they need care. Then, when they need care, they’ll be more likely to turn to you since you’re already their go-to expert.

Use research and data to chart out a typical patient experience from before they need care through their recovery. You’ll gain insight into how your content can help them accomplish their goals and have a positive experience with your brand.

If you’re doing journey mapping on your own, use a tool like Hubspot’s free Customer Journey Map Template to create a visual for easy reference.

#3: Keyword Research

Keyword research reveals the interests, questions, and preferences of people in our area. That makes it a great resource for content marketers who want to better understand what type of content their audience wants.

Use free keyword research tools like Google Trends to discover the popularity of topics and phrases. When trending topics and keywords align with your content marketing goals and target audiences, use them to help plan and create valuable, search-optimized content. and then incorporate what you find into your content marketing mix.

#4: Editorial Calendar

Your editorial calendar is more than just a planning tool. It’s a governance document, a strategy resource, and a place to document specific goals for each piece of content. Use it in conjunction with the other tools we’ve discussed to make sure your team is planning and publishing the right content at the right times for your goals and audiences.

While you could create an editorial calendar in Microsoft Excel, free online tools like Trello are easy for your whole team to access and edit. Not sure how to begin? Here are six tips to get you started with your editorial calendar.

#5: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

Your CRM can help you be smart about how and when you’re reaching out to patients and other audiences. Most CRM systems can integrate with marketing automation platforms, making intentional outreach a breeze. It also means you can tailor your communications so they align with your personas and you can reach out to people in the way and frequency they prefer.

Watch this video for more information on connecting your CRM and hospital website for smarter marketing.

#6: Measurement Planning

Make sure you can sing the praises of your team’s hard work by measuring the success and growth opportunities you find through content marketing. Set specific, measurable goals and use free tools like Google Tag Manager to measure your key performance indicators. Putting a number — even a general one – on your conversion points will help you prove the value of your efforts.

Learn the Best Ways to Use These Tools for Yourself

Discover strategies for making the best use of all of these tools when you check out our Strategies for Patient-Centered Content Marketing webinar.

On January 1, 2021, those requirements expand to include a consumer-friendly online presentation for at least 300 shoppable services. These rules force healthcare marketers to take a seat at the transparency table and help translate internal data into consumer-friendly content ready for the web.

Attend this session and learn how trends like industry consumerism and transparency are impacting legislation. Review what the current and proposed regulations call for, as well as why healthcare marketers should aim to go beyond compliance and find ways to help consumers make decisions about their care. Discover how organizations can use pricing strategically as well as position your system’s offerings beyond price alone.

Join us for this free webinar and learn:

• The background of the price transparency movement and how we got to where we are today
• What rules and regulations you need to be aware of, including dates and compliance requirements
• How to approach pricing strategically at your organization
• The differences between price transparency and cost estimation tools and how to use both to deliver value to your patients and potential patients
• What healthcare marketers should aim for with transparency initiatives to help consumers make educated decisions about their care

Content marketing — the strategy, the stakeholders, the editorial calendar planning, and the posting — can seem daunting. On top of all the other tasks in a marketer’s day, writing articles or shooting videos about stories inside the health system might lose priority.

Add to that stress a lack of internal resources or changing priorities, and it can be hard to finish the content you’d committed to create only a month ago.

That’s why patient stories – authored by real patients – can help relieve the tension and give your content marketing a new, authentic voice and perspective.

Benefits of Using Patient-Generated Content

A 2011 article in the New York Times cited “narrative communication” – or storytelling – as an effective way to help patients improve their health. That means when patients share stories, health outcomes can improve.

“Telling and listening to stories is the way we make sense of our lives,” according to Dr. Thomas K. Houston, who’s quoted in the article. He adds that storytelling can help readers accept a difficult diagnosis if they identify with a storyteller with the same condition.

Aside from the benefit it delivers to your audiences, storytelling also has the power to continue encouraging innovation and growth in service lines based on what patients say is working best.

For the storyteller, the opportunity to share a story can be relieving and therapeutic, especially if they care deeply about helping others in their shoes. The diversity of experiences also helps highlight your organization’s reach and focus on quality patient care.

Invite Patient Voices to Your Brand

While content marketing in healthcare is often – and rightly – focused on tips to help your patients and community members get well and stay healthy, don’t miss opportunities to bring patient voices into your online brand experience.

Consider inviting your patients to get involved in your content marketing by:

• Putting a call to action on social media. Ask your followers if they have a story about being a patient or family member of a patient of your organization. What’s the experience they’d like to share? Give them a direct way to contact you and share their story.
• Asking your patient and family advisory council, or PFAC, if you have one. These groups can provide insight into how people see your organization outside your walls. If you don’t have a PFAC, consider creating one.
• Letting patients opt to share their story via existing surveys and feedback processes. If you have a patient feedback process, let them know that you invite patient voices to be part of your content marketing experience.
• Using your website to generate story leads. If you have a content marketing hub today – or even if you don’t! – create an online form and appropriate call to action where people can submit their experience and volunteer to author a story. Check out how Bronson uses their Bronson Positivity microsite to get stories from patients, visitors, and caregivers.

Examples of Patient Stories

See how some healthcare systems apply the patient content strategy in their content marketing efforts.

MD Anderson Cancer Center

MD Anderson’s Cancer Center’s editorial brand Cancerwise shares its space with caregivers, too. Cora Connor is a caregiver for her brother, Herman, diagnosed with a rare cancer. In her two-part story, she shares not only her story of caregiving, but also of creating a community and becoming an advocate for people diagnosed with the same cancer as Herman.

Cora’s article adheres to the consistent voice and tone of MD Anderson’s brand, even though she’s not a member of the marketing team. Helpful cross-links to Herman’s doctor’s profile and other related content are available throughout the story. It even links to Cora’s previous story about being a loved one of cancer patient.

Cone Health Engages with Video Patient Stories

In Cone Health’s content marketing hub, Wellness Matters, patient Kimberley Thompson-Hairston shares her bariatric surgery journey and experience via video. The audio is Kimberley in her own words without narration or an interview-like structure typically seen in patient stories.

And Cone Health integrates her story – like the others they share– into the service lines represented. Kimberley’s experience led her to become an advocate for other bariatric surgery patients at Cone Health.

Your Staff Are Patients, Too

As you build your brand ambassadors and storytellers, look inside your organization, too. Your staff are patients, parents, caregivers, and loved ones of other patients, so why not explore their stories, too?

Avera Balance features articles from patients and staff writers alike, including Sonja Hegman, a contributing writer who shared her story about treating her cancer without traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.

Her story is heartfelt: She explains the questions she received after diagnosis, and the curiousness of people around her who wondered why she hadn’t lost her hair if she had cancer, even writing that she sometimes “felt guilty for not having enough cancer.”

Establish a Strategy & Workflow for Contributors

Before you send out a blanket invitation for articles from your patient community, make sure your marketing team’s content marketing strategy has a defined goal. For example, you’ll want to ask yourselves:

• How often should patient stories be included in the editorial calendar?
• What service lines do we want to grow volume for, and how could patient stories help?
• What’s the workflow for editing patient-generated content and making revisions?

While your marketing team writers would likely follow a brand style, voice, and tone guide, your patient audience may not be as privy to this experience. But, guiding them with high-level recommendations for how to write their story, what to share, etc. may be helpful.

You may also consider informing your contributors up-front about any edits and adjustments you’ll make to the final product. Subheads, images, and paragraph breaks — along with standard proofreading and editing — should be part of the agreement.

A patient-generated story template might also be a good way to set the stage for your expectations from patient contributors.

While inviting outside writers to your organization’s content marketing efforts might feel like another layer of governance, it can be a very rewarding experience for your brand. If you need help setting expectations, governance, and work flows for your team, contact Geonetric.

Be Transparent & Honest With Storytellers

Whether you’re engaging patients, family members, or staff to share their story, be up-front about your expectations and editorial process.

Consider creating a checklist to ensure the storyteller understands the process and knows what happens next. For example:

• Get written permission from the storyteller to share the story on your website, content marketing hub, social media, and beyond.
• Identify and communicate the goals and purpose of their story, how it will be shared, and what they can expect after publication (e.g. local press, social media followers, etc.). Be willing to support them post-publication if needed.
• Set expectations for process and timeline, including first drafts, revisions, proofreading, and final review before publication.
• Stay transparent through the process, including when you’re nearing publication. Ease anxieties by helping your storyteller understand the editing process, or giving a glimpse of how the article will look when it’s published.

Celebrate Your Brand Ambassadors

As a team member and employee of your health system, you no doubt represent your brand in public and online. But your organization’s patients, their loved ones, caregivers, and friends are just as much a part of your organization’s story. By including them in your storytelling and sharing their voice and experiences with your readers and audiences, you’ll connect with people who need guidance most.

Reach Out

If you need help getting started with your content marketing strategy, contact Geonetric. Our experts can help you find a content marketing model that fits your organization and resources and paves a way for brand wins.

The healthcare worker shortage is a nationwide topic. And it’s guaranteed your hiring managers are feeling the effects. A few facts that show just how critical this problem could become:

• 2.3 million new healthcare workers need to be hired by 2025 to provide adequate care, according to a report from professional services firm Mercer
• By 2032, the United States will face a shortage of nearly 122,000 physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges
• One million registered nurses (RNs) will retire by 2030, according to the Journal of Nursing Regulation
• Shortages RNs will be worst in the southern and western parts of the United States, according to the American Journal of Medical Quality

As a marketer, you’re probably less involved in helping human resources compared with other needs, like promoting patient experience and medical services. But your marketing tactics are uniquely able to help HR recruit the employees that have such a huge impact on patient experience and access to care at your organization. Enter content marketing.

Check out how this hospital blog transitions to lifestyle site focused on health, wellness, and patient stories

Believe it or not, the right mix of content marketing stories can help fill HR’s talent pipeline. Here are seven ways you can leverage your content marketing to support hiring efforts.

1. Showcase your workplace culture

Did your pulmonology department participate in a local 5K race? Did your pediatric department host a trunk-or-treat (a Halloween trick-or-treat event) in your hospital parking ramp?

Sharing your culture and events through content marketing is a great way to draw in job-seekers and let them know what it’s like to be an employee at your organization.

2. Spotlight employee achievements

Whether it’s a nurse winning a Daisy Award, a receptionist hitting a milestone anniversary with the organization, or one of your doctors completing groundbreaking research, your employees do amazing things. Take time to recognize those achievements — to not only show off your impressive organization, but also to demonstrate to job-seekers how much you value employee contributions.

A few ways to do this could include:

• Feature stories about your staff’s accomplishments
• Video interviews with employees and their teams
• Video events, like Facebook Live events

3. Share your patients’ perspectives

Your patients have a lot of great things to say about what you do and how you do it. Their stories often focus on the interactions they had with members of their care teams. So invite patient input, and share their experiences via a feature story, video, or audio. You can even welcome them to write their own story and submit it online to share in your content marketing.

4. Feature your forward-thinking leadership

Sometimes an executive leadership team can seem inaccessible to both the public and your staff. Try a quick survey or a brief, five-question interview as an innovative, interesting way to gather and share fun facts. These stories are easy to share on your social channels, too, as a way to showcase how your leaders shape your organization’s culture and mission.

5. Invite new employees to center stage

Bringing on new talent to your organization is worth celebrating. Interview or survey new employees to get to know them, their roles, their backgrounds, and their interests, so people inside and outside the organization can get familiar with your growing pool of patient-focused talent.

6. Showcase diverse roles and experiences

There is more than one way to work in healthcare. Share stories about internships and other career-building opportunities for students. Showcase nonclinical staff and describe how they support the culture and the experience of patients and staff.

Your content marketing efforts don’t have to be limited to your clinical roles, patients and candidates alike can find value in these stories. Showing that you value all your employees could be a differentiator for potential employees who work in non-clinical capacities.

7. Create an email segment just for potential employees

If you’re using email as part of your content marketing mix, consider creating a list just for job-seekers. Let them sign up and opt-in for career-focused content on your site and send them relevant career articles and job postings so you’re engaging with them before they even apply. This also helps you learn what types of content are most meaningful to your job-seekers.

But First, Strategize

The careers section landing page is often the most-visited page on a healthcare website. Capture this audience by integrating job- and culture-related content marketing articles into your foundational career pages. This helps job-seekers see stories that are meaningful to them. In VitalSite, SmartPanels make this easy to do dynamically, but if you’re using a different CMS investigate what options you have to feature these stories.

Be strategic with HR-related content marketing. Plan stories and their use and distribution in an editorial calendar. This will help you keep the effort organized, fed, and up-to-date.

Although marketing doesn’t always get called on to help recruitment efforts, tactics like these might just be what fills that HR pipeline. And your amazing employees deliver amazing care, which is the story you’re out there telling every day.

Contact Us

Feeling overwhelmed? Our content marketing experts would love to help you make the most of your efforts to fill that HR pipeline — reach out today.

If you’re trying to appeal to a certain demographic, create and optimize content to suit their interests, and deliver it in the way they want to consume health information. For each piece of content you create — whether it’s a webpage, content marketing piece, or other external communication — consider the demographics of your ideal consumer.

Some Examples

Before you write a piece of content, picture the ultimate healthcare decision maker you’re intending to convert. The following examples list a topic of content and who you may be trying to target.

Once you’ve narrowed down the group(s) you want to read, view, or listen to your content, the guidelines in this blog post can help you strategize your messaging and delivery.

An Important Disclaimer

By necessity, this article uses generalizations based on research, making broad assumptions and assessments of different demographic groups. You can probably think of exceptions you personally know when it comes to the preferences of each of the groups discussed in this article. Let the information below guide you, but keep in mind you’re speaking to individual human beings, rather than monolithic groups.

It’s also smart to break “stage of life” or generational groups down into social groups you know exist in your target geographic area. If you want to increase your millennial audience, for example, what do people in this age bracket in your community, specifically, care about? Do some keyword research and investigate online communities, such as social media groups and forums, to find out. Affinity groups in Google Analytics are also a nice way to get a sense of how various user groups fit into the community.

If your target audience wants to get or stay fit, cook convenient and healthy meals, or achieve work-life balance while working from home, create or tailor your content accordingly. Your research can help you build audience personas.

How to Sway Millennials

Millennials — born between 1981 to 1996 — are now the largest age demographic in the United States. According to the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Health Index, the most common conditions diagnosed in this generation are:

• Behavioral and mental health concerns like depression, substance use disorder, hyperactivity, and psychotic conditions
• Chronic conditions like high blood pressure, Crohn’s disease/ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and type II diabetes

If you’re trying to target millennials, content about these conditions could help you reach them.

When you think about your current marketing efforts to this group, you may be trying to attract young adults to your primary care or urgent care services, or bring expectant mothers to obstetricians and parents to your pediatricians. But it’s important to build brand loyalty with millennials today so they continue to look toward your organization for care as they age and increasingly access services.

To best reach idealistic, tech-savvy millennials:

• Consider ad-buys on services Millennials use, such as music streaming apps like Pandora and Spotify
• Emphasize the ways your organization makes care convenient and affordable
• Highlight your organization’s mission and values, emphasizing how your audience supports a higher purpose when they choose your organization —and be as authentic and transparent as possible
• Include ratings and reviews on physician profiles, respond to online reviews (both positive and negative), and manage your online reputation
• Leverage social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat, and publish relevant content your audience wants to read, share, and comment on — that means using visual storytelling and videos on channels they’re best suited for
• Promote digital solutions (like telehealth e-visits, online appointment scheduling, chat bots, text message reminders, or the functionality of your patient portal) that bring engagement online and make life more convenient
• Strategize your brand personality through your editorial style, voice, and tone, and keep that personality consistent throughout your content
• Take a mobile-first approach to your online properties, especially your website

Reaching Generation X

Gen X spans people born in the mid-1960s through 1980. Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Health Index’s states they’re most often diagnosed with conditions like:

• Cardiovascular diseases, such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure and arrhythmia
• Type II diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Obesity
• Cancer (mainly prostate and breast cancer)
• Mental health concerns, like anxiety and depression

You may hear Gen Xers referred to as “the sandwich generation,” meaning they’re sandwiched between the children and parents they’re responsible for caring for and making health-related decisions on behalf of.

Gen Xers are considered skeptical to the point of cynicism. But the good news, as Adweek reports, is that when a Gen Xer trusts your brand, they’re more likely than any other generation to remain a loyal consumer.

Write content that’s compelling to the “Breakfast Club” generation when you:

• Build trust by providing detailed information they need to make a discerning, informed choice — Gen Xers can be knowledgeable when it comes to health topics, and they understand the value of evidence-based care
• Emphasize one-to-one provider-patient relationships, and explain the ways patients can communicate with members of their care team face-to-face and digitally
• Engage with Gen Xers online, and publish content on Facebook and YouTube, social channels Gen Xers use often
• Focus on living well, especially when it comes to improving or maintaining their physical appearance
• Recognize the importance and value of their relationships, especially the kids and parents they may look out for
• Use data, such as quality scores, to prove your arguments and competitive differentiators; showcase the awards or certifications your staff or departments have won and what they mean in terms of how patient benefit

Targeting Baby Boomers

People born between 1946 and 1964 are Baby Boomers, and this group accounts for 43% of today’s healthcare spending. Thanks to advances in medicine and healthier lifestyles, this demographic is living longer, and about 20% of Americans will be over 65 by 2030. Now in their 50s to early 70s, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Health Index found Boomers are experiencing conditions like:

• Type II diabetes
• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Eye problems
• Arthritis
• High blood pressure

Almost 20% of all Americans have a disability, so making your website and other online properties accessible is important no matter what demographic you’re trying to reach. It’s even more critical for Boomers, with a disability rate of 25% today — a number that’s expected to increase as they age. Make sure your website, in particular, offers an intuitive user experience that makes it easy for users of all abilities to find and consume the information they’re searching for.

To convince Boomers you’re the best choice for care:

• Appeal to their health consciousness — focus not only on managing conditions, but living and aging well, maintaining independence and abilities
• Build positive relationships with members of the press in your community, and aim for news coverage that casts your brand in the best light – Boomers consume traditional news media more than other generations
• Choose “senior” instead of “elderly” or “geriatric”, and never use ageist language or reinforce ageist stereotypes
• Humanize your brand with an approachable and informative voice and tone
• Make sure your content is free of errors
• Make your content shareable — Boomers are 19% more likely to share content than other demographic groups
• Optimize the patient experience with helpful customer service available at every step
• Reach them on Facebook, their preferred social network, and through blog posts and videos, and support your digital efforts with TV ads

How to Appeal to Women

In the U.S., women are the primary medical decision makers not only for themselves, but also for their family members. And women are more likely than men to serve as a caregiver to a loved one. The American Marketing Association reports 80% of healthcare decisions are made by women. The same article states 74% of women prefer gender-neutral messaging, rather than gender-specific marketing. What’s the takeaway? While you should try to make your marketing appealing to women, be careful not to veer into pandering. And keep in mind that there are few actual differences between how women and men research health information online.

Build positive relationships with women consumers by:

• Avoiding overuse of “feminine” colors (read: pink) or imagery that objectifies women’s bodies (my personal pet peeve is headless pregnant bellies) or makes use of the meme-worthy chestnut “women laughing alone with salad”
• Being authentic, educational, and thought-provoking
• Emphasizing how your organization gives back to your community
• Leveraging content marketing effectively, including blog posts, videos, and social media posts
• Making sure your marketing is optimized for online audiences, because women are more likely than men to search for health information online
• Noting amenities that make getting health or wellness services more appealing
• Reaching them on the devices and channels (like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest) they enjoy; a study by Bustle found 81% of female millennials say social media is the best avenue for brands to reach them
• Steering clear of stereotypes — like the assumptions all women are obsessed with their weight, weddings/marriage, or motherhood
• Striking a positive, empowering tone that gives your female readers agency and supports their choices about their health and bodies

How to Appeal to Men

The general consensus is that men are an untapped audience when it comes to medical care and healthcare marketing. If you’re trying to increase patient volume for services aimed at men, consider these tactics:

• Avoid sexist phrases that shame men, like “man up,” and stereotypes that men supposedly aren’t interested in or incapable of cooking, child care, or other traditionally “feminine” activities
• Choose words and phrases that make the benefits of your services relevant to men, and try to strike a functional tone — men “look for a promise of efficacy that produces a desirable result”
• Highlight the convenience of your services
• Leverage mobile ads, which 68% of men say make them likely to make a purchase
• Publish content regularly about men’s health topics in an email newsletter or blog
• Underscore long-term benefits of healthcare, such as continuing to have the energy and abilities to do one’s favorite activities
• Target the women in their lives — their partners, moms, sisters, or friends — who can convince them to visit a healthcare provider

Get Help from the Experts

Let Geonetric’s content strategists and digital marketers help you make data-driven decisions about appealing to your target consumers, with help conducting keyword research, localization services, market segmentation and audience analysis, and developing personalized content that drives conversions.