Your website is constantly evolving, and that’s why having a governance framework is essential. Healthcare organizations like yours seek guidance on how to establish internal accountability, define roles, and assign decision-making authority. Content governance can help avoid confusion, keep your content current, get internal buy-in, and improve your digital experience.

Signs you need help

It’s common to feel that your content is in a constant state of chaos, but you don’t have to. Your organization would benefit from content governance if you:

• Don’t have a consistent voice and tone throughout your website
• Don’t know what content exists on your website
• Struggle to maintain existing content
• Experience delays in getting content published because of inefficient content development, editing, and review processes
• Are unclear who approves the final content
• Have pages that haven’t had an update in years
• Have duplicate content
• Grapple with too many urgent, high-priority content requests
• Struggle to find content assets in your digital asset manager (DAM)

What is content governance?

Content governance is a plan to achieve your internal content strategy. It’s the framework that helps your team keep track of all the moving parts and determine how content gets created, reviewed, and published.

Benefits of governance

Maintaining good content on your website is vital to the user experience and your brand. It produces better results – for both end-users and your organization.

Internal benefits

Having a practical governance framework in place helps you:

• Align content with overall strategic direction, brand voice, and goals
• Increase productivity, accountability, and collaboration
• Resolve conflicts and questions more quickly because you can refer to  agreed-upon procedures and direction
• Build a scalable and repeatable content operation process  for current and future content contributors
• Protect your content from internal requests that don’t meet the priorities of your target audiences
• Reduce risk to reputation and legal status
• Enhance brand with consistent, high-quality experiences across digital properties

Audience benefits

Governance helps you create a better user experience. When you implement a solid content governance plan, your website visitors may find it easier to:

• Accomplish their top tasks
• Get to know your brand
• Know what to expect when they engage with your organization online
• Find relevant, up-to-date information

Governance framework

The main components of content governance include people, process, documentation, and training. Let’s look at each more closely.

People

The first element of the framework is the people. It:

• Defines “who” and “what”
• Establishes roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority
• Considers your core team, content contributors, and stakeholders

Process

Processes will get your team on the path to creating high-quality content with fewer delays, misunderstandings, and frustrations. Process:

• Defines “when,” “where,” and “how” to get content moving through your organization efficiently
• Establishes workflows related to planning, creating, publishing, and maintaining content

Documentation

Documents can pave the road for consistency and quality at your organization. Documentation:

• Defines “why” and “how”
• Establishes standards, policies, guidelines, and tools to encourage consistent, quality content
• Serves as a “single source of truth” to resolve confusion or conflicts

Content documentation examples include:

• Core content strategy statement
• Editorial style guide
• Content review checklist
• Editorial Calendar
• Stakeholder request decision tree

Training

Training makes sure everyone has the information they need to put your governance plan into action. This piece of governance can include different types and levels of training depending on roles and responsibilities.

Training examples:

• CMS/DAM training
• Writing for the web  training
• Accessibility training
• Training on new or updated standards, policies, and guidelines

Where to start

In an ideal world, content governance starts early – before you begin writing content, designing layouts, uploading media, and publishing pages. However, your organization can benefit from moving forward with improving your governance anytime. Governance may fit seamlessly in your project timeline if you:

• Are ready for a redesign
• Hire a new team member
• Have changes in your organization or brand
• Have new content needs
• Hear concerns or complaints from stakeholders
• Implement new technology or features

Content governance tips

How to get started

As your website evolves, your governance plan should too. The key to getting started on developing or maturing your governance plan is to start by understanding where your team or organization is at today.

Contact us before you create your governance plan. Geonetric’s experts can facilitate discussions, share examples of approaches that have worked for other healthcare organizations, and help teams move governance documentation forward while still accomplishing day-to-day work.

Consider the fact that more than half of Google searchers don’t click on anything. To top that off, according to copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.

That means your headline may be all that people see. Don’t you want to entice them to click in and engage with you? An engaging headline is key to getting your target audiences to dig deeper and read the content you work so hard to deliver. Here are a few ways to be more strategic with your headlines so they convert.

1) Be accurate

Bait-and-switch is never good. Make sure your headline aligns with what your readers will find in the article you’re sharing. Accuracy means users are less likely to bounce, too, which is always good for your SEO efforts.

When headlines accurately represent your posts’ content, users will be more satisfied with their decision to click. That goodwill means they might even go deeper into your website to find more information about their interests.

Pro-tip: Make a draft headline to get you started on the article, and then jot down additional options as you write. That way the final article and the headline are in alignment.

2) Speak directly to your reader

Personable and engaging headlines don’t talk about “patients,” they talk to them. They’re a great way to engage users right off the bat.

For example, North Mississippi Health Services asks “Are Your Kids Ready for School?” in one of their recent articles. This engages the reader because it’s personal, it’s about their kids and provides helpful advice for making sure the reader is ready for back-to-school season.

Headlines like this address your users’ concerns or echo their questions. That creates a stronger bond with your brand and lets your users know that you’re putting their needs first.

Try experimenting with different words to make sure that you’re speaking directly and engaging your readers. For example, try using verbs and other evocative words to engage your reader right away. When you use different words in your various headlines you can see what words speak to your users and make sure you’re speaking in a way that’s meaningful to them.

3) Ask a question

Learn what questions your patients ask their care providers — or consult good old Dr. Google via Google Trends. Then, repeat those questions back to your users in your headline. This also helps with SEO – people sometimes search in question format, so you could match their search query better if you plan for it!

This engages your reader right away. They want to answer the question for themselves or find the answer in your resource. Still, the old adage stands – don’t ask questions where your users could say “no.”

Be thoughtful, and make sure the question leaves them wanting to dig deeper. Leading with empathy for your users is an important part of this.

And remember, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Not every article calls for a question in the headline, so use this tactic strategically. Otherwise your audiences may get burned out with the format.

4) Use numbers

Numbered lists, intriguing statistics, and headlines with numbers are a great way to catch your audience’s eye and entice them to click. They promise details, content that will deliver on answers they want.

The other benefit is that numbered lists, or “listicles,” promise an easy-to-skim article structure. Readers know they won’t have to engage with details that aren’t meaningful to them or don’t address their concerns. Time is money, and listicles promise a quick overview to find out if their answers are inside.

Using engaging, intriguing statistics is also a way to get buy in from your audiences. Put your most click-worthy stat in a headline with helpful details, and you might catch attention enough to get a click. Whether you keep their interest is up to your article.

Pro Tip: Nielsen Norman Group recommends writing numbers as numerals when writing for online readers. That’s because numerals are better at drawing your reader’s eye. So if you follow Chicago style, don’t be afraid to modify it for your headlines.

5) Give readers a reason to click

Traditional headlines highlight an article’s most important message. They might summarize a story or direct attention to a specific fact. This headline style works well when you’re reporting news and your goal is to give readers a succinct synopsis of your content.

As a content marketer writing headlines, though, your goal is to drive clicks. So, you need a different writing style. Pique readers’ curiosity by serving up a headline that promises to deliver information they care about if they engage with your content.

Want to dive deeper?

Watch Behind the Scenes of Successful Healthcare Content Marketing to get more tips from experts. It includes even more ways that your headlines can be written to intrigue and engage your audiences.

Get started

Ready to get started? Test these strategies on your content marketing hub to see what tactics are most meaningful for your users.

Want a little help to get this effort off the ground? Check out more content marketing articles and contact us to see how you could benefit from our writing experts.

#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.

You’ve addressed the concerns of myriad audiences, from hospital staff to expectant parents to donors and more. Now it’s time to add one more audience to your list: The newly vaccinated.

As of February 26, more than 14% of Americans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. These people still play an important role in helping to contain the spread of the coronavirus — and they have their own distinct questions about how to keep themselves and others safe. Google Trends shows that searches for “after covid vaccine” reached an all-time high in February. As states roll out vaccines to more people, interest in the topic will likely remain strong.

Hospitals and health systems can continue being a trusted resource for COVID-19-related information in the post-vaccine phase. Here are some tips for meeting the information needs of people in your community.

Consider Local Needs

People in different areas of the country may need to hear somewhat different messages. Does your organization need to primarily educate? Change or reinforce behaviors? Consider what opportunities you have to bolster information or fill in gaps based on what local media and public health agencies are (or aren’t) communicating.

And keep track of vaccine distribution in your state through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s vaccination tracker, which shows the percentage of the population that’s gotten one dose or both doses. The data can help you understand, at any point, what stage your audiences may be at in terms of need for information.

Discover Trending Topics

Invest some time in researching common questions of those who have received a vaccine—or are looking forward to receiving a vaccine and want to know what to expect. You can certainly get some perspective from your colleagues who were among the first in the country to get the vaccine. Take time to also understand what’s top-of-mind for those with less familiarity with medicine.

Great sources for information include:

• Keyword research – Check Google Trends and other keyword research tools to find common post-vaccine-related queries in your area. For example, in Iowa, “can you spread covid after vaccine” is a rising search term.
• Primary care providers – Ask them what questions patients have related to safety precautions after being inoculated.
• Surveys – Ask your followers on social media or add a popup survey to the COVID-19 section of your website. Ask users what questions they have about what to expect after getting the vaccine.

The media — What questions are news outlets covering? What similar concerns can you address in your own communication?

The post-vaccine questions you uncover may be the start of a helpful frequently asked questions (FAQ) page on your COVID-19 resource hub. They also may fuel story ideas for your e-newsletter, blog, or content marketing hub.

Reach Your Audience

Many people in your community have spent the last year taking in a lot of COVID-19 news, sorting through changing or conflicting public health guidance, figuring out vaccine eligibility and scheduling, and more. They may be coping with grief, burnout, or general distress. They’re probably tired. So, consider these strategies to make your messages resonate.

Keep Messaging Simple

At this point, it’s more important than ever to keep your messaging simple and straightforward.

• Omit unnecessary words
• Speak directly to the reader
• Use an active voice
• Use familiar, everyday words
• Use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs

Consider also translating vaccine communications into languages commonly spoken in your service area.

Try a New Format

If you’ve been relying mainly on text, consider a new format for this last stretch of public health guidance related to the pandemic. You’ll likely be repeating some messages people have heard for months (for example: wear a mask). Engage the audience by presenting information in a new way – like an infographic, social media graphic or short video. Research shows that novelty motivates us to explore.

Focus on ‘Do’s

Positive phrasing can be easier to understand than negative. Focus your guidance on telling people what they can do more safely in the days, weeks and months after receiving their vaccine, rather than simply stating what they shouldn’t do yet.

Find More Tips or Ask for Feedback

Read further strategic recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination communications, or contact Geonetric today if you need any help with your efforts.

1. Update Your Editorial Style Guide

COVID-19 has introduced a new lexicon to our communities. Make communicating about the new virus and an unprecedented public health situation easier by creating an addendum to your style guide and sharing it across your organization.

Editorial style guides help your team develop content that’s clear, accurate, consistent, and reflective of your brand. If your team already has a style guide, it likely includes guidance around voice and tone, grammar, punctuation, formatting, and tricky words.

Consider adding entries on:

• Acceptable ways to refer to the virus
• Any new program, facility, or location names related to COVID-19 care
• Definitions of terms that have become popular during the COVID-19 outbreak, such as “home quarantine” and “self-isolation,” and guidance on when to use them
• How to refer to your telemedicine services
• Preferred resources for COVID-19 information (for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Words to avoid

Need help? Review The Associated Press Stylebook’s new entry on coronaviruses.

2. Create a Central Resource — or 2

Build a crisis resource hub. The hub makes it easy for people to access information, and it also makes managing content easier for your marketing and communications team.

Consider two hubs — one on your internet for external audiences and another on your intranet for internal audiences.

3. Streamline Your Workflow

In the early days of a crisis, adrenaline may keep your team fueled through a surge of urgent communications. But as the initial phase passes, the need for communication stays steady, so streamline your workflow as much possible.

For general COVID-19 information, link to reputable national resources, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). You can even embed their public health media library content about the coronavirus on your own site. This lets you connect your website visitors with accurate, up-to-date information while saving you and your stakeholders time.

Focus your time, and the time of your stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs), on content that’s specific to your organization or community. When sending content for internal review, help your SMEs provide efficient, effective feedback by giving clear expectations around the purpose of the content you’re creating, their role, and the deadline for their input.

4. Create a Content Review Schedule

As news breaks, recommendations are updated, policies change, classes and events move online, and volunteer or donation needs evolve, your team is creating a lot of content.

Make sure your community is seeing — and acting on — the most current information by establishing a crisis content review process.

It may not be realistic to review every page of COVID-19-related content every day. So set a schedule to review higher-priority content often, and other content less frequently.

For example, you may set schedules to review:

• Pages that generate the most traffic
• Pages older than a time range chosen by your team
• Pages that contain the phrase “COVID-19” or “coronavirus”
• Pages that mention a specific policy, need, or class that’s just changed

Create a plan that fits your content needs and your team’s capacity.

Documentation & Tracking

Document your plan, and then use a spreadsheet to keep track of:

• Pages to review
• Person responsible for page review
• Review date
• SME or stakeholder for content (if needed)
• Changes made to published pages

Need Help?

Need help managing your COVID-19 content — or the hundreds of other web pages you’re responsible for? Geonetric’s healthcare writers and content strategists can help. Let us know how we can jump in as an extension of your team so you can meet your short-term and long-term marketing and communications goals.

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.

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.

Start with Strategy

Before you start writing—or even outlining—your service line section, take these steps:

• Consider your voice, tone, and style – Will your content be academic and authoritative or caring and conversational?
• Determine your project goals – What do you want to accomplish with this new content? For example, are you hoping to increase seminar registrations, drive appointments, or improve your search engine rankings?
• Reflect on your capacity – What resources can you dedicate to content creation and upkeep?
• Understand your audience – Who will the content be for, and what do those people want to learn or do on your website? How are they searching for healthcare services?
• Review related marketing material and news releases – What has your organization already developed about this service line?
• Interview internal stakeholders and subject matter experts – What information do they think is important to include on the website? What common questions do they hear from patients that you can answer online?
• Identify gaps or inaccuracies in current web content about this service – What information needs to be added, expanded, or updated to best reflect your services?
• Check out your competition – What do competing health systems offer for this service line, and how do they market it? How can you make your organization stand out online?

Your answers to these questions will help you figure out what stand-out service line content looks like for your organization.

4 Examples of High-Quality Heart & Vascular Content

Get inspired by checking out how other healthcare systems have approached heart and vascular service line sections. Whatever approach you choose, get the best results by following our guidelines for writing healthcare web content.

Focus on the Patient Journey: Adventist HealthCare

To make their website as patient-centric as possible, Adventist HealthCare, based in Gaithersburg, MD, takes a patient journey approach to their service line content.

Its Heart & Vascular Care service line section follows a typical patient pathway to receiving heart care—from preventive care (“Keep Your Heart Healthy”) to screening and diagnostic testing, through treatments, and, finally, to rehabilitation and follow-up care.

This approach helps consumers orient themselves and easily find the information they want at the time they visit the website.

Plain language, short sentences, and bulleted lists make it easy for users of all literacy levels to read and understand health care concepts. A focus on explaining the benefits of certain technologies, services, or treatments helps users make educated decisions about their care. Understandable, empathetic content supports conversions because users are more likely to take action when they feel reassured by the brand.

Spotlight Subspecialty Care: Overlake Medical Center & Clinics

Every health system, hospital, or physician practice has something that sets it apart from its competitors. Something that’s worth shining a spotlight on. For Overlake Medical Center & Clinics’ cardiology department, it’s their electrophysiology care.

Their distinctive Seattle-area arrhythmia center—and its focus on patient education—merits a deep dive into this subspecialty online.

Overlake’s extensive Arrhythmia Center content is robust and readable, with detailed pages that highlight causes, symptoms, and advanced treatments for atrial fibrillation and other types of heart rhythm disorders.

Content uses plain language to answer common queries, like “Should I See a Doctor for Heart Palpitations,” and thoughtfully explains what the center’s awards, technology, and facilities mean for health care consumers and the care they’ll receive.

Give a High-Level Overview: Olmsted Medical Center

Like many health systems, Olmsted Medical Center in southeastern Minnesota has a small marketing team. They don’t have the capacity to update core website pages frequently, so they’ve chosen to take a high-level approach to service line content.

Their Cardiology & Vascular Care page provides a comprehensive overview of cardiovascular services—from diagnosis through treatment. Subheadings and bulleted lists make the content easy to scan.

The page is concise but optimized for search and for users. It lists common conditions and treatments—and, just as importantly, explains them in patient-friendly terms.

Build SEO for Cardiology: Hartford HealthCare

Search engine optimization should be woven into every content development project you take on. Sometimes it’s the driving force.

Rewriting the entire Heart & Vascular Institute section wasn’t in the cards for Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut. But when research revealed that that “cardiology” was one of the most popular heart care-related search terms in their area, they prioritized a new, SEO-friendly cardiology page.

To boost SEO, the new specialty page:

• Answers key user questions
• Integrates “cardiology” and related keywords in subheadings, body copy, and other high-SEO value areas
• Cross-links to related pages
• Features a prominent call to action

The new content brought the web traffic Hartford was looking for. So they took that targeted approach to additional high priority service line pages across the site.

What’s Your Approach?

Need help determining the best approach to service line content for your organization? Contact us. Geonetric’s experienced content strategists and writers work exclusively with healthcare clients, which means we understand the complexity of healthcare marketing and writing.