What Role Will Blogs Play in Healthcare Marketing in 2023?
Key Post Highlights
> Blogs provide readers with the information they actually need.
> Blogs connect you with your audience.
> Blogs create leads.
The amount of information available with the click of a few buttons is nearly endless — especially when it comes to information about your health.
For better or worse, Dr. Google often replaces an actual conversation with a healthcare professional. People are looking for answers to anything from “Am I having a heart attack?” (4,400 monthly searches) to “Why is my hair falling out?” (22,200 monthly searches) to “How to stop hiccups” (60,500 monthly searches). Where readers find this information, of course, depends on what appears on the search engine results page.
The first step is getting your healthcare organization to show up on the results page with a good distribution strategy. Once readers get there, your blog sits at the center of an integrated healthcare marketing strategy.
While blogs date back to the mid-1990s, they have since become a crucial part of any healthcare organization’s website. Here are 3 roles blogs will play in healthcare marketing in 2023.
1. Healthcare blogs provide readers with accurate (and unique) information.
There’s no doubt that readers are searching the web for information about their health, whether it’s preventative, diagnostic, or therapeutic. The problem lies with where they stumble upon the information they’re searching for.
As a healthcare organization, you play an essential role in providing accurate and easy-to-digest information. Some would even argue that it’s your responsibility to do so.
What’s more, you can provide specific information that’s tough to find elsewhere. Forget the disease 101 stuff. Not only does that not cater to your specific audience, but it doesn’t showcase your organization’s expertise. By giving readers information that only you can provide, you’re delivering a much-needed service and becoming a thought leader in your space.
Not only does a blog benefit your patients, but it also promotes your specific services by explaining how they can support your audience’s health.
2. Healthcare blogs allow you to connect with your specific audience.
A good healthcare website has varied content. You have your pillar (or static) content, which highlights services, providers, and other relatively unchanging information.
But you also need an outlet for more specific information and a way to connect to your current and prospective patients.
Fluid content — such as the content on your blog — allows you to connect with patients, providers, and other people in your ecosystem. It’s precise communication tailored to your audience’s values.
From age to geographic location to socioeconomic status to race, there are many factors that you need to consider when relating to your audience and providing useful information. A blog is a space for exactly that.
3. Healthcare blogs create leads and boost your business.
Whether you’re looking to bring in new patients, promote a service line, recruit new providers, or do something else entirely, blogs are a place to make this happen.
The more active your blog is, the higher your site’s chances are of showing up on the search results page, being shared on social media, or being linked to from another page. In fact, companies with blogs have 97% more backlinks to their sites.
Once people make it to your website, they can see your calls to action, share your content, make appointments, and apply for jobs. These leads turn into tangible results for your organization.
Blog Your Way Into 2023
It’s never too late to start a robust marketing strategy that includes a blog. With a well-thought-out content calendar, engaging writing, and useful information, you can provide your audience and your organization with what it needs most this year.
At CareContent, we know blogs. Not only do we maintain the blogs of numerous clients, but we manage our own. Our newly reimagined blog, Bookmarked, provides even more useful, timely, and actionable information for our target audiences.
Ready to begin, enhance, or completely reimagine your healthcare organization’s blog? Let us help!
How Healthcare Website Design Has Evolved, What’s Next, And When It’s Time For A Refresh
Just like fashion trends, healthcare website design trends change over time. Some elements go in and out of fashion, and even websites that are only 5 years old can start to look dated.
Staying on top of the trends that are here to stay can give your website longevity — while also creating a better experience for your users.
When it comes to healthcare websites, design trends change about every 3 to 5 years or so. If it’s been a couple of years since you last touched your website’s design, it might be time for a glow-up.
Realizing it may be time to give your healthcare website a new look might make you motivated to get started — or it might give you the cold sweats. Website overhauls are big projects, and it’s normal to be filled with excitement or dread.
Once you decide a website redesign is in your future, you don’t have to turn around tomorrow and break your CMS. Take some time to first think about what goals you want to meet with a new site or look at your site’s current metrics. Having some hard numbers and a plan to match can help you get buy-in from your team, higher-ups, or other stakeholders.
When you’re ready to start a website refresh, be sure you’re ready to do a website refresh. With clear goals, a strong team, and patient-first perspective, your new site can drive conversions — and connections.
Healthcare Websites Have Gotten …
… Simpler
Clean lines, pared-down navigation, and more modern design are driving the future of healthcare website design. While healthcare websites are often known for being robust (and even convoluted), minimalist trends have been rising in popularity over the last few years. From influencer homes to successful websites, many are opting for simpler websites. First impressions are everything, and a clean site can show competence, professionalism, and often faster loading speeds.
… Mobile-Friendly
From ordering a pizza to Googling how old Shemar Moore is to checking their kids’ grades, people use their smartphones all day long to communicate and accomplish tasks. The same is true when it comes to searching for a provider, looking up hospital reviews, or trying to make a doctor’s appointment. Many of your users will be visiting your site on their phones or tablets, so designing for mobile can’t be an afterthought.
… Consumer And Patient-Focused
In the same way that the care you provide in the office may have become more patient-centered in recent years, your website should strive to be more patient-centered too. Updating your site can give you an opportunity to add more interactive elements like quizzes, make your service pages easier to understand, or center more photos of patients — and doctors — who represent your patient population.
… More Accessible
Using your healthcare website shouldn’t be difficult for visitors. Finding the information they need, understanding the language you use, and navigating the site with a range of assistive devices (like screen readers) should be easy. Accessibility isn’t a trend, it’s a necessity, and your website needs to accommodate the different needs of current and prospective patients. Not having an accessible site isn’t just annoying for users — it can be illegal if you aren’t meeting ADA compliance guidelines. Website evaluations with a focus on accessibility can create a better experience for users and protect your healthcare organization from potential lawsuits.
Your Website Might Need A Refresh If …
… Your site isn’t getting the kind of traffic you want.
There can be a lot of reasons a site isn’t performing well. From a complicated strategy to disagreement about priorities to a changing of the guard, it’s not uncommon for your site to simply not meet your standards — but it also might not be meeting your client’s needs. If you have bigger goals for your site and want to see more traffic, it’s probably time to revisit your content strategy and revamp your website.
… The visual design feels outdated.
Design trends tend to change around every 3 to 5 years. While you don’t have to follow these design trends, it’s good to know what they are. If your competition is adopting a more updated look, it may be time to consider a refresh on your end, too. Take some time to formally or informally audit your peers’ sites to see how yours stacks up. This can give you a better idea of what’s popular, what’s falling out of style, and if your visual design is trailing behind.
… Tech is outdated.
Technology is always changing — and it makes its mark in terms of what can become possible with your healthcare website. There are many tools that can make your site more efficient, but it can be hard to stay on top of every new plugin or trend. Giving your website a facelift can mean taking time to check out new tech that can make your site cleaner and more user-friendly. (Tip: Pay special attention to your Contact, Location, and Donation pages when it comes to new tools and technology.)
… Your team has a hard time updating the site.
If you’re constantly fielding emails about editing a page or can’t seem to get a page looking or working like you want it to, there’s some good news. It’s not you — it might actually be your site. Old, clunky content management systems (CMS) can leave you and your team scratching your heads (or wanting to put them through a wall). But it doesn’t have to be this way! A website refresh and possibly a change of CMS might be just what your healthcare organization needs to reduce everybody’s stress levels.
I Think We Need To Revamp Our Website — Now What?
Realizing it may be time to give your healthcare website a new look might make you motivated to get started — or it might give you the cold sweats. Website overhauls are big projects, and it’s normal to be filled with excitement or dread.
Once you decide a website redesign is in your future, you don’t have to turn around tomorrow and break your CMS. Take some time to first think about what goals you want to meet with a new site or look at your site’s current metrics. Having some hard numbers and a plan to match can help you get buy-in from your team, higher-ups, or other stakeholders.
When you’re ready to start a website refresh, be sure you’re ready to do a website refresh. With clear goals, a strong team, and patient-first perspective, your new site can drive conversions — and connections.
Your Digital Marketing Strategy Isn’t Working — Here’s Why
Key Post Highlights
> Talking to your key audience is one of the most critical steps in developing a digital marketing strategy.
> Content needs to meet your business goals.
> Don’t forget to plan for content distribution.
Your website looks beautiful. You constantly post on social media to your tons of followers. You’ve even just added the capability to book an appointment online.
You’ve invested all of this time, effort, and money — but have received a whole lot of nothing in return. What gives?
Well, it’s very likely that your hospital’s digital marketing strategy isn’t exactly where it should be.
Here are 5 reasons why your digital marketing strategy just isn’t working.
Well, it’s very likely that your hospital’s digital marketing strategy isn’t exactly where it should be.
Here are 5 reasons why your digital marketing strategy just isn’t working.
1. You didn’t talk to a key audience: patients ...
We can’t stress this enough: Talk to patients. Current patients, former patients, potential patients, patients who considered your hospital but decided to get care elsewhere. All of these perspectives are crucial for creating a strategy that actually meets audiences’ needs and keeps them coming back.
At CareContent, we tend to break up discovery interviews with patients into several buckets: needs, fears, frustrations, and motivations. Often, we break them up further so that we cover both their care and the website. For example, we might ask them about what they need from their providers in order to feel more comfortable with a diagnosis, as well as what types of information and functionality they need from the website.
If you skip this step, you’re not doing your patients — or your hospital — any favors.
Patients will get annoyed when they can’t find the information they’re looking for the most — like if you take their insurance or if your providers offer after-hours care. Annoyed patients look elsewhere.
Health systems have a responsibility to provide their patients with the tools they need to improve their health and wellness. If you’re not utilizing your digital presence for this, you’re missing out on key opportunities to fulfill this responsibility.
2. … Or your other key stakeholders.
Since digital presence is a communications tool, the marketing and design teams are obviously going to be heavily involved. And we’ve already mentioned how important it is to talk to patients. But make sure that you’re not missing out on talking to other people who can provide valuable insights.
You wouldn't host a clinical trial by yourself. You’d go through all the proper channels. You’d work with researchers, physicians, funders, pharmaceutical companies, federal regulators — you name it. It’s the same with your marketing strategy. You can’t just pull things together by yourself and hope it works. It takes many perspectives and insights to create a successful strategy.
Don’t forget to talk to:
- Providers: They can tell you what patients frequently ask them — as well as the questions they should be asking, but aren’t. They can also inform strategy for provider-facing content, like pages about careers or educational opportunities.
- Call Center Employees: They get overworked and frustrated when they’re answering the exact same questions every 20 minutes, when those answers could easily be on the website. This also creates a back-up of people who actually need to get through on the phone lines.
- The Higher-ups: C-suite. Board members. Find out exactly what they’re hoping to grow over the next year (and beyond) so that you know what you should be writing and posting about. Which leads us to …
3. Your content doesn’t actually match your hospital’s business goals.
Your digital presence’s strategic goals need to align with the health system’s strategic goals. Otherwise, you’re not really moving the needle anywhere.
If the hospital wants to bring in more patients to the cardiology unit, but you’ve focused most of your content on oncology and women’s health, you’re not targeting the right people. If the hospital is trying to book more appointments all around, but you haven’t provided the right number or put the “Make an Appointment” button in a place that’s easy to see, you’re making that a lot more difficult.
Also Read: Goal Setting 101: 3 Different Ways To Set Goals In 2022
4. Your content is stale.
The content on your site can’t just be informative. It has to be engaging, interesting, and shareable.
This is why we recommend blogging. A lot of people freak out when they hear the word “blog,” because they view blogging as a rigid chore. So instead, they create “content hubs” or “resource centers.” Totally fair.
No matter what you call it, erase the idea that blogging is a burden and embrace the blog approach:
- Post frequently and on a regular cadence. Make a content and social media calendar ahead of time so you don’t post too sporadically or suddenly post every hour.
- Tailor content to align with specific services that advance your hospital’s strategic goals (see point #3)
- Create evergreen content. This is content that isn’t time-sensitive, and can keep on bringing in traffic long after it’s published. Remember: You can always reshare this content, or go back and edit it.
- Also create timely, relevant content. Mix it up. In between your evergreen content, write about the issues that people want to know about right now, in this moment. These posts can easily bring on the clicks and shares when posted on social media.
5. You didn’t include distribution in your strategy.
Okay, so you’ve read this list so far, and you’re thinking, “Wait…but I did all of that!”
If so, it might not be a problem with your content creation strategy — it could be that you forgot about distribution.
You can create all the amazing content you want, but it won’t get results if it doesn’t get into the hands of the right people.
Social Media Distribution
Social media is a must — 57% of consumers report that a hospital’s social media presence would strongly affect where they choose to receive care. However, you don’t need to be on every single platform. Put your energy into building a strong presence on the channels that will help you meet your goals and reach the right audiences.
That means doing your research. The social media landscape is always changing, so be sure to check current trends for the most used and fastest-growing platforms (Those are Facebook and TikTok, respectively, right now). Find the platforms where the user base’s demographics match those of your target audiences. It’s also a good idea to ask your audiences during discovery interviews about the channels they use most frequently.
Also Read: What’s Your Social Media Style? [QUIZ]
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to ensure that your audiences aren’t missing out on valuable content. A newsletter doesn’t need to be old-school newspaper style, with articles and columns made specifically for it. It can simply be a round-up of new content. Depending on the platform you’re using, you might be able to make newsletters customizable so that audiences can choose the type of content they want to receive.
Bonus #6: You didn’t get help from CareContent.
Okay, fine. This is just my personal bias.
But for real — our team would love to work with you to create a killer content strategy. Reach out to us and let us know how we can help.
CEO Vitamins: 4 Digital Marketing Influencers I Follow
Key Post Highlights
> Ross Simmonds and strategic content creation
> Andy Crestodina and the value of organic search
> Blippi and creating a recognizable brand
> Pauleanna Reid and the power of storytelling
In the past couple years, we’ve seen so many personal, professional, and business interactions move online. With 2023 already here and happening, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we all are continuing to hopefully cope and innovate around these never-ending digital changes.
It’s important for all of us to stay on top of the way that the marketing industry, trends, and best practices are evolving. With the launch of CareContent’s new-and-improved blog, I’m going to be sharing some of my thoughts in bite-sized, packing-a-punch posts as a part of the series “CEO Vitamins.”
Like a vitamin, I hope this series supplements your regular learning diet and can give a boost to what we all think is possible.
I thought I’d kick these posts off by sharing 4 of my favorite digital marketing influencers.
1. Ross Simmonds
The first digital marketing influencer is Ross Simmonds. He recently launched his own podcast — which I’m really excited about — about the power of content creation. I’m looking forward to digging into his episodes.
He gets content creation. He understands that it’s a strategic asset, not just something you drop on a treadmill and start pumping out.
My goal is to always be looking at how we can help our clients meet a goal. How can we help them do something that matters to their business as well as to their audience? Ross Simmonds provides great insight and understands the power of content as the centerpiece of any digital marketing effort. There’s something we can all take away from his expertise.
He gets content creation. He understands that it’s a strategic asset, not just something you drop on a treadmill and start pumping out.
My goal is to always be looking at how we can help our clients meet a goal. How can we help them do something that matters to their business as well as to their audience? Ross Simmonds provides great insight and understands the power of content as the centerpiece of any digital marketing effort. There’s something we can all take away from his expertise.
2. Andy Crestodina
The second digital marketing influencer I follow is Andy Crestodina. Andy Crestodina is a thought leader on content marketing and web design who I have admired since I started this company. I love his 13 point guides to a homepage and a newsletter and stuff like that. I like him because he gives such actionable steps for how you rank well in organic search.
Your healthcare organization needs its web presence to reach patients, providers, and healthcare professionals.
I’ve unofficially adopted him as a mentor. I used to do office hours with him when I was really starting out, and he basically helped develop the templates we use and the rules that we follow around SEO.
I call him every now and then and have meetings with him just to pick his brain. His company, Orbit Media Studies, is up in Ravenswood in Chicago, but he’s a nationally known keynote speaker at international conferences. I’m honored he still takes my phone calls.
3. Blippi
The third digital marketing person isn’t in healthcare and he’s not corporate, but I’m just amazed at what he’s done and how well he’s done it — it’s damn Blippi.
If you have a child, then you have heard about Blippi. Blippi is a Hollywood exec turned children’s YouTube character who generated $20 million in revenue off his YouTube channel, affiliated merchandise, and live shows — just by creating a bunch of videos on YouTube that kids are basically addicted to.
This is a man who knows what he’s doing, and I loved reading the story in Forbes about how meticulous he was when crafting his persona so that kids would know how to easily say his name. A name like Blippi — it works. Kids don’t stumble over it, they memorize it. It’s very recognizable.
Blippi was deliberate with everything, from how he crafted the colors of his clothing to the cadence of his voice. I am amazed at how his presence has grown. He has a very sticky factor among children that has allowed him to branch out into merchandise, book bags, toys, downloadable content on his website, and even live shows.
Plus he has like a billion followers. He’ll make a video — like “Everything Kids Should Know About Dump Trucks.” This video will be 2 hours long, and these kids will sit there and watch this for 2 hours and literally become experts on dump trucks. They’re not just idly watching; they can recap key messages and retain the information. It’s very fascinating how he’s managed to do all of that.
4. Pauleanna Reid
A fourth digital marketing influencer — who’s actually very new to me — is Pauleanna Reid. She writes about women leaders for Forbes, but she also has her own agency called Writer’s Block where she ghostwrites for celebrities. And not just ghostwriting books, but also speeches and presentations.
I’m really interested in her take. I follow her YouTube channel where she shares videos ranging in length (from one minute to one hour) and content. She covers everything from making sure that content creation becomes a brand asset to how you tell your story and drive your brand. I’m loving her so far.
Why Follow Influencers In 2023?
There are a lot of influencers online that I just don’t understand — and don’t plan to follow. It seems like anyone with a smartphone and a pretty face can get famous on Instagram. I’m not here for the people who are influencing me to buy the newest skin care product or TikTok-trending leggings.
I’m here for the people who are really influencing the marketing industry. Whose expertise and guidance can help us connect people with the content that can change — or save — their lives.
Digital marketing influencers are the people to watch when it comes to how trends are changing and where the field is going. By keeping our eye on what these influencers are doing, we can all learn something and push the envelope on what is possible.
New Year, New Website, New Services — Same Commitment To Top-Notch Healthcare Marketing
Our new website reflects who we are as a more grown-up, full-service company.
