Hackensack Meridian Well being’s Award-Profitable Content material Technique

Seven years in the past, Hackensack Meridian Well being operated on content material autopilot.

It’s a narrative acquainted to many entrepreneurs.

Some with the model printed a print journal. Others despatched newsletters with syndicated content material that used medical sources unaffiliated with the biggest well being system in New Jersey. They’d totally different names and aesthetics. No model voice existed.

They usually wished to develop a web-based content material hub — that’s what I used to be charged with once I began on this function in 2018.

Since then, Hackensack Meridian Well being has united its content material into the HealthU model, which features a digital content material hub, a quarterly print journal and publication, social media, and a podcast launched a number of years in the past. This system gained Greatest Content material Advertising Program in Well being Care within the 2023 Content material Advertising Awards.

Lately, I shared the behind-the-scenes story within the CMI webinar Develop Up! The way to Enhance Your Content material Maturity Degree and Show ROI (registration required). Michelle Jackson, vp of content material technique at GLC, our company companion, joined me.

Right here’s a take a look at the components that helped the content material crew set up the voice and content material technique for Hackensack Meridian Well being.

4 parts of a profitable content material advertising program

In remodeling Hackensack Meridian Well being from a content material creation program to totally realized strategic content material advertising, we integrated 4 essential parts:

These parts enabled us to go from order takers (i.e., put this within the publication) to strategic operators who make sure the printed content material connects strongly to the model’s advertising priorities, serving to get individuals to our services.

Plan content material first, then select channel and format

Our content material technique includes a content-first, channel-second strategy. We stopped doing journal planning, weblog planning, and many others. We now do content material planning.

Right here’s the way it works. The content material crew:

• Identifies a search development, akin to curiosity in marathons.
• Plans the content material — on this case, a chunk on suggestions for marathon newbies.
• Identifies the suitable channels.
• Interviews a subject professional (a physician in our system).
• Crafts an article for the content material hub and produces a podcast episode from that data.
• Repurposes the content material into different belongings (i.e., a graphic for social media).

Typically, we expect a subject would work properly only for social media or solely on the content material hub. Often, we use the viewers’s response to the digital content material as a thermometer for the print journal.

Let’s say an article about how a lot weight somebody must lose for weight reduction surgical procedure receives a big response on-line. We’ll plug it into the print journal and embrace a QR code for a weight-loss well being threat evaluation that returns the reader to our digital content material.

However HealthU content material goes past these channels. Different advertising groups within the group can use it of their campaigns, whether or not a sponsored content material alternative in an area digital publication or an airplane-pulled banner with a CTA for HealthU solar security suggestions over a crowded seaside in New Jersey (sure, that occurred.)

Work throughout groups for content material technique success

Listening and collaboration are the important components for the content material program’s success.

With 36,000 staff throughout 18 hospitals and 500 affected person care places, you may count on a whole lot of competing priorities. The content material crew helps the complete group in Hackensack Meridian Well being’s community workplace.

We meet frequently with entrepreneurs who help particular person websites and repair traces. We meet with them month-to-month to debate their main, secondary, and tertiary priorities for the following three months. They don’t include content material requests; they arrive with strategic priorities, and we decide easy methods to assist them help these objectives.

Each two weeks, we additionally meet to look extra intently on the anticipated and crucial actions within the coming weeks. Are new medical doctors onboarding? Do new packages want a quantity enhance? Will new tech be launched that we might help?

At these conferences, we actually hear to grasp what they’re saying. Then, we take that data, analysis the associated concepts, and develop acceptable angles and distribution channels to help these priorities.

For instance, sleep drugs is a precedence for our pediatrics service line. Armed with that information, we researched trending matters round sleep to grasp what individuals wished to know. We wished the content material to reply their questions, not simply speak about what we expect is essential. There was a excessive search quantity surrounding the usage of sleep gummies to advertise higher sleep in children, in order that’s the subject we tackled.

Supply a pitch kind

However content material concepts aren’t restricted to these conferences. We created a pitch kind for advertising communications crew members. They share the small print of their concept, the sources, and even media consent types and images, if accessible.

Each pitch is reviewed. If we don’t plan to pursue an concept,  an auto-generated e-mail goes out, which features a notice about why the subject was declined. For instance, a pitch to advertise a extremely technical element of scientific analysis was submitted. We replied by noting, “The subject doesn’t slot in HealthU’s consumer-friendly content material technique, however listed here are another communications channels throughout the division that may make it easier to attain your objectives.”

The pitch types additionally assist the content material crew determine recurring themes — inside topical tendencies — that may inform future content material planning. (To know exterior tendencies, we use instruments akin to  Google Tendencies and Reply The Public, which now incorporates information from Bing and YouTube search engines like google and yahoo along with Google.)

To handle all this content material, requests, and manufacturing, we’ve moved from large spreadsheets to Airtable. It’s been a game-changer for us, letting us monitor all of the concepts and content material in a single database and automating steps, akin to the person responses to pitches. The digital dashboard can be accessible to all advertising communications crew members to allow them to advise their stakeholders on content material standing at any time.

Present the influence

The fourth component of our profitable content material advertising program revolves round outcomes. In spite of everything, driving individuals to make use of Hackensack Meridian Well being providers and go to medical doctors in our community is the last word goal.

In planning the content material, we additionally plan to measure its success. All the outcomes are compiled in a single, templated report. Division leaders obtain that report month-to-month. (We report back to the C-suite quarterly.)

To evaluate the influence of the content material, we secured our personal name heart quantity. Each CTA contains the identical cellphone quantity. That line receives about 3,000 calls yearly.

Within the journal, we publish branded shortened URLs and QR codes. We additionally did a reader survey and located one-third took motion in response to HealthU content material — scheduling an appointment, utilizing a service, registering for a category, subscribing to the publication, and many others.

The metrics additionally inform modifications to the content material technique. Over a 12 months in the past, the digital metrics indicated our long-form affected person tales and crew member spotlights didn’t carry out as strongly as different instructional content material. We deprioritized affected person tales and gave greater precedence and visibility to instructional items round trending matters and human curiosity tales selling our medical doctors.

After these content material modifications, calls elevated by 97%, referrals to medical doctors jumped 169%, and repair referrals grew by 61%.

Rising past a tactical strategy

Seven years after the tactical evolution, we nonetheless publish {a magazine} and a publication. However now, they’re built-in parts of the HealthU technique, projecting the identical voice and mission because the digital content material hub, podcast, and different Hackensack Meridian Well being content material.

We’re a small crew that additionally oversees social media and net content material  — 5 full-time staff at Hackensack Meridian Well being and  GLC as our company companion. However by collaborating with the opposite advertising communications groups and really listening to — and addressing — their priorities, HealthU delivers large outcomes for the model.

Please notice: All instruments talked about on this article had been recommended by the writer. In the event you’d wish to counsel a instrument, share the article on social media with a remark.

MORE EXAMPLES FROM 2023 CONTENT MARKETING AWARD FINALISTS

Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising Institute