The Iris Content 2020 Guide: Creating Content for Health Services
In 2020, content is king, and focus on present day marketing is what will be needed this year and beyond. Ads have been relegated to the sidelines: every fifth Internet user has an ad blocker.
Regardless of the health service you’re offering or are a part of, making sure you have a significant online presence will definitely boost your business and increase your popularity. That’s why there’s so much focus on creating content for health services.
Let’s say you’re a health service in a densely populated metropolitan area. To get valuable search traffic to your business and site, target long-tail keywords. These include questions starting with “how do you know if you have…” and commonly searched symptoms. You can only see your domain ranking increase.
Tips for Health Service Content Post-COVID
In light of the raging pandemic and its aftermath, health services will need to change their tone. Normally, keeping an easygoing, conversational tone was common and quite effective. This has changed. In 2020, it is best to avoid humor because people are very sensitive and it might come across the wrong way.
Take a Supportive or Neutral Stance
Unlike in the past, content marketing agencies are not taking the position to help brands “capitalize” on the crisis. We are helping them become as accessible or at least as visible as possible right now to those who might need their products and services. It is not a good idea to use words like “benefit,” “capitalize,” “offer,” “opportunity”, “gain,” or “profit” in content. Instead, use “cope, “contribute,” “respond”, “connect,” “play a role,” and “navigate.”
Watch out for Insensitive Words
Certain words and phrases were completely harmless before the new coronavirus outbreak, which they are not any more. These include words like “viral”, “spread”, “contagious”, and “infectious.” As a health service, it can be very challenging to steer clear of these terms, but if you must use them, do so as sparingly as possible.
Conversion was king prior to COVID-19. Now, contribution has usurped the throne. If the health service is less essential with respect to COVID-19, like an ophthalmology clinic, it can still find a way to remain relevant. Priority needs to shift from getting more business to keep providing value to the target group because for many, 2020 is all about surviving.
Quote Authority Sources
Health-related content should quote authority sources like the CDC and the WHO, although the latter’s authority was a bit shaken after Donald Trump’s decision to cut financing for it. It might take some time to check up on details, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. The coronavirus topic is not a “trending” one by any means. Unfortunately, it will have long-lasting effects, so your content will probably remain relevant for some time. You should take care to ensure it’s on par with the highest standards.
Forms of Content for Health Services
Content for health services can include animation, blog posts, videos, infographics, images, and pretty much anything you can think of. In order to keep people interested in your content, you should mix things up. Don’t flood your website or platform with plain blog posts. Use infographics and images whenever you can.
Animation
Since the coronavirus outbreak, animations have become a hot (if not the hottest) content marketing trend. They have always been a powerful medium for visual storytelling. A lot of businesses are turning to animations at this time, even “serious” ones, as they recognize how underestimated and underemployed a tool they are.
Conventional options like movies and live-action interviews have become restricted due to COVID. More and more brands are trying animation to compensate. Often, it is the best option for their purpose. The easy format enables people to tell complex and often serious stories in an engaging way, even stories that aren’t necessarily interesting from a visual point of view.
Another advantage of animation is the vast variety of animation styles available. You can choose between stop motion, 2D, 3D, or mixed-media. The style depends on the content type and service provider. It doesn’t have to be expensive. A good animation must tell a story in an engaging way without detracting from the gravity of the matter at hand.
Videos
When it comes to videos, think of them as your best friend. They are the ultimate form of content for health services whether we’re talking about hospitals, clinics, or anything else. Why? The reason videos are so popular is because they gain the viewer’s trust.
Sure, we all read blog posts and some of them are quite engaging, but they don’t have the same effect and connection that videos do. Think of it this way, what would you trust more, a 3-minute video of a doctor talking about hypertension or a page long article or post?
Infographics
Infographics are visually appealing. Personally, I find it a great deal of fun to go through an infographic and extract information from it. It certainly beats getting information from text or plain tables/graphs.
Combine valuable and reliable information with nicely designed schematics to create one of the most entertaining forms of content for health services, or any other kind of service actually. By creating colorful infographics that engage readers and catch their attention, your website or platform’s popularity will almost certainly reach new heights.
Best Types of Content for Health Services
It’s a lot easier to plan a set of articles for the next week or so and work on them according to schedule. This alone might work in a stagnant field that’s not part of everyone’s daily life. When it comes to creating content for health services, you need to be oriented with everything happening in the world and what people are talking about.
For example, for a couple of years now people have been avidly involved in discussing vaccines and whether or not they’re safe. Has your hospital, clinic, or form of healthcare service commented on this issue? When your audience knows you’re up to date with what everyone else is discussing they’ll be more inclined to trust you. It’s also a sign that the people running your platform aren’t sealed from the rest of the world. This makes everything else you post more trustworthy since they’ll know your content is fresh rather than outdated.
Talk about Your People
In the same sense that videos establish a connection with your audience, so will stories about members of your staff. Every week or so, try to add a post or an article about a staff member. This will help you gain the trust of readers because they’ll start to connect with your institution on a deeper level. Instead of seeing doctors in white coats and employees, they’ll start to see regular people just like themselves.
Highlight certain aspects of the lives of staff members in your stories. Talk about their background and where they come from. It’s also important to speak of their achievements and show that your institute is tremendously proud.
Get Readers Talking
Sometimes the greatest content is created by your readers and audience. Get them involved and talking. Create surveys and ask for their opinions. Find out what your subscribers or followers think by asking them questions not just related to your service, but to health in general.
You can do this through your website if you get enough traffic, or using social media. After hearing what everyone has to say, you can share the most popular opinions or publish the results of your online discussion/survey on your website in the form of a blog post.
This will make your readers feel like their opinions matter and instead of being on the passive receiving end of content, they’ll be actively involved in content creation themselves.
The Importance of Social Media
Consider publishing guest posts on highly authoritative digital platforms and posting original content on social media. Whether that’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook, there are many platforms to choose from. Make the most of the tools. The world of social media is hard to get into, but once you get started, everything becomes much easier. It’s hard to gain followers and create a social media fan base at the beginning, which is quite discouraging, but failing to get involved in social media is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Your website might be the best example of perfect content for health services, but what good does it do if no one knows about its existence?
Having an avid social media presence isn’t just great marketing, but also one of the most successful ways to redirect people to your website so they can see your content. Social media lets you connect with people who have used your services or are considering using them. You might find someone praising your service, which you could utilize by asking their permission to post their kind words on your website.
Conclusion
Creating content for health services can be tricky. A lot of people and institutions fall into the trap of creating generic content in simple text and nothing else. Your goal should be to gain and keep the trust of readers. This can be achieved using engaging forms of content and talking about trending health related topics. As long as you have the trust of your audience, they’ll definitely keep coming back.
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