Cre­at­ing healthy con­tent for your audi­ence seg­ments doesn’t have to be dif­fi­cult. All it takes is using your exist­ing resources and find­ing cre­ative ways to max­i­mize the con­tent and experts your com­pa­ny already has. Not only does it bring the poten­tial of increas­ing traf­fic and read­er­ship, but more impor­tant­ly, it helps con­sumers view you as an indus­try thought leader.

Health care con­tent mar­ket­ing can be extreme­ly chal­leng­ing.

With so many rules and reg­u­la­tions that need to be fol­lowed from a dig­i­tal per­spec­tive, it can be dif­fi­cult at times to find the right bal­ance between con­tent that engages and edu­cates your audi­ence, but also fol­lows the high lev­el of stan­dards that we need to adhere to in the health care indus­try.

Anoth­er chal­lenge in health care is that your audi­ence isn’t just con­sumers. You must also con­sid­er mem­bers, providers, agents, and employ­ers.

What fol­lows are some insights from ini­tia­tives I devel­oped as the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gist for Flori­da Blue, which is part of Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield sys­tem. Here’s how the company’s blog put the focus on edu­cat­ing and engag­ing read­ers, while also appeal­ing to our diverse audi­ences.

Repurpose Existing Content

Repur­pos­ing con­tent is extreme­ly impor­tant. This could come in the form of:

• Find­ing con­tent that already exists in one for­mat and then trans­form­ing it into anoth­er.
• Tak­ing an idea or ideas out of one piece of con­tent and build­ing those ideas out fur­ther to cre­ate anoth­er blog, pre­sen­ta­tion, info­graph­ic, and so on.

For exam­ple, Flori­da Blue shares a vari­ety of con­tent (e.g., let­ters, emails, newslet­ters, PDFs) with its var­i­ous audi­ence seg­ments. The con­tent top­ic varies from inform­ing indi­vid­u­als about updates regard­ing health care reform, to open enroll­ment, to pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al con­tent focused on health and well­ness.

We know our audi­ence finds this con­tent inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tive. Most impor­tant­ly, this con­tent has been cre­at­ed by our sub­ject mat­ter experts and has gone through our review process, so it’s all ready for prime­time.

There are sev­er­al ben­e­fits of repur­pos­ing already exist­ing con­tent and plac­ing it onto a blog. It:

• Extends the invest­ment that was orig­i­nal­ly put into its cre­ation, thus improv­ing the ROI.
• Pro­vides a dig­i­tal foot­print of con­tent that has yet to exist online.
• Gives your blog more con­tent. More pages on your site means more oppor­tu­ni­ty for your site to get more pages indexed in search engines and found by peo­ple who are look­ing for author­i­ta­tive top­ic experts.
• Aids in key­word rank­ing as the con­tent usu­al­ly con­tains words and phras­es that you’re try­ing to tar­get, whether it’s long-tail brand or non-brand terms.

Repur­pos­ing not only can help build out excel­lent con­tent on your company’s blog, but reach addi­tion­al peo­ple with great con­tent that’s ready to go!

Not All Content Is Meant To Convert

Dig­i­tal con­tent comes in sev­er­al fla­vors. While lead gen­er­a­tion and con­ver­sion is an impor­tant part of your mar­ket­ing efforts, it shouldn’t be the only main focus because not all con­sumers at the same stage of the deci­sion jour­ney.

Con­tent should be intent-based, inter­est-based, or infor­ma­tion-based, but doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be all three things at the same time. What it should be all the time is appeal­ing to your audi­ence seg­ments – and if the con­tent doesn’t tar­get any one of them, then there’s lit­tle need for it on your site.

Intent-Based Content

This con­tent is cre­at­ed so your audi­ence seg­ment to take action, whether it’s fill­ing out a form, down­load­ing an app, sign­ing up for a newslet­ter, or mak­ing them aware of a con­test. Con­tent should always have a spe­cif­ic pur­pose and calls to action to tell your read­er what to do. For exam­ple:

• We want­ed to increase aware­ness to our dig­i­tal newslet­ter. So in addi­tion to mak­ing sure our mem­bers were aware of the lat­est edi­tion, we want­ed to share with the mass­es because the con­tent was appeal­ing to many. One easy way to accom­plish this: cre­ate a brief blog post about the newslet­ter and then pro­mot­ed the blog post social­ly via Face­book, Twit­ter, and LinkedIn.
• We want­ed to increase aware­ness about our new mobile app expe­ri­ence fol­low­ing a sig­nif­i­cant update. To let peo­ple know they should down­load the app, we pub­lished a blog titled “New Look and Feel – Flori­da Blue Mobile App”.

Interest-Based Content

This type of con­tent is usu­al­ly focused on a spe­cif­ic audi­ence or per­sona that usu­al­ly dis­cuss­es a focus top­ic. One way we are doing this is with our pod­cast and blog series, sole­ly tar­get­ed to our providers.

• Flori­da Blue ICD-10 Pod­casts & Blogs: ICD-10 is the 10th revi­sion of the Inter­na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Dis­eases and Relat­ed Health Prob­lems (ICD). Basi­cal­ly it’s diag­nos­tic cod­ing sys­tem that is almost in every coun­try in the world. Present­ly we are in the tran­si­tion point from ICD‑9 and ICD-10, so there’s much debate and inter­est around this, espe­cial­ly to providers. One way we’ve stayed on top of this is by inter­view­ing experts on a con­sis­tent basis, with our Open Line Fri­day Tele­con­fer­ences. It is essen­tial a con­fer­ence call that is record­ed, then placed it in a pod­cast for­mat and then placed in blog post, sum­ma­riz­ing that main points. Not only does it increas­es the lifes­pan of the con­tent, but also pro­vides an area online where providers can access the infor­ma­tion at a lat­er date.

Information-Based Content

This con­tent is edu­ca­tion­al and its goal is to sim­ply inform the audi­ence. No mat­ter which audi­ence seg­ment you’re try­ing to reach or appeal to, infor­ma­tion­al-based con­tent is always a sure way to gain trust with your read­ers.

Pro­vid­ing peo­ple with the tools to solve their prob­lems or make their life eas­i­er is a sure win-win for the brand. Here are two exam­ples of our infor­ma­tion based con­tent:

1. Infor­ma­tion for Our New Mem­bers: This blog is high­lights the tips and infor­ma­tion that is help­ful to the mem­ber, such as how to make a pay­ment, insight about ID cards, as well as con­tact infor­ma­tion if the mem­ber has any ques­tions.
2. What is Health Insur­ance? This blog con­tains a video, which is a part of our edu­ca­tion­al series on our Flori­da Blue YouTube Chan­nel. Using our blog as an addi­tion­al pro­mo­tion tool, it helps edu­cate the read­er about ins and outs of health insur­ance and health care reform, as they can be dif­fi­cult top­ics to under­stand.

It’s impor­tant to not only know whom your con­tent is for, but also need­ed to enhance and improve the cus­tomer life­cy­cle. By devel­op­ing con­tent around intent, inter­est, and infor­ma­tion, you will be sure to appeal to your audi­ence seg­ments in a pos­i­tive man­ner.

Finding and Using Internal and External Subject Matter Experts

Find­ing and uti­liz­ing sub­ject mat­ter experts is an easy win for any brand. You can use inter­nal sub­ject mat­ter experts to help with con­tent cre­ation, but also net­work exter­nal­ly and dig­i­tal­ly to find exter­nal experts who are gra­cious enough to pro­vide con­tent. Our blog built thought lead­er­ship by work­ing with three blogs:

1. Stu­dents with Dis­abil­i­ties Ben­e­fit from Flori­da Blue/UNF Part­ner­ship: This blog was cre­at­ed by one of our inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions experts. We have a team of inter­nal and exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion experts, so one way to increase thought lead­er­ship was to have con­tent that was already cre­at­ed inter­nal­ly, be repur­posed and post­ed on the blog with the experts byline. This increas­es diver­si­ty of your con­tent, by hav­ing new authors on your blog. Doing that also can increase your read­er­ship as those new guest blog­gers have a dif­fer­ent social media net­work they can tap into, which once again is anoth­er way to increase traf­fic to your site.
2. Smart­way, Inno­v­a­tive Prod­uct for Women | Win­ner of the 2014 Flori­da Blue Health Care Inno­va­tion Com­pe­ti­tion: This sum­mer, Flori­da Blue spon­sored a inno­va­tion com­pe­ti­tion where stu­dents from across the State of Flori­da pitched their ideas for inno­va­tions in health­care. After the win­ner was select­ed, we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with them and gain some exper­tise regard­ing health care inno­va­tion
3. An Insider’s Per­spec­tive on the Afford­able Care Act: Our Inter­view with Jason Alt­mire [Pod­cast]: Jason Alt­mire is the Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty Affairs at Flori­da Blue. He also is a for­mer Con­gress­man from Penn­syl­va­nia and served from 2007 to 2013. Using his exper­tise for var­i­ous blog posts and pod­casts has been a great way to edu­cate our blog read­ers on health care reform.

Are you tai­lor­ing con­tent to spe­cif­ic audi­ence seg­ments? How is it work­ing for you? Share your insights in the com­ments!