There are many obsta­cles in con­tent mar­ket­ing with regards to health care as you have so many things to be aware of not only from a med­ical per­spec­tive, but also a legal per­spec­tive. Below are four chal­lenges of con­tent mar­ket­ing in health care, along with some tips that can help the process run more smooth­ly. While you may not be in health care, these chal­lenges and tips are sure to res­onate with many of you.

Regard­less of what indus­try you’re in, con­tent mar­ket­ing can be a very involved process because so many com­po­nents go into the whole process. When done cor­rect­ly, not only can the out­come be very ben­e­fi­cial, but also more cost effec­tive than oth­er dig­i­tal pro­mo­tion­al avenues, like paid adver­tis­ing.

1. Review & Approval Process Turnaround Time Can Be Lengthy

With top­ics like the Afford­able Care Act, health insur­ance, and clin­i­cal con­tent, the review and approval process are vital steps in the con­tent mar­ket­ing process, but can take the most time because dif­fer­ent depart­ments or indi­vid­u­als have to vet the con­tent before it can go live.

When we cre­ate a piece of con­tent for my health care brand’s site, a form is filled out elec­tron­i­cal­ly where dates of when the con­tent must go live, along with the sub­ject mat­ter experts who are in charge are list­ed. If the con­tent is med­ical in nature, then pri­or to fill­ing out this form, an email from a med­ical direc­tor approv­ing the con­tent must be sent and attached with the form, along with the con­tent. This is to make sure that the top experts in the com­pa­ny have approved all con­tent that is clin­i­cal in nature, pri­or to the review process tak­ing place.

While the approval and review process can be chal­leng­ing, the one thing that will help you is hav­ing a ful­ly flushed out con­tent cal­en­dar. This way you can lay out and pic­ture the con­tent roadmap, see gaps, and deter­mine how long some­thing will take to get approved before launch­ing. I usu­al­ly try and sub­mit con­tent to the review and approval team approx­i­mate­ly one to two weeks pri­or need­ing it to go live on the blog.

With regards to the con­tent cal­en­dar, it is imper­a­tive that you leave enough wig­gle room for the review process so you nev­er will have gaps in your go live dates. While I lay out future month’s con­tent in advance, I do com­mu­ni­cate to var­i­ous stake­hold­ers that the con­tent cal­en­dar is flex­i­ble and dates can be moved around if need be.

Hav­ing a review and approval process is some­thing that I high­ly rec­om­mend. It will always keep your con­tent and your brand look­ing pro­fes­sion­al. In the end, stay­ing ahead of the game by hav­ing a con­tent cal­en­dar that is planned out in advance will help you alle­vi­ate the time it can take for con­tent to get approved.

2. Finding Pre-Approved Content That Can Be Recycled

Being in a large health solu­tions com­pa­ny, con­tent is con­stant­ly get­ting cre­at­ed by dif­fer­ent depart­ments. Whether it’s health and well­ness con­tent, new mem­ber con­tent or con­tent around the lat­est changes in health care, the con­tent is already devel­oped, but find­ing it can some­times be chal­leng­ing.

The good news is that find­ing this already approved con­tent will save you time as there are no steps need­ed into get­ting it reviewed. This type of con­tent is great to help frame your con­tent cal­en­dar as with minor tweaks can be recy­cled and placed on the blog.

I tend to hunt for already pro­duced and approved con­tent often for sev­er­al rea­sons:

• It’s cre­at­ed by the experts.
• It’s already reviewed.
• It can save time ver­sus cre­at­ing new con­tent that pro­motes the exact same mes­sage.
• It can help extend the lifes­pan of the con­tent.
• It is cost effec­tive and can aid with ROI as it’s already pro­duced.

One way to find this con­tent is to sim­ply ask around the dif­fer­ent depart­ments in your com­pa­ny. Reach out to the experts in the com­pa­ny and find out who assists with their con­tent efforts.

My brand devel­ops direct mail pieces to our new mem­bers regard­ing new mem­ber infor­ma­tion. This is great con­tent that can be repur­posed on the blog because it helps the con­tent reach more peo­ple.

Once you have found your hand­ful or experts and indi­vid­u­als who know where to look, reach out to them on a reg­u­lar basis to find out if there’s any new con­tent so you can help extend their message’s reach by plac­ing it on the company’s blog.

3. Educating Members About Health Care Changes

The Afford­able Care Act intro­duced a lot of changes, not to men­tion oth­er health care focused top­ics like open enroll­ment. These come not only with lots of infor­ma­tion that can be con­fus­ing but can also have spe­cif­ic dates which requires indi­vid­u­als to take cer­tain steps so they have health care for the future.

Get­ting these mes­sages out is done not only in dig­i­tal for­mat, but also in direct mail. No mat­ter where you place the con­tent, some indi­vid­u­als still may not see it. Fur­ther expand­ing this con­tent, repur­pos­ing in dif­fer­ent for­mats, as well as pro­mot­ing it on your blog and social media can only help in edu­cat­ing your mem­bers of changes and updates with your prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Keep in mind that the con­sumers are unique and digest con­tent in var­i­ous ways. One may like to read con­tent, while oth­ers like to watch a video. The key is recy­cling the updat­ed con­tent in var­i­ous for­mats and pro­mot­ing that con­tent so there is a high­er like­li­hood of it get­ting seen.

Pro­mot­ing this con­tent week­ly or even dai­ly through­out var­i­ous social media chan­nels can also help get your mes­sage in front of peo­ple, just make sure it’s mixed in with oth­er enter­tain­ing and edu­ca­tion con­tent, so your audi­ence doesn’t get annoyed or bored.

4. Updating Information Due To Industry Changes

Anoth­er big chal­lenge of health care con­tent mar­ket­ing is mak­ing sure exist­ing con­tent is up to date. Ever­green con­tent must be accu­rate to reflect cur­rent rules or updates of clin­i­cal stud­ies.

To keep up with reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards, we at times have to take down video or blog con­tent and wait for the new­er con­tent to become avail­able. Once it becomes avail­able, we quick­ly upload, tweak, repub­lish, and then pro­mote con­sis­tent­ly and fre­quent­ly.

One workaround for this type of con­tent is instead of cre­at­ing a new page, update the old con­tent and repub­lish with the cur­rent date. This way the user will get served the most up-to-date, pre­cise con­tent to avoid any con­fu­sion.

For con­tent that is clin­i­cal in nature, instead of tak­ing down the old­er piece of con­tent, cre­ate a new blog post and refer to the old­er study and men­tion what updates have occurred. Also adding words like “Update” or “Break­ing News” to your blog titles could increase click-through rates, as you’re talk­ing about some­thing relat­ed to cur­rent events.

Summary

Being as orga­nized as pos­si­ble, plan­ning ahead, and hav­ing a ful­ly flushed out con­tent cal­en­dar can real­ly help aid with these con­tent mar­ket­ing chal­lenges.