Tips and Trends To Use in Your Healthcare Content Strategy

Content is king, especially in the healthcare industry. With healthcare content marketing, you can send your message clearly and effectively. This guide focuses on the tips and trends to help your digital marketing strategies. It will touch on:

• A brief background of content marketing in healthcare
• Trends to follow to make good content or post
• Four important reasons why your healthcare business needs content marketing
• HIPAA compliance in content marketing

With the best content, you can successfully target your market and promote your brand. Are you ready to boost your content marketing strategy?

Let’s begin!

What Is Healthcare Content Marketing?

Healthcare content marketing is about developing, promoting, and managing different types of content for businesses, practitioners, and ecommerce sites related to the healthcare industry.

This process is one of the many ways professionals, specialists, and practitioners help their patients and clients make intelligent decisions about their health. If your business is in this industry and you have a website, investing in a good content marketing strategy will not only build your business but will also allow you to help your patients with their health and wellness.

4 Important Reasons Why Your Business Needs Content Marketing

Healthcare content marketing can benefit your business or practice in many ways. Let’s focus on these four important reasons.

     1. It Helps You Generate More Leads and Increase Revenue

Creating engaging and relevant content will turn your visitors into leads. People looking for solutions to their health issues will trust your brand because you present high-quality content.

A dermatologist's website might have a blog with well-written posts about various skin conditions and their respective treatments. Seeing this quality content will let prospective patients know this is a competent dermatologist, and they will eventually consider trying their services and book an appointment from the site.

     2. Promotes Trust and Authority

A 2021 survey revealed that 88% of content marketing experts use content to promote brand awareness.  The best content will take your brand to your target audience to develop trust and authority. An example would be a website about healthy eating and dieting, which shows authority through content that highlights expertise.

     3. Appeals to Patients Looking for Health Answers Online

People are looking for quick answers to many issues, especially regarding health. With the right content, you can take advantage of this new patient behavior online. As a healthcare practitioner, you can create health guides, actionable tips, videos, and infographics to help your patients access reliable and up-to-date information.

     4. Encourages Patients Into Using Reviews

Customer reviews are user-generated content you can feature on your site to appeal to your patients. Start by asking your patients and clients to leave a review of your service or products on your Google My Business profile or when they visit your location.

Tips for Your Healthcare Content Strategy

Creating compelling content is the best way to capture your patients’ attention and help convey your message. Remember these tips to create the best content for your healthcare website.

     1. Use Local SEO on Content

If your healthcare business or organization has a local office, leverage local SEO. Dilute the competition by targeting a local audience. That means focusing on keywords that locals use to search for services like yours.

You can optimize for local SEO by publishing articles using your local keywords. Claim and manage your Google My Business or GMB and Maps profile so your local customers can easily find your business. Finally, place your business on local directory sites and ensure your contact details are uniform online.

     2. Diversify Your Content and Posts

As we mentioned before, using different forms of content will develop customer trust and convey authority in your industry. These highlight your expertise in your niche and let you reach a broader market. So, in addition to text, consider other forms of content such as short videos, white papers, infographics, and others.

     3. Make Content Well-written, Simple, and Easy To Understand

When creating complicated content or writing about a healthcare topic with multiple advanced medical terms, consider simplifying your content. If your audience is primarily non-technical clients, consider focusing on the benefits of your content and your end goals rather than the technical side of your topic.

     4. Comply With HIPAA Rules

HIPAA compliance is mandatory for healthcare websites that handle sensitive patient information. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal law that regulates the use and disclosure of protected health information (PHI). It preserves the right of patients to understand and decide how their data is utilized.

Your healthcare business, practice or organization must comply with HIPAA by setting up protocols to safeguard your patients’ information. If you need to gather information from your patients as a part of your content marketing campaigns, such as case studies, infographics, or video presentations, you must ensure that

• Employees are trained not to share patient information outside your organization.
• Your employees and workers take appropriate steps to uphold the integrity of PHI.
• Written permission from patients is obtained before using their health information for marketing, research, and fundraising.

Trends To Follow for a Good Content or Post

Content marketing is effective and competitive. Monitor content trends to keep up with the fast-changing marketing landscape. Trends like the following can help you create successful campaigns.

     1. Taking Advantage of Positive Customer Reviews

Nowadays, patients read reviews when choosing the best healthcare service for their needs. They rely on positive reviews but, at the same time, check negative ones for any issues with a provider’s services.

Marketers use positive reviews to develop stories about winning over sickness and achieving wellness. This trend is more popular as reviews have become sources of creative content.

     2. Considering Covid-19-Related Content

Content related to the COVID-19 pandemic has remained in high demand. Content with keywords such as “quarantine,” “vaccine,” and “social distancing” keep on creating high traffic for various healthcare websites.

Taking advantage of this trend is one way to create winning content for your healthcare website. Expanding your content to cover more updated COVID-19 topics like “long COVID” and “travel health protocols” will help you create in-demand content today and in the future.

     3. Using Available Internal Data

Healthcare is one of the industries where massive internal data is available. This data can be used to create a variety of content. If your business or practice conducts research, the information you gather can be developed into tips, reviews, white papers, and other forms of content that promote your industry authority.

Riding on this trend can improve your search engine rankings because your patients will refer to your site as a reliable source of information.

     4. Giving Influencer Marketing a Try

Influencer marketing works with a social media promoter or influencer to improve brand awareness. This new trend in the healthcare industry stems from the popularity of short-form videos on YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok.

Working with an influencer means asking them to use your products or services. They will document their “experience” through short videos and post these videos on their social media platforms.

Summing Up

To create engaging, top-quality content for your healthcare business or practice, you must clearly understand content marketing and why your business needs healthcare content marketing.

It would be best if you considered HIPAA compliance in creating content for marketing purposes to ensure the ethical use of PHIs. Finally, applying the latest trends in healthcare content marketing will guarantee your content is at the top of search engine results pages.

Using these strategies, you can engage your audience and turn them into full-pledged subscribers, customers, and patients. Want to know more about healthcare content marketing? Contact us now and get the most up-to-date information.