Online it ALL Matters

Bye Bye Blogger

2015-04-07T09:46:00.002-04:00

Since we started Online It ALL Matters, Aha Media has grown from a freelancer trying to grow a business to a team of more than 16 strong.

You can find our old blog posts and our new blog here: http://ahamediagroup.com/our-blog/

Thank you for your loyal readership and shares. We hope we will see you in our new location often.

The 3 Hallmarks of Bad Content

2015-03-12T08:40:00.000-04:00

Much has been written about what makes content good. But, what if there were a way to recognize the hallmarks of bad content, so you could plan for better content?

Besides the obvious, like high bounce rates and lack of conversions on the page, how can you tell when you really need a heavy-duty rewrite of your content?

3 Signs Your Content is Tired

When we evaluate content for rewrites, we look for these three things:

Frankenstein content: We’re all familiar with content that has been pulled from so many places—a brochure here, a microsite over there. It no longer reads as a cohesive piece, but instead sounds like something out of a fantasy land where they speak in non-sequiturs and magical spells.

How to avoid: Editing may not be the answer for your content. You may need to dig in and rewrite whole sections, plotting information flow and developing content architectures to ensure pages are consistent.

Where does this belong?: Have you ever read a web page and thought, “This is in the wrong place.” It’s almost as if the writer(s) were not sure what to do with that piece of information, but they were sure it belonged somewhere. To the reader, it’s obvious that something is awry because those two odd paragraphs stick out like adults chaperoning a teenage pool party. #awkward, as my 12-year-old would say.

How to avoid: Create strong information architectures and content roadmaps by plotting your personas, identity pillars and messaging points. Think through your different target audiences and what content they need to know to move to the next phase of the buying cycle.

Flabby content: This is my personal favorite. Here’s what it sounds like, “We are the best brand for you. Our professionals are the best at what they do, and then we use a lot of really fancy words that don’t mean anything to prove that point without backing it up with any facts.”

How to avoid: You cannot be the best unless you have solid facts or independent qualifications to back up your brand’s superiority. And maybe your brand isn’t superior. That’s okay—find the things that DO differentiate you in the marketplace and talk about those things. For the right audience, those points will convince them to convert.

What do you think? What are the signs of bad content to you? Please email Ahava your examples.

6 Tips for Engaging Self-Pay Patients

2015-03-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

Despite The Affordable Care Act’s individual health insurance mandate, a recent study shows nearly 1 in 4 people are still uninsured. These findings underscore a growing movement among patients who would rather pay for care only when they need it. What’s surprising is they’re having a hard time finding hospitals willing to work with.

Nine out of 10 consumers consider receiving upfront price estimates nearly as important as receiving an accurate medical diagnosis. Many would-be self-pay patients searching for this information are instead finding chargemaster data, which is inflated many times over to cushion the administrative burden of working with third-party payers.

While implementing a self-pay program isn't easy, some early adopters are taking the plunge. For example, UCLA Health (a client of Aha Media’s) recently launched a cash pricing program. As one of the first academic medical centers in this arena, their program offers cash pricing for more than 50 procedures, with plans for soon adding more.

Accessible Price Information is Key to Engaging Self-Pay Patients

As more hospitals develop similar programs, competition will get stronger. Help your hospital stand out with these tips:

Use consumer-friendly language. No one is going to spend a lot of money on something they don’t understand. Help self-pay patients feel confident about their purchase by using simple language to describe:

The procedure they are paying for
What services are included and excluded in the listed price
Your billing process
This report from the American Hospital Association offers sample definitions and tips on communicating price transparency information to consumers.

Seize your golden opportunity. Make price information available to patients at teachable moments, such as when they are considering an elective procedure. Make it easy to close the deal by linking to your price information on after visit summaries.
Get them there in as few clicks as possible. Many patients, millennials in particular, want easy access to pricing information from their mobile device. Interactive features such as an easy to use interface of the human body, like UCLA uses, instead of a list can ensure a positive user experience. Want more mobile engagement strategies? Read 4 Mobile Strategies for Your Business.
Know your audience. It’s not enough to report prices for your most common procedures as most states already require this by law. Consider the specific health needs of your self-pay population, keeping in mind that most are likely under 65 years of age. Family planning and childbirth services are a great place to start.
Don’t let them bounce. Use your pricing information page to draw potential patients deeper into your site and closer to conversion by strategically linking to relevant clinical program information and online appointment request forms.
Give more information than they ask for. Chances are your self-pay patients want to know more ways to save. Add links to cost saving programs and services, such as reduced cost generic prescriptions, clinical trials for new treatments and free patient education programs, from your price information page.

How are you engaging self-pay patients? Tell us about your experiences in our Comments section.

Why You Might Want to Manage Only 1 Social Media Channel

2015-03-03T08:01:00.000-05:00

Are you spending your time and resources on multiple social media channels?

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, flickr, Instagram and Pinterest?

How much ROI are you getting from each channel?

Do you know? Exactly?

We all make choices about priority. But Web 2.0 has muddied the waters. What if we’re not on every channel? What if our customers can’t find us?

Here’s a better question: What if they don’t care?

If you truly want to be effective in social media, you need to set priorities and discover ROI. In other words, you should act like a pumpkin farmer: You need to make a determination about which social media activities grow you the biggest fruit.

Act Like a Pumpkin Farmer

In the business book, The Pumpkin Plan, A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field, author Mike Michalowicz explains that you must prune your business in the same way a farmer prunes his pumpkin patch. When baby pumpkins grow, the farmer assesses the vine and cuts away certain smaller pumpkins to give the bigger pumpkins the best chance to grow.

Social media strategy is no different. Take a long, analytical look at which tactics are driving your engagement, and therefore your revenue, as well as the tactics that are faltering.

Perhaps you don’t need to create an infographic every week, or post to Instagram four times a month, or create a $10,000 video once a quarter. If that content doesn’t actually do something to drive your revenues, you are simply wasting your time, giving equal sunshine and care to pumpkins that may not grow to true maturity. Then, what will you sell at harvest?

Prune the social media efforts that are not growing fruit. Spend your time mastering one or two channels before moving on to other efforts. It’s your job to convince your executive leadership team that being strategic means using resources in a thoughtful manner to maximize output.

What Harvard Knows About Consultants That You Don’t

2015-02-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

Researchers at Harvard Business School sought to understand what makes change and transformation efforts successful. Based on research of strategy models at a variety of a global companies*, they found that 70 to 90 percent of internal execution efforts fail. It seems that companies have a hard time getting internal strategy projects completed.

To boil it down, that means seven to nine of your strategic projects are going to fail this year if you try to complete them in-house.

Let's find out why.

Outside Eyes Give You the Competitive Edge

According to the report, most internal strategists approach strategic projects in the following manner:

Step #1: Identify an opportunity—not hard to do, when you’re constantly swimming in the sea of your own challenges

Step #2: Attain buy-in from executive leadership—challenging, but possible for most internal strategists

Step #3: Execute on the strategy

Step #3 is where most internal strategists can’t bring it home. It’s not that they are at fault—they are simply too busy with all of their other responsibilities to execute on a new strategy.

Get the Competitive Edge

Too often, we think we can do it all ourselves. We don’t want to get outside help, or look to a consultant for an outside opinion, because we think we know our business better than anybody else. But the truth is, outside consultants often give you the competitive edge. They know your market landscape and can provide expertise on how to solve your unique challenges.

This is true for content and content strategy. Often, we are asked to step-in on a project that someone thought they could write internally. Or a social media or content marketing project has been stalled for months, until clients reach out to us for help with implementation. The best part is we see ourselves as your consultative partners, who can help you think through your strategy AND execute on your behalf.

Don’t let 2015 be the year that goes by with seven to nine failed strategic projects. Reach out to a strategic partner who will lend a fresh set of eyes and a perspective that will position you for big wins this year.

*Kotter, John P. “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Harvard Business Review, January 2007.

Spring Cleaning Your Marketing Strategy: 6 Practices to Shed

2015-02-24T10:22:00.000-05:00

With Daylight Saving Time around the corner, many of us are eagerly awaiting the sense of renewal that comes with spring. Along with decluttering closets and planting flowers, now is also a good time to let go of marketing beliefs and practices that are no longer serving your brand, or anyone else’s brand for that matter.

Freshen Up Your Marketing Strategy by Letting Go of These 6 Practices:

1. Organizing content in a Z-shaped pattern: As users’ online viewing habits are becoming more sophisticated, eye tracking studies show they are scanning pages using five distinct patterns. To make sure your most important content gets the exposure it deserves, chunk it out and make sure you favor the left side of the screen.

2. Thinking your app is a marketing strategy: Digital platform guru Josh Clark says it best, “An app is not a strategy. It’s just an app.” Think of your app as a container that helps you deliver content. You can use it to strengthen brand loyalty by applying content in ways that help meet a specific user need, but an app alone does not a marketing strategy make. Check out the healthcare app that Aha Media wrote for a client.

3. Cramming too much information above the fold: Gone are the days of building content for users who don’t scroll: we now know that users are spending as much as 66% of their time below the fold. Your new challenge is to make sure above the fold content is compelling enough to encourage scrolling down for more.

4. Assuming your mobile users are distracted: With 58% of American adults using smartphones, mobile interactions are just as likely to occur from a user’s couch as they are on the go. With features that desktops don’t have, such as cameras, microphones and GPS, mobile users are not only focused, they have tools to interact with your brand in new and interesting ways.

For example, allowing current customers to augment product reviews with their own pictures adds depth, and affords potential customers a first-hand account of what they can expect from your brand.

5. Overestimating the value of homepage traffic: Given advancements in search behavior and search engine ranking algorithms, users who don’t know your brand are far more likely to find your site from blog or video content than your homepage. Use Google Analytics to learn which pages are drawing the most traffic and optimize them to encourage maximum visibility for your brand.

6. Eliminating extra taps and clicks whenever possible: Today’s users want to engage with brands in a meaningful way. When your website encourages them to breeze through using the least possible number of taps and clicks you’re passing up interactions that can strengthen customer loyalty. In fact if you can hold a user’s attention for just three minutesthey are twice as likely to return.

Do this by building your site to encourage touch interactions:

Building your site to support the ergonomics of using a device with one hand (it’s all about the thumbs!)
Sizing touch targets so they’re easy to use
Adding speech recognition capabilities for important features such as search

Did we miss anything? Share your tips with us in the Comments section.

Why Your Web Pages Alienate Your Customers

2015-02-17T08:10:00.000-05:00

Did you know we use five different coping strategies to scan a web page? It's just a simple fact of neuroscience: The human eye is built for scanning on digital screens. But you need your customers to read. You want to build web pages that encourage scanning, but also invite them to commit to reading.

There are five different scanning patterns that people use when scanning web pages: F-shaped, Layer cake, Bypassing, Spotted and Commitment. But there are three types of pages that will cause your customers to bounce like rubber balls right off your site. Learn how to avoid them below.

3 Web Moves to Avoid

Don't Shout: You know those web pages make everything important? They assign no visual hierarchy to pages so that the customer has no idea where to look first. These pages are cluttered with too much content, not enough use of different types and sizes of fonts and no focus. Clean up your pages by working with excellent web designers who understand how to create white space and anchors for the eyes.

Organize: What's the most important thing you want your customer to know after scanning your page? Where's the call to action? Are you using words your customers know? Organizing information for the reader is the most important thing a web writer does. Too often I read web pages where the lede is so buried, it would take 1,000 archaeologists and Indiana Jones to dig it up. Elevate your main point and lose the rest.

Prune: The most beautiful spaces in the world understand the balance between too much and too little. Americans are bombarded by 5,000 messages a day. Your job is to help your customers focus. So prune out unnecessary side bars or calls to action.

P.S. You can learn more about the 5 patterns we use to scan pages, as well as how to create fantastic web copy that converts by taking one of Ahava's digital copywriting classes. These workshops are custom designed for your company and take your team from a group of print writers to digital writers who understand organic SEO, how to construct and write powerful web pages and calls to action and how to design content marketing campaigns that convert.

Which SEO Factors Will Matter in 2015: Part 3

2015-02-12T09:01:00.000-05:00

We hope you are enjoying our three part series on SEO success for 2015. In our last two SEO posts, we covered on-page factors—those things you can do to pages on your site to increase their relevance for search.

Now, we’re going to talk about off-page factors—or those things you can do off your website. People typically think of off-page factors as link-building, but there’s so much more to this part of SEO.

Off-Page Factors You Need to Know

Check your backlinks (those links that point to your website from other web pages): While linking was popular to increase your SEO rankings, we now know search engines are paying less attention to this strategy. Some of the links directed to your content may be spammy or worthless. Check your backlinks. When you find ones that may be harming your SEO, consider asking the site owner to remove them or use Google’s disavow tool.

Use social: We all know how important social media is to our SEO efforts. While Google has said that social is not a major factor in determining search relevance, social media can and should drive traffic to your content. When people engage with your content they tend to share it, which means more people will find it. It’s a win/win for increasing your relevance and converting traffic to customers.

Local listings: When we audit clients, we are surprised to see how often they don’t take advantage of this relatively easy way to increase your relevance in search. Listing on sites like Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local and Bing Places for Business can impact how often people find you.

Off-page factors and on-page factors will affect your SEO in 2015. Master these concepts and include your larger digital marketing team in your efforts to get ahead using these advanced tactics.

If you need help, consider a forensic SEO audit. We look at all of the factors potentially affecting your SEO and then provide you with some recommendations to jumpstart your efforts. Contact Ahava today.

9 Tips for Marketing Your Hospital Using Online Physician Profiles

2015-02-10T08:46:00.000-05:00

More than 90 percent of Americans consider choosing a doctor a major life decision. Word of mouth is still a primary influencer, but consumers are now seeking those “words” online. In fact, nearly half of consumers are going online to research doctors before seeking care.

Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for by leveraging your hospital’s online physician profiles.

Emotions Rule When Choosing a Doctor

When it comes to choosing a doctor, emotional needs play as much a role, if not bigger, than rational thought. To be successful, online profiles need to convey warmth and character, while also trumpeting a doctor’s background and expertise.

What’s more, social media has trained consumers to value other peoples’ experiences when making important decisions. To maximize visibility, physician profile information needs to exist beyond the virtual walls of your organization’s website.

Here are 9 tips for marketing your hospital using online physician profiles:

1. Focus on experience and certifications: Potential patients care most about whether a doctor is qualified to care for their condition. In fact, eight in 10 say that a doctor’s experience with a specific procedure or treatment is an extremely or very important selection factor.

2. Always include a professional headshot. Including a professional looking headshot can help new patients put a face to a name and relieve anxiety before their first appointment.

3. Connect with consumers by using a short video. Video is a great method for getting beyond profile basics and letting a doctor’s personality shine. Another plus is that videos are 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive first-page ranking in Google.

4. Claim and complete profiles on third party review sites. Surprisingly, 62 percent of consumers use online review sites, such as Yelp and Healthgrades, as their first step in finding a new doctor. These sites pull information from licensing databases and public sources, which can lead to incomplete or outdated data, so it’s important to claim these profiles and keep them updated.

5. Use LinkedIn to improve your findability in search. LinkedIn is likely not the first place consumers go looking for a new doctor. However, healthcare social media gurus, including Dr. Kevin Pho, are singing its praises because LinkedIn profiles get the highest rankings among social media platforms. This can push negative mentions of your brand further down on search engine results pages.

6. Save information about insurance accepted for other pages. Don’t waste precious profile real estate listing out all the insurance plans with which a doctor participates. Over a quarter of insured patients are willing to go out-of-network if they feel they can get care that better meets their needs. To this end, focus on offering details about expertise and innovative treatments.

7. Use language that conveys empathy. Users are more likely to make appointments with doctors who convey empathy through their online content. Do this by including words as “compassionate” and “patient-focused”. Learn more about our research in this area and other insights for Creating Better Healthcare Content.

8. Optimize profile pages on your website for search. Don’t forget to optimize profile pages on your organization’s website for search. If any of your doctors have a strong reputation, consider using their name as a keyword since consumers may be searching for them this way.

9. Keep profiles current. Visit profiles periodically to verify information and make updates as necessary.

Did we miss anything? Add your suggestions and feedback in the Comments section below.

Assess Your Online Reputation Using 5 Simple Steps

2015-02-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

When you Google your business name, information on the first search engine report page (SERP) can tell you a lot about your online reputation. But keep going.

According to experts, 3 out of 4 usersclick on results within the first three SERPs. From indifferent or negative online reviews to blogs that don’t sing your brand’s praises, there really is such thing as bad publicity. Know where you stand by assessing your online reputation.

Before we get started, it’s important to understand the two most significant online reputation influences:

Organic search is how people who don’t know exactly what they might be looking for find you. Factors such as keywords, visitor traffic and social sharing determine organic search rankings. This can be a boon to brands that have great content; it also means unflattering content can outrank it.
Social media affects your online reputation even more than the number of followers you have. This is because Google treats Facebook and Twitter like normal web pages. Every tweet, status update, and share mentioning your brand that shows up in search can be just as impactful as the pages on your website.

Given how fluid the web is, organic search and social media can build up your brand’s reputation or unravel it in just a matter of hours. Your best defense is to regularly assess your online reputation. Here’s how:

5 Simple Steps for Assessing Your Online Reputation

1. Become anonymous: Given advancements in personalized search, search engines keep detailed records of your preferences, including location, industry and company. To get the most accurate results when you’re assessing your online reputation, be sure to log out of search engine accounts and disable personalized search.

2. Start searching: Use organic search to find out what people are saying and what content is being associated with your brand. Conduct multiple searches using keywords including:

Your company name, brand name(s), product names and names of key personnel
Common misspellings of your company name or brand name(s)
Your brand in a positive light, “best brownies, Bloom Organic Bakery”
Your brand in a negative light, “worst brownies, Bloom Organic Bakery”

3. More ways to search: Don’t limit yourself to web pages on Google. Your online reputation includes any content on any search engine.

Conduct the searches mentioned above in Google Images and Google Video.
Try multiple search engines. The major ones are Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.
Try searching metasearch engines, such as Dogpile, Clutsy and ZapMeta.

4. Monitor social media mentions: Use these tools to streamline monitoring across more than 400 social media channels:

HootSuite: Offers a robust dashboard allowing you to check every social media site
Reviewpush: Monitors online review activity and compiles statistics allowing you to compare positive, negative and neutral reviews
Social Mention: Monitors multiple social media channels and tells you which keywords people use when talking about your brand

5. Evaluate your findings: There’s no golden rule in determining whether you have a “good” or “bad” online reputation. Generally speaking, if the top 10 search resultsfor your brand include listings that are either negative or have nothing to do with your brand, there’s room for improvement.

For more blogs on this topic, learn more about why You Cannot Afford a Bad Reputation. For an online reputation that dazzles, follow our 9 Tips for Online Reputation Management.

Which SEO Factors Will Matter in 2015: Part 2

2015-01-29T09:06:00.000-05:00

When writing content for the web, there’s so much you have to juggle: How users search for information, how they read content online and how those patterns have changed with mobile consumption.

Evolving patterns in search are trends you need to understand and master. In Part 1: Which SEO Factors Will Matter in 2015, we talked about on-page factors that will help juice your organic SEO in 2015. On-page factors refer to what you can actually do to the pages of your website to improve their relevancy.

We're going to explore a few more now, and then time, we will explore off-page factors (things you can do off-site to help boost your traffic).

Rockstar SEO On-page Factors

Here are three more on-page factors to consider:

Use rich snippets: Rich snippets allow developers to add specially coded elements to their websites. These elements appear in search—think of a video, an image or the name of an author that comes up when you search. These coded elements will improve your click-through-rate (CTR), an important factor for search engines. After all, the more people that click on search results that lead to your pages, the more relevant your content seems to the search engines’ algorithms.
Optimize your images: Make sure the pictures and graphics you use have alt-tags or image tags. These will help with SEO and also improve your customers’ overall experience. Try this free alt-tag checker to find images that may be missing tags.
Check your page load times: People want fast-loading web pages when they click on a search link, which is why the search engines really care about how fast your pages will load. 50% of people expect a page to load in two seconds or less; 80% abandon pages if it takes more than three seconds to load. You can use the Page Speed tool from Google to check your pages. Talk to your IT team to see what you can do to influence page load times.

Spend some time with these advanced concepts, so you’re not practicing SEO like it’s 2008. In fact, we recently did a forensic SEO audit that revealed some easy, quick fixes that rocketed our client’s SEO up over 100% improvement in traffic in some cases.

Master these ideas, and you will see the same results. Or give us a call so we can help you out.

12 Tips for Landing Pages That Maximize Conversion

2015-01-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

If your website isn’t converting, look no further than your landing page. Landing pages aren’t like other web pages. Their one purpose is to convert visitors to customers. “Good” conversion rates vary by industry, but experts suggest anything less than 2% is ripe for improvement.

There is no magic formula, but most successful landing pages include:

· A clear, concise call to action (CTA): Don’t be shy about what you want visitors to do. Encourage them to venture down your marketing funnel by asking them to perform one specific action.

· Clean, simple design: Your landing page’s appearance (or lack thereof) has a strong influence on its ability to convert. Successful landing pages make smart use of white space, color and images.

· Compelling content: Use relevant content to capture your visitor’s attention and show them what you offer. Visitors should be able to distill the main points of your landing page by scanning it, so keep your messaging crisp.

· Trust symbols: There’s no better way to build trust with potential customers than trust symbols. Visual cues, such as the Good Housekeeping seal, can immediately bolster your credibility. People will be less anxious working with you if they know others have had a good experience.

To maximize conversion, follow these 12 tips:

1. Start your CTA with a verb: “support our cause”, “register for…” or “make an appointment.”

2. Put your CTA in a place where users expect it to find it: The ideal location depends on your layout, but you can’t go wrong with the top or bottom of the page. Or both.

3. Make sure your CTA is the only action a user can take on that page: Links to other information belong on interior pages.

4. Use color and design to draw attention to your CTA, but don’t go overboard. Your visitor’s eye should gravitate to your CTA, but it shouldn’t smack them in the face.

5. Test your landing pages: Make sure they load quickly across all major browsers and device types.

6. Include one colorful, high-resolution imageto reinforce your primary message.

7. Use eye-catching headlines that address your visitor’s needs.

8. Get to the point quickly and save details about things like your team or the inspiration for your product or service for interior pages.

9. Offer a succinct list of features and benefits that appeal to your visitor’s pain points. Just be careful not to overshadow your CTA.

10. Appeal to your visitor’s rational senses with facts, logic, and data, and their emotional needs with stories, pictures of people and testimonials.

11. Display logos of well-known brands you work with or have been recognized by such as the Norton™ Secured seal for website security and the Better Business Bureau.

12. Demonstrate your authority by sharing relevant accolades: If your brand fares well in customer satisfaction surveys or online review sites, be sure to mention this.

Want to know more? Find out Why Your Web Traffic Doesn't Convert.

Confessions of a Content Strategist: Heather Tweedy

2015-01-20T09:08:00.002-05:00

Welcome to our first Confessions of a Content Strategist in 2015.

These interviews are so interesting to me because content strategists come from such different backgrounds. Yet, we all have so much in common. From our first epiphanies about what it is we actually do, to our passion for tools and documentation, to our concern for the web as it continues to evolve at light speed, we all are cut from the same cloth.

Heather Tweedy (@heathertweedy) is no different. Starting at Mutual of Omaha in 2014, as the Fortune 500’s only content strategist, Heather is knee deep in creating structures and standards. As she said, “I am putting some concrete frameworks around things so I can start having fun in late 2015.”

Mutual of Omaha is a Fortune 500 mutual insurance and financial services company based in—you guessed it—Omaha, Nebraska. To be the only content strategist in an organization so large and complex is challenging, and Heather was generous enough to share her experiences, challenges and wins.

Ahava Leibtag: Tell me about your background.

HT: “After college, I did an internship with an agency and was the only person who could read a Radian6 report. I started to get interested in how people’s sentiment changed based on content. I became obsessed with conversion rates; things like, how you lead people through the funnel? After that, I went to a mid-size company that had no social, and no content outside of the static website, so I built everything for them from the ground up. I was building governance before I even knew what that was! I was elbows deep in spreadsheets with language around what we say; these are the buttons we use, etc.

Then I co-owned an agency that did content development and web work. I saw all the documentation that goes around building a website. Our company was virtual, so documentation became super important because we were not face-to-face. Then I saw the job announcement at Mutual of Omaha and realized this: ‘This is what I do—I am a content strategist!’ so I threw herself into the profession.”

AL: Why make the jump to something so large and corporate?

HT: “I wanted to be in a big company and was at a point where I just wanted to get back to doing the work. When you own an agency, you are so busy doing so many things that don’t have to do with your core skill set, and I was ready to go back to doing content strategy. I am the company’s very first content strategist and everyone is trying to figure out how I fit in.”

AL: How do you find being in such a large company?

HT: “It’s interesting. Like all big companies, there are not enough resources devoted to the web governance. Trying to wrap your head around all the vendors, all the documentation—which domains do we own and auditing 200+ websites—which ones are duplicates, which ones to retire—getting people to be engaged to use shared drives and add their URLs to those spreadsheets. How do you get people to follow governance standards and inspire them to follow them?

AL: So how do you keep people focused on governance and inspired to follow all those rules and regulations?

HT: “You need to create a top-down culture. Kristina Halvorson consulted with Mutual a couple of years ago and created the structure for a governance board. Every month (ideally), we bring directors into the room from different parts of the company—a lot of high-ranking people sit in that room. We talk to them once a month and they go back to their teams and tell them this is a priority to me; therefore it had better be a priority to you.”

AL: Even so, with the governance boards you describe (and it’s amazing that you’ve been able to create and sustain that cultural change), how do you socialize governance?

HT: “All of Brand gets together once a month. Our team presents there and says here are the things that are happening. We are also building an internal shared site that will have all of our initiatives—voice and tone, taxonomy and intelligent content guide. It’s a socialization and training exercise at the same time.”

AL: Which tools do you spend the most time using?

HT: “I spend a lot of time in Excel for documentation. And, I love Google analytics: The goal setting and funnels and can see how a particular button performs.”

AL: What do you use to report? I’m always interested in which ideas are communicated best through visualization and other forms of reporting.

HT: “I use a variety of things—Powerpoints and programs like that. I also create custom dashboards so my internal client can see what they’re interested in. For example, product owners have customized dashboards.”

AL: What’s next for content strategy?

HT: “I really see the next big thing as independent content—things that we can move around—exist in absence of a platform—if it’s being seen on different size screens—it looks the exact same—not like responsive, which reorients screen sizes. This is exciting for our industry because it means you have to make sure that when you create a piece of content that it’s marked up for extra use—whenever we talk about this, it performs well on email—the next time we use it, the person will look and see what to put in the email. It’s an exciting time.”

What do you think is next for content strategy in 2015? Tell us and let us know if you’d like to be interviewed for Confessions.

Want to catch up on the previous Confessions of a Content Strategist? Check out:

Which SEO Factors Will Matter in 2015

2015-01-15T08:59:00.000-05:00

As we begin a new year, you should be concerned with the rapidly changing factors that influence search engine optimization.

SEO has changed significantly—even in the last two years. We recently did a forensic SEO audit for a client and even we were amazed by how much has changed. The old tactics are not going to give you the same results as before.

In this three-part blog post, we will explore what influences on-page factors (what you can do to your website's pages) and off-page factors (what you can do off-site).

Superstar SEO

In order to master SEO in 2015, you need to understand some advanced concepts. Whether some are familiar or completely new, they are all important. Nobody knows the exact algorithm (except the search engine engineers), so no one of these concepts is more important than any other. Together, however, they will jumpstart your organic SEO efforts.

1. Concept: TF-IDF, also known as term frequency-inverse document frequency

Simply put, TF-IDF is how important a keyword or phrase is within a universe of documents. TF measures how often the word appears in the document; IDF determines how important it is to the document. So in this newsletter, you can pretty much throw out words like “it’s”, “so” and the word “and” (also known as stop words).

But the word SEO? Clearly important to this document and others that we write and publish on our blog. To be clear, TF-IDF is not about keyword density. It’s how important those keywords are within the larger universe of pages. Most SEO experts agree that this concept by itself doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to your SEO but is a factor that will continue to matter as semantic search and natural language patterns drive search innovation.

Application: Create your content in topics that have natural relevancy to each other.

2. Concept: Use natural language and variations (synonyms)

Semantic search is about improving search by understanding user intent and the contextual meaning of language. This means you cannot spam the search engines with non-natural language.

Instead of using the same keywords over and over, use variations. This means you need to do great keyword research BEFORE you start writing, so you can plan your topics and pages within the greater universe of documents you are creating. Think about complementary phrases people use. For example, the digital watch may also be called the iWatch or the Apple watch.

Application: Great keyword research matters more than ever. Some great keyword research tools? Google’s Adword Keyword Tool (free), Google Trends (free) and Moz (paid).

3. Concept: Co-occurrence and phrase based indexing

Search engines need to understand the significance of your keywords as well as their context in order to serve relevant search results to users. They use a formula that ranks complete phrases and words that typically come together to understand intent on your pages. For example, the word digital can have the words marketing, watchor health come after it. Search engines will analyze the different keywords and phrases you use, as well as the distance between them to understand the relevance of your content to the user.

Application: Write your content like you would talk, so that it’s obvious what the topics are about. Try a tool like ntopic to determine your content’s relevance.

4. Concept: Page segmentation

Placement of keywords and phrases matters. Place words in the main body text; it is far more important than the sidebars. This is critical when writing for mobile, as that channel may hide certain elements of the page.

Application: Placement of keyword and phrases is important. Put them inside the body copy and not on sidebars. HTML5 solves this concern by providing the following tags: article, aside and nav, which define sections of the page.

5. Concept: Entity Salience

Keywords are still critical but eventually, as search improves, something will replace them. It looks like that may be entities, or concepts that belong to a certain topic. By mapping the relationships between certain words, search engines will create stronger search results by eliminating bad matches and pages that don’t match users’ intent.

Application: Write like you talk and use terms that belong to a universe of ideas. For example, when writing about Apple, you may want to use terms like the digital watch and the ipod, NOT words like farmers, orchards and Honeycrisp.

Conclusion:

Start with great keyword research. Research for individual keywords, complete phrases and synonyms. Understand how all these terms will fit together within a larger universe of content.
Create sets of content that answer questions around a particular area.
Understand that all of these concepts and tools are pointing to one conclusion: Write using natural human language patterns and don’t try to game the system.

In Part 2 we will cover more on-page factors, and in part 3 we will explore off-page factors for SEO success.

How to Reach and Market to Caregivers and Families

2015-01-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

With an estimated 66 million family caregivers in the US, now more than ever, as a healthcare marketer, you should include family caregivers in your target audience and identify specific strategies to reach them. Family caregivers can have just as much influence as the family members they care for, especially when it comes to choosing hospitals, doctors, and treatments.

In fact, four in ten adults are caring for an adult or child with significant health issues: These numbers will only grow as our population ages.

What You Need to Know About Reaching Family Caregivers

From grocery shopping to performing complex nursing tasks, family caregivers are responsible for many things for their loved ones. Family caregivers have many things in common. They:

Embrace technology: Caregivers are more likely than the general population to search for health information online, including information about medical problems, treatments and drugs
Feel stretched thin: In addition to caring for their loved one, more than half of family caregivers are employed full-time and more than 75%also have children under the age of 18 living with them
Don’t consider themselves caregivers: Family caregivers tend not to identify themselves as such, meaning marketing aimed at “family caregivers” often misses its mark.
Are not just wives and daughters: It’s common for wives and daughters to participate in their loved one’s medical care, but they’re also being joined in growing numbers by men, daughter-in-laws, siblings, friends, and neighbors.

How to Engage Family Caregivers

Successfully reaching and engaging family caregivers is not only good for the healthcare business, it’s becoming an integral part of delivering patient-centered care.

Now that you know about the behaviors, needs and interests of family caregivers, here’s how to engage them:

Social media: Feeling isolated and overwhelmed, many family caregivers turn to social media for support. Connect with them by offering tips to solve common challenges or moderating online discussions in a condition-specific forum.
Family caregiver blog: Family caregivers lack basic training in this new role. Help them gain important knowledge and skills through expert blog posts on topics such as home safety, avoiding infection, and medication management.
Apps: Help family caregivers stay organized with a free app offering features such as shareable task lists, a calendar to track appointments, daily treatment schedule and medication reminders. Learn more about the The Do’s and Don’ts of Building a Branded Hospital App.
Personal health records: Offer tools to help family caregivers set up, access and maintain their loved ones personal health record. If your PHR platform supports secure patient-physician communication, this is an excellent feature to promote.

Do you have any creative campaigns you’d like to share about involving caregivers?

Note: Right after we published this, we discovered a petition on change.org to track caregiver stress. See the petition, Track Family Caregiver Stress and Its Cause.

The Top 10 Content Strategy Articles of 2014

2015-01-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

I’m a practical girl. So typically when I write these lists (check out 2012 and 2013), I tend to like articles that give me practical guidance for how to do my job as a content strategist.

There were a lot of great articles this year. But there were fewer than last year, and even fewer than the year before that. Which means two things, possibly:

We’re not writing about content strategy passionately anymore
We’re calling it something else

I think a few factors are influencing this trend:

The terms content strategy and content marketing are used interchangeably (they are not the same thing) and are still confusing many “content-which-camp-do-I-belong-in?” practitioners
The chasm between editorial/brand content people and technical/adaptive content/content engineers is widening
Content strategy as an umbrella term works to describe how we plan, create and manage content. But when people write specific articles about SEO, governance, structured and adaptive content, as well as mobile usage patterns, they don’t necessarily call it content strategy.

You will see that I divided the list into two parts: 1-5 are really classic more technical takes on content strategy, and the 5-10 are where content strategy and content marketing intersect.

All in all, it was a good bunch of articles, but it was hard to find “the classics”; the articles that I believe starting out content strategists stumble upon and say, “Oh my—there’s a name for what I do, and this is it.” (Think Rachel Lovinger’s Nimble Content: Content should be free, like a bird, not like beer, or Jonathan Kahn’s on web governance.) When I read those I actually shook with joy because I recognized that someone out there was also trying to figure this stuff out.

So I challenge you, oh beloved community, to pick up your pen and start to think big once again. We need the inspiration.

Content Strategy Articles of 2014

#10 Has Content Marketing Hijacked Content Strategy?: This is the perfect post to set up the content strategy vs. content marketing debate. Is content marketing winning the war? Colleen Jones (@leenjones) answers in this smart, tight post that reveals that the two have a lot to learn from each other and can even be used—shock and horror-together.

#9 How To Repurpose Content Without Looking Like A Total Jerk:This is the classic article that’s about content strategy (and also about content marketing) without making reference to either. Erin Everhart (@erinever) walks us through a solid challenge for content professionals: How to keep creating content that keeps people engaged? She walks through very concrete examples of how to repurpose content, while also explaining some basic concepts. Great post for all levels and insanely practical.

#8 4 Ways Content Sharing Can Fit Into Your Content Strategy:Herbert Lui (@HerbetLui) emphasizes a common challenge shared by giant publishers and small businesses: How do you keep content creation manageable, high quality and resonant for your audiences? He gives four practical tips that explore some of the basic and more intermediate concepts in content strategy.

#7 Is Your Content Strategy Guided by Audience Intent (or Just Keywords)?I know some of us want to admit that SEO is not important in the life of a content strategist, but it is. This article describes search innovation and how context and user intent are shaping the search algorithms of the future. Going in depth, Laura Lippay (@lauralippay) demonstrates how thinking through your content strategy will result in far better optimization. Pay attention, dear content strategists. Before long, we’ll be talking about entity modeling.

#6 A Definition of Content Strategy: Jonathon Colman (@jcolman) does it again by explaining that content strategy at its core is about providing a better user experience. It’s short but makes quick work of defining content strategy against content marketing and information architecture. To quote Jonathon, “Content strategists use language, data, and systems to build better experiences for people than either IAs or designers can working by themselves.” And that really should be the last word on this subject: The digital world needs content strategy because without us, no one is paying attention to these weeds.

#5 A Content Strategy Template You Can Build On:While I’m not a huge believer in a one size fits all package, this approach to content strategy means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. At 17 pages, the content strategy template is a great starting point for companies starting out with content strategy, or even the lone content strategist who is trying to inspire change in her organization. Hats off, Isla McKetta (@islaisreading)!

#4 Training the CMS: We’ve all been there—we’ve done all the work on the content model and then we ask the CMS authors to input. Yikes! All that hard work down the drain? In this incredibly important piece, Eileen Webb (@webmeadow) poses the following solution: Put detailed instructions for how to input content into the CMS itself! Great examples help to bring this might-have-been-boring topic to life.

#3 The Battle for the Body Field: Jeff Eaton (@eaton) explains the challenges in multi-channel publishing, some of the current solutions we have and what we have to know as content strategists to implement them. Rich in examples, this is a potential classic for those of us struggling to understand the technical back end of content and markup.

#2 How to Adjust Your Content Strategy for Adaptive Content Personalization: I heard Noz Urbina (@nozurbina) speak at LavaCon in Portland and was truly captivated by these ideas. Then this article came out I remember reading it and thinking—wow, this really is the future. Why aren’t more of us talking about this? My interest led me to talking to fellow content strategists like Jenny Magic and Emmelyn Wang, who are thinking about these concepts every day.

#1 Content in a Zombie Apocalypse: It’s about zombies (ok, not really). It’s content strategy (the part of content strategy that talks about separating content from form). It’s Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) (It really is). It’s classic (already). Read it now.

And there they are. You may disagree and even think there are ones that I missed. Please post in the comments below!

The Top 10 Hospital Commercials of 2014

2014-12-30T09:25:00.000-05:00

It’s that wonderful time of year again, when we look at the top hospital commercials. We gather these commercials by asking for people’s recommendations over Twitter and Facebook, as well as doing our own research using Google and YouTube.

Every year (you can see 2012and 2013), we look for the same things:

Does the brand make a memorable point that’s a lasting takeaway?
Do they do so without using some of the same imagery we see in almost every hospital commercial?
Do they try and provoke an emotional response that’s appropriate?

Take a look at our choices for 2014 and let us know what you think.

#10 Sick Kids Foundation: Day 16- Danielle

If this doesn’t bring you to tears, we’re not sure what will. This is one of the best campaigns in healthcare marketing right now. Sick Kids Foundation, is in the midst of running a 45 day long video campaign. Each day it posts a 30 second video, giving you a glimpse of one of their patient’s lives. And each video ends with “Help make their tomorrow as good as your today. Together we will.”

#9 University of Virginia Children's Hospital: A Dream of Healthier Ever After

Often hospital commercials are dramatic and intense. This commercial is upbeat with kids of all ages loving life. It ends with a positive tag line of “Our dream is for every child to be happy and healthy, always.”

#8 Virginia Hospital Center: Tower of Power

We loved that this commercial had an upbeat message using animation. This animated campaign gets their message across that “You don’t have to be the biggest to be the best.”

#7 Tampa General Hospital: Treasure Your Family. Value Their Care

Watch a woman’s life from being born to giving birth. The ad captures milestones that remind us of how we have to cherish those precious moments and ensure we place our loved ones in good hands.

#6 Shriners Hospital for Children: Love to the Rescue: Caitlin

A dramatic patient story told by rewinding events. You witness how far Caitlin has come and how much she has accomplished. Her progress compels you to open your heart and your wallet: “Caitlin’s life is one of nearly a million changed by donations from people like you—Send your love to the rescue.”

#5 Nemours Children’s Hospital: Kids and Doctors

In split screens a child and adult each wake up “excited about the promise” of a new day. As the day progresses, they meet up as a pediatric patient and doctor stating that “great things happen” when they find each other. “Your Child. Our Promise,” is the hospital’s way of saying that they promise to care for every child as if it is their own child.

#4 Stony Brook Children’s: ER

Well done. The boy in this commercial behaves like a typical kid bombarding an adult with a million questions. After challenging the doctor’s ability and qualifications, the doctor finally wins the argument with “I am a Stony Brook doctor, that’s my job.”

#3 BC Children’s Hospital: Phone Call

The suspense in this commercial and the feeling of watching a moment you really shouldn’t be a part of, set this commercial apart for us.

#2 Florida Hospital: 100

This commercial starts off with a dramatic beginning and has a fun upbeat ending. The TV ad ends by asking you “What do you want to do when you are 100?” and directs you to Florida Hospital’s Healthy 100 campaign, which motivates people to adopt healthy lifestyle changes.

#1 Baylor Health Care System Serving others: It’s our calling.

While showing all the typical hospital scenes, this script gives us an unforeseen twist. It introduces one of the six employee values, “Servanthood--serving with an attitude of unselfish concern.” Its goal is to inspire you to serve others as well because “servants change everything.” In this case, the servants are the staff of a hospital. After watching this commercial, we felt truly inspired.

Honorable mention…Rex Express Care: Urgent Care or ER?

While we’re not sure this ever aired on the air, we think it’s a great entry. A bunch of urgent care staff members rap an educational message about when to come to the urgent express care center.

9 Tips for Online Reputation Management

2014-12-23T08:18:00.000-05:00

There’s no doubt about it, online reputation management is essential for businesses of all sizes. Enhancements to universal search such as embedded videos and indented news results are drawing user’s eyes (and clicks) further down the page. If there’s negative information online about your brand, users are more likely than ever to find it.

In Part I of this two-part series, we talked about how to establish your online reputation and how to grow your presence. Now learn how to keep a good thing going by protecting and managing your reputation.

Protect Your Online Reputation

You’ve worked hard to build your brand and establish and grow your online reputation, but don’t stop there. These additional steps will reinforce your position as a valued and trusted member of the online community:

Keep content fresh: Offer a continuous stream of original content supporting your brand. Update your blog with helpful information about your products and keep your social media profiles up to date. For more tips, read our blog about 12 ways to keep your web content fresh.
Contact is key: Make it easy for customers to reach you by prominently displaying your contact information and letting them know their feedback is welcome.
Personal vs. professional profiles: Social media profiles are indexed by search engines, which can make any photo, comment or social connection highly visible. Maximize privacy settings on your personal accounts and keep your professional profiles public. Be careful not to overshare.
Be in the know: Actively monitor what’s being said about your brand online. Use Google Alerts for general web tracking, Technoarati to find mentions of your blog, SocialMention to monitor social media, and Disqus to track your comment threads.
Use logos: Displaying the logos of industry associations or trade groups you belong to. If you participate in services that speak to the quality and security of your services such as the Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Verisign, and be sure to display those logos as well.

Manage Brand Reputation Issues

Even the most successful brands receive negative feedback and criticism online. While there is no magic potion to remove it from the Internet, there’s still plenty you can do to keep negativity from marring your brand.

Good customer service: It goes a long way. Offer timely and helpful responses when a customer expresses frustration or dissatisfaction with your brand.
Keep reviews coming: Search engines rank your most recent reviews highest, so if you get a negative review be sure to ramp up your efforts to get more reviews. Hopefully this will yield positive reviews that can help push the negative ones further down the page.
Respond to criticism: Know that some review sites such as Yelp allow business owners to respond to negative reviews, so take advantage of this when you feel it’s appropriate.
Own up to it: If you get negative press for a mistake, offer an apology if appropriate and tell people what you are doing about it. Spread the word across all your digital channels.
Get a professional: If things really go south, hire an experienced online reputation manager. They’re experts in helping push negative content down and restoring your brand’s good name.

Why your Web Traffic Doesn’t Convert

2014-12-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

As a marketer, it would seem that syndicated content makes your life easier. It’s content already written, presumably for your audience, and probably drives search traffic to your website.

But, if the main thrust of your content strategy is using syndicated content on your website, you’re in trouble. And that’s not just my opinion: 69 percent of marketers back original content over licensed content. (Source: Contently, Dec. 2014)

Why you Need Custom Content

You need to develop custom content for your website, because syndicated content rarely converts your web traffic to customers. While it may drive search, it doesn’t help you drive revenue, which is one of the two golden rules of content strategy. (The second rule? Create content that supports your customers in accomplishing their tasks.)

We had one client who was getting 800,000 page views to one page in a month with little to almost no conversions. That’s a nice amount of traffic—but for what? And why would someone convert? You haven’t told them anything special or different about your brand.

Is it budget?

I know budget is a concern for many marketers, which is why they rely on syndicated content. And it might be a stop gap or a good way to build out certain parts of your website or your content strategy. But your goal for 2015 should be to customize that content, or create your own, relevant content for your audiences that will drive traffic AND revenue.

Custom content may seem expensive, but let’s do the math. Let’s say you license syndicated content at $15K a year, which seems relatively inexpensive. That drives huge numbers to your website, but very little conversions. Now let’s say you hire a content firm to write custom content for you for the exact same amount. And you drive far less traffic, but far more conversions. Which metric really matters for you when you walk into your boss’s office for your annual review?

The choice seems pretty clear to me—it’s risky and different than the content strategy you planned in the past, but isn’t it time to try something new? It’s clear that syndicated content just isn’t doing the job you need it to do.

Need help convincing your executives to stop wasting money on syndicated content? Email Ahava today for a brief step-by-step guide.

Confessions of a Content Strategist: Emmelyn Wang

2014-12-16T08:56:00.000-05:00

As we discussed in last month’s Confessions of a Content Strategist, with JennyMagic, the need for a new role within content strategy is emerging—the content engineer. Who is that person who can translate for the content marketing teams and the software engineers and keep everything in line for the customer?

Meet Emmelyn Wang, a content engineer at uShip. She’s an API specialist and currently holds the title of “Community Engagement Manager”. Her job is to interface with every department in the company to educate them about the API. For example, Business Development talks to external folks about the uShip API as a powerful tool to build partnerships. Emmelyn creates content for software developers to successfully use the API. That content increases engagement with the API which drives business to uShip.

“I am the liaison between business and technology. Business has a need and technology has to build it—but what’s really important is that the people driving those two things don’t speak the same language. The most important question is: How do we get them so speak the same language? My content helps to influence the design and use of the APIs—both how they function and the data they provide,” she explains.

In her current role, Emmelyn serves three different groups—uShip developers for the web product and both native mobile apps, business development and sales, and third party developers. The main web product gets over 2 million hits a month. uShip.com facilitates the delivery of thousands of listings a day (for shipping purposes) and a portion of that traffic that happens through APIs. APIs are Application Programming Interfaces that allow different data systems to talk to each other and process information securely and with built-in performance implications. Native mobile applications are built using APIs and both the data and functionality are consumed through APIs.

From a Content Strategist’s standpoint, why does an API matter?

They provide a standardized content and functionality delivery mechanism and structure that is easily consumed, dynamically updated, and scalable. Standards include the HTTP protocol, XML, JSON, and REST.

For example, Stripe API’s documentation found at https://stripe.com/docs/api, built using Ruby (https://www.ruby-lang.org) and Sinatra (http://www.sinatrarb.com) facilitates such an efficient process. When developers update the product (Stripe API) code, their documentation and helper libraries are also automatically updated.

Ahava Leibtag: Tell me about your background as a content strategist.

Emmelyn Wang: "I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with an English and Business background with a heavy emphasis on natural sciences and writing intensive courses. I worked in high tech first before I went to get my MA in Technical Communication (MATC) from Texas State University.

My first job out of college was at IBM as a business analyst and it was a great place to network as a young person. Then, I served as a volunteer board member for the Society for Technical Communication, and networked with people who had been doing content strategy for 30-40 years. It is wonderful to have that mentorship and community of professional support."

AL: How did your work take you in such a heavy technological direction?

EW: “I’m in the field of tech comm because I’m curious about the way things work. I’m a very hands-on learner and am not afraid to dive into source code, make database queries, and learn how to do anything a hardware or software engineer needs to do to understand and use a product. I was the senior technical communication specialist for Hoover Software, a Dun and Bradstreet company, and was invited to consult on products about business intelligence. It was then that I got more heavily involved with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) than I had at other high tech companies. APIs are so dynamic—they are a super form of content reuse, and a very efficient way to deliver both data and functionality. Even though an API doesn’t have an interface, it’s considered a software developer’s interface. Since APIs don’t have the common consumer user interface most people are used to working with, there’s a huge need for documentation to explain how to use it. So many companies are looking for content strategists who can explain APIs, because they drive so much business. For example, at Dun and Bradstreet, their API was their most lucrative product and service known as DaaS (Data as a Service). So much so, that for companies that don’t have an API, other companies won’t do business with them. In general, content strategists need to understand the functionality of how content is consumed by mobile applications and around the web-- APIs are one major way that is happening. APIs are not just a ‘backend’ piece. If you want sound data and functionality in your applications, you have to design it into your API first and foremost. Now, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) there’s an even more exciting mash up of software APIs and hardware technology.”

There are thousands of APIs created and maintained around the world. Learn more at http://www.programmableweb.com.

AL: Give me an example of a project where you were successful in using both your content strategy skill set and your content engineering skill set?

EW: “I worked on one project where we had a product that was called by seven different names depending on which department of the company you were talking with. But the customer doesn’t know that. So I had to explain ‘Here’s what it is in the code, but here’s what we call it in the database, and here’s how we explain it to the customer’. We managed to consolidate seven names into one by really explaining it from the perspective of the customer.

I don’t even use the phrase ‘content strategy’, because the people I’m working with may not understand the implications for the context. I say, ‘Okay let’s talk about the industry terminology and internal terminology.’ or focus on the exercise to implement the content strategy as a guide. We’ve even set up audience-focused glossaries to help in situations like that one.

I think as content strategists, sometimes we need to use different terms to describe the outcomes of what we do to better relate to the people we’re working with. If we don’t, we need to educate our audience and that steps right into UX. It’s not about the importance of the content strategy, rather it’s about demonstrating that setting up a clearly defined process is something amazing that brings value to the company that everyone needs.”

Want to see an example of the difference between an API for communication between companies and the standard website that’s used to communicate with customers? Check out:

https://developer.uship.com

www.uship.com

As Emmelyn explained: “When you ship something, you can use the API to determine how much shipping will cost and that’s driven by the API on the uShip. There’s always a work flow and a use case. Keep top of mind ‘what does this partner need—what do your users want to do?’ It’s the same conversation we have with the mobile team and the product teams—again, it’s about building the best ways to move content to the right people at the right time so they can accomplish their goal.”

Are you a content strategist who is moving more into the role of content engineer? Let me know and we may interview you next for Confessions of a Content Strategist.

Emmelyn has worked in Silicon Hills for the past 17 years at companies including IBM and SMSC. She is an alumnae of The University of Texas at Austin. While earning her M.A. with a Major in Technical Communication (TC) from Texas State University, she specialized in international and cross-cultural TC.

She champions content strategy, usability, and localization best practices and teaches TC at the college level. She regularly mentors professionals who are entering the TC field. She served as Director of Programs and Education, then VP, and finally as President of the Austin chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).

Emmelyn first became a Content Strategist at Dovetail Software. Her responsibilities included spearheading information development efforts for the design, creation and, care of content across the company (technical, marketing, and public relations). She worked as the Technical Communications Specialist for the Austin Ventures start-up, Virtual Bridges. She has also consulted for Hoover's, a Dun & Bradstreet company as Senior Technical Writer. She most recently served uShip and third party developers, partners, and affiliates as the Community Engagement Manager on the API team.

Her subject matter expertise includes documenting software APIs and providing strategic technical marketing initiatives for increased engagement. She's familiar with various CRM systems on multiple database platforms. Her niche role is working with an API, user experience design, and support teams to improve the customer experience.

Emmelyn is now leading by serving as Director of Web Content Marketing for Mouser Electronics, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Mouser focuses on technical content, tools, and distribution of electronic components to design engineers. She provides strategic direction to the new product introduction team, translations team, and content creation teams in the US and abroad.

Twitter @lifewingmate

Do you have a Content Strategy for Wearable Technology?

2014-12-09T09:08:00.000-05:00

Darwin said it best, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Wearable technology is coming to a wrist near you and if you’re involved in content creation, you need to be ready.

There are hundreds of industries that will benefit from wearable technology, but one of the first industries primed to radically change will be healthcare. How people make decisions about their health, manage their health and communicate with healthcare professionals will all change because of wearable technologies.

Wearables hold significant advances for the healthcare industry

We have long looked for ways to help people change their behavior in service to better health. But how to do this was complex—how do you remind people to eat wisely, sleep well, exercise for their physical and mental benefit and warn them when they were going off course? Wearable technologies offer this promise.

Wearable technology provides a symbiotic relationship between the patient/consumer and the healthcare professional/marketer. The advantages for both parties are clear: people can connect their behavior to data. That data can help healthcare professionals make better decisions about care, including the content they provide to support those decisions.

This data also provides rich fields of information ripe for harvest about consumer choices—not just what works and when, but patterns of behavior that will provide healthcare marketers the ability to understand their audiences better than before.

Creating Wearable Content

There are already numerous ways to provide information to consumers—let’s look at these possible examples:

A diabetic patient sends in his blood sugar numbers for the day—the doctor’s office sends back an article on managing your carb intake more effectively
A heart failure patient monitors his blood pressure and weight every days and sends those numbers to his doctor—the program notices an unhealthy trend and alerts the office to send the patient an request for an appointment and a video about salt intake
A pregnant woman tagged for preeclampsia risk sends her blood pressure numbers to her doctor everyday so she can avoid pre-term labor—her numbers continue to remain low so the office sends her an article about exercising safely during pregnancy

All the scenarios described above are exciting because they place active management into the hands of the consumer. Particularly with chronic diseases, wearable technology is going to transform behavior. The question is: are you ready with content to support your patients’ behavior and choices? If not, you need to start thinking about your content strategy for wearables—content will need to be short, two-way and personalized.

Are you ready?

Why Thank YOU is Better

2014-12-04T18:41:00.000-05:00

Now is a good time of year to talk about how you treat your audience.

Are you thankful for them? Do you make your readers feel your concern and understanding of their unique pain points? Is your content warm and inviting, demonstrating that gratitude?

Today, we’re going to share one trick that will help you make your customers feel you invited them in to your warm house smelling of pumpkin pie.

You as a copywriting device

Our job as content creators is advising our clients how to talk to their audiences. We want to make one thing very clear: You should always address your audience as you. Here are five reasons why:

People only care about themselves: So they pay attention when you address them directly. It is like how you respond to your first name—people respond to the word you the same way. When you talk to your audience, they feel special. When you talk about them…well, you could be talking about anyone.
Third person is awkward: You get into pronoun gender issues and just general grammar hoops and loops. Instead of sounding inviting and concerned, when writers use third person, they sound distant and cold. (See what I just did there?)
You create distance: Let’s look at these two sentences:
“Your experience investing money with us will be simple and easy.”
“Customers who invest their money with us feel it is simple and easy.”
Who do you feel is really going to give you the customer experience you want?
It’s conversational: Third person is formal and structured. When you use the second person, you create a connection with your reader. If content is a conversation, don’t you want to create the most natural conversation you can?
It creates intimacy: Would you say to a customer standing in front of you, “Our customers find this short instructional video very helpful the first time they use our product?” No, you would say, “You should watch this short video—it will be helpful before you use this product.”

Improve your content by addressing your audience directly. It will be easier to write, read and act on. (Tweet this!)

In case you’re not convinced, just think about some famous tag lines in history:

We deliver for the customer.
The customer is in good hands with Allstate.
Never let them see the customers sweat.
It’s not the customer’s father’s Oldsmobile anymore.
We’ve got a taste for the customer.

From all of us at Aha Media, we say THANK YOU, and wish you a warm and Happy Thanksgiving—no matter where you are in the world.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Building a Branded Hospital App

2014-12-02T09:01:00.001-05:00

You may be surprised to learn that there are only a few hundred hospital branded apps available on the App Store. With such a small playing field, building one for your hospital can definitely help you stand out.

But, before committing resources to this effort – the cost of developing a custom branded app is in the neighborhood of six figures – you should know that app users are very particular. People who are likely to download your app expect that it will help them find information and perform tasks that simplify their life.

Failure to meet this expectation can result in stiff consequences, as many users stop using an app after a few uses if it’s not delivering value. User expectations aside, building a branded app is still a very worthwhile endeavor. When executed correctly, it enables positive interactions with your brand that results in a very loyal and engaged patient base.

Healthcare Branded App Do’s

Start by creating a simple interface that allows users to access functions in as few clicks as possible, then offer features that help solve your patient’s most pressing problems.

This may include:

One-button prescription refill
Online bill pay
‘Find a doctor’ feature with online appointment request/scheduling
Secure messaging to physicians or nurses
Reminders or alarms for time sensitive self care actions, such as taking medications, procedure preparation or post discharge care
Indoor GPS to help patients and their families access amenities within your facility
Clinic appointment check-ins
Updates on public health alerts

Healthcare Branded App Don’ts

Maximize your app’s sticking power by avoiding these common mistakes:

Preaching to the choir: People downloading your app have already made a commitment to your brand so don’t waste their time with marketing information.
Displaying health information: People rarely use their smartphones – much less an app – to conduct research in this way.
Being redundant with your website: Users are not likely to download or even keep an app with repackaged website content. Make sure you offer unique features that allow patients to interact with your brand in a meaningful way.
A ‘Swiss army knife’ approach: Limit your app to features that provide the greatest benefit to the audience that is most likely to use it.
Taking the path less traveled: Features like ER wait times and urgent care locations don’t offer the ongoing utility that will endear users to your brand. Save these things for your website.

See a case study from Aha Media Group on writing content for a healthcare mobile app.

Learn more about mobile marketing: 4 Mobile Strategies for Your Business

You Cannot Afford a Bad Online Reputation

2014-11-25T08:33:00.000-05:00

Let’s face it, people are talking about your brand – and not always in a positive way. Whether it’s true or not, negative information can hurt your brand.

Potential customers, business partners, employees, and investors are all looking at your brand’s digital footprint. This includes mentions in social media and blogs, review sites, the media and countless other sources. If you Googled your brand right now, would you be happy with what you see?

Thanks to the relative ease with which people are now able to post information online, your company’s reputation is just as likely to be shaped by the opinions and feelings of others as it is your own carefully penned branding. Don’t be caught off-guard. Online reputation issues are difficult and sometimes impossible to fix.

Instead, take time now to build a strong positive reputation and make a habit of monitoring what’s being said about you online. In this two-part series, we offer tips to help you establish, grow, protect and manage your online reputation.

Establish your online reputation. The first step in protecting your reputation is to establish a strong online presence. Cast a wide net to gain maximum exposure.

· Include your brand’s name in your online domain name and purchase all extensions (.org, .net, .com, etc.) even if you plan to use only one. This is especially helpful if your brand name is similar to others or there are other people with the same name as you.

· The same thinking goes with social media. Claim your brand’s profiles on all social media networks. Actively maintain the ones that are most useful to your brand.

· List your business in all relevant local listings and your blog in relevant blog directories.

· Use tools to help manage your social media accounts, or just limit yourself to the two essential networks for online reputation management: LinkedIn and Google+.

Grow your presence. This important step allows you to expand your audience by offering useful information about your brand.

• We can’t emphasize this enough: LinkedIn and Google+ are ORM superheroes. As highly ranked social networking platforms they help fortify your brand’s online reputation. Keep your profiles up to date, post interesting content, get involved in discussions, and answer other people’s questions.

• SEO can help you rank highly and give users a chance to read about your brand in your own words first. Use Google’s free webmaster tools and follow these SEO best practices.

Next month we’ll offer tips for protecting your reputation and how to handle common issues.

Do You Care More About SEO or UX?

2014-11-20T08:21:00.000-05:00

I know one of the most pressing issues on your mind is how your customers find your content. That's because we field hundreds of questions every year about strategic SEO and writing for organic search. But… are you also thinking about what happens when users start engaging with your pages? If people find your content, but are confused once they read and interact with it, what’s the point?

We find this very often with the questions we receive about our linking style: Does how we write our links impact our SEO? Well, let’s find out.

Links Matter for the User (Who is Kinda Super Important)

When we write content, we make sure the underlined words of the link (or the tag) are over the same words that the user will find when they jump to the page. For example, if the page title (or the H1 tag) is “Diabetes Education,” we don’t write the link as “Type 2 Diabetes.” Instead, the link reads as, “Learn more about diabetes education.” This is important for your customers, because as they follow the link, they land on the page they expected to see. A critical principle in user experience is telling a user where they are on a site and where a click will take them next.

Understanding Exact Match Linking

When I teach digital writing workshops, I used to teach that this concept, called Exact Match, was incredibly important for SEO. And back in the day, it was; particularly if you used keywords in your page titles (you should still do that). But like so many other things in SEO, Google found that webmasters were abusing Exact Match for external links. So they discontinued using this factor in their ranking algorithm.

However, from an internalperspective, this is the absolute right way to write links on your web pages. Think about it from the perspective of your customer: That person wants to know what’s on the other side of the jump, especially in a mobile situation. Writing links in this manner creates clean and easy to read content—something we know Google prefers. When you jump people using nicely flowing call-to-action links, you make it crystal clear where the user is headed.

Exceptions for Usability

Sometimes it may not make sense to use the page title of the page you are referring users to because it’s too long and unwieldy—like the name of a blog title. In those cases, I think it's okay to depart from this style—but do use some words that are going to make sense to the person reading, so they can decide if they want to follow the link.

You can learn more about how to create findable, readable, understandable, actionable and shareable content by inviting us to teach a digital writing workshop at your company. The workshops are personalized, using your content as examples. Check out our digital writing workshops.