Social Media Breakfast creating amazing digital content

‐‐ Expanding our library of good digital content has allowed our office to reach more people than ever before, especially with our limited budget and staff. We’ve gone from having a local impact to reaching a national audience, and specifically reaching audiences who are not familiar with our MD Anderson Cancer Center brand.‐‐ You need to start with great content. What is good content? Stuff your readers actually want to read yet serves your goals.‐‐ Magazines, like Men’s Health and Prevention, have perfected the art of creating great digital content on a DAILY basis and in a consumer friendly way. digital content on a DAILY basis and in a consumer‐friendly way‐‐ Do you realize how hard that is? You’re basically selling the same information over and over again every day‐‐ How many times can you talk about the best and fastest way to loss weight? And, still keep your audience engaged? ‐‐I believed they’ve perfected the art of turning recycled content into dazzling new stories. And, we’re going to discuss just how they do that and how we’ve used these tricks to create content for Focused on Health. 1

‐‐ This is a great example of packaging because it puts the readers’ questions, problems and concerns front and center.‐‐ Lists, how‐to’s, best of, tips and tricks, q&a’s – people love that stuff. They say I’m quick and easy to read.‐‐ Keep your writing short and actionable. And, your sentence structure conversational, not formal. ‐‐ Think practical information that your readers can actually use, written in a way that makes them feel like you re actually speaking to them. No jargon. You re speaking as a makes them feel like you’re actually speaking to them No jargon You’re speaking as atrusted friend not just a medical expert.‐‐ Remember, you’re writing for the web, and web readers don’t spend much time on your page. They are scanners not readers. 2

‐‐ So, here’s an example of how we’ve put this tip into practice. ‐‐ Everyone has this type of evergreen content. This is just basic health information that’s been packaged to address the readers’ concerns. And, it’s written as a list.‐‐ We’ve run various versions of this story and every time it has been successful.‐‐ We ran it first in January 2010 with the title “Pelvic Pain Isn’t the Only Sign of Gynecologic Cancer.” It was our most read story of the month.‐‐ Then, later in 2010, it was reprinted on KevinMD’s site and it became one of his top five most read stories for that year. most‐read stories for that year‐‐ We’ve learned a lot about what works since 2010. So this year, we made some tweaks to the content, gave it a new title and reposted it on our site and sent it out as a news release. Again, it was our most read article, it had the most tweets and retweets on twitter, best clicks and shares on Facebook. ‐‐ Stand up to Cancer shared it on their Facebook page and that alone got more than 245 shares and more than 470 likes. The news release got more than 10,000 hits on Newswiseand was the most read and shared article shortly after it was posted. 3

‐‐ Of all the health magazines out there, I think Men’s Health does the best job at selling health content. And, they have to! They are catering to men and research shows that men aren’t really interested in health content. Women are the proactive seekers of health content online, so Men’s Health has to work extra hard to get their readers’ attention.‐‐ And, most of the time they do that by creating headlines that hook readers in. They know their audience and create headlines that speak to their audience.‐‐ You want to follow a great headline with a solid first sentence – the first sentence sells it. A good first sentence identifies the reader s problem and states how you will address it. A good first sentence identifies the reader’s problem and states how you will address it(Read first sentence on Men’s Health graphic.)‐‐ And then, subheads keep you’re readers hooked in. Good subheads are informative! These are for the scanners. When I edit my first draft, I like go back and read just my headline and subheads. I should be able to get all the main takeaways just from reading the headline and subheads. 4

‐‐ Here’s an example of how a solid headline made a world of difference for one of our articles. In November 2010, we ran an article on exercising during the holidays. The title was “Holiday Exercise: No Excuses” and our readers just weren’t responding to it even though we felt it was pretty good content. We knew it was good because we had also sent it out as a news release and it got picked up by Health Day and then it just went everywhere on the web. (Real Age, LA Times, USA today)‐‐ The next year, we decided to repost the same article but with a jazzier title “You Holiday Shopping Workout. Everyone shops during the holiday so why not sneak in a little extraShopping Workout ” Everyone shops during the holiday, so why not sneak in a little extra workout from it? And, it worked! It was our most popular article for that month.‐‐ Before launching a new issue, we hold a brainstorming session with people from our office. And, all we do is come up with creative, attention‐ grabbing headlines for our stories. ‐‐ For each article, we brainstorm on a headline for the email (this one is targeted to the subscriber). Then, we brainstorm on a headline for the web. ‐‐ The reason we have different headlines is because the headline for the web needs to be SEO friendly. We go into Google Adwords, choose our keywords for the story and then make sure that we include our keywords in the headline for the web version. 5

‐‐ The trend online is “personalization.” Everything from music to movies to news is becoming more and more personalized to the individual.‐‐ And your content should do the same. You want the reader feel like this content was written just for them.‐‐ This Women’s Health article is a good example of this. It’s talking to “you” and it’s asking you a question on a topic that you can relate to. 6

‐‐ We wrote an article using this tactic. We took content that already existed and merely packaged it in a way to make it more personalized to the reader. ‐‐ We broke down our health recommendations by age. So, we had health tips for women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s etc. ‐‐ And, it did great! Our readers loved it, and it got picked up in the debut issue of Today CNY Woman magazine (a free print publication for women in Central New York).‐‐ It was a full page, complete reprint of the story! We’re a strictly web publication, so when we get something in print, it s awesome!we get something in print it’s awesome! 7

‐‐ Writing articles around popular holidays or events also does really well. Or, taking already existing content and tweaking it for a upcoming holiday, season or event does really well.‐‐ Men’s Health did a great job of this when Hurricane Irene was about to hit. They took one of their existing exercise articles and changed out the headline to read: “Your Hurricane Workout.” They made existing content timely for their readers. 8

‐‐ This is one of our stories that found great success because of timing. This was content that we already had, and we decided to tweak and repost it as a new article and share as a news release in June 2011. ‐‐ It worked out brilliantly because it was right before Father’s Day and July 4th, so we got big placements tied to each occasion, including a post on Men’s Health! We were Men’s Health worthy!! 9

‐‐ If a topics grabs your readers’ attention more than any other, run with it! Do a series of articles on the topic. Because if it works the first time, it’ll work again.‐‐ In this example, Men’s Health has found a topic that speaks to their readers (what man does not want to look at Spartacus?) and they have created an entire content package around it. 10

‐‐ We learned how this tip works from a article we wrote in Dec. 2010. It was called “Your Guide to Drinking Alcohol” and it was the most popular article that month. We sent it out as a news release in December right before Christmas.‐‐ The timing was perfect! Everyone was thinking about alcohol during the holiday season but there was not much out there on alcohol and cancer. The result was insane! We got two separate placements on Time.com (Yes, they do Spin offs too!), USA today, US News & World Report and my personal favorite – a hilarious placement in Gawker.com.‐‐ This was the first time we’d done something on alcohol or beverages and people were This was the first time we d done something on alcohol or beverages, and people were responding to it! ‐‐ So, we milked it! We did follow‐up articles: wine, drinks for better health…we even did drink recipes. And, each time, our readers loved it! 11

Everything is better with ketchup!Now let’s talk about how to add some extra flavor to great content 12

‐‐ If Pinterest has taught us nothing else, it’s that people love visuals! And, the right photos and visuals can be the wrapping paper for your dynamic content.‐‐ You photos should be clean (meaning not busy), bright, colorful and attention grabbing. We lay out our issue with the photos before publishing it online to make sure we’ve got the right photos to sell the content.‐‐ We’ve also been playing with infographics and have found them to be very successful. This is an infograhic we recently created on how to build a cancer‐fighting salad. It is our most popular page right now. We also did a Thanksgiving Serving Size Cheat Sheet most popular page right now We also did a Thanksgiving Serving Size Cheat Sheetinfographic in Nov 2011 and sent it out as a news release. The timing, again, was perfect! We got nice placements, including one in the LA Times. 13

‐‐ No matter how beautiful your site is or how great your headlines are, people get bored with monotony. It’s always good to do a little housekeeping once a year and change things up. It can make a world of difference.‐‐ In September last year, we did a makeover of our email template, and it made huge impact on our open and click‐through numbers. 14

We also have an aggressive Content Marketing Strategy:‐‐ Because what good is great content if no one is reading it!‐‐ And, people don’t think of MD Anderson as place to go for health content. If you don’t have cancer, why would you want to come to a cancer site for your health information. So, we go to where our readers are. We love to share our content! And, people are taking it!‐‐ We do blog partnerships, like monthly posting KevinMD.com‐‐ We send out monthly news release to national and local media – we’ve gotten multiple placements from national news websites to local newspapers.placements from national news websites to local newspapers‐‐ We do blogger pitching – we’ve gotten guest blog posts and mentions on sites like the chronicle and glamour.com.‐‐ We push content through Facebook and Twitter.‐‐ These are just a few of the activities we do each month to reach more people with our content. 15

Social Media Breakfast creating amazing digital content

by Jennifer Texada on Feb 10, 2012

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Social Media Breakfast creating amazing digital content Document Transcript