Guest post by Dana Munoz
I'm excited to share an exclusive blog from my colleague and fellow healthcare writer, Dana Munoz. Dana is the SEO Content Manager and Team Lead for Digitalis Medical, an Arizona-based digital healthcare growth agency. She helps healthcare companies across the United States increase traffic and engagement to their websites using the proprietary Digitalis Growth System. Though this blog is targeting healthcare writers specifically, all writers can benefit from these insightful tips.
Top Five Content Writing Steps for Beginner Healthcare Writers
Sharing healthcare knowledge isn't easy, especially when trust in the healthcare system is on the line. When sensitive protocols and complicated terminologies are involved, even experienced professionals can find it challenging to put together a blog, article or brochure that’s easy to understand.
According to Weber Shandwick’s 2018 survey in partnership with KRC Research, The Great American Search For Healthcare Information, 52 percent of the 1,700 American adults surveyed believe today’s available health-related information may be inaccurate. Moreover, restructuring a medical practitioner’s perspective to match the readers is often an arduous task.
In this article, we’ll discuss how beginner healthcare writers can more easily write engaging yet informative content.
Five steps for beginner writers of healthcare-related content
Content writing is a powerful tool for reaching, engaging, and connecting with a profitable audience. However, the success of your healthcare brand’s digital content will rely largely on applying the right marketing and writing strategies.
Writing easy-to-understand health-related content is not easy. For one, it’s essential to verify facts to avoid misinforming your readers, particularly about prescriptions and lifestyle improvements.
Here are the five steps to guide you through the basics of healthcare content writing:
Step 1
Define your audience
Before you begin writing it’s vital to understand who you’re writing for. Are you writing the article for the general public or medical colleagues? Knowing this helps set the tone for your content. It will also will help prepare the structure and style of writing to fit the needs of your reader.
According to a digital healthcare marketing expert, David Sanchez, “The best way to connect with a specific audience is to write like you're talking to one person over a cup of coffee.”
In-depth guides and comforting messages work well when you’re writing to individuals preparing for procedures. However, overusing layman’s terms and more casual language when writing for fellow practitioners in healthcare may be misinterpreted or, worse, come across as disrespectful.
Step 2 Know the latest health trends Structuring your content and writing style to align with your readers is a good start but adding recent events they can easily relate to makes it timely and conversational. For instance, talking about protecting your kids during the coronavirus pandemic presents a story-telling component to your piece, which many people can relate to. Adding news-worthy accomplishments in the healthcare field like recent discoveries or vaccine developments can also positively impact readers. You could also tackle seasonal content, like effective cold remedies for the winter or preventing heat-related problems, like stroke during the summer.
Step 3 Optimize your content for search engines Who doesn’t want their content to land on the top of search engines? Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for effective content marketing because it organically increases your page rank on Google and Bing and therefore your web traffic and content engagement. Before writing, it’s important to incorporate the most up-to-date SEO-friendly strategies into your article to ensure it gains traction. The field of SEO is broad, but on-page SEO recommendations are generally becoming more standardized. If you want to guarantee your article is SEO-ready, here are four easy things you can do:
Implement keyword and competitor research to make your article stand out in the sea of content.
Use tools like Grammarly or Surfer SEO to help you write content.
Gather reliable external and internal content as references you can link to throughout your article.
Don’t forget to include the keywords in headers, alt-texts and your first few paragraphs.
Optimizing your content for search engines not only increases web traffic, but it can also make your piece trustworthy.
Step 4 Structure your writing It’s good practice to start your article or blog with an intriguing introduction using things like questions or exciting facts. This strategy engages your readers and tells them your article contains all the things they want to know. When writing, be aware of your target audience and how best to address your readers. You can do this by adjusting the tone and style of your piece. Additionally, aligning your content with previously set SEO parameters and naturally integrating the resource links you’ve gathered will increase your chances of ranking in search engines. Typically, conclusions are short and sweet and often include a concise recap and finishing statement about your article. Last but not least, a using powerful call-to-action at the end of your article is also a vital strategy to adopt. This helps tell the reader what you’d like them to do next. Using this basic structure will not only attract more readers to your medical piece, but also establish a desirable image for your medical office or facility.
Step 5
Distribute and promote content to reach more people
Writing a quality piece doesn’t always guarantee success. Once you have your article written it’s time to implement an effective promotional strategy so it can take-off in the online medical community and rank among your competitors.
You can achieve this by distributing content on your website or in email campaigns, newsletters, social channels or other online medical communities .
Outsourcing your medical content marketing to professionals is also a time and cost-saving solution.
Become a professional healthcare writer in five easy steps—key takeaways
Content writing in healthcare requires sophistication and consistency to achieve a coherent and trustworthy medical article.
Before and while writing always remember to define your audience and keep yourself updated with the latest trends. This allows you to easily connect with target readers by structuring your piece according to their characteristics and relating current events for additional engagement.
Optimize content and write using these structured guidelines to produce an SEO-friendly article with quality information that search engines love.
Finally, promoting content is just as important as producing quality content. Through marketing campaigns and acquiring professional help, you can more easily let the world know about your high-quality content.
By adding these tools and tips to your arsenal, you’ll be all set to become a sought-after content writer in the healthcare industry.
Dana Munoz is the SEO Content Manager and Team Lead for Digitalis Medical, an Arizona-based digital healthcare growth agency. She helps healthcare companies across the United States increase traffic and engagement to their websites using the proprietary Digitalis Growth System.
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