Photo: James Lee, Chester, NH, USA
Welcome to Brilliance@Work, the first in a new series of profiles about stellar communication professionals and their best practices at work.
Stefanie Rathjen Kelly
Stefanie Rathjen Kelly, Director of Digital Marketing for Pathway Medical Staffing (soon will be Medical Staffing Network: Beyond the Bedside), shares her insights and best practices for digital marketing in the healthcare industry:
Peggy L. Bieniek: How did content marketing become a key driver of your digital marketing efforts?
Stefanie Rathjen Kelly: I got into content marketing because I realized that my digital marketing programs would go nowhere if I didn’t have any interesting, educational and thought-provoking content to fill all of our channels and campaigns. I started to curate and share content from sources interesting to our audience, and then I started to publish original content.
PLB: What is your process for creating original content?
SRK: At the end of the day your content is about your audience and being able to engage with them at a very basic emotional level. I’ve found that engaging our audience in the content creation process has been extremely successful. The audience is interested because they took part in the content. Here are some examples of content we created by reaching out and understanding our audience:
- Case Manager Career Resolution Survey
http://bit.ly/ZrlJwO
Here’s a link to this year’s survey that serves as a basis for collecting the information that is the bulk of the eBook content: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/pathwayholiday2013 - Over 100 Things Every Successful Nurse Case Manager Must Know
Based on feedback from a contest that we ran during Case Management Week in October 2010: http://bit.ly/fFh2l3
PLB: What do you focus on when creating content for your audience?
SRK: You need to be specific with your content. We’re a staffing and recruiting firm for nurses. There’s a ton of information about staffing, recruiting, finding a job, career tips, etc. out there. There’s also a ton of information about nursing. However, there isn’t a lot of information about searching and crafting great career moves in Nurse Case Management, which is our specific niche of the healthcare world. When creating content you need to get down to a more granular level. If you have several different audiences, focus on your greatest revenue-producing audience first. This is the best place to start when you have limited resources.
PLB: How do you continue to create relevant content for your audience?
SRK: My advice is to get inspiration from organizations and thought leaders that have big resources to invest in content marketing. I’m a one-woman marketing show from creating the concepts and strategies for digital marketing and content marketing, conducting the surveys, writing the copy, creating the graphics, developing the landing pages and emails, and cutting up the content to feed it to our various marketing channels like blogs, social media, advertising and nurture campaigns. My philosophy is: don’t reinvent the wheel, just re-engineer it for your specific audience and business goals.
PLB: How do you “cut up your content” for your various media channels?
SRK: Creating great content is very labor intensive, especially for a one-person team like mine. I need to get the most out of each piece so I carve it up like a Thanksgiving turkey: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/turkey.png
I cut up the information in each piece of content and push it out in small digestible bite-sized chunks of information using social media, nurture campaigns, etc. If our audience is engaged and wants more, they can respond to our call to action which is often an eBook download that feeds into our lead generation efforts. Here are a few examples:
- Discover the #1 Reason Nurses Change Jobs
http://pathway-medical.com/blog/2012/07/chart-why-nurses-change-jobs/ - Nurse Case Manager Average Salary $89,303
http://pathway-medical.com/blog/2012/04/nurse-case-manager-average-salary/ - Why 100% of Nurses Recommend Pathway Medical
You can find content everywhere in your organization. Here’s an example of how we took the results of a satisfaction survey and turned it into a marketing/testimonial piece.
http://pathway-medical.com/blog/2012/10/hedis-nurse-staffing-2/
PLB: Can you share an example of how you incorporate traditional marketing into your overall marketing efforts?
SRK: We participated in a trade show and gave away mouse pads printed with quotes from an eBook I created. The call to action was to download the rest of the eBook from a link. It’s a bit old school, but you’d be surprised how many people come looking for this thing. A nurse from a large managed care organization wanted 40 mouse pads for her entire team. The call to action on the mouse pad is www.Pathway-Medical.com/100quotes… and it works. We’ve received tremendous response from this.
PLB: What are some of your favorite resources for content and digital marketing inspiration?
SRK: Some of the resources I use on a regular basis are:
- Content Marketing Institute: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/
- Marketing Profs: http://www.marketingprofs.com/
- Mashable: http://mashable.com/
- Marketing Experiments: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/
Two vendors that do a great job with their own content marketing:
- Hubspot: http://www.hubspot.com/
- Kinetix: http://www.kinetixhr.com/
Some individuals I watch for inspiration:
- Guy Kawasaki: http://www.guykawasaki.com/
- Jason Miller: www.linkedin.com/in/jsnmiller
- Robert Rose: www.linkedin.com/in/robrose
- Joe Pulizzi: www.linkedin.com/in/joepulizzi
- Rebecca Lieb: www.rebeccalieb.com
I recently attended a Content Marketing Master Class in NYC. Here’s a great summary of the event by Mary Montserrat-Howlett, which includes some of the ideas and tips I use on a regular basis:
http://blog.iprospect.ca/content-marketing-master-class-new-york-2013-summary/
“The 5 Whys” is a Six Sigma determining root cause best practice: http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/determine-root-cause-5-whys/
Also, one of my favorite examples of phenomenal content marketing is Coca-Cola’s Content 2020 strategy: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/01/coca-cola-content-marketing-20-20/
PLB: What is your contact information for questions, comments and ideas?
SRK: My LinkedIn profile is www.linkedin.com/in/srkelly and my Twitter handle is @srkellyonline. I appreciate being featured in the first Brilliance@Work profile and am happy to share this information. I look forward to hearing from your readers.
What communication best practices would you like to share in future Brilliance@Work profiles? What are your ideas for topics or people featured in upcoming profiles?
Starry Blue Brilliance 
December 9, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Hi Peggy,
Very interesting interview with Stefanie. I also liked the article from Coca-Cola. My only question would be on how effectiveness is measure as it relates to monetizing the effort and resources applied to the content marketing initiative?
Best,
GH
December 10, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Great question Gustavo.
When measuring the effectiveness of content marketing programs, there are quite a few things to consider. It’s often the cost of not having content marketing in place that should be evaluated.
Consider the stat from SiriusDecisions http://www.siriusdecisions.com that states “the buying journey is 70% complete before a salesperson is even contacted.” That means your marketing needs to do some heavy lifting for your brand to be discovered and considered in that journey. Content marketing is one of the best ways to not only engage and attract your audience, but to also educate your audience and build trust with your brand along the way.
A few measurements to consider
1) Content marketing produces better leads – Measure how many leads your content is bringing in through various channels as well as the quality of those leads. Content often brings in much more qualified leads than other forms of marketing, especially when the content is very targeted to your audience.
2) Content marketing has a long shelf life – Content marketing usually has a much longer shelf life than traditional advertising. For example, we have an evergreen piece of content that we have been using since 2010 and it continues to attract great leads. Given that this content was completely produced in-house and promoted purely through email and social media channels, there were virtually no costs for this long-term lead generating piece of material; versus a one-time spend in advertising that would only last a fraction of the content’s shelf life.
3) Content marketing boosts SEO – Content marketing also has a tremendous impact on your search engine optimization. This is what will get your “found” when your buyers are on that journey (before they speak with you). For example, if you google “nurse case manager salary survey” our company, Pathway Medical comes up #3 and #4 in the organic search rankings above other salary search leaders like glassdoor.com and payscale.com. Without content marketing we would never be able to achieve these rankings when competing with much larger organizations with greater resources.
4) Content marketing establishes trust with your buyers – A Nielsen research report found that 67% of consumers were more likely to buy a new product if they found it through an online search. The report also stated that 53% percent of consumers were somewhat or much more likely to buy a new product when they learned about it through an online article. Looking at these stats, in conjunction with the previous SEO example, means that we are not only drawing attention to our brand, but also creating demand and establishing trust through content marketing.
Here are some other articles on content marketing ROI that you may find helpful:
Content Marketing Institute: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/09/prove-content-marketing-roi-ceo-values/
eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Which-Content-Marketing-Tactics-Best-ROI/1009706
MarketingProfs: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10775/how-to-gauge-the-power-and-value-of-your-content-marketing
Hubspot: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31035/Everything-Marketers-Need-to-Measure-and-Prove-Content-ROI.aspx