Timely, relevant, consistent content is the gateway to attracting new prospective patients to your health system’s website and online channels.
But how do you create the process for developing and publishing all that great content?
At Franklin Street, we use a content calendar in Google Docs, which allows us to work with our healthcare clients to help them manage their monthly content editorial calendar.
This editorial calendar focuses on four aspects to help make creating content less stressful. We set up our calendars in two-month increments. This allows us to plan ahead and assign duties to content creators.
Here is an example of a content calendar:
Here are the 4 elements that belong in your content calendar:
1. CONTENT TYPES
Identify the content types your organization will create content for on a consistent basis. Facebook posts, blogs, videos and downloadable “gated” content on your website are just a few examples.
2. COMMUNICATION VEHICLES
How are you reaching your audiences with your content? Identifying your communications vehicles and the timing for each will help ensure you’re not only creating good content but getting it in front of your audiences. Email marketing, website videos and social media channels are a few examples of communications vehicles.
3. PERSONAS
A persona describes the audience your brand wants to engage and convert. Each persona possesses a group of characteristics, wishes and goals. Your content is tailored to your personas. It’s likely your healthcare brand will have 4-5 different personas. We recommend coding your editorial calendar with content types by persona to ensure you’re not missing out on opportunities each month to engage your different audiences.
4. CONTENT TEAM
Creating great content is a team sport. Your editorial calendar can help you identify the best solutions to spread the responsibilities. Your team may include internal staff, freelancers and agency partners along with subject matter experts in your organization. (For example, one of our clients has her CEO contributing each month to the content calendar by producing a podcast—how cool is that?) As with personas, communications vehicles and content types, identify your content team on your editorial calendar.
Final thoughts
Creating consistent, quality content is not easy—but it doesn’t have to be an impossible task. We hope you find our pointers on building a master editorial content calendar to be helpful. This approach keeps you and your team organized and focused on what’s next.
