A high-quality healthcare blog is an excellent way for a hospital or healthcare brand to create online content. It allows them to establish their authority, share information, and generally put their organization on the online map.
But a hospital marketing staff shouldn’t stop with a blog. It can be well worth the effort for healthcare organizations to invest in other multimedia promotional content forms.
What Is Multimedia Content?
A blog is a text-driven medium. Videos have visual and audible components. But what does the generic-sounding term “multimedia” content mean?
The word sounds generic because it functions as a catch-all phrase for a wide variety of online marketing collateral. Multimedia can be any of several different forms of content, which are generally grouped into five different categories: text, images, audio, video, and animation.
When a business creates multimedia content, it typically includes a holistic combination of these factors. It doesn’t have to incorporate all of them, but it should involve multiple forms of media — hence the concept of multimedia.
Reasons for Multimedia Content in Healthcare
Multimedia is fun, splashy, and exciting. But is it needed in healthcare?
The plain truth of the matter is, no, you don’t need to have multimedia content in healthcare. As with any essential service, you will have customers coming to you no matter what.
Even so, multimedia can give a hospital or clinic a distinct content edge over competing organizations, especially in markets where patients have many options.
For instance, multimedia content can make your healthcare company more accessible. As you reformat messages and information into different presentations for various platforms, it will resonate with more people.
In addition, specific demographics might prefer one form of multimedia over another. A good example could be a senior who appreciates an audio clip or video so that they don’t have to squint at a screen to access information.
Along with enhancing a hospital’s brand image, multimedia content also creates better marketing, analytically speaking. Multimedia can also increase positive emotions, engagement, and overall marketing reach. This can boost SEO and increase organic search traffic.
Different Kinds of Healthcare-Specific Multimedia Content
It’s one thing to understand the benefits of multimedia. It’s another to create multimedia that will complement and enhance a hospital’s marketing strategy. This is where your freelance writer comes in. When you hire a writer, they understand the multiple options that work well in the healthcare realm, including:
Infographics
A visual representation of information is a powerful tool. It takes the mind-numbing minutiae of statistics and presents it in an engaging and easy-to-understand format. This is ideal in an industry that always distinguishes between dense medical knowledge and accessible bedside manner.
Personal Profiles
Healthcare can feel like a machine at times. Hospitals, in particular, have a reputation for impersonal, disconnected care. One way multimedia can alleviate this issue is by creating profiles for the various personnel on staff. This can combine things like text descriptions, pictures, and even video or audio recordings to help humanize each employee in the eyes of individuals receiving treatment.
Case Studies
Education is a major theme in the medical world. This starts with the need for healthcare professionals to stay up to date within their field of expertise. But it also extends to patients and business entities interacting with a hospital. Case studies are a great form of multimedia that can use text, charts, and images to present key points of data.
Videos
In a world where attention spans are at a premium, using short-form videos is a powerful way to capture people’s attention. A hospital can utilize these bite-size clips to provide important information without overloading customers with too much information. Videos are also excellent for teaching patients and potential patients how to utilize your online formats, like telehealth or patient portals.
Audio and Podcasts
There are many health-oriented podcasts out there. It can be a great way to cultivate authority and professionalism when they come from a reputable or familiar source (like a hospital staff). Podcasts can also double as an audible format for longer pieces of information, such as a whitepaper or case study.
Guide to Using Expert Writers to Create Multimedia Content
Your expert healthcare writer can be a foundational element of an exemplary multimedia strategy, even if not all of the multimedia uses text.
For instance, Mayo Clinic has a far-reaching reputation as a well-marketed and authoritative medical online brand. Part of the reason the organization has created such an online footprint is because it uses every piece of healthcare content at its disposal.
Mayo Clinic healthcare professionals actually sit down and contribute critical pieces of information, and the company can reuse and repurpose these in different ways across the brand’s site. But the process should start with competent composition.
If your hospital doesn’t have the bandwidth to tap each staff member to become a blog writer, that’s OK. There are other ways to go about the process.
For instance, you can use your staff as a source of SMEs (subject matter experts) who can work with your professional writers. When you find an expert writer and connect them with a subject matter expert in a specific area of healthcare, such as surgery or maternity, the results can be synergistic. You can develop well-written pieces of text brimming with authoritative details and data.
These, in turn, can become the foundational source of inspiration for other pieces of multimedia. You can have writers turn a popular blog post into a script for a video or podcast. Content managers can also take interesting nuggets of information, such as statistics or quotes, and turn them into social media posts. Repurposing text is an excellent way to generate high-quality multimedia content with minimal effort.
Partnering with PowerPublish to Create Multimedia Content
Every hospital has a plethora of SMEs on hand with an endless fountain of knowledge and experience. However, finding writers who can match their expertise in their own field can be challenging.
That’s where PowerPublish can help. We’ve populated our writer marketplace with vetted professional writers and brand journalists with solid track records. Many of these freelance writers and a wide selection of editors have experience writing for the healthcare industry. They are familiar with the terminology and other important elements of creating hospital multimedia content.
If you’re struggling to create a wide variety of multimedia content, start by creating consistent, high-quality written content. Hire a writer. Hire an editor, too. Then use their efforts as a source of inspiration for a variety of multimedia content that can take your hospital’s online presence to the next level.