Methodist Health System Boosts Consumer Engagement With Integrated Content Strategy

Find out how one of the leading healthcare providers in North Texas evolved its content strategy to drive exponential growth in consumer engagement.

The Organization

Found­ed in 1924, Methodist Health Sys­tem in Dal­las has grown from a local, com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tal to a region­al health sys­tem with mul­ti­ple loca­tions across North Texas. Its com­mit­ment to the mis­sion of improv­ing and sav­ing lives through qual­i­ty health care has earned the health sys­tem a long list of acco­lades and the trust of the com­mu­ni­ty it serves.

The Need

Methodist pro­duces a 48-page print pub­li­ca­tion titled SHINE (pic­tured above) four times annu­al­ly. In addi­tion, it pro­duces info­graph­ics, videos, patient sto­ries and oth­er types of con­tent to reach the com­mu­ni­ty. The mar­ket­ing depart­ment staff shares this con­tent on social media and the sys­tem’s web­site but were ready to cre­ate a seam­less expe­ri­ence between those plat­forms and want­ed to evolve the strat­e­gy to meet the chang­ing land­scape of con­tent marketing.

In 2019, they found them­selves with an abun­dance of great con­tent and a strong social media pres­ence but no cen­tral­ized loca­tion for con­sumers to engage with their sto­ries, blog posts and videos. Their exist­ing chan­nel also lacked an effec­tive nur­tur­ing com­po­nent that guid­ed vis­i­tors on the health­care jour­ney. The Methodist team saw the need to go beyond the func­tion­al­i­ty of their exist­ing website’s blog. In an effort to pro­vide a mul­ti­fac­eted con­tent expe­ri­ence and rel­e­vant con­ver­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties for their audi­ence, con­sumer engage­ment was designed to be a focus of the con­tent strategy.

As an inno­v­a­tive con­tent mar­ket­ing agency with 30+ years of expe­ri­ence work­ing with health­care orga­ni­za­tions, True North Cus­tom was select­ed to cre­ate the con­tent hub as part of an inte­grat­ed con­tent strategy.

The Solution

Methodist and True North Cus­tom col­lab­o­rat­ed to build a con­tent hub (pic­tured above) that is capa­ble of hous­ing not only arti­cles and recipes, but also of offer­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased func­tion­al­i­ty, including:

• Embed­ded videos
• Con­tent shar­ing via social media
• Seg­men­ta­tion of con­tent by category
• Search­a­bil­i­ty and measurability
• Acces­si­bil­i­ty in accor­dance with ADA requirements

In less than two months, the True North team built and launched SHINE Online with all the required con­tent needs, search­a­bil­i­ty and nav­i­ga­tion options, includ­ing the tools need­ed to ana­lyze per­for­mance met­rics and inform future con­tent strategy.

Today, the site hous­es a stream of new and var­ied content:

• Live Face­book videos of surg­eries (includ­ing an awake brain surgery)
• Patient sto­ries and videos
• Sto­ries about physi­cian mis­sion trips
• Info­graph­ics on top­ics such as heatstroke
• Healthy recipes
• Heart-warm­ing pho­tos of new­born babies
• And much more

The Results

“The cus­tomer ser­vice at True North
has been phe­nom­e­nal. The most
impor­tant qual­i­ty I need from a
ven­dor is the cre­ativ­i­ty and agili­ty
to address and solve both my unique
and tra­di­tion­al pain points. They’ve
gone above and beyond, start­ing with
the con­tract review process, con­tin­u­ing
with our mag­a­zine and web­site builds,
and now with our ongo­ing prod­ucts.
Their respon­sive­ness is among the best
I’ve seen. Def­i­nite­ly 5/5 stars!”
—Sta­cy Covitz, Vice Pres­i­dent,
Mar­ket­ing and Pub­lic Rela­tions,
Methodist Health System

The first two months of data fol­low­ing the launch revealed the site is dri­ving con­sumer engage­ment at unprece­dent­ed lev­els. In fact, August and Sep­tem­ber of 2019 pro­duced over 1,000% more traf­fic than the same time frame in 2018 on Methodist’s for­mer blog, which was housed on their main site.

In Decem­ber 2020, SHINE Online gen­er­at­ed near­ly 100,000 page views—with 80,000 com­ing from new users. The sys­tem’s COVID-relat­ed con­tent is dri­ving sig­nif­i­cant growth in organ­ic traf­fic along with social media shares and referrals.

Each month, we con­tin­ue to see an increase in traf­fic to the blog and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of goal com­ple­tions or conversions—more than 7,500 since August 2019.

Audi­ence

The pri­ma­ry audi­ence falls between 25 and 65 years old, with ages 25–34 the largest traf­fic segment.

We assumed the vast major­i­ty of audi­ence traf­fic would be female. How­ev­er, we have been pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find that near­ly 35% of total traf­fic has been male. For many mar­keters, men are tra­di­tion­al­ly hard to reach with health con­tent, but engag­ing head­lines and an abun­dance of videos depict­ing live surg­eries and patient sto­ries like a motocross bike acci­dent sur­vivor have increased the male demographic.

The Future

As the site con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate traf­fic, we expect to see even more social engage­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a focus on Face­book Live videos that yield high traf­fic and inter­ac­tion (com­ments, likes and shares).

Organ­ic traf­fic will con­tin­ue to grow as the site builds SEO author­i­ty. In a high­ly com­pet­i­tive health­care mar­ket, being seen as a trust­ed health and well­ness resource is a dif­fer­en­tia­tor for Methodist, and its con­tent hub has helped fur­ther define its posi­tion as a part­ner to the community.