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 to provide a multifaceted content experience and relevant conversion opportunities for their audience. 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 reveal that the site is driving engagement at unprecedented levels. Traffic & Conversions 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. Each month, we continue to see an increase in traffic to the blog and a significant amount of goal completions or conversions—more than 1,900 since August 2019. Audience The primary audience falls between 35 and 65 years old. We assumed the vast majority of audience traffic would be female. However, we have been pleasantly surprised to find that just over 30% of total traffic has been male. For many marketers, men are traditionally hard to reach with health content, but catchy 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 significant increases in 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.