Nancy Siniard

Healthcare Marketing: Improve Your Hospital’s Search Rankings

Improve your hospital’s search rankings by improving your hospital’s website content and navigation. 104011192

Below is an article by Marty Reardon that appeared in MarketingProfs that gives very sound advice on how to improve both your SEO ranking and your website experience.  There are ten very helpful pieces of advice that healthcare marketers can use to improve their hospital’s website.

10 SEO Tips to Improve Your Search Rankings–and Your Website

SEO, when done well—with quality in mind—doesn’t just help increase your search rankings; it also improves your entire website from the viewpoint of search engines as well as your visitors. And that, rather than a cheap shot at fooling search engine algorithms, should be the ultimate aim of your SEO campaign.

So here are 10 tips that won’t just knock you up a few places in search results pages for a couple of months; rather, they’ll help turn a visit to your website into a better experience and help your site to naturally grow in popularity.

Tip 1: Create incredible content

The most important aspect of your website—and the most important part of all your optimization efforts—is your content. You can’t get around that fact in the long run, even with the best of SEO tricks. And why would you want to? You can fool the search bots for a while (and less and less with every passing year), but if your content is of low quality, nobody is going to visit your website or share with the world what you’re offering. 
 
Good content, on the other hand, will be eventually be widely read and widely shared by others, often on their own websites, creating excellent link-building opportunities for your website (see Tip No. 5).

Your site’s content must be well written, informative, as unique as possible, and free of excessive keyword use intended solely to garner search spider attention. If your content is genuinely informative and written for the niche it’s serving, it will already have the keywords you need.

Update your content frequently to focus on the latest information in you niche.

Tip 2: Pick a comfortable niche

Your blog or website can deal with extremely general subjects, but that will make your work a lot harder. General-interest websites have to deal with stiff competition from some very powerful and well established players.

Sticking to a niche, on the other hand, limits your audience but also limits your competition. You can write more authoritatively on your subject, and you can more easily generate a reputation for reliability among a much smaller but more loyal circle of readers.

The important thing is to research the keywords that are most searched for in your niche and use them wisely in your Web pages. You should also keep well abreast of new developments in the field.

Tip 3: Carefully research keywords

We’ve noted the danger of using too many keywords, but that does not mean you have to deliberately stop using them; on the contrary, keywords are still vital for SEO.

Compile a well-researched list of the most commonly searched for keywords and phrases in your niche by using tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool; once you’ve got them sorted out, scatter them strategically throughout your content, your headlines, and your sub-headers. Just make sure you don’t overdo it by using them to the point that text flow seems unnatural.

Tip 4: Stick to SEO-friendly URLs

You should also optimize all of your website’s pages at a basic level. Start by ensuring that every page of your website has a distinct and SEO-friendly URL that describes what the page is about in a few words. For example, if you have a page about cooking steak, instead of <www.myawesomesite.com/tips/item4?=45756>, convert your URL into something like <www.myawesomesite.com/tips/grilling-the-best-steak>. That is much more search engine friendly.

Tip 5: Use tags and meta descriptions

You should create concisely informative meta descriptions of all your Web pages with the keywords for that page appearing in the description; you’ll have 150-160 characters to fill. These meta descriptions are likely not use by Google any more for ranking, but they’re useful in attracting attention from human readers in the search results page, so use them anyway.

Also include title tags for every important page of your site. These need to fit within 70 characters and should offer very quick descriptions of the individual pages they represent with at least one or two page relevant keywords within them. Make these friendly to human readers, don’t just list keywords.

Tip 6: Don’t forget image attributes

You likely have content-relevant images on your website or blog; those images offer an excellent SEO boosting opportunity thanks to image search features on Google and other engines. However, search spiders can’t analyze images well if related text is not included—though they do consider the name of the image file (e.g., “cavalier-king-charles-puppy.jpg” is better than “sidebar-image.jpg”).

Therefore, you need to create brief HTML description tags for each image you post amid your website content. These tags should consist of a quick description of what the image is of or what it relates to in your content.

Tip 7: Build internal links

Internal link-building is an on-site SEO tactic that consists of creating a well-organized and thorough link structure among your own website’s pages. In other words, as many pages as possible should be connected to each other in a hierarchical or web-like connections of in-page, text-based hyperlinks.

Pay particular attention to creating connections between your main pages and your homepage; do so via menu objects or by placing the links right into your on-page content.

Another helpful internal link-building feature is a sitemap, which has the benefit of also helping search spiders index your site better and faster.

Tip 8: Build external links

External link building is a different animal: You need to encourage the creation of backlinks to your site from other websites; that is, links on other sites lead back to relevant content on your own website pages.

If you want to build external links successfully and without resorting to black hat tactics, you’re going to have to dedicate a lot of time to posting links to social sites, finding guest post opportunities that allow you to publish links back to your website, leaving plenty of informative guest comments on other websites in your niche, and syndicating your RSS feed (if you have one).

(Try to ensure that those links are not “nofollow.” Links with a nofollow attribute are ignored by search spiders as a valid backlink in the sense that your site doesn’t receive “credibility points” from the search engines. You can still get visitors as a result of those links, however, because people will click on them and end up on your site.)

The process of building backlinks is slow, but it eventually pays off to create some really good SEO.

Tip 9: Enable social media sharing

Enable as many social media sharing options on your website as you can. Install buttons for all the major social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and others on every important page of your website. With these buttons, your readers can spread the word about the valuable and interesting content you have to offer; eventually that content can find its way to other websites and so lead to some quality backlinks.

Tip 10: Avoid using Flash and images as text

The search spiders that index websites read only text on websites and are, for the most part, incapable of analyzing Flash or image files. So, in general, stay away from both as content mediums. Do not use Flash-based site navigation tools and stay away from creating content text that is in image form.

In the case of Flash navigation, the search bot won’t be able to click through to index the pages the flash navigation links to, leaving parts of your website without indexing. In the case of image-based text, any useful information and keywords you put there will be invisible to the search engine.

Stick to site browsing code like jQuery or CSS and create purely text-based written content.

Healthcare Marketing: 9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People

The most successful people in business approach their work differently than most. See how they think–and why it works.

100092920Healthcare marketers are driven people. They wear a multitude of hats and must have many areas of competencies.  They have to multi-task.  They have to start early and stay late.  They have to be on top of their game at all times.  They are the keepers and protectors of their organization’s brand.  And it’s not easy!  It’s demanding.  But it can also be very rewarding.

Jeff Haden recently wrote two articles for Inc magazine about the beliefs and habits of extremely successful people.  It has some great points that I think can apply to healthcare marketers.  I share his first article here about the beliefs of remarkably successful persons:

I’m fortunate enough to know a number of remarkably successful people. Regardless of industry or profession, they all share the same perspectives and beliefs.

And they act on those beliefs:

1. Time doesn’t fill me. I fill time.

Deadlines and time frames establish parameters, but typically not in a good way. The average person who is given two weeks to complete a task will instinctively adjust his effort so it actually takes two weeks.

Forget deadlines, at least as a way to manage your activity. Tasks should only take as long as they need to take. Do everything as quickly and effectively as you can. Then use your “free” time to get other things done just as quickly and effectively.

Average people allow time to impose its will on them; remarkable people impose their will on their time.

2. The people around me are the people I chose.

Some of your employees drive you nuts. Some of your customers are obnoxious. Some of your friends are selfish, all-about-me jerks.

You chose them. If the people around you make you unhappy it’s not their fault. It’s your fault. They’re in your professional or personal life because you drew them to you–and you let them remain.

Think about the type of people you want to work with. Think about the types of customers you would enjoy serving. Think about the friends you want to have.

Then change what you do so you can start attracting those people. Hardworking people want to work with hardworking people. Kind people like to associate with kind people. Remarkable employees want to work for remarkable bosses.

Successful people are naturally drawn to successful people.

3. I have never paid my dues.

Dues aren’t paid, past tense. Dues get paid, each and every day. The only real measure of your value is the tangible contribution you make on a daily basis.

No matter what you’ve done or accomplished in the past, you’re never too good to roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and do the grunt work.  No job is ever too menial, no task ever too unskilled or boring.

Remarkably successful people never feel entitled–except to the fruits of their labor.

4. Experience is irrelevant. Accomplishments are everything.

You have “10 years in the Web design business.” Whoopee. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing what you do. Years of service indicate nothing; you could be the worst 10-year programmer in the world.

I care about what you’ve done: how many sites you’ve created, how many back-end systems you’ve installed, how many customer-specific applications you’ve developed (and what kind)… all that matters is what you’ve done.

Successful people don’t need to describe themselves using hyperbolic adjectives like passionate, innovative, driven, etc. They can just describe, hopefully in a humble way, what they’ve done.

5. Failure is something I accomplish; it doesn’t just happen to me.

Ask people why they have been successful. Their answers will be filled with personal pronouns: I, me, and the sometimes too occasional we.

Ask them why they failed. Most will revert to childhood and instinctively distance themselves, like the kid who says, “My toy got broken…” instead of, “I broke my toy.”

They’ll say the economy tanked. They’ll say the market wasn’t ready. They’ll say their suppliers couldn’t keep up.

They’ll say it was someone or something else.

And by distancing themselves, they don’t learn from their failures.

Occasionally something completely outside your control will cause you to fail. Most of the time, though, it’s you. And that’s okay. Every successful person has failed. Numerous times. Most of them have failed a lot more often than you. That’s why they’re successful now.

Embrace every failure: Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.

6. Volunteers always win.

Whenever you raise your hand you wind up being asked to do more.

That’s great. Doing more is an opportunity: to learn, to impress, to gain skills, to build new relationships–to do something more than you would otherwise been able to do.

Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.

Remarkably successful people sprint forward.

7. As long as I’m paid well, it’s all good.

Specialization is good. Focus is good. Finding a niche is good. Generating revenue is great.

Anything a customer will pay you a reasonable price to do–as long as it isn’t unethical, immoral, or illegal–is something you should do. Your customers want you to deliver outside your normal territory? If they’ll pay you for it, fine. They want you to add services you don’t normally include? If they’ll pay you for it, fine. The customer wants you to perform some relatively manual labor and you’re a high-tech shop? Shut up, roll ’em up, do the work, and get paid.

Only do what you want to do and you might build an okay business. Be willing to do what customers want you to do and you can build a successful business.

Be willing to do even more and you can build a remarkable business.

And speaking of customers…

8. People who pay me always have the right to tell me what to do.

Get over your cocky, pretentious, I-must-be-free-to-express-my-individuality self. Be that way on your own time.

The people who pay you, whether customers or employers, earn the right to dictate what you do and how you do it–sometimes down to the last detail.

Instead of complaining, work to align what you like to do with what the people who pay you want you to do.

Then you turn issues like control and micro-management into non-issues.

9. The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.

Everyone says they go the extra mile. Almost no one actually does. Most people who go there think, “Wait… no one else is here… why am I doing this?” and leave, never to return.

That’s why the extra mile is such a lonely place.

That’s also why the extra mile is a place filled with opportunities.

Be early. Stay late. Make the extra phone call. Send the extra email. Do the extra research. Help a customer unload or unpack a shipment. Don’t wait to be asked; offer. Don’t just tell employees what to do–show them what to do and work beside them.

Every time you do something, think of one extra thing you can do–especially if other people aren’t doing that one thing. Sure, it’s hard.

But that’s what will make you different.

And over time, that’s what will make you incredibly successful.

Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business.

Pitfalls and Uses of QR Codes in Healthcare Marketing

QR codes can be useful in healthcare marketing but only if used correctly.  Effective use is dependent on understanding the context and following some basic guidelines.

QR with HQR codes are the cool thing these days in marketing.   Some have said it’s the next big thing because it brings physical interaction into the digital space.  And you have begun to see them everywhere.  Some places which are very creative and ingenious and some, which are questionable or downright stupid.

Just two years ago, only 1% of U.S. adults used QR codes.  But according to research from Forrester Research  just a year later that number grew to 5%.  Then a Temkin Group study  recently found that now 24% of adults are using them.   So use is increasing.  But just how effective are they?

Dan Wilkerson, a social media project manager at Luna Metrics (lunermetrics.com) outlined on masable.com some of the problems with QR codes for marketers.  He listed 5 problem areas.

1. Worthless Content

QR codes are easy to create, inexpensive and trackable.  They also open up a world of possibilities for consumer interaction.  However from a consumer’s point of view, scanning a code is a little cumbersome and requires time and effort.  Worse still, 90% of the time the link is to a website not optimized for mobile.  This is frustrating.

2. Consumer Awareness

Many consumers don’t know what QR codes are. An ArchRival study (archrival.com) of college students found that over 75% didn’t know how to scan a QR code.    These are statistics that are hard to believe. What looks cool for marketers may not be understood by the consumer.

3. Value as a Medium

QR codes are not considered a medium itself.  More often than not, QR codes are used simply to link to a company website.  Is it worth the effort to take your phone, unlock it, boot the app, get the code in focus and scan it, assuming you already have an app.  Is it worth the effort just to go to a brand’s website?

4. Location, Location, Location

QR codes are showing up in the most unlikely places.  Seemingly everywhere, on everything.  And many in very questionable locations with little or no thought for context.

5. Aesthetics

Too many QR codes are ugly.  And they are often confused with codes used for industrial purposes.  Many think they are tracking barcodes instead of a marketing tool.

So there are limitations to QR codes.  That’s not to say they are useless.  They can be effective for healthcare marketer f used correctly.

Here are some basic guidelines to improve effectiveness.

1. Make it worthwhile to the consumer. 

Provide information that is useful and valuable to the consumer.

2. Include instructions with a recommended app spelling out how to use the code.

3. Make sure using the code doesn’t take more than 6-10 seconds.  Otherwise you will lose the consumer.

4. Walk through your QR code implementation in a real-world scenario to make sure it’s actually useable.

5. Make the code as attractive as possible and distinguish it from packaging barcodes. 

You can use Photoshop to round off the corners and sometimes remove portions of the code for better aesthetics.

QR codes are not just marketing gimmicks.  If they are used that way, they will not be effective.  But they can be very useful if they are the results of a defined marketing strategy and provide value to the consumer.

Healthcare Marketing: 8 Ways to Create Bad Hospital Advertising

Sometimes hospital advertising is just bad.  Sometimes just not effective.  Knowing the things that don’t work can help marketers be more effective.

BAD AdHealthcare advertising is both art and science.  Sometimes it’s effective and sometimes it’s not.  It is not easy.  It is demanding.  It’s dynamic and always changing.   But in Healthcare Success Lonnie Hirsch and Stewart Gandolf note some things that are sure to doom hospital advertising.

Here are several of the most common pitfalls, classic fumbles and root causes often seen in hospital advertising.

1      Spotlight infection rates and re-admission scores. No doubt there’s some degree of professional pride in attaining certain quality of care measurements, but “fewer septicemia infections,” “fewer re-admissions,” does not make for a great billboard. This one sometimes overlaps with our next category.

2     Multisyllabic medical terms are impressive. Notwithstanding that the patient-public is increasingly well informed, healthcare advertising needs to communicate without confusion. What’s more, the public is far more interested in easily understood benefits and daily living solutions than in the medical science behind why they feel better.

3     Everyone eats alphabet soup. A corollary to the item above, shorthand, buzzwords and abbreviations—EMR, HIR, HIPAA, ACO, ER, PPACA—can be barriers to understanding

4     “We are pleased to announce…”  your new building, technology or award. Information about concrete or equipment—without saying how these things benefit the lives of people—is a non-starter…and often boring.

5     Someone upstairs said we should do this ad. There are exceptions, but advertising is rarely a good platform for ideas that are disconnected from defined marketing goals, speak to internal matters, or tackle political issues.

6     Be over-the-top shot at being clever (or trendy, cheeky, witty or insider).The line between “creative” and “confusing” is a thin one. It’s remarkably easy for ads to be seen as obscure, unclear or simply un-funny.

7     Proofreader? (We don’t have one.) A spell-check program has its limitations. Over reliance will have you tracking calls to a Phoenician.

8     Let’s just copy someone else’s nice-looking ad. If there were no copyright or conscience issues, it’s a bad idea. It may be “pretty,” but you don’t know its objective or goals, intended target audience, its role in a larger media plan or marketing strategy, how it performed…or any of a dozen other critical considerations. You’re taking quite a chance on “nice.”

Avoid these mistakes and make your adverting more effective.

Marketing Your Hospital – Most Read from 2012

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A Hospital’s  Strong Brand is Strong Indeed

Hospital Marketing Strategy First, Social Media Marketing Second

Television and Internet Advertising: Effective When You Need to Reach Affluent Patients

How to Promote Your Hospital with Social Media

Advertise Your Hospital on Television or Not?

Healthcare Marketing: Traditional Marketing Dead?

Many pundits are declaring the demise and even death of traditional advertising.  They are premature.  They are wrong.

Traditional AdvertisingI just read an article by Bill Lee in the Harvard Business Review.  In the article he declared, “Traditional marketing – including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications – is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear.”

Lee gives three pieces of evidence for the death of marketing.  First, buyers are no longer paying much attention. Several studies have confirmed that in the “buyer’s decision journey,” traditional marketing communications just aren’t relevant.

Second, CEOs have lost all patience. In a devastating 2011 study of 600 CEOs and decision makers by the London-based Fournaise Marketing Group, 73% of them said that CMOs lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient business growth.

Third, in today’s increasingly social media-infused environment, traditional marketing and sales not only doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t make sense. In fact, this last is a bit of a red herring, because traditional marketing isn’t really working anywhere.

There are others who have made similar predictions.  But I will say, it’s not true!  True, marketing is changing.  True, social media and relationship marketing is playing a more significant role in the marketing process.  And true, consumers have more control and more power.  But none of that means traditional marketing is dead.

I could go on and on and on with success stories of brands that are effective using traditional marketing.  Traditional marketing is still such a dominant and influential force in our culture.  Brands are being made and enhanced everyday using traditional marketing methods.

On a personal level, our agency does work every day using traditional marketing methods that render sales growth and increases in market share.

And traditional marketing works in healthcare.  Yes it’s changing.  Building authentic customer relationships is of supreme importance.  And healthcare marketers must always be open to change.  They must be willing to experiment with new strategies.  But it’s not time to abandon traditional strategies and tactics.  And for those who say marketing is dead, aren’t looking in the same places I am.

 

Healthcare Marketing: PR No Longer the Ugly Stepsister

PR and publicity are important tactics in creating positive “buzz” for a hospital’s brand.  

154218007PR has always been an important tool of every healthcare marketing department.  But there has been a major shift in the healthcare industry that includes the resurrection of public relations.  Many ad budgets have been cut.  Less is being spent on traditional media.  But in many cases more is being spent in PR and publicity.

Generally, PR has been the poor, ugly stepsister to the advertising function.  PR was just a way to keep the hospital’s name in the newspaper and for hospitals to pat themselves on the back for their community involvement.  PR was considered free and regularly not much more than an afterthought in the marketing plan.  It was an add-on to an advertising campaign or something done to keep the management team and board happy.

But today, many hospitals are placing much more emphasis on PR.  In addition to moving some of the budget from traditional media to new media, event marketing, social media and mobile marketing PR and publicity is playing an increasing important role in the marketing department’s strategy and efforts.   With a shift toward customer-generated media, PR becomes more critical to the hospital’s marketing efforts.

“PR plays into the whole ‘buzz Marketing’ trend”, stated Tony Mikes of Second Wind.  “PR is very much about brand awareness, so we can certainly accord some of the credit for PR’s emergence from the shadows to the rise of branding as a critical marketing tactic.”   Creating “buzz” and keeping the hospital’s name in the news and on the lips of influencers and consumers are extremely important.  As marketing becomes more consumer-driven and consumer- controlled, PR and publicity can play an even bigger role and sometimes more effective role than advertising in enhancing the brand in the minds of the consumers.

PR and publicity are also important for place-based media efforts.  Pre-promotion of staged events creates attendance and media coverage while post-promotion extends the chatter.

PR should no longer be an afterthought, but an “automatic.”   PR and publicity can boost the hospital’s brand organically and authentically.  Complimenting and enhancing all the other marketing activities.

Healthcare Marketing: Let’s HEAR it for the Brand!

rbsb2_07Just like brand visuals, audio can help recognize, identify, position and enhance a brand.

Imagine a swoosh.  What do you think of?  Nike, of course.  When you see the NBC peacock, does a sound come to mind?  It’s the three distinctive chimes that have been associated with NBC since the 1920s.   It’s almost impossible for anyone who has a television to hear those three notes without conjuring up the brand.  Which proves audio branding can be just as strong as a great visual.

Just like a strong established visual, sounds can also reach beyond the rational mind and tap into memories and emotions.  Audio branding uses sounds to create memories or positive memory triggers that help recall a specific brand in the mind of consumers.  As LeeBeth Cranmer, writing for SecondWind states,  “It’s not merely background music but a sound that represent the identity and values of a brand in a distinctive manner.

 McDonalds is another brand that effectively uses audio branding.  As soon as you hear that “I’m l Lovin It” audio you probably think about the golden arches.  United Airlines has used an adaptation of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” for generations.  And who can hear the four Intel tones and not think of “Intel Inside?

The power of audio branding has been evident since the early days of radio when jingles were so prevalent.  As Cranmer continues,  “ in our modern age of advertising and marketing, audio branding is more important than ever due to the increased number of touch points available to promote your brand through sound.”

Because we live in an age of sound, there is a great opportunity to tap into a medium that can create strong memories and emotional connections with your brand.  Healthcare marketers should consider audio branding as a component of their marketing strategy.

And audio branding is not limited to music or musical tones.  It could be a distinctive voice, a sound effect or a particular way of saying a tagline.  We spend great amount of effort and money working on the visual identity of our healthcare brand.  Strong consideration should be given to creating that audio identity as well.  To make sure your brand is not just seen but also heard.

 

 

Healthcare Marketing: What Marketers Can Learn from the Presidential Election

What a brand promises and how a brand acts must be consistent.  Otherwise the brand suffers….. and presidential candidates lose elections.

99925228This blog is a little longer than most but I think it’s worth the read.  Jim Signorelli, CEO of ESW Partners, wrote an article for Adrants that addresses why he thinks Romney lost the presidential election.  His premise is that voters perceived too much of a gap between what Romney said and how he acted.  While Obama’s words and actions were very consistent.  The “story logic”, as Signorelli termed it, was not consistent for Romney.

The reason the article is compelling for healthcare marketers is because it makes the case that perceptions and reality must be consistent with each other.  In marketing terms, a brand promise and brand image (inner layer) must be consistent with what’s actually delivered (outer layer).  If the gap is too wide, the brand loses favor in the minds of the consumer.  It’s a lesson we all know as healthcare marketers and the truth of it can even be confirmed in the world of politics.

How ‘Story Logic’ Influenced Obama, Romney Campaign

From the early beginnings of the race for the White House, the news media seemed deeply concerned about who would have the biggest war chest. Certainly, dollars have historically contributed a great deal to winning Presidential campaigns. But given that Obama scored a 62% Electoral College advantage with only 4% more spending than Romney, the power of money has been seriously called into question.

Money buys audience reach, message frequency and media placement. Money also pays for the creation and production of messages as well as the necessary wherewithal to administer those messages. We cannot discount the importance of these financial realities.

But there is one variable that has recently gained enormous power. Unlike the other variables, it doesn’t depend on spending. It costs nothing more than respect for its existence and adherence to its demands. In part, it is driven by the new order of social media and its ability to make brands more transparent. It’s called story logic.

Story logic runs deep in every brand, including those of Presidential candidates. As consumers, we don’t see it, but we do sense how strong story logic is or isn’t. To apply story logic to any brand, one must first see the brand as lead character in the story that it sets out to tell its audience. Specifically, a brand is very much like a story’s protagonist confronting certain obstacles to achieve certain goals.

Both story protagonists and brands are multi layered. Their surface, or outer layers, contains visible behaviors. In the example of brand Romney vs. brand Obama, each candidate’s outer layer consisted of things said, done, and promised prior to and during their campaigns.

Going deeper, the brand’s inner layer is like the engine under its hood. It consists of beliefs and values that fuel the brand’s outer layer and helps audiences discern what the real beliefs are behind the brand’s behavior. As marketers, we can voice what a brand’s outer layer consists of. But the truth of their inner layers is completely dependent upon the voices inside the heads of their audience.

Story logic is simply the linkage between a brand’s inner and outer layer. When what we see or what we are told about a brand’s promise runs contrary to the value or belief we ascribe to that brand, the logic chain is broken and the story becomes something that doesn’t make sense.

In the contest between Romney and Obama, it was relatively easy to infer that each brand had polar opposite inner layers. One was driven by the belief in strong government; the other put greater stock in the private sector. From a social perspective, one candidate held more liberal beliefs and values and his opponent’s were more conservative. We were able to infer the difference in values and beliefs from each candidate’s outer layer promises and plans to support specific policies.

However, when one looks at the many surveys taken prior to Election Day, a few stand out. They are those that reflect the relative consistency between each candidate’s outer and inner layer.

In a poll taken by Time Magazine, one month prior to the election, readers were asked, “Which candidate is more truthful, Obama or Romney?” Obama outpaced Romney 72% vs. 28%. In a similar poll conducted by Newhouse in October, Obama’s ads were seen as more truthful than Romney’s, 42% vs. 30%. Whether you give credence to these polls or others that asked similar questions, we all know that Romney was often described by pundits as a “flip-flopper.” “Flip-flopping” occurs when a brand’s outer layer is perceived as a moving target. The biggest blow to Romney’s story logic came from his secretly filmed 47% comment that was picked up and repeatedly viewed on YouTube and other media outlets. Despite Romney’s admission that this statement didn’t reflect his true feelings, it created a great deal of dissonance. Dissonance is the enemy of story logic.

Some have argued that Romney’s ever-changing outer layer resulted from efforts to be all things to his highly fractionalized party. But in Presidential elections as with brands, the perceived consistency between beliefs, values, and actions has a great deal to do with winning votes or customers. Lack of layer consistency, perceived or real, can only result in confusion, dislike, and distrust — or all of the above. It is hard to know if Romney would have won had there been a stronger link between what he stood for and what he was promising to deliver. Arguably, stronger story logic would have turned off certain factions at the expense of others.

On the other hand, Obama had the story logic advantage. Whether you agreed or disagreed with his actions and promises, his consistency was rarely called into question. Clearly, he had obstacles to overcome given the worse economy since the Great Depression and social policies that were labeled by many as socialistic. But unlike Romney, the link between his outer and inner layer was unwavering.

I’m often asked what is more important, a brand’s inner layer or its outer layer. Rather than address that question head on, I often defer to brand success stories like Apple, The Ritz Hotel, North Face, Nike, and others that show how important it is to make certain that both layers are well defined and appeal to audiences large enough to foster growth. But what I believe is more important than either layer itself is the logical integrity between the values and beliefs a brand stands for and it’s actual or implied behavior. As with stories, brands depend on audiences concluding for themselves that what is portrayed is believable and authentic

Jim Signorelli is CEO of ESW Partners, a marketing communications agency based in Chicago specializing in branding. He recently published a book, StoryBranding Creating Standout Brands through the Power of Story.

Healthcare Marketing: 10 Time Savers for Social Media

Social media is a time suck!  But there are ways to be more efficient and minimize the distraction.

One of the major issues about social media for healthcare marketers is the time it requires.  Social media may be comparatively inexpensive but it requires a major investment of time to do it well.  And what healthcare marketer has time?

But Corey Eridon posted on HubSpot ways to make social media more efficient.  Things to do to keep the demands of social media from paralyzing you.  Here’s a summary of some of the suggestions he posted.

1) Compose your updates in advance. It’s time to update your social media posts…Facebook and Twitter.  Do you click around trying to find content to power those updates?  If you do, you will spend an inordinate amount of time researching and posting.  It’s better to bookmark information as you stumble across it.  Or if you need to do research, do it in advance and bookmark the information.

Use a social media publishing schedule– an Excel template (or something similar) that lets you input all of your social media status updates for each social network, organized by the date and time you’d like to publish them.

You can set aside an hour and input all of your social media updates for the following work week. That way you’re not left scrambling to find enough compelling content for all of the social networks you need to manage.

2) Maintain a content repository. To craft a week’s worth of social media updates you should use a content repository. Here’s what it looks like:

Basically, this is the place that you can keep all the content you’d like to promote and resurface in social media — because the more content you create, the harder it will be for you to keep track of all of it. So put in your ebooks, your blog posts, your infographics, everything you will want to re-promote at a later date in social media. Then you’ll be able to jump over to this tab and quickly find content to promote! Just be sure to include an expiration date so you don’t accidentally promote something that has already taken place.  And you will be less likely to let things fall between the cracks.

No more pulling content out of thin air, marketers!

3) Use a collaborative tool to share your schedule. Social media content can come from more than just you! Take the burden off of yourself and make your social media presence richer by including other people in crafting social updates. You can share the days and times when you’ll be publishing updates and it makes it easy for everyone to see what slots are available for promotion. You can even block off certain slots as “Reserved” for your own updates to ensure the content you need to promote doesn’t get swallowed up by other people’s updates.

Just make sure you communicate three notes about this collaborative approach to social media content creation: Establish a deadline for  content for the following week; communicate that the spreadsheet is first come, first serve; and make it clear that the social media manager has authority to veto updates that aren’t appropriate or not consisitent with the brand.

4) Schedule your updates to auto-publish. With content ready, use automation to make your life easier.

Now, not every social network makes it easy to auto-publish, so you’ll have to do some manual updating (on LinkedIn, for example). But you can still automate a good chunk of your publishing using a tool like HootSuite.

5) Set up social media monitoring. While creating your content in advance is a serious boon to productivity, healthcare marketers should still be leaving room for timely updates, too. What if a news story breaks? Or someone covers your company in their publication? Or someone publishes an excellent blog post you’d like to share with your network? That real-time content is critical, and you can set up monitoring to ensure you see it coming through. Use Google Alerts to keep up to date on information you can use.

6) Establish your company’s social media policy. If you know exactly what you should and should not do on social media, it becomes much more natural to create content and respond to fans and followers. If your company has a social media policy that details exactly what you should and should not say in social media and the tone you want your company to convey, it’s way easier to quickly create content and interact with your fans … because that kind of detail and forethought gives your company an actual personality. It’s much easier to be social when you have a personality.

7) Leverage networks’ admin features. Sometimes, more hands are better than one… Sometimes.

It can get a little scary for marketing managers, though, when too many people are involved in social media marketing. Specifically, if they all have administrative access to the accounts. Because while you know the nooks and crannies of each network, not everyone is as knowledgeable as you. So how do you leverage the help of your fellow co-workers without having them have a free-for-all?

Make use of the admin features on social networks. On Facebook, for example, you can now assign specific roles for users that limit their ability to do things like create posts, respond as the brand in comments, or create ads:

LinkedIn and Google+ let you assign admin roles, too, but you’re out of luck with Twitter. So either keep your brand’s Twitter login credentials under wraps, or give some serious training to anyone you give those credentials to!

8) Pre-schedule your checkins throughout the day. Even with a monitoring tool set up, you’ll have to check in to each of your social networks throughout the day to respond to comments and interact with fans and followers. Some marketers feel like they need to respond to everyone on social media immediately. While immediacy is great, your network also understands that you aren’t glued to your computer screen at all times. It’s alright (and important for your productivity if you don’t have an employee dedicated only to social media monitoring) to set aside specific times during the day for social media monitoring.

10) Use tools to create visual content. You know you should be creating visual content to share on social media, but you’re not a graphic designer. What do you do? Leverage some of the visual content creation tools that make the task easy. If you have a Smartphone, you should have no trouble finding apps that make you look like a visual content creation genius. There is, of course, the much-loved Instagram to take your photos from blah to beautiful. And there’s a new favorite of many marketers, Over , that lets you overlay text over photos for that kind of content that will get you seriously high engagement.

10) Eliminate the clutter in your analytics. Social media is one of those channels that marketers have simultaneously too much data to analyze, and not enough. Don’t get bogged down in the abundance of data! Spend less time looking at the fluffy metrics that really mean nothing to your overall marketing success, and just focus on a few core metrics.

Utilize these time saving techniques to relieve the burden of social media and to improve efficiency.  It will make social media more effective, less of a time suck and it will give you more control over the process.  Don’t let social media control you.  Instead, you control it.