by Ken Krause | Oct 26, 2016 | Blog
By now you’ve no doubt heard about the benefits of establishing a corporate blog. One of the most important, of course, is for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Google (and other search engines) rewards frequent content updates on your website, so if your blog is connected to your website, and it’s active you’ll rise in the organic search rankings. That makes blog writing a pretty important part of your marketing program.
This simple fact creates an ongoing challenge for many, however. Namely, coming up with interesting topics to blog about.
Sometimes the ideas flow easily, especially at first. It seems like you have a cornucopia of information to share with the market. After that initial gold rush, however, you find yourself staring at the blinking, nagging cursor for longer and longer periods of time. You’ve expended the obvious topics and begin to wonder if establishing that blog was such a great idea after all.
The reality is great blog writing ideas are all around you. They crop up in your life every day. Like Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza’s idea for a show about nothing, you just have to learn to recognize them.
Comment on industry articles
One of the good things about working in healthcare and health IT (HIT) is that there is never a lack of new information, new approaches, new discoveries or new regulations coming out. Most of us get several newsletter and at least scan the headlines every day.
These articles can become a rich source of blog fodder. For example, if an article announces a new rule or a change to a program from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that will affect your customers/clients, that’s a blog post! Link to the original article, provide a one- or two-sentence synopsis, then add your thoughts about what it means to the industry.
Or perhaps a new research report has come out that could affect your clients. Again, bringing it to your clients’ attention and providing a little analysis with it can provide added value to them while giving you a blog post that practically writes itself.
Share a tip or trick that helped a client with a general issue
This is another rich source of blog writing ideas. Perhaps your team has helped a client solve a particular issue, such as data that needed to be scrubbed in a certain way in order to be used in a specific electronic health records (EHR) system. Whatever the issue, there’s a good chance it isn’t just that one client who is facing it.
Talk about the challenge, and the problems it’s causing, then explain how to solve it. All you really have to do is recap what you’ve already done no original thinking required. If you’re not directly involved with this aspect of the business, check with the development or customer service team. They can probably keep you supplied with ideas for months. Just be sure not to give away anything the business would consider a competitive advantage.
Blog about discoveries in a related field
Everything you write about doesn’t have to be directly in your company’s space. Sometimes it can just have a loose relationship with a tie-back later.
Take the example of cognitive computing. There are all sorts of advances in this area going on outside of healthcare as well as inside. If you hear about how cognitive computing is being applied to make self-driving cars smarter, there’s a blog post. You can write about what is already happening with cars, the speculate on how it might affect healthcare or HIT in the future.
Mine some key data
Data and analytics are huge in healthcare and HIT these days. It seems just about every organization is generating tons of them. Most, however, are under-utilizing that information, especially when it comes to marketing.
You can take advantage of that by looking through the reports for trends that are interesting without giving away anything that again is proprietary. For example, if you have software that enables payers to create member portals, and there is a sudden uptick in the number of portals your team is creating, you may want to comment about how portals are on the rise and speculate as to why. That will also give you an opportunity to talk about the advantages of portals to encourage more sales.
Or maybe you see that your clients’ customer satisfaction scores are suddenly on the rise. You can find out what changes they’ve made to enable that to happen and share them with your blog audience.
Pay attention to day-to-day conversations
Each day you, your co-workers, your clients and others share information and ideas in passing. It may be through conversations, emails, reports, meetings or some other sources.
Hidden within the ordinary course of business may be a few nuggets that can make worthy blog posts. All you’ll need to do is listen to them with that filter in mind. If a co-worker says something you find interesting write it down. Establish a folder for emails that contain good ideas that you can reference later if you’re stuck.
However you save them, the good news is when you need an idea and none are coming to you immediately you can go back to your files and dig one up. Just be sure you have enough information available to remember what the original topic was. Nothing worse than having a great headline and no idea what it means.
Work with your PR agency on ideas
While most healthcare and health IT companies tend to be very specialized in a particular aspect of the industry, PR agencies such as Amendola Communications cover a much wider swath. That can work in your favor by bringing in ideas that are related to, but not dead center in, your sweet spot.
If you have one, you can brainstorm topics with your PR agency, taking advantage of their experience to in other areas, especially general industry knowledge, to develop blog topics you might not have thought of on your own.
Of course, having a PR agency also means you can turn over some or all of the content creation to them, particularly if writing isn’t your strong suit. But even if you prefer to do your own writing, that sort of collaboration can open you to new ideas and areas that help build your blog as a go-to resource for your target audience.
Yes, blog writing can be challenging. The Internet is always hungry for new content. But the reality is great ideas for posts are all around you. You just have to know how to find them or let them find you.
by admin | Aug 24, 2016 | News
Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and healthcare IT public relations and marketing agency, announced today that it has been selected as the agency of record for Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCRA). Amendola will provide a broad range of public relations and content services that promote Vocera’s mission to break down communication barriers and improve the healthcare experience for patients, families and care team members around the world.
“We knew Amendola Communications was the right agency to promote our unique value proposition to the right audiences and media outlets, with its deep industry knowledge and significant media and analyst relationships in the healthcare and healthcare IT sectors,” said Kathy English, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing. “The decision to hire Amendola was a clear and easy one to make after vetting the agency’s track record of delivering high-performance PR and marketing campaigns in our targeted markets. In just a few months, Amendola has already exceeded our expectations.”
Smartphones and wireless technology are fundamentally changing how care teams connect and collaborate, and Vocera is leading the way by supporting all types of communication, working in concert with multiple devices, and integrating with more than 70 clinical systems. The Vocera Communication Platform provides a secure, enterprise-class solution with an intelligent active staff directory that enables users to connect and communicate with each other instantly via voice communication, secure text messaging, and contextual alarm notifications. Used by more than 1,000 hospitals around the world, Vocera delivers the right information to the right person at the right time, saving valuable steps and time.
Amendola Communications is executing public relations, social media and content marketing strategy and programs for Vocera, with a special focus on the company’s thought leadership. Vocera’s leadership team is made up of widely respected clinicians and tech industry luminaries who are at the forefront of national movements in healthcare today, including offering technology solutions that address longstanding communication challenges and restoring the human connection at every point of a patient’s healthcare experience.
“We felt an instant connection to Vocera’s impressive team and look forward to promoting their initiatives and successes in this high-tech market where we have deep expertise,” said Jodi Amendola, CEO of Amendola Communications. “Our team is leveraging both Vocera’s thought leaders and clients to convey their important value proposition to the healthcare industry that critically depends on teamwork and the right information in order to globally dismantle communication barriers across even the largest healthcare enterprises.”
About Amendola Communications
Amendola Communications is an award-winning national public relations, marketing communications, social media and content marketing firm. Named one of the best information technology (IT) PR firms in the nation four times by PRSourceCode, Amendola represents some of the best-known brands and groundbreaking startups in the healthcare and HIT industries. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros delivers strategic guidance and effective solutions to help organizations boost their reputation and drive market share. For more information about the PR industry’s “A Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact: Tara Stultz | 440.225.9595| tstultz@acmarketingpr.com
by Stephanie Janard | Aug 17, 2016 | Blog
Confidence. When you have it, life is a panorama of possibilities. Success just seems to follow, and even the occasional failure turns into a new opportunity. As a longtime marketing and PR copywriter, I’ve noticed company success follows a similar trajectory. Highly successful companies are, without exception, led by true believers in the company’s products and mission. And they tend to prove this faith in how they deliver their marketing and PR messaging.
By the same token, organizations that doubt their value proposition do exactly the opposite like when the US Postal Service infamously sent a status report to US Congress members via Fed EX. Or when Blackberry tweeted about a new marketing launch with an iPhone.
Both are textbook examples of how fear can paralyze an inherently good offering and jeopardize future success. With that, here’s a checklist of traits exhibited by companies that do believe in their ability to radically impact the market:
- They leverage and promote what they are uniquely known for, even indeed, especially if this value proposition bucks industry norms
- They are not overly spooked by the competition. They are obsessed with delivering outstanding outcomes for their customers.
- They don’t agonize that they’re not packing enough information in a single marketing or PR piece. They are laser-focused on getting information out to enough audiences.
- They are single-minded in their mission to make their industry and their customers worlds better and put their resources to work in proving how this can be done.
Content Marketing = Messaging Confidence
So how can companies do all of the above, in a planned, strategic way? From my experience at Amendola, they are the ones most likely to dive enthusiastically into the realm of content marketing creating and strategically distributing a valuable library of information until they effectively dominate, if not own, their industry’s narrative.
I absolutely have to call out our client Health Catalyst here. The company has methodically built the definitive online knowledge hub on how healthcare organizations are creating better outcomes through, in part, analytics and other data-informing tools. Searches for various terms and trends in healthcare often lead one to the Health Catalyst website the knowledge library is that extensive and well-crafted.
Turning customers into true believers, too
Health Catalyst also leverages its vast knowledge for an annual conference that is becoming the best-known event in the healthcare analytics arena. I think that this, too, is another hallmark of the true believer who leads his or her company to success: there is constant interaction with customers. If not conferences, then smaller user groups. If not weekly or monthly face-to-face meetings, then certainly regular opportunities to connect via webinars, online forums, and more. There are newsletters, both print and electronic if not sent monthly, then quarterly. (All of these efforts, incidentally, provide your loyal customer champions with information they can take to the powers-to-be to make the case for your company.)
This leads to another trend I’m noticing companies increasingly have someone in charge of elevating customer experiences. Critically, these people work closely with customers to set benchmark targets and then help to meet or exceed them. This can greatly benefit content marketing campaigns by cultivating case studies that reveal astonishing results.
A tell-tale sign of insecure messaging
Here’s an inescapable fact about the healthcare IT industry: many companies in this space are convinced that healthcare executives and clinicians exist on a remote and humorless plane away from the rest of humanity.
You can easily see this in much of the marketing and PR messaging that churns out from these companies. It reads as if written by a robot programmed to generate only acronyms, jargon and ubiquitous claims such as “transforming operational efficiency” and “aligning business and clinical outcomes.”
That’s about the only kind of writing that will get the greenlight in a company that isn’t confident its prospects have actual emotion buttons. Or, more to the point, aren’t confident the company’s product is compelling enough to push these emotional buttons.
In his delightfully titled blog post “What HIT Writing Needs is More Cowbell” my colleague Ken Krause lays out a good case for taking a more consumer-oriented approach to writing for healthcare audiences. “At the end of the day, clinicians and HIT leaders put their pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else,” Ken reminds us.
He adds, “When physicians plunk down money for that highly coveted BWM, it’s not because of gas mileage research; it’s because they’re sure they’ll look cool driving it.”
Indeed. And these all-too-human people work in a profession that can be extraordinarily stressful, chaotic, astoundingly over-regulated, chronically under-staffed, and many other characteristics that are a recipe for howling-out-loud humor. You read that right. As comedy writing guru John Vorhous has astutely noted, the essence of comedy is rooted in truth and pain and there’s a lot of pain in delivering healthcare in today’s modern era.
That said, I’ve yet to see healthcare IT break the comedy barrier (some of us are trying), but inroads are being made in tech B2B, thanks to a series of brilliant Adobe Marketing Cloud commercials. It is very clear that Adobe knows its audience: marketing professionals. Specifically, Adobe knows what drives us insane and nails it in what are hands down some of the funniest ads I’ve ever seen.
When customers know you get them, they have more trust in buying from you. And humor is one of the most effective ways of translating this empathy. Are you confident you understand your customers true pains? Then be more confident in using humor to market to them.
Becoming more confident in your value proposition
Sometimes, all we need is a taste of success to get a big boost in confidence. Engaging in some or all of the above activities content marketing, focusing on the customer experience, cultivating more customer interactions, crafting messages that speak on a human level increases both the odds of company success and confidence in your product. Basically, these activities get the word out about your value proposition which is 98 percent of the work involved in getting this message to take root.
by Jodi Amendola | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog
Cloud technology gets a lot of deserving recognition for equipping organizations with a modern IT infrastructure at a fraction of the time and upfront cost it would require to build one in-house. In an interesting paradox, the value of hiring a public relations agency is less perceived, even though the benefits are much the same professional expertise and tools (and not to mention, valuable media relationships) all at the ready, priced at a pay-only-for-what-you-use basis. Yet PR agencies are often asked, “Why should I hire you instead of adding a full time employee?”
As it happens, there’s a quantifiable difference. While there’s no doubt that a full-time, senior-level or even junior employee can bring value to an organization, there’s a decided limit in experience, media relationships and hours in the week. By contrast, a public relations agency like Amendola typically assigns a team of five people to each client account. On average, each team member has 15+ years of experience in one or more niches such as account management, strategic counsel, crisis communications, social media, media relations, content development and more all of which won’t necessarily cost more than bringing on a single full-time employee. In addition, when employees call in sick or go on vacation, you may be caught short. Not so with an agency team behind you, where PR activities are constantly covered.
Hiring the PR agency brain trust
One of the most compelling reasons to hire an agency like Amendola is that our employees come from a variety of backgrounds, giving our clients access to broad expertise. Some of us hail from agencies, while others are former TV, newspaper and radio reporters. Others come from the client side, including provider and payer organizations, healthcare IT companies and industry trade associations. What this means for Amendola’s clients is that instead of having one person with some degree of knowledge in multiple areas, they can put multiple experts to work in many different areas.
For example, a client that’s been focused on the provider side may at some point want to enter the pharmaceutical space. That’s no problem at Amendola, where we can quickly add strategists or writers, social media or media relations experts–deeply versed in life sciences to the existing client team. We even have market intelligence researchers who can uncover valuable information about newly targeted spaces. When it comes to gaining insight and a foothold on new markets, the power of an experienced PR agency works faster than just one or two insulated employees.
Strategy driven by business goals instead of personal comfort levels
Speaking of the in-house bubble, very often whoever drives public relations and marketing in these departments makes decisions based on their own expertise, comfort and convenience. This isn’t a criticism so much as the natural propensity of humans to do what they do best even if it’s not necessarily best for the company’s business objectives. And so, these professionals end up spending all of their time/energy/budget on their favorite or most familiar strategies, and neglect other often important areas.
At Amendola, we offer expertise in all areas of marketing communications, branding, PR and content, which no single person can possibly provide. This enables us to determine and deploy strategies that are most likely to meet our client’s business goals. If that includes social media, we’ll assign a social media expert to the account. If brand awareness, we’ll bring in a well-connected media relations. We will customize our services to meet your business objectives.
The rewards of resource sharing
You might be skeptical that all this access to public relations expertise really can be had without investing in a sizable in-house department. But as a PR agency that works with many different clients, Amendola is able to spread the business costs across this extensive client portfolio another commonality with cloud services vendors that spread the cost of infrastructure across multiple accounts, sparing any single customer from having to shoulder the entire cost. While we offer a full range of services, including some that are a la carte, the majority of our clients have monthly retainer agreements in place that are comparable to the monthly payroll of a single employee, minus the costs of training and other in-house employment expenses, such as health insurance.
Again, these clients benefit from the experience already gained by our work for others; very rarely do we encounter a completely unfamiliar topic in the realm of healthcare or healthcare IT. And when we learn something new, all of our clients benefit sooner or later. That’s the power of “public relations-as-a-service” it brings top-tier public relations services to all.
by Ken Krause | Jul 20, 2016 | Blog
Long before I entered the world of health IT marketing, I remember my father telling me “Ask an engineer what time it is and he’ll tell you how the clock was made.” I don’t actually recall the reason he said it although there must’ve been one since he wasn’t one to speak in adages normally but I do recall the lesson.
The adage has taken on new meaning today. One of the cool things about working at Amendola Communications is that I regularly meet brilliant people doing brilliant things to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. I’m frequently amazed that they can not only think of innovative products and services to develop but also can put them together.
Yet therein lies the rub, so to speak. They are so justifiably proud of the thinking, work and effort that went into their products that they forget the average user isn’t interested in all the inner workings or how they got to where they are. They just want to “know the time.” They care more about the “why” than the “how.”
Jargon and technobabble
One of the biggest challenges these engineering-oriented folks face when it comes to health IT marketing is the technologist’s love of jargon and technobabble. Throw in the healthcare world’s love of acronyms and abbreviations and pretty soon you”ll have an incompressible communique that might even baffle Alan Turing. (For those not familiar with Turing, he’s the man who led the British efforts to break the Nazi’s “unbreakable” Enigma codes in WWII, which helped shorten the war by several years. The movie about that effort, The Imitation Game, is an excellent watch by the way.)
One popular phrase that seems to have accompanied most health IT marketing announcements over the past 15 years is “open and interoperable.” Given the healthcare industry’s well-documented and ongoing challenges with interoperability, at first glance that would seem like an important benefit. But in reality, the phrase has been so over-used and mis-used that it has really lost all meaning. Besides, if every technology that made that claim actually was open and interoperable, health IT wouldn’t be in the state it’s in right now.
The same goes for many of the facts, figures and specifications often touted in press releases, data sheets and other materials. While this information has its value, that value is not in leading the discussion. It’s more support to assure potential buyers that a product they are now convinced solves their problem will also work within its existing infrastructure.
This difference between facts and useful information really came home to me a few months ago when I was asked to look at a press release and data sheet to determine how much editing would be required to make them effective for health IT marketing. I diligently read through the press release. I then diligently read through the data sheet.
Finally I gave my response. I thought they both needed a lot of work because after all that reading I wasn’t quite sure what the product did or why anyone in healthcare would want it. I knew what sorts of protocols had been used in its creation, and the alphabet soup of standards it met. I’m fairly certain I even knew what type of software development was used in its creation and what they people who worked on it liked to eat for lunch.
The only thing I didn’t know is exactly what it did. Or why I should care.
The Imitation Game
This time I’m not referencing the movie, but instead the way organizations seem to like to imitate the language used by competitors or big players in the industry to make their marketing materials seem more “official” and important. This is especially true on websites.
When we start with a new client, or are pitching a new prospect, one of the first things I and most of my colleagues do is go to the client’s/prospect’s website to learn something about them. Sometimes this is a very fruitful venture that provides great background and insight into the organization’s purpose and objectives.
But there are definitely times when I come away less informed than I was before I went onto the site. Platitudes, clichs and marketingspeak picked up and (slightly) repackaged from the websites of companies someone on the team admires rule the day. It makes me think that the company has no idea what it does and who its audience is. Or that it has a solution that’s in search of a problem to solve.
Rather than trying to sound like everyone else, and one-up the competition in the use of meaningless phrases, smart marketers will understand who they’re trying to reach and what problem(s) they have. They will then craft their messages to address those audiences and their issues directly. And simply.
It’s like a FedEx Super Bowl commercial from the last decade. A group of underlings in suits are trying to explain to the CEO why they need to switch to FedEx. They start out with an MBA-level discussion which goes right over the head of the CEO. Then they simplify it to more of an undergrad-level explanation. Still nothing but crickets.
Finally someone says, “For every dollar we spend we’ll get two back.” Sold!
If all your competitors are trying to outdo each other with technical information and complex explanations, don’t look at it as a guideline. Look at it as an opportunity.
Remember Apple didn’t get to be the world’s valuable company by selling technology and specs. That’s what their competitors tried to do. Instead, Apple sold solutions and simplicity. In fact, their whole brand was based on making their technology so easy to use and un-intimidating that you didn’t even need an owner’s manual. You could figure it out for yourself.
Keep it simple
Whether you’re creating a press release, white paper, collateral piece, video or some other form of communication it’s important to focus first on the benefits to the user. Even the most technical audience needs you to identify what problem(s) you solve or improvements you deliver before they will invest any more time. Answer the question: “Why should I care?”
If they don’t understand what the product or service does immediately, and why it will make their jobs easier/lives better, all the rest is unnecessary detail. Especially if your audience is clinicians; they already have enough inner workings to worry about in the human body.
It’s great to be proud of the technological breakthroughs you have created; celebrate them fully. But when it comes to PR and marketing, remember to focus on the WHY. Being able to tell time is WHY we buy a clock.
To learn more about how to communicate technology benefits more effectively, click here.
What has your experience been? Have you ever gone to a website or read a brochure and left more confused about what the company did than when you started? How do you address the people within your own organization who want to stuff marketing materials full of jargon and marketingspeak?
