Content Strategy
What is a content strategist? I guide website content toward better findability, user engagement, differentiation from competitors, and ultimately achieving client’s business goals. I have worked as a strategist for two years with MERGE, a marketing agency in Boston, and as a freelancer for one year remotely. My clients include health systems (Atlantic Health System, Broward Health, IU Health, Sparrow Health, and UConn Health), Payors (GEHA, Coverys), and pharma/device enterprises (Supernus, Boston Scientific and Radius).
Main areas of expertise:
Content audit
Competitive analysis
UX/CX content collaboration with project development and with content flow in Figma wireframes
Editorial guidance and content management
Basic SEO strategy
Basic information architecture and sitemapping
“Christine is a thoughtful, curious professional with knowledge of the healthcare industry. Her writing and industry experience help her to provide insights on ways to improve patient experiences as they navigate care. Her interest to learn and contribute, and her always ready-to-research attitude, make her a highly collaborative team member.”
Sheri McLeish, Sr. Director Content Strategy at MERGE, Boston, MA
Client: Health system’s bariatric department
Make Visitors Comfortable
The new site does a much better job explaining the bariatric treatment process and preparing patients.
Audience: Prospective bariatric patients
Goals: Increase visibility and patient conversions
Objectives: To find content gaps, help the department better explain the treatment process, and prepare patients.
Actions: I established analysis criteria, analyzed site content, and summarized actionable recommendations.
Deliverables: Slide deck, website copy
Findings: On the positive side, the site's tone was warm and welcoming. The videos were informative and offered important social proof. The content broke myths about bariatric treatment. The content was also very scannable and readable.
On the negative side, the videos were too long and didn’t clarify staff roles. There was a lack of content on costs and safety risks, which were big concerns of patients. The health assessment was not robust and could mislead patients about eligibility. There was a disconnect between what the department offered and what patients needed to prepare for the long treatment process.
Recommendations:
Shorten the videos to ~ 2 minutes and ensure essential content is also offered in text format.
Explain the process more comprehensively with better content bridging and an information hierarchy.
Pull out quotes in the testimonials.
Add content on health conditions that bariatric surgery helps overcome.
Publicize telehealth options.
Clarify offerings like ‘24/7 support.’
Remove dated content.
Create content that will better prepare patients like a pre-op and post-op guide, FAQs, a virtual tour of facilities, and a discussion checklist for doctor visits.
Next steps: The client was aligned with the recommendations.
Client: Medical malpractice insurance company
Audience: Providers, hospital administrators, agents/brokers
Goals: Help the audience get to know Coverys; become a thought leader.
Objectives: To answer whether the content was findable, engaging, and usable, find content gaps, and identify differentiators.
Actions: With the Screaming Frog tool, I built an inventory of the pages and created a keep/edit/delete list. I established analysis criteria and analyzed site analytics and content.
Deliverables: Keep/Edit/Delete list of URLs, content audit slide deck with findings and recommendations, site inventory.
Findings: The audit found that the site had relevant and high-quality editorial content, but the search tool lacked enough topics to be useful. There were also a lot of content gaps and a lack of compelling imagery. The content was often targeted to a general audience, but the different segments had very distinct needs.
Recommendations:
Strengthen the About section by adding content on their DEI efforts, a compelling mission statement, the community work the company did, and their awards and accolades.
Reduce the space given to leadership photos which were hindering their DEI branding efforts.
Add testimonials to differentiate and build social proof.
Showcase innovative products for differentiation and conversion.
Expand filtering and cross-linking to improve findability.
Add specific topics, content formats, and segments in the search tool.
For findability, add a Related Content component to each page and build a taxonomy.
Next steps: The client was aligned with the recommendations and, with UX recommendations also in hand, is in the process of modifying the site.
Expand Content Search Tool
A major problem with findability on the site is that the content library has a narrow search tool. They need to expand the tool to include content formats and more popular topics.
Increase Engagement
Most pages on the current site lack compelling imagery and cross-links to related content.
Client: Pharma company
Audience: Providers with patients who have cervical dystonia or chronic sialorrhea
Goal: To transition from drug representatives to the website for lead generation.
Objectives: To analyze whether the content was findable, engaging, and usable and offer recommendations.
Actions: I inventoried the URLs with the Screaming Frog tool. I established analysis criteria, reviewed the competitive analysis done recently by MERGE, and analyzed site analytics. I then analyzed site content and synthesized my recommendations.
Deliverables: Keep/Edit/Delete list of content, slide deck with findings and recommendations, site inventory
Findings: The company relied too heavily on print leave-behinds and, as a result, the site had scant content. Important CTAs were missing or hard to see. The ordering and reimbursement steps were not clear. Bragging points were not emphasized. Important content like injection training was missing.
Recommendations:
Transition high-quality printed content that representatives were using to HTML for the website.
Add CTAs for ordering, reimbursement, and injection training.
Make ordering and reimbursement content clearer.
Emphasize the beneficial differentiators of nonmixing drug administration.
Enhance digitalization and telehealth tools to increase access and improve convenience. That included their training videos.
Show them examples of excellent training materials by competitors to give them an idea of what was possible.
Next steps: The client was aligned with the recommendations and modified the site.
Transition PDF Content to HTML
On the final site, the printed “leave-behind” materials were transitioned to HTML, making the site more robust.
Clarify Content and Boost Revenue
The final site makes the reimbursement process much clearer by breaking it down and consolidating it all in one place.
Compare to Inspire
I gave examples of excellent training resources produced by competitors like Dysport.