Inbound marketers have had a hard time with the question of length for years. We can focus on creating the kind of short content which makes sense in a world that moves at a fast pace of social media and busy lives. Longer pieces that have more information are always better. Like many marketing questions, it depends on what is right for your audience and your business. For healthcare marketers, creating focused, deep long-form content as part of your marketing efforts could be worth more time it needs for a few reasons.
Complex Healthcare
This idea is not controversial. There are many years where doctors are expected to spend training and studying before entrusting them the role that speaks to plenty of amounts of complicated knowledge that they need to learn about how the body is working. New research is always available showing up to make things complicated.
The fast-paced cycle of the news means that new research will eventually become exaggerated or oversimplified in reporting, which leaves people either confused or convinced that they know something is not very accurate. When talking about a subject as important and as big as health, the information needed by your audience the most is not the kind which makes exciting headlines as well as easy summaries. It’s what merits in-depth coverage.
People’s healthcare needs are different
Healthcare content which tackles general advice and concerns is pretty common. You might still be able to recall blog posts as well as articles that you have seen discuss the generic health advice for everyone such as drinking lots of water, eating vegetables and exercise. Nothing is wrong about those articles except that a lot of patients are coming to your hospital with very particular concerns.
So, they don’t really need to know if they should be exercising more but they need to know about a certain medical condition that they might probably have at a certain moment. Content which does a deep discussion about answering a person’s questions with issues such as pregnancy, broken arms or legs, or even skin cancer are more meaningful and more relevant to patients who are concerned about them at certain moments than any generic health advice.
Specialized content
Making content focused and specialized on certain topics will definitely provide the lesser visitors but more meaningful relationships compared to content about broad topics and generic issues. Experts in healthcare marketing may choose a numbers game and have as much content published out there with many visitors as much as possible. This might be good but competition is tough with very generic and broad topics.
You might want to go where the competition is less cutthroat and audiences are specifically looking for answers for specific questions and concerns. Also, people will identify your brand more easily this way, because no matter how small their number is, they know that your brand addresses specific needs. This is where doctors and health staff members come in. They see firsthand the kinds of questions and concerns that people have when they go to hospitals.
Long content
Short content is very important in healthcare marketing but over the years, healthcare marketing has found a preference for long content in terms of SEO, reputation and reader acceptance. The rise of social media suggests that people want fast and short content but analytics tools have shown that people stay on sites longer and read long articles with better chances of buying or subscribing. Google also loves long content. Based on a recent analysis made for top-ranked sites for 20,000 keywords, content that have more than 2,000 words tend to dominate the top spots.