The health and wellness blogger’s guide to content strategy

Publishing a blog without a defined content strategy is like setting sail without a map. You might move forward, but you’re going to struggle to get to your destination.

Instead, having a clear content strategy for your blog keeps you focused on serving your unique target audience, avoiding unnecessary work for your team and staying aligned on your goals. You’ll be empowered to say no to requests that don’t support your priorities. And you’ll know how your efforts are performing and understand where to make adjustments.

In just a few well-executed steps, you can create a successful blog content strategy for your health and wellness blog.

How to build your blog content strategy in three steps

A successful healthcare blog strategy should engage, educate and inspire readers with content that aligns with their interests — on the topics, formats and channels they prefer. This builds trust and fosters a long-term relationship between your audience and your healthcare brand.

After years of helping health systems, hospitals, payers, non-profits and health B2B organizations craft winning blog content strategies, we’ve identified three essential steps for success.

1. Start with a blog mission statement

Content strategists dive into metrics and uncover a story — the story of user behavior, search engine optimization (SEO) and engagement metrics. But you can’t just present executives with an Excel document full of data and expect them to understand it; instead, you need to translate that data intYour blog’s mission statement is the foundation of your content strategy. It defines the “why” behind your blog and ensures every post aligns with your organization’s goals. A strong mission statement keeps your content focused. This helps you determine which ideas fit your blog strategy and which do not.

Answer these questions when writing your mission statement:

1. What is the overarching purpose of your blog? Why does it exist?
2. Who are you trying to reach? Be as specific as possible. What value does your blog bring to their lives?
3. What is your blog’s voice, tone and personality? How does it relate to your organization’s overarching brand, ethos and value proposition?

Having a defined blog mission statement, such as this example from Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, contributes to a stronger and more cohesive brand identity. It communicates your values and goals, which helps establish your blog as a credible and trustworthy source of information.

2. Set clear goals for your blog

Your blog strategy differs from your overall website strategy. Its goal may not be to immediately drive a revenue-related conversion (such as making an appointment) but instead build brand awareness and domain authority for your hospital website over time.

Define what specific, measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) will show the blog is successful. Examples include:

• Increasing monthly organic traffic
• Achieving a certain number of high-performing blogs per quarter (defining what “high-performing” means to your team)
• Boosting user engagement (e.g., visitors read two or more assets during a single visit)
• Driving site visitors to provider profiles or appointment requests after reading an article

3. Develop a consistent publishing and distribution plan

Consistency is key when developing the content calendar for your health and wellness blog. Your calendar should include topics, deadlines and any promotional activities.

Prioritize quality over quantity — consistently publishing valuable content is more important than frequent but low-impact posts. Be realistic about your team’s capacity to produce consistent, valuable content and consider scaling up with external writers when needed.

But the work’s not done once the blog article goes live. Factor in targeted social media posts and email marketing to your audiences — and place them where those key audiences want to receive messages. Your content distribution strategy may differ based on the timeliness of the subject and your core audience’s preferred channels.

Want to enhance your content strategy? Learn how adding a content strategist to your team can accelerate your efforts.

3 ways to set your health and wellness blog apart

1. Give your blog a unique name

Creating a memorable content experience for your readers starts with a name.

Shine, the name for Methodist Health System’s interactive blog and health magazine, reflects the organization’s overall faith-based mission to improve and save lives through compassionate, quality healthcare.

2. Create and maintain high-quality, unique content

Choose timely topics that will resonate with your target audience and put your hospital’s spin on those topics. Here’s where a competitive content analysis is key: ideally, one that includes not only your direct competitors in the market but also larger health and wellness systems and even non-healthcare brands your team looks to for inspiration. What’s working well, and where are opportunities to improve or outperform competitors?

For example, while many hospital systems include primary care and wellness content, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System carved out a unique health niche with a college health article hub that provides information for college students and their parents. It’s about helping young adults learn to navigate the healthcare system.

To maintain content quality, regularly audit your existing blog posts:

• Refresh and republish high-performing articles published three or more years ago.
• Consolidate or retire redundant or outdated, low-performing content.
• Ensure new posts don’t compete with existing articles for search rankings

3. Align your blog messaging with your brand

Make sure your blog strategy reinforces your organization’s unique brand, voice and tone. Swedish accomplishes this goal in its health and wellness blog by:

• Positioning the hospital brand early in an article summary
• Showcasing providers in an empathetic yet expert manner
• Including clear calls-to-action that link to related services

Strategic messaging strengthens your health and wellness blog’s credibility and value, and ultimately establishes it as a trusted resource for health information.

Want to learn more about blog content strategy? Attend this webinar with Stella and AdventHealth’s John Katez.

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Smart blog strategy starts here

Need help refining your blog content strategy? WG Content has 20+ years of experience crafting custom healthcare content and strategy. Contact us to learn how we can elevate your healthcare brand’s blog.

More tips on blog content strategy:

Stella Hart

Stella is an experienced healthcare marketer, digital strategist, and user…

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