Webinar: Create a Mission-Driven Blog Strategy That Resonates

0:00:04.4 Kristen Lecky: Welcome, John and Stella. So I’ll introduce John first. John Katez. He’s a senior social media and digital content manager from Advent Health. John is a digital strategist leading social and content initiatives, including social media, editorial planning, web copy, email newsletters, blogs, and analytics. So just a little bit of a job. He is skilled in driving brand awareness and engagement through innovative digital campaigns and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to develop and execute strategic content initiatives. So welcome, John.

0:00:37.4 John Katez: Thank you.

0:00:38.5 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, we’ve enjoyed working with you over the years and so it’s good to have you and thank you for joining us today. Of course, we also have Stella. Stella Hart is one of our content strategists here. Stella is an experienced digital strategist and user experience analyst with a background in patient education and healthcare marketing. She’s passionate about health literacy, web accessibility, and giving consumers the tools they need to take an active role in their care. So welcome, Stella.

0:01:04.9 Stella Hart: Thanks. Glad to be here.

0:01:06.3 Kristen Lecky: Yeah. So before we get started, I had a fun fact that I wanted to share with our attendees because what they don’t know about Stella and John and maybe even myself, some of you guys will know this information is that all three of us share a love for basset hounds. We’ve all had basset hounds, we’ve all lived with basset hounds. And I think that’s really. It takes like a special person to live with a basset hound. I think Stella and John both can agree and understand when I say that I was just sharing with both of them that my son actually wrote his, his high school college application essay on the social difficulties of living with a basset hound because they smell so bad. So anyway, fun fact about Stella and John and I guess myself as well. So today’s webinar, we really are going to do have more of a conversation. So no slides, no PowerPoint, we’re not going to pull anything up. We’re going to just do lots of Q and A. So I’m excited for this conversation. I think it’s really going to inspire some really good questions. So let’s go ahead and get started.

0:02:04.7 Kristen Lecky: I have my notes here with my questions for you. All right, so John, I’m going to have you kick us off. Since the title of our webinar is, you know, a mission driven blog, I thought it would be important for us, you to kind of lay the, the frame, the groundwork here in terms of what is the mission of Advent Health and what does that mean to you personally?

0:02:26.2 John Katez: Yeah, great question to start us off. So our mission at Advent Health is to extend the healing ministry of Christ. So this mission is deeply rooted in our commitment to whole person care which we think encompasses physical, emotional, spiritual and mental well being. So being a part of an organization that values holistic care and strives to make a positive impact on individuals lives definitely means the world to me. My team has given a lot of power and we always try to communicate the mission through various content strategies, whether that’s social media, newsletters, blogs. We always want to ensure that like that message of hope and healing reaches our entire audience. So together with our teams, employees, our partners, like y’all, we really like to contribute and create a supportive and compassionate environment for all of those communities that we serve.

0:03:11.3 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, and I can really share in the enthusiasm for the mission. Just working with so many of your teams throughout Advent Health in terms of like just that shared energy and commitment around the mission and how no matter where these teams and what office they work out of that it really is, you know, a shared energy around that mission. So thank you for sharing that. So with that in mind, talk to us a little about a little bit about what that means to the blog. So what kind of inspired you to move in a new direction with your blog strategy? Recognizing that you have this really passionate mission as healthcare, all healthcare organizations have, but you have this particular, you know, focus in that area. How does that, what did that mean to your blog strategy and how did you adopt that?

0:03:56.4 John Katez: Yeah, I will say our mission is definitely a differentiator. And over the past few years our blog strategy has undergone a lot of different changes. We’re trying to keep up with the times. We have a lot of competitors out there that are just content powerhouses. So we’ve done everything from like relying on internal, you know, in house copywriters that create content. We also like to diversify our content. So that’s kind of where we bring in some kind of different vendors and agencies that might have different, you know, point of views. But we always try to stick rooted in our mission. So any piece of content we do, we want to make sure is laddering up to physical well being, spiritual well being, mental well being. I will say the primary driver behind all these has definitely been the competitive landscape, not only competitors, but the changing landscape, whether that’s SEO changing or search algorithms, the, the onset of AI and AI overview. So we’re always trying to stay on top of it to make sure our content is the most, you know, it’s resonating the most with our consumers.

0:04:54.8 Kristen Lecky: I put you a Little bit on the spot. You talked about your competitors and content powerhouses. Talk to us a little bit more about how that is for you a unique differentiator then like how do you lean into reconciling against the powerhouse of content with this real focus on mission driven.

0:05:11.3 John Katez: Yeah. So we might not have some of the largest content libraries like some of our competitors do. Where we really put a lot of our focus on is creating content that’s going to resonate for consumers or if it’s older content, content that we have, optimizing that content. So some of our competitors might have 10,000 blogs out there, but if you’re a consumer trying to find a specific, you know, health topic or information around a health occurrence or health observance, it might be really hard to dig through that. So going back and looking at some of our older content and looking at high volume search keywords or little things we can put into, maybe like pull out schema markups on Google, things like that is really going to set us apart.

0:05:51.1 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, yeah. And we’re going to talk about in a little bit what you’re seeing and how it’s working, you know, to know that it’s making an impact. But let’s start with how we operationalize this. So Stella, I know you play a big part in supporting John and his team in identifying topics and, you know, executing and deploying this strategy.

0:06:12.9 Kristen Lecky: So talk to us a little bit about what the operation of this looks like. Can you talk to like how do you identify topics? Sort of what is the workflow and how you support the team?

0:06:22.2 Stella Hart: Yeah, it’s a great question. I’m really involved in an ongoing research and discovery process for blog topics and then the team helps us pick what’s going to be the best angle. How do we put the advent health stamp on this in our own voice? So what keeps it interesting is there are lots of different data sources and various inputs that we can look to find inspiration for different topics. And so the first place I usually take a look at is their existing content. So they have a health or they have their existing blog and then I’m looking at traffic for the last 30 days and where are we seeing some interesting surges in interest. So are there any noticeable spikes in traffic or engagement when we’re looking at organic performance? So if there are blogs, for example, that were written three or more years ago, but they’re seeing a recent surge in interest, that’s a great opportunity to take a look at that blog, refresh, potentially republish it, re promote it, make sure that it’s optimized with the latest keywords, the most accurate information. That’s a great opportunity there. We’re recycling their existing content. I’m also looking at regional and national topics, current events, things that are emerging or currently trending as topics.

0:07:49.5 Stella Hart: The marketing term for this sometimes is called news jacking. You know, even looking at pop culture, where are those topics that people are really interested in really meeting the audience where they are? And I think Advent Health takes a really sophisticated approach to looking at health observances. You know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for example. So a lot of organizations may just put out a press release and that’s the title. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But Advent Health takes that next step of what are the questions that people are really asking around this topic? And how do we serve up content that is going to relate to that observance and perform well and be something that folks really want to read and then something else to keep in mind. So there’s a lot of competition out there. There’s a lot of content out there. We’re really looking for that sweet spot of high user interest and low competition. So where are those topics that people may not have answered in the past? It could be a new question that folks are asking in large numbers or something to that effect. But where are the gaps in the landscape where we can have a piece of content that’s going to meet the target audience needs? And then we’re also keeping a close eye on competitor and benchmark brands.

0:09:19.0 Stella Hart: Right. So what are the topics that they’ve recently covered? Is there content that they have on their website that sees ongoing interest? And so that’s another great way for Advent Health to identify potential gaps. What’s performing for their competitors, and where can we have a piece of content that maybe answers that as well? So after I conduct my research, I’ll deliver the topic and maybe some potential titles or angles to the larger Advent Health group. And we have phone calls where we meet and discuss as a team. They’re really fun.

0:09:53.9 Kristen Lecky: You gotta sell those ideas, right, Stella?

0:09:56.1 Stella Hart: Yeah.

0:09:57.0 Kristen Lecky: And convince him it’s the right one.

0:10:00.0 Stella Hart: Right? Yeah.

0:10:00.7 Stella Hart: And I get to come in and say, you know, this is what the data is pointing to. Is this an angle that’s going to resonate with your market and with your brand? Because they really are the experts when it comes to their mission and the folks that they’re trying to reach. So we also talk about, these are the data sources, but anecdotally, what are the conversations we ourselves are having around our kitchen tables. I remember back around Thanksgiving, we were talking about the safety of various forms of like plastic cookware and microplastics. And this seemed to be something that was really coming up with everyone on the call. And after that, you know, I can jump in and look for the latest keyword research and see what folks are really asking around those topics.

0:10:50.0 Kristen Lecky: Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a deep dive on and understanding, you know, what are on the hearts and minds of our consumers and our patients in our community, reconciling that maybe against what content exists already, what’s out there with their market in terms of our competitors pitching the ideas to John. So I’m curious because you do this, you know, for other organizations, both in your, your prior career as well as here at WG Content, what’s different? I mean, do you find that there’s something different in how you’re looking and researching to pitch those topics that’s different for Advent Health versus maybe some other. Just curious, like what sort of nuances exist for this strategy?

0:11:31.7 Stella Hart: Yeah, well, that’s such a great question. We definitely want to localize the recommendations that we make for their specific target audience. And because I’ve had the privilege of working with Advent Health for more than a year at this point, I already know I can’t suggest that topic or, you know, these are things.

0:11:51.8 Kristen Lecky: Yeah. You learn, kind of… Yeah.

0:11:55.5 Stella Hart: Or, you know, we see a lot of engagement and interest in content aimed at parents and caregivers. So that’s a place where I’m just constantly going back to that well to see what are those questions that folks are asking.

0:12:09.7 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, no, that’s helpful. And so John, when she pitches ideas, how do you decide what to move forward on? I’m, I’m curious what kind of the governance of this looks like. Like, you know, how do you know where to say yes or when to say yes and when to say no.

0:12:24.1 John Katez: Yeah. So kind of as Stella alluded to, we have like a call with like a larger Advent Health group. So I’m blessed with like a really diverse team, not just my content and social media team, but we bring in folks from other teams. We’ve got folks on the comms team, folks from our reputation management team. So we have a lot of different perspectives in there and we’ll round robin. So while, you know, maybe three or four of us might be, you know, give the thumbs up on a topic, you know, something about breastfeeding, our rep management team might flag like hey, cool with the topic. But just be aware we’re going to insert ourselves into this conversation and we might have comments, you know, expressing one view versus another view. Do we want to be a part of that conversation? So it’s really good to have the different perspectives just to think about things. Not maybe some of us aren’t thinking about.

0:13:07.6 John Katez: It’s important not to work in silos and to understand those different perspectives. But I would say kind of that’s what the governance looks like. I would say the strategy definitely has evolved. You know, when we were writing blogs years ago, it might take like a week or so to get a first draft.

0:13:22.0 John Katez: Now with some of these like trend spotting topics like Stella was talking about, our turnaround time goal is 24 hours. So by the time Stella pitches an idea, if we’re sold in and we open up, you know, something in our project management system, the goal is to have a first draft within 24 hours with also a corresponding social image so we can drive traffic to the blog through social. So I said, that’s been a huge success. Obviously not just me, but our digital studio team, our copywriters, our design team that’s making those social graphics. We’ve all kind of come together and anytime there’s a trending news story, we jump into action.

0:13:57.5 Kristen Lecky: Okay, so 24 hours, I think, I’m sure you have. We have a lot of people on this webinar that are like salivating at that because, like, that’s the dream, like, that’s what everybody wants. So talk about how you got to that, like what you create. It sounds like a little bit of a micro team. Or you talk more about that and maybe think about the people that are listening and on this webinar, like, what do they need to do and how do they get there and translate that into a way that is kind of the tips that you can give that to help them turn around content in 24 hours.

0:14:27.0 John Katez: Yeah, there’s definitely been a lot of tweaking on the process as we’ve gone through it. I would say the 24×24 hour expectation we’ve kind of set where we know the average blog read time is about two and a half minutes. So if our copywriters are writing an article, they kind of know the general word count to stick around the general time. And then like I said, we also do a course on corresponding social image. We can post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to kind of drive that volume to the blog. We have templates for all kinds of different blog social images. So that way, when we’re submitting a job, our designer isn’t having to start from scratch to make a social image. They can grab a template, they know what the topic is, they can drop in an image. That’s how we can move so quick. Obviously there’s things that pop up and hiccups, but usually our project managers are pretty good about moving stuff around. So we are. We can get that first off within, you know, 24 hours. I will say another secret sauce we found is if we want to quote, like a team member or a physician, it can be hard to pin somebody down if they’re working in our facility or a hospital.

0:15:27.0 John Katez: So sometimes we’ll work with our copywriters to, like, ghostwrite quotes for our physicians, and then when we can touch them, they’ll approve it. That just helps us, you know, stay speedy.

0:15:35.7 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, So going back to the governance idea, I mean, it’s almost like you guys are operating like a newsroom, right? I mean, it’s really about, like, it’s. It’s information in, information out. And you’ve got this great team in place, great partners in place, a great process. You’ve got your templates, you’ve got everyone moving and humming along. Talk about, like you said the other. How do you reconcile when to say no? Do you have it? Can you think of an example where you’ve had to say no to maybe an idea that Stella’s pitched or one that’s come across your desk is like, no, doesn’t really fit with our mission, or the kind of tone and strategy of the blog and how did you arrive that. And how do you get buy in across the organization? Or do you have to.

0:16:18.3 John Katez: So sometimes if I’m unsure if I need a gut check, there’s always someone I can ask. Of course, there’s been instances where we’ve said no. We always try to pay attention to, like, celebrity diagnosis. Sometimes it’s a really interesting diagnosis or health topic we want to talk about, but we might not want to touch a certain celebrity for a certain reason or mention them on our website. That’s probably a pretty common one. There’ll even be sometimes where Stella will flag topic ideas. I’m thinking of the. Was it the Montessori beds, monastery beds, where it’s a topic I don’t even know about. But then Stella has all this data behind it to show search volume, to show that it’s a, you know, a topic that would resonate with our women’s and children’s audience. And I want to say, like that one which I was a little on the fence about after your data points and we did it. That was one of our highest performing ones. So honestly, just relying on people’s expertise, like, Stella’s been doing this a while. She knows what she’s doing, but just making sure it’s staying aligned with our mission as well.

0:17:16.8 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s a great example. So how do you guys know this is working? Maybe John, you start like, how do you know that this strategy is paying off and working for you?

0:17:26.7 John Katez: Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of success with our new strategy. One just being able to turn out content quicker, still being to amass a large amount of content. We’ve also seen an uptick in blog traffic, not only on our newer content pieces, but some of our older content pieces, which I know Stella talked about. We’ll go back and optimize. So it could have been a blog we wrote four or five years ago, but there might be new health data on it. So we’ll inject some new information. Maybe we’ll bring in a physician to speak on the topic anytime. We kind of revamp those blogs. We do see an uptick. Of course, we always want to pay attention to keywords that are having high search volume. And then now with AI overviews, we’re kind thinking, okay, going forward, are we writing content for consumers that are searching for content, clicking through it and landing on our website, or is consumer behavior changing? They’re searching on Google. AI is pulling out a snippet, showing to them so they’re not having to click. So now we’re kind of at that fork in the road. Where do we pivot again because of AI?

0:18:29.0 Kristen Lecky: Yeah. And where do you and how do you optimize? Yeah, correct. Stella, what are you seeing and paying attention to?

0:18:36.5 Stella Hart: Yeah. This has been such a rewarding initiative to be a part of, because when I pitch a topic and then the content is either updated or there’s a new blog launched. Advent Health does such a great job of optimizing that content for users and for search engines and now for AI that the content really has the best chance to perform. So I have a few example success stories.

0:19:02.8 Kristen Lecky: Oh, I love those. Yeah.

0:19:05.8 Stella Hart: One that John alluded to. We recommended writing a new blog aimed at parents considering transitioning their children from cribs to Montessori toddler beds. And we’re seeing a lot of, like, different questions about, you know, how. How did this, how does this benefit my child? How can I set it up how can I make sure that it’s safe and a helpful transition for them? So we also noticed that this was a topic that other brands really weren’t covering. So that perfect combination of high user interest and low competition. And this was so fun because immediately as soon as the blog was published, we saw success. So it became Google’s featured snippet in Google search engine result pages. Anytime anyone was looking for anything around toddler beds or Montessori at toddler beds specifically, this article was being served up to them. So…

0:20:04.1 Kristen Lecky: I don’t know what a Montessori bed is. No way. I did. I think I’m with you. I don’t know what that is. Is that different than just a traditional toddler bed?

0:20:14.5 Stella Hart: So since we published this blog, I actually set one up myself for my toddler following the tips and the… So selfishly, it was a great blog for me.

0:20:28.3 Kristen Lecky: Yeah.

0:20:29.2 Stella Hart: But it’s a bed basically where toddlers are able to get in and out as easily as possible. It kind of empowers them to have like this control over their space and have a little bit more independence.

0:20:43.9 Kristen Lecky: Very cool.

0:20:47.7 Stella Hart: Another. Oh yeah, sorry. Another example. We’ve seen a lot of blogs on competitor and benchmark mark sites around nutritional supplements really taking off. And we noticed an opportunity in the market to specifically cover magnesium. This was a supplement that we could see was gathering a lot of trending interest over time, so kind of exploding in folks being interested in the benefits of magnesium and are they legit and why would you take it, that sort of thing. So as soon as that blog was published, it also got a lot of immediate traction. And we’ve seen that both of these blogs have some long term staying power. So they’re regularly appearing in the top performing blogs month to month for Advent health and giving the blog a lot of healthy organic traffic.

0:21:44.6 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, those are great. Yeah. So what’s next? I mean, John, do you have like. I mean as you’re constantly innovating and iterating and thinking about where this is headed, what comes to mind for you?

0:21:56.6 John Katez: Yeah, I would say we have a lot of different vehicles to kind of get our blog content out there. I mentioned social posts earlier. We also have like a monthly newsletter that go out to all of our consumers. They can like subscribe for specific topics if they’re interested in cardiac care, cancer care, exercise. And then last year we actually rolled out a pilot for a moment marketing exclusive like ad hoc email campaign. So instead of waiting for our monthly deployment of our newsletter, if it was a really trending topic. Like, I know we did one about how to use AI to like, better manage your health. We sent that out immediately. And we can basically look at consumer behavior on our website. And if they’ve typed in search around specific topics, we can basically segment the audience to that newsletter is going out and send it to people that are more likely to engage with that content. So just running that pilot for three months, we saw a lot of success, and we’re looking to kind of continue that pilot this year as well.

0:22:51.9 Kristen Lecky: That’s great. And so speaking of AI, and you’ve mentioned it a few times, I mean, we’re all looking to satisfy the Google, you know, Google search intent and now AI overviews. And, you know, it’ll be something different next year. Right. In fact, we might all be like holograms doing this webinar instead of like. But curious to hear how you’re leaning into using AI in this strategy. How do you use it with your team for either ideation, outlining content creation? I know, you know, we fill some of those things for you today, but how are you doing it or using it?

0:23:28.3 John Katez: Yeah, I would say we’re definitely kind of like tiptoeing into this space. We’re not. We’re not jumping in. We’re not diving into the deep end. We have explored using it for content ideation, which has been great. It can also give recommendations on an existing piece of content, ways to optimize it. We’re not using AI to write full articles or anything like that. I know when Google rolled out their AI overviews, they were kind of at first giving AI summaries for healthcare websites. And I know they kind of pulled it back as some of the AI overviews were not being vetted and stuff. So we’re just being very careful and tiptoeing. I’m part of an AI committee here in our digital marketing team where we help vet tools, see if, you know, if something can be useful. If we can use it to look at the data, that’s another thing. We’ll use it. We’ll have a lot of, like, data insights on content, and we’ll use AI to help kind of come up with a storyline for that.

0:24:18.5 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, good. I’m gonna. I think we might have wrapped up our questions, so I’m gonna see what sort of questions we have here, and I’m gonna do my best to figure out how to access these. This is my first time hosting a webinar, so you’re doing great. All the new tech parts of it I’m like, okay, all right, here’s the question. How do you balance new vs refreshed blogs? How much is new each month vs refreshed? Can you share some refreshed blog wins from this approach?

0:24:48.8 John Katez: Yeah, I would say definitely balance. I would say we, we kind of prioritize the newer content first. We’ll look at how older content is performing before we want to decide if we want to optimize it or not. And then if we do optimize it, we’ll look at it kind of like at a month or two after just to see how the performance worked. I would say usually, like balance wise, we’re probably aiming for 10 to 15 net new blogs a month at least from my team. Refresh. Probably like two to three, I would say would be a good goal for us.

0:25:17.3 Kristen Lecky: Two to three a month and then…

0:25:19.2 John Katez: Yeah, so two to three refreshed and like 10 to 10ish new ones.

0:25:23.7 Kristen Lecky: Okay. Yeah. Do you have a thought about that, Stella?

0:25:28.4 Stella Hart: Yeah, I can speak to a couple of blogs that we recommended. They refresh and optimize using the latest keywords and kind of responding to some of the most current conversations happening in their market. So they have a blog that has continued to see a lot of interest around having a baby in your 40s. And we found that users were searching for the term geriatric pregnancy and this term did not appear in the Advent Health blog. It’s kind of a stigmatized term that’s kind of gone out of fashion, but folks are still searching for it. That’s the term that they’re still most familiar with. And so it’s kind of a delicate needle to thread. But I think Advent Health did a great job of including that term in the blog with content offering context that, you know, this isn’t really the preferred term anymore. And you know, we use advanced maternal age and really coming back to their mission of inclusion and sensitivity. And I thought that was a great win. And then as soon as that phrase was in the blog, it has continued to see a lot of interesting success and engagement over time.

0:26:42.9 Kristen Lecky: I have never heard that that term before. I’m surprised that that’s. I did. I have not heard it before. But so that’s interesting that you identified that and then it was go back and be able to refresh the content so it was more for current search intent, you know, in terms of getting that updated. Interesting.

0:26:58.7 John Katez: Yeah, that’s a great example, Stella. Like we had that great piece of content was a great article, but consumers weren’t really Finding it because they were using phrases like geriatric pregnancy. So, like, having you help us connect those dots just to break through the noise was awesome.

0:27:12.5 Kristen Lecky: Yeah. So, John, when you think about, like, everything that you’ve. How long have you been at Advent Health now?

0:27:19.3 John Katez: Ooh, I think I’m coming up on four years this summer.

0:27:23.5 Kristen Lecky: Okay, so based on your career, though, and your experience and certainly at Advent Health, what would you. I mean, like, any sort of, like, parting tips or wisdom. Like, when you think about this blog strategy, these are the three things that are the most important to making this work. Would you be able to synthesize or. Or kind of organize around what you would recommend to everyone listening today? Like, these are kind of the most important things to. To kick off a strategy like this?

0:27:50.8 John Katez: Yeah. I would say one is don’t just keep doing things the same way they’ve always been, because that’s how people have done them. You know, don’t be afraid to kind of like, shake things up. I will say the leadership team here is really great and open to feedback and new ideas if you have data points to prove it. So that’s always been really nice and refreshing to have someone be like, hey, I think we should try this. And like, yeah, let’s. Let’s try it. Like I mentioned that email pilot we came up with last year made a slide deck, said, this is what I wanted to try. I’ll have results to share. And they were like, yeah, let’s. Let’s do it. So really feeling empowered has been awesome, having that support. And then I would also say the different perspectives, whether that’s looking outside my internal team and reaching out to other teams at Advent Health, working with different agency partners like WG Content, just being open to different ideas has definitely helped strengthen us.

0:28:45.4 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, no, I think that’s great. What about you, Stella? You’ve been doing this for a while too. Like, what Anyone? That’s. I would imagine that most people have some type of blog strategy in motion right now. So what would you suggest to them to, like, either, you know, reimagine the blog, you know, think about what to do differently, kind of what in your world, what are. What’s the advice you would give?

0:29:07.5 Stella Hart: I think today more than ever, focus on performance and what are your overarching goals and really keeping an eye on those KPIs and how your strategy is? You know, we all want our content to be published and for folks to read it and enjoy it and feel empowered and take an active role in their health and wellness. So don’t publish something and then let it live in, in the void. You know, keep, keep tabs on it, understand how it’s performing and how users are maybe interacting with it. And you know, Google search engines, AI as well loves content that is regularly reviewed and updated. So that is a signal to search engines that this is content that’s high value and it contributes to your brand authority or your domain authority. So keeping that in mind too, if you have an existing content library, it’s a great resource to keep your eye on what’s performing and also it’s okay if you publish something and it doesn’t perform the way you expected. So you can learn just as much from your market and what’s going to perform by those blogs that don’t quite resonate the way that you were expecting.

0:30:33.3 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, and I think we’ve been hearing too in the last couple years is I think there’s also this sort of renewed energy around reimagining the efforts and the purpose of the blog. Like we’ve been asked to look at, well, what exists in our market today and what’s missing and how can we really lean into that a little bit more? Should we have a mission statement for our blog? What is the value proposition of our blog? What is the, even the cadence or like short form content, long form content, when do we bring in our clinicians? When is it more health and wellness or like there’s so many different moving parts to consider. So I think, you know, just a discipline around examining, you know, what are you doing, what is working, what’s not working. Is there an opportunity to just. I think John, you might have met, don’t just keep doing it because you’ve always been doing it, but really, really kind of get creative and get, you know, think outside the box in terms of what are the. What’s on the hearts and minds of people in your community and in your market that maybe those, that you could do a better job of connecting with, with those consumers or with that audience.

0:31:36.4 Kristen Lecky: And it’s a lot of fun to do that kind of stuff too, right? I mean it’s, you know, get to do that every few years, you know, it’s just to kind of get creative with those efforts. Anything else that you guys would like to add? I think I’ve, we had one more question up there and it was really one for you, John. And it was more about like if you could go back into your career, what sort of advice would you give yourself? I think that was someone that was Just thinking about where you’ve come and what you’re doing today. Is there any advice that you would give yourself, your younger self?

0:32:07.4 John Katez: If I was going to go back and speak to like, my younger self, like, early, early, early on in my career, I always didn’t feel adequate enough to like voice my opinion in a room. Like if it was like a brainstorm or a workshop or we were thinking about a campaign, I was always thinking like, oh, they don’t want to hear from me, they want to hear from the other folks. And eventually, year after year, you kind of get over that and you just start giving your opinion. And you know, for the most part, people love it. So I would say don’t ever like second guess yourself when it comes to something like that. You have a table just like everybody else. You have a voice at the table just like everybody else. And that’s just what makes a team stronger.

0:32:48.9 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Stella, how about your. How about you?

0:32:53.8 Stella Hart: Oh, I think my professional development and career development and my career trajectory has really been shaped by having very valuable mentors. And so I think I would tell my younger self, really look for those mentors and appreciate them and value them. And, yeah.

0:33:18.2 Kristen Lecky: And yeah, yeah, we have actually now it seems like more questions are coming in here. Maybe I missed these, but let’s see. What tools do you use to gauge trending topics and search volumes? I think, Stella, you were, you’re on point for that one.

0:33:34.6 Stella Hart: Yeah, there’s a lot of different tools we like to use, so we use some rush. We’re looking at Google Trends, Google News, Google Alerts, sometimes Google Keyword Planner as well. There’s a great free newsletter that I’ve subscribed to called Exploding Topics and that will give you, you know, maybe 5 trending or soon to be trending topic ideas, some of which are related to health and wellness. So that can be a great resource as well.

0:34:07.8 John Katez: Just to add on to that too, Stella, some of the tools we use over here on our side is we have like a social platform tool which pulls in like comments and DMs and all that kind of stuff. And our reputation management team can have a listening stream and see if certain topics are getting a spike. So if we’re seeing conversation on social, that might be a good idea to write a blog about it. Also we can look at all of the searches on our Advent Health.com website. So if we’re getting a bunch of people typing in Covid coughing, maybe we should look back at some Covid content. Is there A spike happening in our community, things like that. So just like, our internal tools will use us too.

0:34:46.3 Stella Hart: So great, Great idea. I think too, looking at the blogs can be such a great way to understand what topics might be ready to perform. But also looking back at the year before and looking for those seasonal trends around cold and flu season or maybe in the fall when people go back to school, things like that. And then also your service line content as well. Where are we seeing maybe some shifts that indicate folks are really interested in this topic right now? Or more recently, how do we serve up blog content that’s related to that?

0:35:20.5 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, yeah. Well, kind of related to that is a question that I see here. And it’s sort of like that balance. You kind of addressed this already, John, but it’s like, how cautious do you find yourself when you choose a topic for public content? So it’s like, we can go into, like, it’s provocative, it’s trending, everyone’s talking about it. But maybe, you know, we should err on the side of caution, you know, like, do you guys have sort of that line and how do you balance that?

0:35:51.5 John Katez: Yeah, so it is a balance. We do have that line. I would say we’re empowered more than not. Um, of course, we don’t want to get any kind of like, political conversation. Any kind of, like I mentioned, like, if there’s like a wacky celebrity, we don’t want to mention them in a blog, something like that. But if it’s a general health topic, if it’s for public health, sure. The only time we’ve paused on like, a public health topic is if we were waiting on a specific, like, physician or expert to weigh in. But generally we’re pretty okay to move with topics. If I ever need a gut check, you know, I’ll flag up to my director or I’ll loop in my reputation management team just to see what their perspective might be.

0:36:29.0 Kristen Lecky: Yeah, so how, I mean, you guys are so like, you’re looking at that moment marketing, like, what’s in the moment, what’s trending? Let’s look kind of at the other side of that. Is like your editorial calendar. Like, how far out do you plan your editorial calendar? Is that something that you do? I mean, so there’s the ideal and then there’s the what actually happens. Right.

0:36:53.1 John Katez: So when I first joined, it was basically kind of like we were always working on the next month ahead. I’ve been blessed with such a rock star team that right now they’re working on June, which is like, crazy. Never been this far ahead. I know.

0:37:04.8 Kristen Lecky: What are people going to be thinking about in June? I don’t know.

0:37:08.2 John Katez: Men’s Health Month.

0:37:09.6 Kristen Lecky: Yeah.

0:37:11.8 John Katez: So that’s always our goal is to be a couple of months ahead. And basically we deploy like a package of assets for all of our host hospitals and doctor’s offices and Health park, which those could be social assets, those could be infographics, those could be blogs, press releases, articles. And we kind of give them to them a couple months in advance so they can start to plot out their own editorial calendars. And then of course, we also host quarterly newsrooms with all of our regions across the organization. So my team will present all of the ideas we plan on talking about next quarter. And if there’s anything we’re missing or if a certain market has a specific priority or they’re seeing an influx in a certain condition in their area, they might flag that to us. And then we’ll work on it behind the scenes to add it in for when it’s deployed.

0:37:57.8 Kristen Lecky: Okay. Very cool.

0:38:00.0 John Katez: Yeah.

0:38:00.5 Kristen Lecky: Well, there’s a lot. There’s a few more questions coming in, but I’m going to wrap. I think we’re at time, so we will include these in a follow up and answers to these questions. And I just appreciate both of you so much sharing all of this great insight. I think we’ve learned a lot today and it’s been fun chatting with you both. So thank you so much.

0:38:19.0 John Katez: Thanks, everybody.

0:38:20.5 Stella Hart: Thank you.0:38:21.0 Kristen Lecky: Bye.