A great way to make your experts, your surgeons and anyone on your team more accessible is to put them in front of a camera and have an interview.  Speaking from experience, not everyone translates well in front of the camera, and you need to consider what you are looking to accomplish when you do this – but for this post, we’ll focus on a simple question and answer format.

A popular one – because from a technical perspective it requires only one camera and microphone – is just the A in Q&A.  I think you’ve seen them, a simple slate asking a question and the surgeon answering the question on the slate.  It seems simple enough, but all too often there is a desire to make them perfect, to have multiple takes, multiple phrasing, and in the end the outcome is something that feels rehearsed, that feels too perfect, and it’s just not as impactful as it could be.  Answers that sound rehearsed are just not as believable.

The format seems simple enough, but the market is full of charismatic speakers that come across as wooden automatons and not the warm, inviting, accessible people that you know they are.  So what should you do?

First: Stop directing!  Have a conversation, if you don’t think you’re getting the answer you need, ask a follow-up question.  Remember, you’re not looking for answers to questions, you’re looking to use answers to questions as a means to educate and make your team more accessible.

Here’s the other side of it, you need to understand who you’re interviewing.  You may be taking a doctor out of their comfort zone – some of the most confident people in the world, who are used to having to be right all the time – and you tell them, in essence, “wrong, do it again”.  You are not going to get a great result if every question requires 4 or 5 takes.

Here are some tips:

• Be prepared. Not just with questions, but with an understanding of what you are what you are looking to accomplish, this will inform your conversation.
• “Natural” environments work. An office, a lobby, even a courtyard, will help your interview subject relax and will be more inviting for your target audience
• Don’t direct. Just have a conversation and let them speak, everything can be addressed in editing
• Ums and Ahs are ok. They don’t make the interview subject look stupid; they make them look human – and accessible.
• Listen. Don’t be surprised if you find out there are more questions answered than you asked, and they may work better than your original list.

If you take this approach, you’ll find you have more a more relaxed on camera presence, and one that is ultimately more inviting and effective.

Recently we had a great conversation with a client regarding their use of video to extend their educational reach.  We had just finished a live event, and reported the number of attendees to the seminar – over 900 surgeons.  What excited them even more was that they had offered up their contact information in return for attending the on-line event.  In the few weeks that followed, the number had climbed to 1,200 – and continues to grow, because unlike the seminar event the video record of it endures.

If you have a role with a hospital providing educational services to your community, or a device manufacturer providing surgeons with ongoing training, you are putting together seminars and workshops.  Some may even be very popular, with as many as 100 attendees.

These are no small efforts.  Even for local seminars, they need to be promoted, facilities coordinated, speakers recruited (and sometimes paid honorariums), and even then you’ve likely had events that don’t meet your attendance targets.  By placing cameras in the room, you can capture that event, and create an enduring asset that can be repurposed on-line, on DVD, or even as a video podcast.

Recording the event is very straight forward and can be done with multiple levels of production value, allowing you to give it a try for relatively little expense to prove to yourself that this works before calling in the big guns.  Once you have the video, our experience is that you’ll have success quickly and begin to identify other uses for this new asset.  Just don’t forget to press the record button.

Next time we’ll talk about how hospitals are using these simple recordings to create rich interactive experiences that help build the relationships with consumers prior to their becoming patients.

As healthcare marketing begins to embrace content marketing and social media, one of the biggest challenges is letting go of the impression that your website is at the center of the web.  In preparing a post on how healthcare marketers measure success of content marketing, a pattern emerged, where success was being measured by how many hits the content brought back to the website.  While this is ultimately where you’d like to get your content seen, it’s a misplaced goal and you can be even more effective if you shift your perspective.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="284" caption="The Ptolemaic Web"][/caption]

Back in the second century Ptolemy, published authoritative works that put the earth in the center of the universe, with everything else revolving around earth in perfect concentric circles.  Applying the perspective that your site is at the center of the web, you get a Ptolemaic Web similar to the one illustrated here.  In a Ptolemaic view of the web, the focus is on your site and doing whatever it takes to get the traffic there.  Micro sites get developed to focus on special events or topics, a premium is placed on understanding what your competition’s site is presenting and making sure your site is leading in capability and “cool” factor, and you’re always looking for ways to get industry press or news sites to link back to your website.

The weakness in the Ptolemaic Web, is it’s distance from the user.  Yes you’ve built great interactivity into your site – evaluation programs, self assessments, maybe even a PHR interface, and once you have the user registered, you are pretty sure you’ve got them.  But here’s the challenge – how do users find your content?  SEO?  SEM?  Should I post on Facebook, tweet on twitter?  Drop a video on YouTube, Vimeo?

As it turns out, on the 4ooth anniversary of his telescope, Galileo may have the answer.  He confirmed the earth wasn’t the center of the universe.

That’s right – the earth isn’t at the center, and the order of things isn’t so neat that everything is orbiting in perfect circles – things that are close one day may be far away on another.  So how does this apply to content marketing and social media?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The Galilean Web"][/caption]

Your site, is not at the the center.

Content marketing success is a measure of the value of the content (and by extension your brand), the goal is to make your site a destination, not drive click-throughs.

I know it’s subtle, but a visual of the Galilean Web may help.  In the Galilean Web, each user represents a separate and unique “web solar system”, with their launch point being at the center.  Users may have multiple “web solar systems” for each activity on the web – like searching for related health information.  In the example here, search is at the center, with other relevant destinations like blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and networking sites serving as resources.  Social media and communication tools are on a separate orbit, identifying other potential destinations.

Where’s your site?  It’s that dot in the corner.  You’re not in their system – they’re searching for information and content and your site isn’t showing up because there is competing content in multiple locations on the web, and these aggregation sites are more relevant to users and search engines.

So how do you get into this user’s web solar system?

Content.

Place your content where you know your users are.  Not just in one place – get it out there!

Context.

Make it relevant, assure its quality, and update it frequently, and they will reward you by becoming frequent consumers of your content – shifting their social media orbit to be closer to your site.  Over time, they may even make your site a destination in their solar system.  Shift your focus from counting click-throughs to observing how the content is consumed.   Adjust what you’re publishing based on the feedback you’re getting.  You are going to benefit by being seen as a valuable contributor to their information needs.

It’s important to note, they may never visit your site – but it doesn’t matter if they’ve become your brand advocate and choose to get their healthcare services from you because of your content.

At the end of the day, isn’t that your objective?