Content Strategy

I worked for two years as a content strategist with MERGE, a marketing agency with a focus on health. My clients included 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).

Areas of expertise:

Content audit
Competitive analysis
Basic information architecture and sitemapping
Basic SEO strategy
Editorial guidance and content management

Below are three case studies describing how I guided clients toward better findability, user engagement, differentiation from competitors, and ultimately achieving their business goals.

“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

Interested in working together? contact me to discuss your project.

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
Challenges: Low 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: The tone of the site was warm and welcoming. The videos were informative and great social proof. The misconceptions section helped break myths about the process. The content was very scannable and readable. On the other hand, 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: I recommended that the client not rely so heavily on videos, keep them to ~ 2 minutes, and make sure essential content is also offered in the text. Explain the process more comprehensively with better content bridging and information hierarchy. Pull out quotes for 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 and has modified the site.
Need help? If you need a content audit and analysis, let’s talk. I can also conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis if you need to get a better sense of user expectations.

Client: Medical malpractice insurance company

Audience: Providers, hospital administrators, agents/brokers
Challenges: Client story was missing, how to become a thought leader.
Objectives: To answer whether the content was findable, engaging, and usable, find content gaps, and identify ways to stand out from competitors.
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, slide deck with findings and recommendations, and 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: I recommended strengthening 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. They also needed to reduce the space given to leadership photos which were hindering their DEI branding efforts. They needed to add testimonials to differentiate and build social proof. They needed to showcase innovative products for differentiation and conversion and expand filtering and cross-linking to improve findability. I proposed specific topics, content formats, and segments for them to use in the search tool. Also for findability, I advised them to add a Related Content component to each page and build a taxonomy to help users find relevant content.
Next steps: The client was aligned with the recommendations and, with UX recommendations also in hand, is in the process of modifying the site.
Need help? If you need a content audit and analysis, let’s talk. My audits are actionable, thorough, and delivered on deadline.

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
Challenge: Transition from depending on drug representatives to the HCP 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: The printed content representatives used was good and could be transitioned to HTML for the relevant web pages. CTAs for ordering, reimbursement, and injection training could be added or made more visible. Ordering and reimbursement content needed to be clearer. The beneficial differentiators of nonmixing needed to be emphasized. Digitalization and telehealth tools needed to be enhanced to increase access and improve convenience. That included using their training videos. I showed 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.
Need help? If you need a content audit and analysis, let’s talk. I can also conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis if you need to get a better sense for user expectations.