5 Reasons Not to Use Generative AI For Thought Leadership Content

While everyone extols the promises of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) at drafting and enhancing copy, I will push back—especially for writing thought leadership content. I’m not a Luddite. Last year, as tech companies rushed their chatbots to market, I spent several months testing whether Chat GPT, Claude, and Gemini could help me brainstorm ideas and automate my writing process. At first, I felt I’d found the perfect assistant—one that would do research, draft outlines, and improve my sentence structure as needed. 

The more I played with GenAI, however, the more my faith in this technological advancement waned. While a chatbot serves as a competent grammarian, I don’t trust it as a storyteller. While it does a decent job of feeding me data, it often takes more time to fact-check that information than to do the research myself. 

What concerns me most about GenAI is not the chatbot’s competence but what it will do to my own. After just a few months of using chatbots, I felt I was becoming a lazier thinker and writer. If I couldn’t develop a strategy or phrase fast enough, I turned to the chatbot, abdicating my authority to a machine. Working with GenAI was unsatisfying after the novelty wore off, and I began feeling less connected to my work. Less authentic. 

The Limitations of Generative AI

My job is to develop and write content that promotes my clients as thought leaders. I work to understand and communicate their unique perspectives, innovative insights, knowledge, and values.

Chatbots are trained on published data—other people’s opinions and ideas. Their output is never unique.

While GenAI is here to stay and may make positive contributions to marketing and communications, I don’t believe it can replace a thinking, sentient human writer. If we rely on chatbots to do our thinking for us, they may dumb us all down.

In fact, that is already happening. A recent Japanese study on the effect of using GenAI tools on critical thinking concluded that, “while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification, from problem-solving to AI response integration, and from task execution to task stewardship.” 

We can’t stop the use of GenAI. However, when it comes to thought leadership, we can refuse to replace human intelligence with artificial intelligence.  Here are five convincing reasons to do the thinking yourself.

1. Chatbots do not produce original ideas.

Chatbots work from a knowledge base derived from massive amounts of publicly available text and code found on websites, books, articles, and databases. They can analyze data on specific subjects and summarize it. While they hold onto more data than most humans can learn and/or retain, their insights aren’t original. They can’t think or form opinions.

By definition, thought leaders are not followers. They are critical thinkers who develop their insights and unique points of view through experience, training, and deep knowledge. 

I asked Google’s Gemini, “Can you produce original ideas?” It responded, “I can process information and respond in creative ways. Essentially, I can recombine information in new and interesting ways to create something novel.” 

GenAI is a follower. When you give it a prompt, you get a creative regurgitation of existing data. Without doing the research yourself, you have no guarantee that the response you get from a chatbot is relevant or accurate. 

Chatbots can scan and make conclusions from data. However, they can’t distinguish what data within their huge training base is most relevant to our queries. Additionally, they can’t identify the societal or cultural biases the data contains. The bias in their responses may run counter to your or your organization’s values.

By digging down and asking continuous questions about the conclusions a chatbot has made, you may come closer to material you can use to supplement articles, e-books, or white papers. Doing so may save you time if you can confirm that the sources are reliable. But you still need an accomplished writer to integrate that data with your thought leaders’ insights. When you trust a chatbot too much, you risk developing poor-quality content that may prove useless to your audience, compromise the trust you’ve built, and weaken your brand.

2. Chatbot output can be incomplete, misleading, or even false.

While rapid advances are being made in the size of chatbot memories, their context windows can limit the quality and accuracy of the copy they generate.

When a chatbot is trained, it learns to understand and generate text based on sequences of tokens (words or parts of words) up to a certain maximum length—its context window. The chatbot only retains what fits within this window. As the window expands, older interactions (both prompts and responses) will be erased as new ones are added. 

Conversing with a chatbot for too long is like talking with an old person with short-term memory loss who forgets what you’ve been talking about a few minutes into the conversation. At a certain point, a chatbot will also lose track of earlier context so that its later responses have no relation to your original conversation.

In addition to memory limitations, chatbots have been known to have hallucinations: information that appears plausible but is incorrect or fabricated. That’s because they are trained to recognize patterns in their training data and predict what words should come next based on those observed patterns. The core foundation of AI is mathematical, not human reasoning. Sometimes, a chatbot will let you know it’s unsure of an answer, but when it encounters uncertainty, it may make up an answer that it deems plausible without letting you know it’s a fabrication.

3. GenAI is based on the most likely, not the latest, data. 

AI chatbots are trained on data that may be outdated. This is a critical issue when writing scientific, medical, and healthcare content since chatbots may ignore the most recent research completely. Chatbots base their responses on the volume rather than the quality of data they’re trained on. The chatbot may deem a single breakthrough study as too insignificant to mention, even though the new study makes all previous research obsolete.

When queried, ChatGPT responded that it “was trained on a wide range of publicly available information up until October 2023.” Google’s Gemini model is continually being updated and improved, referring to Google Search for information. We know that search engines can’t always filter fiction from fact. Anthropic’s Claude was last updated in April 2024 and notes, “This means that I aim to provide accurate responses based on information known up until that time. However, I want to be upfront that I can’t make any absolute claims about the exact contents or details of my training data.”

It’s nice that these programs attempt honesty, but you can’t count on it. At the end of the AI synopsis that now populates the top of Google searches, it notes, “Generative AI is experimental.”

4. AI-generated copy can lack accurate sourcing

You can ask your chatbot to provide sourcing, but sometimes those citations link to a 404 error or a webpage that is completely irrelevant. If you can’t discover the source of specific information in AI-generated responses, you have to look for citations yourself to authenticate the response. 

In doing your own research, you may discover there is more interesting or relevant information available. You may also find that whatever insights the chatbot has provided were directly lifted from a competitor and reordered or rewritten. If you were to use that output, it would diminish your authority as a thought leader. 

If you rely on AI to do initial research, you should always have a professional fact-check it to ensure its accuracy. Make sure you work from the most valuable data currently available for your thought leadership assets. 

5. AI does not have a conscience

One of the key characteristics of a true thought leader is the set of values that influence their point of view. GenAI does not have a conscience. It also does not have empathy or a genuine sense of humor or irony—critical elements in good thought leadership content.

When I asked Claude the subjective question, “What’s it like to be you?” Claude replied, “As an artificial intelligence, it’s difficult for me to fully capture the nature of my own experience and ‘consciousness’ in a way that would make complete sense to humans. I don’t have subjective experiences quite like a human does. I’m an advanced language model that can engage in intelligent conversation, but under the hood, I’m doing complex pattern matching and text generation, not experiencing an inner mental life. I don’t have sensations, emotions, or a unified subjective experience in the way humans do.”

That doesn’t mean a chatbot won’t attempt to approximate the emotions it’s picked up from its training model. Don’t let it seduce you. For thought leadership content to be authentic, it has to come directly from a human source. 

In praise of human writers

GenAI is a great tool for writers because it can help jumpstart a project when you’re looking at a blank page and catch all your misplaced commas. But, they can’t replace the questioning, learning, and imaginative expression that goes into creating a piece of prose. 

As AI evolves and humans rely more on it to do their reading, math equations, and housework, we may hit a point where writers become eccentric characters of the past. But I hate to imagine a time when all humankind has abdicated its humanity to the machine. (Remember Hal in “2001 Space Odyssey”? That didn’t go well for the humans.)

Fortunately, we still have human thought leaders who can drive innovation and help organizations and societies maintain core values. For now, we also have writers—the thought leaders themselves or ghostwriters— with the talent and skills to communicate these unique insights to receptive audiences. Only humans have the consciousness to combine personal experience, expertise, and judgment and weave it into a unique and compelling read. I hope that never changes.

The post Do You Think? appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

If you want your healthcare content to be understood and effective, make it easy to read. Fascinating facts, great stories and persuasive copywriting mean nothing if your patients or business prospects can’t or won’t take the time to read them. Even in the best of times, it takes skill to capture the attention of a distracted audience. During a pandemic, it is even more challenging.

Don’t Overestimate the Health Literacy Level of Your Audience

It may come as no surprise that U.S. adults have a low health literacy rate — their ability to access, understand and process health information. In 2003, when health literacy was last assessed, only 12 percent of U.S. adults over the age of 16 performed at the highest literacy proficiency level. What is surprising is that only 24 percent with bachelor’s degrees and 33 percent of those with advanced degrees met that bar.

Meet your audience at their reading level

The average U.S. adult reads at or below the 8^th grade level. That means that if you write your patient education pamphlets, health and wellness websites, brochures, and even sales sheets at a high school or college reading level, you’re going to lose the majority of your readers. Keep your content between a 7th and 8th grader reading level to ensure the widest audience.

Don’t worry that your content won’t be sophisticated enough for scientists, specialists and corporate executives with advanced degrees. They also appreciate simplicity. With busy days and multiple deadlines, they often don’t have the mental energy to absorb lengthy, complex and abstract prose.

Keep your readers engaged

Writing content that is simple, interesting, and persuasive takes skill. It’s a constant exercise in paring down, shortening sentences, and replacing complex words with simpler ones. Writing to an elementary reading level does not mean your writing has to be elementary. It will not insult a professional’s intelligence or keep you from being able to cover everything you need to communicate. When you do it right, your copy isn’t boring. It pulls the reader in.

Take a lead from print journals like The New York Times to ensure you’re getting your message across to the professionals you want to address. They write to a 6th to 7th grade level. Even better, the New Yorker and Economist shoot for a 5th grade level.

To write content that gets read, understood and even shared, consider the following tips:

• Start with what you want to say and then pare it down by as much as 50%.
• Shoot for 20 to 25 words per sentence, varying sentence length for interest.
• Keep your average character per word count around 5.
• Make all verbs active, not passive. (i.e. change “Medication should be taken…” to “take this medication…”)
• Eliminate unnecessary adverbs.
• Use a readability rating tool to test your content.

Run your content through a readability rating tool

Happily there are many good online tools for measuring readability. Different tools use different measuring scales. Flesch-Kincaid is the most popular scale used, with a good readability score being 60 or over. The options I find the most useful are:

• Microsoft Office Word: If you use Word, you can set preferences to provide Readability scores after it finishes checking spelling and grammar. It provides average words per sentence, Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and tells you the percentage of passive sentences in your copy.
• Readable: This page allows you to test the readability of your text and see where it can be improved. In addition to this free calculator, Readable offers different plans, starting at $4/month for a single user. Other plans offer additional editing features.
• WebFX:  This free readability test tool lets you test a block of text or text from a website url. It provides scores from several measuring scales, text statistics and visual indicator bars that indicate if your copy is good to go.
• Hemingway App: This $19.99 app not only gives you your scores but also helps improve readability by suggesting edits to words and phrases.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio.

If you feel like your content is getting ignored, it may be time to rework it for a broader audience. If you’d like help, I work with healthcare companies to develop content that builds awareness and generates leads. Contact me for a free 15 minute consultation.

The post When it Comes to Healthcare Content, Readability Matters appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

How to stay constructive when working remotely

Five months into sheltering in place and you may be spending 90% of your time at home. Your interaction with colleagues has gone 2D. Your boss has cut back your budget. And you can’t make plans to travel anywhere, meet with colleagues or socialize without wondering if it will be safe.   

With new distractions, stress and the uncertainty of how long this will last, it may be harder to start each day with a smile. Have you slowed down your pace? Are you feeling only half as productive as you used to be? Are you feeling like the future is completely out of your control?  

Remote work has its advantages. But providing structure isn’t one of them.

As someone who has worked from a home office for several decades, I have developed various practices that help me stay focused and enjoy a more constructive day.  Maybe a few of these will work for you.

Be grateful

The truth is, as horrible as things get, there is always something to be grateful for. Focusing on one good thing in your life before you get up each morning can set the tone for the rest of the day. This isn’t just magical thinking. Research has proven that gratitude not only improves your psychological and physical health, but it also improves your self-esteem.

Instead of letting stress and frustration take you down the rabbit hole, focus on all the resources and skills you have to work with. It may be your creativity or ability to analyze the marketplace. It may be a great webinar or podcast you learned something new from. You can also be grateful for the people in your life — a colleague who helped you finish a project or a child who made you laugh.

Get out of your pajamas!

My grandmother insisted that no matter how you feel, you should get dressed every morning as soon as you get out of bed. For almost every day of her 99 years, she followed her own advice. Through the 1919 pandemic when she wasn’t allowed to leave her college dormitory. Through the Great Depression and two World Wars. Through the death of her son, her husband, all three of her sisters and all of her close friends. Every single day, she was up by 8 and dressed. No matter what time I visited her, she was always put together in some version of a blouse, fitted skirt and matching sweater. 

Loungewear represented inertia to my grandmother. It was no surprise that when she died, she went in her sleep, dressed in her nightgown.

I’m definitely more of a sloth than my grandmother, but every time I contemplate whether to head back to bed and work in my bathrobe, I remember her admonition to get dressed and seize the day. You don’t have to get fancy. Sweats will do. But don’t forget to change into a decent shirt if you have to Zoom.

Fine tune your schedule

It’s fairly common to add meetings to your calendar and leave the rest of the time slots blank, figuring you’ll fit projects in as they come up.

You can be more productive if you move all your to-dos onto your calendar. To-do lists on their own are easy to ignore. And a calendar with empty time slots makes it easy to procrastinate on more important projects, thinking you have time to spare.  

Consider using a whiteboard to plan your week. Take time on Friday afternoon or Sunday evening to fill it out. Schedule your large tasks first, such as projects with tight deadlines. Then add in personal appointments, workouts and activities that are important to your health and sanity.

Since even the best plans are affected by changes or delays, revisit your calendar every evening and fine tune it for the next day. Add in even small tasks that take under 10  minutes — like making a call to a banker or sending out a follow-up email to a client.

Always set your calendar to send alerts several minutes before you need to start the next scheduled activity.

Get an accountability partner

We all have projects we put off because they have no deadlines. Marketing calls, proposals, marketing content for the next quarter. They may not be critical this week, but they also can’t be ignored. A great way to get them done is to find an accountability partner (or two or three). Set a particular time on particular days of the week to work on just those tasks. Check in by text or a messaging platform like Slack. Confirm what you are committing to work on. Set a timer for 50 to 60 minutes and go!

Check in at the end of the time period to report what you accomplished. You’ll be amazed how much you can get done when you have someone holding you accountable.

Take a walk

Schedule a walk every day. Put it in your calendar. It’s not only good exercise, but it helps you let go of worries and refresh your mind and attitude. You may find that whenever you are stuck with a work or personal problem, opening the door and taking a few laps around the neighborhood provides the answer.

If you’re lucky to have dogs, they’ll force you to go out. If not, walk whenever you’re losing steam or feel that the day is getting you down.

Ask for help

This pandemic isn’t going to magically disappear. It’s going to keep affecting your life and work for some time. Having practices that help you feel in control gives you the best chance of doing well.

And on those days when you just can’t get it together, remember you’re not alone. One of the best strategies for staying sane while working remotely is to maintain a pool of colleagues you can reach out to for help. The one certain thing about this pandemic is that we’re all suffering through it together. And there will be days when each of us needs a helping hand.

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Let your audience know your business is still going strong

It’s hard to get anyone’s attention in the best of times. During this pandemic, it may feel impossible. But as healthcare spending picks up, you can’t afford to sit on the sidelines waiting for a better time to engage. This is the right time to offer solutions that can help your healthcare customers improve their efficiencies — and the efficiency of the industry as a whole — in a post-COVID-19 world.

If your clients have temporarily curbed their spending, their purchase decisions may be more considered going forward. Prospects may pay more attention to the quality of your relationships. As you get back in contact, you need to assure your audience that you understand their fears and frustrations and are there for them with the products and services they need when they are ready to invest.

The insights below may help guide your content marketing process.

Be sure of your audience

“Don’t push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are.” – Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing, HubSpot

Is your audience the same as it was six months ago? Do the services or products you offer still solve the challenges your audience is dealing with now? Given changes in the market, you may have to rethink your audience or the benefits you can offer them. If you’ve developed personas for your content marketing program, review each one to make sure they’re still relevant. If not, create new ones.

Provide empathy and support

There has never been a more important time to demonstrate you care. After a period of uncertainty, everyone is grasping for a sense of safety and control. Use your communications to empower your audience with ideas, information, or products that can help them deal with the pandemic. You can launch an email campaign or post regularly on social media. Offer ideas relevant to your products or services, such as safety tips for different situations and locations, nutrition plans to boost immune systems, or positive news to boost morale. Or develop a white paper that provides policy ideas, coping strategies, or reports based on your own research.

Meet people where they are

If you have an essential product or service that meets current needs, offer it, don’t sell it. Your goal should be to let people know what you have and where they can get it. This is not a great time to convince someone to buy something they don’t understand or know how to use. Provide sales sheets and web pages that explain features in clear terms and answer specific questions. Demonstrate through testimonials or case studies how the product or service is helping businesses like theirs. Use CTAs that ask questions rather than demand actions so you can initiate conversations.

Offer a discount

At a time when so many people are struggling financially, you can build a reputation for caring by offering services or products at a discount. Just make sure to communicate that you’re offering the same high quality at a more affordable cost that reflects current economic conditions.

Entertain

A lot of people are bored or stressed from working at home. If this sounds like your audience, offer links to great videos, a challenging crossword puzzle, or an app you think is incredible. Be remembered as the organization that kept them sane through difficult times.

Educate

Many people have more time to learn new things. If they’ve already binge watched everything of interest on Netflix and Hulu, they may be ready to take on a more complex report, guide, ebook, white paper, or webinar that will help them advance their careers or improve their physical or mental health.

Be consistent

There is no way to predict when we’re going to put Covid-19 behind us. But one thing you can predict is that if you stop marketing consistently, you may be without a business to market.

If you’ve cut your budget or run out of new ideas for content, go back through everything you’ve produced to see what you can repurpose. Revise content for a revised reality: A white paper can become a series of one-sheets, blog posts or emails. A collection of case studies can turn into a long article. A sales sheet can serve as the basis for an instructional ebook.

Keep the content rolling. And if you need help, reach out. If I’m not a good fit for your project, I’ll be happy to refer you to other content marketers who can do the job.

Photo by Anna Shvets

The post Stay Engaged appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

How to Apply a Dog Trainer’s Tips to Gain Trust and Attention

The novel coronavirus hasn’t just affected the way we live our lives. It’s affected the way we communicate. With everyone’s nerves frayed and their hopes and dreams on hold, our audiences have changed. People may not be as receptive to the messages that once elicited enthusiasm. They may be skeptical of claims that promise to improve their lives. They may be too distracted to pay any attention at all.

As marketers and communicators, we can’t assume that the audiences we spoke to before March 2020 are the same today. We need to redefine our audiences and then reintroduce ourselves. For everyone but the most loyal followers, we need to re-earn respect and trust.   

So, how do we do that?

5 tips we can learn from dogs

To find some answers, I turned to my dogs. They are the ones who’ve seen me through this crisis, at my side through thick and thin, day and night for the past eight weeks. No matter what my mood or what mistakes I’ve made (like forgetting to fill the water bowl or take them on a morning walk), they continue to wag their tails and trust me to be here for them.

That got me thinking about dog trainers and how they establish trust with anxious dogs. I wasn’t surprised to discover that the tactics they use for dogs work just as well when it comes to communicating with humans in a crisis.

So, with thanks to Cesar Milan, I have amended his training insights for my colleagues in marketing communications.  

1. Stay calm: You should never approach a new dog with excited energy. It can result in a flight or fight reaction or an unwelcome response. You don’t, for instance, want to be jumped on and knocked over. In today’s wary environment, people are just as likely to be unresponsive or hostile to an overly enthusiastic pitch. If your products or services are essential, they will almost sell themselves. (If not, this is a good time to take a break or reinvent your business for the current times.)  Your best action is to introduce or reintroduce your brand and regularly send gentle reminders that your services or products are available to meet their needs.
2. Respect their space: Cesar recommends “no touch, no talk, no eye contact” when it comes to working with anxious dogs. Well, this tip won’t be hard to enact, since we’re all practicing social distancing anyway. But this is also a reminder to keep your messages simple and brief, respecting the fact that everyone is already overwhelmed and can’t focus on complex messages. If you have a lengthier presentation or piece of content you want to share, start by presenting a brief overview and let your audience request more. (This gives you a great way to keep the conversation going.)
3. Get on their level: With dogs, you want to get on their level, making sure that your body language is non-confrontational. With people, you want to get on their level too. Do that by demonstrating empathy. Let them know you understand how they feel. Address their concerns or pain with communications that explain how your solutions are effective and reliable—showing more than telling how they work.
4. Let them come to you: According to Cesar, a dog will let you know if he or she trusts you by sniffing and/or licking your hands and staying calmly in place. You can assume that if the dog turns away, she isn’t interested. You’re not going to buy respect by running after her. It’s the same with anxious business prospects (or patients in the healthcare industry). For the immediate future, you’re unlikely to make a convert through aggressive pitches. Just keep sending those gentle reminders with valuable insights, articles or newsletters and wait for them to come to you.
5. Go for a walk: Walking a new dog helps you earn trust as your dog learns how well you direct and protect her. In the human world, when prospects demo your products or begin working with you, they quickly form opinions about the quality you provide. You earn trust and build your reputation when your message matches the quality and effectiveness of your products or services.

That final tip — walking — is as critical for our mental health right now as it is for marketing. I find that going for a walk in the middle or end of the day clears my head and opens space for creative ideas to start flowing. (It’s even better when you have a dog to walk with!) So, don’t just do it metaphorically. Get out and get some fresh air! And when you get home, please remember to wash your hands. 🙂

For some great examples of how healthcare organizations are creating connections and building trust with their audiences, download a free copy of:

 9 Examples of Empathy in Healthcare Content Marketing.

The post Communicating With an Anxious Audience appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

How to adapt your healthcare content marketing for a more distracted audience

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – Stephen R. Covey

It’s not enough to develop customer personas and think that from that point forward, you know who your audience is and what they want. Your audience’s wants and needs are constantly changing. Especially now, as the majority of the country has been sent home to work and live in one place. You need to be able to shift your message—and how you deliver it—to meet the current business and social climate.

Good content marketing begins with listening. As in personal relationships, it takes more time—and sometimes energy—to sit back and listen before offering up the benefits of your products or services. I say this as someone who loves to talk. (My kids too often accuse me of trying to provide solutions, when all they want is for me to hear them out.) If listening was easy, we’d all be doing it more often.

However, the more you listen, the more you find that your prospects’ feedback provides a wealth of material for marketing content that you’ll never get from brainstorming ideas with your colleagues. Address their issues in your reports, white papers, articles, and videos and you have the best chance of developing loyal and long-term relationships with customers who trust you to understand and meet their needs.

Happily, technology and social media provide an effective way of listening when you can’t form focus groups or go into the community to engage. Consider the following 5 tactics to understand your audience’s perspective and concerns:

1. Calls to Action: Whether you’re writing a blog post, promoting a white paper, posting on Twitter or LinkedIn, or submitting guest written articles, always insert at least one CTA that is a question rather than a command. For example, if you’re writing about a new medical device that you’ve just launched, your CTA might be, “What would be your biggest challenge in adapting this technology?  Please email me your concerns at info@companyname?”
2. Surveys:  Instead of posting content about your services or products, post a survey that asks specific questions about a new service or product you are marketing that will elicit thoughtful answers. Explain why this information is important for you to collect. People are willing to provide opinions if they know how they will be used. Also, keep surveys short — three to four questions max — to respect your audience’s time. Offer multiple choice answers when possible, but request at least one written answer. You’ll find many survey tools online that are simple to set up and use.
3. Comments on Social Media: When you interact with followers on social media, consider asking powerful questions that invite interaction, instead of posting your own point of view. Keep the conversation going by following up their responses with more questions.  Not only will you make the other person feel heard, but you might also help them see the issue in a new way. And they will remember that feeling longer than any comment you could make about your own knowledge or expertise.
4. Comments on Rating Sites: If you have a practice or organization that is receiving online reviews, make sure you monitor rating sites regularly and respond to written reviews as applicable. But again, instead of providing a canned response, ask questions that demonstrate your empathy. Instead of, “I’m sorry we didn’t live up to your expectations,” ask, “What could we do to make that experience better for you?”
5. Online Feedback Surveys: You can automate a feedback collection process with a software program that sends surveys to patients or customers immediately after all or specific interactions. The feedback can help you evaluate the quality of your service and/or products. Better yet, use software that can be integrated with a Customer Relationship Management program so you can respond to any survey response with either another question or answer. If a recipient only gives you one star, for instance, ask them what you could do to bring that up to five. Again, respect your customers’ time and don’t overdo the surveys or questions.

For some great examples of how healthcare organizations are creating connections with their audiences, download a free copy of:

 9 Examples of Empathy in Healthcare Content Marketing.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio 

The post Just Listen appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

Today, I woke up and thought how nice it would be to go to my local cafe, grab a latte and a pastry and chat with the folks who hang out there in the morning with their dogs. Truth is, I almost never go to that cafe. I don’t drink coffee and I try not to eat pastries. And I rarely walk my dogs in the morning. But now that I am told I can’t do it, I want something I didn’t want before.

Social distancing isn’t fun. One thing you can say about it, though, is that we’re all experiencing it together. In a country where we pride ourselves on individuality, it’s rare that we’re all coping with the same thing at the same time.

But just because we’re confronting the same limitations and uncertainties together, our emotional responses to the crisis may be quite different. Some feel optimistic, seeing new market opportunities for their health app or medical device. Others on the frontlines of medicine are too focused on their jobs to think about anything else. Many are dealing with grief or fear and can’t concentrate on the rest of the day, let alone the future. Others are upset by what they are missing and angry.

So, how do you communicate effectively with an audience that, until a few weeks ago, you thought you understood? Communicating in a time of crisis takes extreme empathy. Being human is probably the most important quality we can share.

You can still engage while social distancing

This crisis is going to teach us a lot about staying connected when we are apart. To keep the channels of communication open, leave the canned content and complex thoughts for another time. Start by asking questions instead of having a one-sided conversation: What do I have that you need? How can I make this situation better for you? How can I help? The answers you confidently provided a month ago may be different today.

Use the following tips to market your services or products with empathy. While not original, they bear repeating:

I hope it won’t be too long before the cafes reopen, workers return to the office, and we have a more predictable business climate. We have a bumpy road ahead of us, but there is some comfort in knowing, as we sit in our home offices alone, we’re in this together.

If you have questions about healthcare communications in a crisis, please reach out to me. I’m a captive audience for the duration.

Photo by Fabien Maurin

The post Communicate with Empathy Through this Crisis — Use a Human Voice appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

Consider your audience’s perspective

How much of your healthcare marketing content starts with the words “we” or “I”?

If you’re not getting the results you want from the content you create, it may be time to change your perspective. As long as you put the spotlight on your organization and not your audience, you miss the opportunity to demonstrate empathy in your healthcare communications. And empathy is an essential ingredient for effective content marketing, especially when you’re marketing a healthcare service or product.

Start with listening.

As a marketer, it’s your job to know your audience. It can be tempting to use your own experience to make assumptions about their problems and what they need. But cognitive empathy—the ability to understand how another person is feeling and might be thinking—requires both imagination and research. Spend some time finding out what your prospective customers or patients are going through and what critical problems they want solved before you begin providing your solutions. You can use one or more of the following tools to listen in:

• Conduct qualitative surveys with existing customers. (If possible, set up some informational interviews so you can get feedback firsthand.)
• Talk to your salespeople about their interactions with your customers (or talk to providers, if you are marketing healthcare services to patients).
• Read online healthcare forums or use social listening software to learn what questions your audience is asking, what problems they’re having, and what topics are trending.
• Read case studies, white papers, and industry reports done by marketers in similar businesses.
• Evaluate what your competition is communicating to their potential customers.

Put your focus on your audience’s story.

You probably have a great story to tell. But telling your story without
establishing context can be as unwelcome as unsolicited advice. Your link to
your audience, whether they are patients, healthcare professionals or
healthcare business executives, is through their frame of reference.

Demonstrate empathy in your healthcare communications by painting a picture of where your audience is now. Confirm what’s important to them, what issues they’re struggling with, and what they want their future to look like. When people feel heard, they become more receptive to whatever solutions you can provide.

Develop an emotional connection.

Harvard professor, Gerald Zaltman, concluded that 95% of the purchase decisions people make take place in their subconscious minds. In other words, these decisions are most often made based on how you make someone feel. If you can help them feel good about you, it’s more likely they will pay attention to the various attributes of your services and/or products.

Consider, for a second, a hawker at a county fair, shouting out all the features of his wares. Being loud doesn’t build him an audience. But if he catches your eye when you’re walking by and says something personal to you or manages to get you to laugh, he increases his chances of getting you to stop and listen (if only for the entertainment value).

So, how do you nurture positive emotions and increase the likelihood your
target market will be receptive to your communications? Consider using one or more
of the following tactics:

Continue the conversation

In the healthcare industry, few decisions are made on impulse. It often
takes multiple interactions before a customer or patient is ready to act. When
you take the time to make an emotional connection, your prospects are more
likely to trust you to meet their needs and reach out for the additional
content you create to move them through the proverbial marketing funnel.

For some great examples of how other healthcare organizations are creating connections with their audiences, download a free copy of my 9 Examples of Empathy in Healthcare Content Marketing.

Photo by Josh Calabrese

The post Empathy in Healthcare Communications appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

Why I’m Grateful for My Career

On Thursday, I’ll gather with my family and give thanks for the blessings we’ve enjoyed over the past year, the bounty we share, and the support we provide each other as siblings, parents and grandparents. 

But today, before I close my computer, I want to express gratitude for my freelance life and the content marketing business it allowed me to create. Freelancing has fulfilled me in ways I could never have imagined when I started out a few decades ago. 

I’m thankful for the people who helped me get my business off the ground and keep it growing. 

To Iain, who gave me the opportunity to write my first piece of collateral while I was a young account executive at an ad agency. My copy was approved on the first pass and emboldened me to shift my career from account exec to copywriter.

To Susan, who responded to my first direct marketing letter and hired me to write a campaign to promote the winery she worked for. I thank her for continuing to retain me as she moved to a large PR firm and then on to a biotech company, giving me challenging projects that broadened my portfolio and my credentials.

To Pat, who became my graphic design partner and showed me the joys of working in partnership with another creative freelancer. The work we did together is still among the best in my portfolio, as she put beauty and order to words on the page. 

To Linda, who was my best cheerleader when I started out and became my writing partner and co-publisher of a magazine we founded and ran for five years. 

To Dan, who assigned me articles to write for Sunset Magazine and then referred me to their book division, where I had the chance to write nine books over the next seven years.

To Stewart, who helped me develop expertise in healthcare marketing and fine tune my content strategy, web writing and SEO skills after a career spent in print.

And to all my clients who have put their trust in me over the years and made it a joy to start work every day. The collaboration is every bit as edifying as the work itself. 

I’m thankful for the ongoing education my freelance business provides.

I can’t imagine another career that would let me jump between industries, functions and types of writing—all in the same month. Freelancing means I can choose to be a generalist or an expert in the area that fascinates me most. Since every freelance project is new, I get to meet and interview a wide variety of experts and continuously learn new things. There is no chance to get bored or become stale in the work I do, as long as I keep reaching for new challenges.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to maintain my relevance.

You can’t remain in business as an independent contractor unless you offer the skills clients are looking for today. As technology changes the way we communicate, I need to keep pace and know as much or more than the generations coming up behind me. It feels great to stay relevant and not be afraid that progress will run me over.

I’m thankful that I can work from anywhere with an internet connection.

While I spend most of my workday in front of a computer, it doesn’t matter where that computer is located. It can be in my home office, in a coffee shop, in a park or even—as it was for six months recently and will be again—in a rental home in Mexico. 

I’m thankful for the work-life balance I have created.

I am grateful for the flexibility I had to make my three children my priority without interrupting my career. There were months and even years when I sacrificed income and advancement to give my kids more attention. But I never had to choose between all or nothing. I was in command of the hours I worked and the jobs I took on. I could design my workdays around my children’s schedules. And today, I can still take off time to help with my grandchildren’s care. 

I’m thankful for the ability to support myself doing the work I love.

I wasn’t sure I could make a living writing when I began freelancing. I started my business out of frustration, believing I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a woman at a time when I knew no other female copywriters. I imagined I’d give myself a year and see what happened. I’ve never looked back.  

And finally, I’m thankful for the people who continue to have my back.

Freelancing isn’t for everyone. At times, it can feel insecure and frightening. I had the benefit of growing up with a father who ran his own architecture firm. I often watched the boats coming into the San Francisco Bay, wondering if one might be my father’s ship—the one my mother said we were waiting to come in. We never went without a meal, but I did get used to instability tempered by the promise of much better things to come. I am grateful that my mother believed in me too, and always had my back. 

Today, I rely on the encouragement of friends and family, a great marketing coach, and a group of fellow freelancers who are generous with their advice and support. Even though I work alone, I never feel alone. I have so much to be thankful for that no matter what my bank account looks like on any given day, I feel very rich. And with a new challenge from every new project, I’m excited for the year ahead.

Photo by Jakob Owens

The post A Freelancer’s Thanksgiving appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.

It’s the details people don’t expect that make your health care story worth reading.

Too much of the marketing content written today—for blog posts, websites, brochures and even for video—is all the same. Worse, it’s completely predictable. It provides no insight into the uniqueness of a business, an individual or a product. It doesn’t address patients’ or doctors’ questions with a new perspective. It certainly doesn’t establish you as a thought leader. It simply reiterates what the competition is saying in slightly different words. It’s easily forgotten and often a waste of time to both write and read.

People react to information or experiences that are novel. When a thought or idea catches us by surprise and touches our emotions, it forces us to stop and think about it. Then, we are more likely to remember it and share it with other people. As our story is shared, our visibility grows.

When you write promotional materials or even leave comments on other people’s posts, think about the details your customers or patients may not expect. Disrupt their notion of what they think you offer and give them a reason to take a closer look.

The post Make Your Health Care Story Stand Out appeared first on Lisa Stockwell.