Spanning 23 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient clinics, Northwell Health is the largest health system in New York, despite being a relatively new name on the scene. The healthcare enterprise, formerly known as North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, launched a re–brand in 2015 as part of a broader plan to distinguish itself in the highly competitive New York hospital space. Gina Czark, a former journalist and veteran of the New York City hospital scene, joined Northwell in 2016 as the Associate Vice President of Content, working under CMO Ramon Soto. It was one of our most-engaged social media posts, and we had the realization that we had to move away from talking about ourselves and put the patient’s needs and wants at the center of our content strategy. The idea of not talking about yourself is counter-intuitive for many marketers, especially in the healthcare space. Looking more at operations, how did Northwell go about building a content marketing team? He realized that we need an actual content team that is focused on enterprise content across all 23+ hospitals and our affiliate clinics and partners. Our team is 20 people, focused on content strategy, audience insights, audience development, social media strategy and multimedia, including videography and photography. So if we’re doing paid social media, even advertising is a part of it. In fact, we have a whole parenting vertical on The Well because we’ve found that it resonates with our target audience.
Spanning 23 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient clinics, Northwell Health is the largest health system in New York, despite being a relatively new name on the scene. The healthcare enterprise, formerly known as North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, launched a re–brand in 2015 as part of a broader plan to distinguish itself in the highly competitive New York hospital space. Along with a name change, Northwell reimagined its approach to its brand and marketing, with the aim of uniting its 66,000+ employees under one sophisticated, patient-centered vision.
Developing a content marketing strategy was a key component of realizing that vision and remains one today. Gina Czark, a former journalist and veteran of the New York City hospital scene, joined Northwell in 2016 as the Associate Vice President of Content, working under CMO Ramon Soto. We sat down with Gina, who is now Vice President of Content Management, to discuss how Northwell’s content marketing strategy — including its centerpiece hub, The Well — has helped connect the enterprise with a new generation of patients who are increasingly turning to the digital space to learn about their health, share their experiences, and connect with providers.
The Well just launched this year, but you were leading content strategy since you arrived at Northwell. How did you approach publishing before The Well?
Before we had The Well, we relied pretty heavily on experimentation and telling stories through social media. We did some testing and learning, playing around with different formats and different mediums, always with the goal of not doing your standard physician bio or testimonial and instead focused on emotional storytelling. All in all, we did about eight months’ worth of testing of content that we knew we would eventually want on a content hub. We were finding that our existing websites maybe didn’t have the right template or weren’t the right venue for the stories we were telling, so we leveraged our social media accounts, as well as Medium to initially share stories.
How did you measure success for your content at that time?
Our initiatives on social media were the first attempts at an integrated distribution plan. We supported key service lines and set KPIs and benchmarks — whether it be read rates on Medium or completion rates on videos, and then for social media, not just likes, but also comments and overall engagement with the content.
Along those lines, one of the first content series we launched, which is now a series on The Well, was “So you’re getting a fill-in-the-blank-procedure,” that describes common medical procedures. One of our writers volunteered to write about her upcoming colonoscopy. We A/B tested different images and headlines, and then put a little paid boost behind it. From that, we found that our audience started sharing their own experiences and also tagging their friends and loved ones to get them to read about it, which was a great indicator of success. We had these very germane, organic interactions with the content that really helped form the strategy for The Well. It was one of our most-engaged social media posts, and we had the realization that we had to move away from talking about ourselves and put the patient’s needs and wants at the center of our content strategy.
The idea of not talking about yourself is counter-intuitive for many marketers, especially in the healthcare space. Was it a challenge to sell the idea internally that Northwell should get away from talking about itself?
Initially yes, but when we looked at the competitive landscape we were able to clearly see what was missing. It was an opportunity to expand on one of our innovation pillars of “We see healthcare differently,” and create it in the digital and content space. There was a lot of education of what we needed to build, as many people perceived content as only a blog, newsroom, or opportunity to share awards or milestones about our institution. I pride myself on…
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