Healthcare’s niche market makes it an ideal magazine or website opportunity. As with any publication, audience development is critical. Your audience determines brand loyalty, and it also drives ad revenue, which can greatly outweigh subscription revenue.
Audience development skills are critical to any trade publication, and each industry has its own characteristics. You need to know your audience, offer them what they want, and do it better than anyone else.
SEE ALSO: Audience Development Strategies for Humans and Search Engines
Easier said than done? Not necessarily.
Keep New, Relevant Content Flowing
Content draws reader in and holds them, but only if it’s relevant. Healthcare publications with a general scope have a bit more freedom with the material published. But the narrower the focus, the narrower your content should be. Consider it a niche within a niche.
For example, a magazine devoted to registered nurses would have different material than one with a target audience so broad as to include the whole of general health care. Broad-focus readership might seem to offer more opportunity, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Niche publishers can hone in on what really matters to the audience, offering content that’s extremely relevant to the whole readership. And if you offer an online and print version, online revenue gets a boost by publishing unique material that’s only available digitally through a paywall.
Including both timely and evergreen content gives the publication staying power. Readers want to know what’s current, but don’t knock yourself out of the running as the source for what’s considered standard information in the process.
Make Archived Content Available, if For a Fee
Once a story has run, that doesn’t mean its relegated to the vaults. That’s another reason evergreen content is so important. What’s trending now might not be relevant in 6 months, so it’s rendered unusable, but some topics don’t go out of style.
With content that doesn’t become outdated, you have an opportunity for more revenue by making it available through a paywall and even by offering an eBook anthology of past material. And there are two ways to achieve that.
Scott Yates for Inbound Insiders explains that there’s a difference between sustainable and timeless content.
Sustainable content is relevant now, but it might need occasional updating to stay with the times. For example, updating tech information and current statistics can save an article that would otherwise become outdated.
Evergreen content, on the other hand, doesn’t need many, if any, updates. An article on compassionate care might be a good example, since compassion doesn’t go out of date.
Use Social Media Consistently
Social can broaden your reach, and it’s a great brand and loyalty builder. But if you’re going to use it, do so consistently.
No social media presence isn’t the best approach, but it’s better than an inconsistent one. The Poynter Institute also reminds that social is a great way to promote your evergreen content and generate more revenue.
Social builds a community around your health care publication. As long as you participate, that community can grow and thrive.
Healthcare publications are different from other trade magazines and websites, and yet they’re the same. What’s important to your readers is naturally different from what a tech magazine would offer. But the strategies involved with building a strong brand with loyal readers aren’t much different at all.
Give readers a reason to come, and then give them more reasons to stay. It’s as challenging as that. But as simple as that, too.