SEO and Web Writing: How to Create Great Web Content from WebMD

In a big organization where digital strategy is a critical hub, how do writers and search engine optimization professionals work together to maximize efficiencies?

At WebMD, one of the Web’s largest consumer healthcare portals, Tom Roseberry, Senior SEO Manager, is responsible for a team of SEO professionals who work together with content writers to optimize pages and draw traffic to the website.  The process he describes is one that almost all digital strategy organizations can learn from in terms of SEO, digital writing and collaboration.

Most digital writers began their careers as other types of writers, usually journalists or print writers. Learning to write for the Web is a technical skill, made more complicated by all of the various trends in organic search, link building and social media. As Tom explains, “Writers focus on the SEO keywords trap and get away from writing. They tend to see SEO as a big scary thing where they have to rank and get traffic.”

How to Write Effectively For Your Audience
Tom’s advice to writers is to write really great content that people will want to read and use keyword research to inform your writing. Ideally, Tom explains, keyword research should give you a sense of what other related topics people are searching for in relation to your topic. In WebMD’s case that would be related symptoms, remedies and treatments to certain conditions.

For example: When collaborating about several new articles about diabetes, the SEO team found that ‘diabetes diet’ was a popular key phrase. The writer used that information to add a section to the article about what to eat when you have diabetes. That could, in turn, link to an entire section on nutrition for diabetics.

Another way that keywords inform writers is by watching news trends.  If a topic starts trending, then Tom’s team knows it is probably something they should cover on WebMD. When bath salts reached its peak because of the “zombie scares”, Tom’s team already had content online because they consistently watch those healthcare keyword trends.

Tom explained, “We always ask ourselves, ‘Is this right for our audience? Will this resonate with them?’ If the answer is no, then usually we won’t write about it, not matter how ‘hot or trending’ it may be. Our brand is a respected source for medical information online and we need to always be a reputable voice consumers can trust.”

Setting Up an Effective Workflow
Tom and his SEO team follow a consistent workflow when creating and collaborating about content. One of the advantages the SEO team has is that they sit within the editorial department, so they are a part of the overall team that produces content.

Their workflow process is thorough and allows for cross-pollination of ideas from different content creators:

1. Content Meetings: These meetings are a very collaborative process between the programming team, writers and SEO professionals. They discuss the specific angle and audience engagement around the topic and decide how to approach it.
2. Keyword Research: The SEO team researches the keywords around the topic and provides guidance to the writers. Again, the goal of the research is to find the keywords that resonate with users, but also inform the writer about any peripheral topics to include. Tom says his team uses a combination of Google Adwords and Google Insights for Search as well as internal data.
3. Review: The content must go through a rigorous review process, including editors, medical reviewers, copy editing and SEO review. 

It was fascinating to hear how WebMD set up their editorial process and content strategy to take advantage of the combined strength of their SEO professionals and writers.  Thanks so much to Tom for spending valuable time explaining the process to me—I learned so much and I hope you have as well.

Tom’s SEO Rules for Writers:

• Use keyword research to inform your writing
• Don’t change your writing style. If you try to incorporate popular keywords, it will sound clumsy and won’t resonate with readers.

Focus on:

• Writing a really great article
• A headline that will resonate with user 
• Use keywords in your subheadings when appropriate

From One Professional Mom to Another: 7 Pieces of Advice for Marissa Mayer

As a working mother and an information technology professional, I’ve been watching the news of Marissa Mayer and her new appointment as CEO of Yahoo! with equal parts curiosity, enthusiasm and surprise. The surprise comes from the fact that shortly after the announcement, news of her first pregnancy emerged as well.

The reactions to this news were mixed; some mean-spirited, some doubtful, wrapped in a cloak of ,“How could she take such a high profile job when she’s about to have a baby?”  Articles like this one definitely do not help women who want to believe that the corporate world has taken a great leap forward in separating motherhood from corporate leadership.

I have some advice for Ms. Mayer, humble advice, but advice well earned from a 20-year career in IT and communications.  I’ve been a mom for nine years (three children) and a CEO for seven and here’s my take:

1. Get used to being torn: When this baby comes, you will not know what hit you.  That’s okay. Your first baby is like a bomb going off in your life.  It turns the whole world upside down; it even turns the colors of nature different shades. You will love your baby. You will be sleep deprived. You will be amazed that your body produced this little miracle. You will wonder how you will ever be the same again. You won’t be. My mother always tells me, “Having a child is like having your heart walking around outside your body.” Your mind and heart will always be split—between work and that love you feel for that baby.  That’s okay.  It just takes getting used to a state of being where your heart and your mind are in two places at once.
2. Find a great nanny: When I walk out the door, I don’t think twice.  My nanny is the greatest person to have ever entered my life, next to my husband and my children. She loves them in a way I never could: she’s not responsible for the people they become so she can enjoy them for who they are in the moment. I am jealous of her at times for the relationships she has with them. But when they cry, they always want me. I am their mother. Nothing will ever change that glorious truth, no matter how many business trips I take, no matter how many conference calls I’m on at 5pm—absolutely nothing.
3. Schedule time with your baby and be present: I make sure I connect with each of my children at least once a day for five minutes. It sounds like an unbelievably amount of short time, doesn’t it? And yet when I make it about five minutes, there’s no way I can pick up my iPhone or check my computer—it’sonlyforfiveminutes,Ahava. Those five minutes bleeds into 10 or 20 and I’m present the entire time. Babies are different—my children are older—but you must carve out  time every day for you and your baby alone. When my second daughter, who is now seven, was an infant, I would rock her to sleep to the song Yellow by Coldplay (go ahead, judge me).  In two weeks, we’ll be at their concert together.  Every day, during those five minutes, you will make the connections that matter, that drive us, that bind us to our children—not just as their parents, but as people we enjoy.
4. Schedule time for you: The greatest thing I ever did to grow my business was schedule two hours of Pilates into my week. Having that time for me, to work on my body, was the best decision I ever made to take care of my mind. Feeling stronger in my body made me feel stronger as a business owner, decision maker, writer and thought leader. My children are at camp and school when I’m at Pilates. Do I have to play catch up at night when they’re in bed? Yes. Am I exhausted? Yes. But, I feel great about the way I look; I stand taller and straighter.  It’s worth the two hours a week—trust me.
5. Embrace failure as a necessary step to success: I’ve had the privilege of hearing two content strategists at Facebook describe their corporate culture of a hacker mindset.  Many of the programmers come from the hacker culture, where they break into systems in order to control them. Hackers are often thwarted time and again until they find the way in though a secure system. So, they embrace failure as a natural step to success.  Parenting, work, and life are like this as well. We fail, we learn, we fail, we learn, we succeed, we learn. As my amazing Pilates instructor, Jane, says during an incredibly hard exercise, “It’s just practice.”  That’s life, Marissa. It’s just practice.
6. Life is about choices: You already know this because you had an executive role at Google. At the end of the day, no one has it all. Life is about choosing between one thing and the other.  Sometimes, you will be faced with the choice of your baby or a meeting. Sometimes you will choose the baby. Sometimes you will choose the meeting. And you will do what all great leaders have done since the beginning of time: You will make the best choice you can based on all the knowledge you have in front of you at that moment. 
7. Lead like a mother**cker: In her transcendent collection of columns written as Sugar, Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed answers tortured Elissa Bassit, who asks for advice about the art of writing: “I write like a girl…Right now, I am a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can’t write…The truth: I am sick with panic that I cannot—will not—override my limitations, insecurities, jealousies and ineptitude to write well, with intelligence and heart and lengthiness. And I fear that even if I manage to write, that the stories I write will be disregarded and mocked.”
   Sugar answers, “How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of ‘I could have been better than this’ and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and mother**cker… So write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a mother**cker.”

And that’s my humble advice to you, Ms. Mayer: Lead like a mother**cker. Don’t worry about being a feminist role model. Don’t worry about whether you should be a CEO when you’re about to have a baby.  You have incredible talent, drive and intelligence. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be the CEO of a major corporation at 37.  So don’t worry about what everyone else is thinking, feeling, saying, Tweeting. They only know what they know.

Now let’s find out what you know.

Writing Sensitive Content: What All Healthcare Marketers Should Know

This is a guest post written by one of Aha Media Group's writers, Hadassa Field. Her sister lost her battle with breast cancer more than one year ago; she is very much missed by friends, family and her community. 


During her sister's illness, Hadassa learned more than she ever wanted to know about breast cancer by performing online research. Here are her thoughts on how we can improve as healthcare marketers.

Writing healthcare content may seem like a theoretical exercise, until you know a cancer patient personally. Over the course of my sister’s seven year, losing battle with cancer, I learned quite a few things that all healthcare marketers should know. Here’s what cancer patients are really thinking when they read your website:

1. Don’t underestimate how much I want to be reassured. Don’t just write dry content in a detached style. I’ve been diagnosed with a terrifying, life-threatening illness, and I want some comfort along with the information I am gathering. Make an effort to use the occasional reassuring phrase, so that I start to think that your center might be the place I might be able to trust.
2. Don’t exaggerate the severity of my illness. I’ve already done lots of research before landing on your site, and I know just how sick I am. When you doom me to early death unless I use the physicians at your center, it strikes a false note, and gets my mouse moving elsewhere.
3. Don’t make grandiose statements you can’t be back up. No cancer center can truly say that they provide incomparable care. I’ll get concerned that I am being sold a bill of goods if I feel that you are all talk and no walk. I am much more impressed by research that your doctors lead, techniques developed at your hospital, and hard percentages of recovery rates, than I am by fancy claims.
4. Don’t be vague. I am tired and overwhelmed. Walk me through the care process clearly and succinctly. Tell me exactly who I will see first, which nurses will oversee my care, whether there will be collaborative meetings about my case, and what kind of experimental options I will have access to. I am trying desperately to keep my cool, but I’ll feel so much better if you can take some of that burden off of my shoulders.
5. For goodness sakes, don’t assign blame. Did you ever think of how I feel when I have suffered through rounds of treatment, only to find my cancer has not responded? I may be searching your site after my cancer has returned, to find out what my options are. Please, oh please, don’t ever say discuss “patients as non-responders” in your literature, or insinuate in any way that I, as a person, could have chosen to respond, if I really, really wanted to. Trust me, it is not that simple. Acknowledge how powerless I am, and try to refer to “cancers that don’t respond to treatment,” as opposed to patients who don’t respond. It’s a small change that means a lot to me.
6. Don’t forget about my loved ones. When you refer to my children, my significant other, or my parents in your content, I feel like you realize that I am not an isolated medical case. I am a whole world, and much of it might be crumbling right now. Take the time and acknowledge that. Tell me about programs or care options available to my family and friends who will be living through cancer with me, and who may have to deal with it after I am gone. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that; I’ve thought of everything.

As a healthcare marketer, you have an awesome opportunity – you can help a real, live person navigate what is probably the biggest challenge of their life. Although you often think you do this anyway, this time, make a special effort to put yourself into the reader’s mind.

Don’t just write as if it doesn’t matter. Because, trust me, it really, really does.

Content Governance: Ahava Leibtag's Interview on Content Marketing 360

Well, it's getting to be a theme on blog---style guides and now a radio interview with Pamela Muldoon about content governance. You can listen here and enjoy!

Listen to internet radio with Next Stage Media Group on Blog Talk Radio

Content Strategy: 10 Essential Elements of Style Guides

Content strategists love to wax poetic about style guides, mysterious and legendary, but the truth is they have been a communications tool way before our emerging discipline. What makes them like the Loch Ness Monster is that they lack consistent use. Since someone, once upon a time, did write the style guide to create consistency within an organization's written content, its lack of use is a conundrum.

Style guides are a critical part of content governance.  Governance across the Web is so vital because we want our users to have a consistent experience throughout our digital properties.

If you want or have a style guide, this blog post is for you, as I'll describe 10 essential elements of any great style guide. If you already have one, blow off the dust from its lonely covers, crack it open and look for these elements. Feel free to add them.  Style guides should be living documents, as you'll see from our list.

Ready?  I promise, no Loch Ness monster in sight.

The 10 Essential Elements of Successful Style Guides
1.  Centralized and Distributed
Distribute your style guide to the writing and posting workforce within your organization. If they are not professionally trained writers, then spend time explaining how to use the style guide, why it is important and how to access it (shared drives, Google docs, printed once a year, etc.)  Systems create freedom. Most people enjoy having rules to direct them when they are unsure.

2. Grammar Rules
Most corporate style guides use very short paragraphs to direct writers to other style guides for grammar rules, etc.  There are very basic grammar rules that people ALWAYS get wrong--even trained professional writers. So include three to four pages on some basics.  These might include the differences between the commonly misused words affect/effect, who/whom, bad/badly, complementary/complimentary, etc.

3. Punctuation Section
Punctuation can be a matter of style. For example, different organizations use the labeling of dates in various fashions, especially internationally. Make sure to explain the Oxford comma, how to use quotes, and my favorite (not!) the use of the Em Dash and En Dash.

4. Branding Guidelines
While you may think that branding guidelines (design, use of logo, etc.) belong in a separate document (and you may be right), I would argue both written and design style elements should be bundled. As we move toward an increasingly versatile workforce, where digital practitioners will be required to know how to write and code, branding guidelines within a traditional written style guide will gain importance.

5. Voice and Tone
So important. So overlooked. Knowing how to write a redirect page vs. a sign in page are two very different talents. Style guides can help with this, most critically by saying, "This is how we say it" and "This is NOT how we say it."  I recently wrote a style guide where I explained to never compare the organization to a competitor. Instead, I explained how to elucidate the positioning as to "attack" the competitor without being forceful or inelegant. Sometimes, what NOT to say is just as important as what TO say.

6. Channel Distribution Guidance
How do you personify your brand's voice and tone in 140 characters? Well, it had better be in your style guide. How many social media properties are you managing currently? Five? Six? 11? However many there are, make sure your style guide gives distinct instructions for each one. For example, your brand may allow you to say something like "Will we C U there?" Your brand may not. Note it in the style guide.

7. Mobile Section
I think mobile is different from channels because mobile makes content look different. Social media channels simply broadcast on different frequencies, if you would. Depending on what you're selling and how you're selling it, have a section in your style guide that addresses your mobile properties and their distinct styles.

8. Titles, Naming Conventions, Degrees
These are all important elements of a style guide most often ignored. Since I write so much in the healthcare space, I cannot tell you how many times within the SAME bio I have encountered MD and B.A.  Well which designation are you using, pray do tell?  What about when a link to a page on the website says "The Program for Highly Functional Children" and the page title says "Your Gifted Child"?  Depending on how large your organization is, you may want to create a cheat sheet for naming conventions, because they are most often the mistake on the page.

9. Last Published
This is so important, it should be number one, but then there were eight other things that I felt were more important. Update and distribute the style guide once a year. Make sure the last published date is ON THE COVER and every other page too.  That tells people they are working with the most current version.

10. User personas and Customer Segmentation
I left this one until the end because I feel the others MUST happen and these can wait. So many organizations have customer segmentation information, but they don't bring those customers to life. Give them names, occupations, salaries, families, vacation spots and hobbies. Connecting to an actual persona, rather than data on a page helps writers and publishers to understand whom they are talking to in a digital conversation. Knowing whom you are conversing with makes for better dialogue, no?

So, what do you think? Did I leave anything out? How else can we improve the management and distribution of style guides?

Crisis Communications: 7 Reasons Pepco Needs a New PR Team

In light of recent developments regarding Pepco and the recent "rare derecho storm", I thought it relevant to discuss why Pepco did such a poor job of communicating with its customers about power restoration.

I'm not a power engineer, and I've never run a public utility, although I did serve as a government employee at one of the regulatory agencies that does so.  I have no idea how to fix a power line or get a generator back on line. However, the poor communication strategy that Pepco displayed since last Friday is important for those of us in the field of communications strategy to discuss, and especially in light of changing technologies, digital strategy.

The challenge in all communications is setting expectations for people, and on this front, Pepco fails miserably. Here are 7 things they need to change:

1. The Pepco App:  I'm not sure who built this and why.  It has 4 menu items:

• Pay My Bill
• My Outage
• Outage Map
• Contact Us

If you pay your bill through your Pepco app raise your hand. Anyone?  Ok, next menu item, "My Outage".  This did not work, even though I had all the relevant information.  I could never get the database to accept my information.

It's the Outage Map that really infuriates me. The thing was worthless from beginning to end, and even though I got power back last night, it still shows that my neighborhood will come back online by Friday, July 6--a full week after we first lost power.

Why not just allow people to put in their address and zip code? Then the "app" will text them or call them when work crews are in the area?  If all an app does is infuriate people, then it's a good idea to change it or retire it. The app was not designed with the user in mind--or the power engineers. Should the crews in the field be responsible for updating estimated times for power restoration? There is full developed technology available to automate a lot of this communication.  Use it Pepco.

2. Media Communication: I have to commend both The Washington Post and WTOP for excellent coverage on the storm and the power outages. Today, Tuesday, was the first day I heard the CEO of Pepco, Thomas H. Graham, on radio commercials, discussing safety to the crews as well as how hard they were working. Those radio spots should be written and recorded before any major storms and ready to deploy the minute they know there are power outages of this magnitude.  They don't have to be specific and they don't need to say more then, "We're doing the best we can."  Learn it from the boy scouts, old boys, "Be prepared."

3. How they Set Priority: Why isn't there a short microsite that people can read through on how Pepco determines how to set priority about which neighborhoods to turn on? According to Pepco, hospitals, traffic lights and water treatment plants are of priority.  Put that on your website!  Spend the time when you haven't lost power to create a short explanation of how Pepco runs every single power outage so that individuals feel educated about exactly what Pepco is doing. In fact, include in the app this sequence and have the app show where in the sequence Pepco is during the power restoration effort.

4. Education is priority: Send out brochures with bills. Run radio spots throughout the year. Teach people that during storms they need to stay away from downed wires. Use the website or app to give short articles on what to do with food and frozen items and how long they are safe to consume after a power outage.

Why wait till it really matters? I learned to stop, drop and roll in school when I was in fourth grade. Pepco should be educating elementary kids, high school kids and adults using a variety of programs so people know what to do during a storm. Because....

5. Your consumers' priorities don't match yours: The only thing people really care about is when their power is going to come back on. @pepcoconnect posted pictures of storm damage on Sunday, at the height of people's frustration. Are you kidding me? I don't need to see photos from you--let the photojournalists cover that aspect. I certainly don't want to know that your people are collecting those in the field while I'm sitting in the dark and heat. Wait till after you've got everyone restored. Or never post them, ever.  Just make your customers' priorities #1--tell me when my power is coming back.

6. Stop making excuses: I don't want to hear that you didn't have time to prepare for the weather. It's weather, for crying out loud. You can't prepare for it.  Just say, "We are doing the best we can--we apologize for the inconvenience and we are going to set this right as soon as we can." Point people back to the app or your website to explain how you are setting those priorities.

7. Run your social media better: The Tweet stream was terrible--they just kept repeating the same information. @WTOP did an amazing job--every single user who tweeted to WTOP was retweeted back to the following audience. @pepcoconnect should have done a better job of explaining Pepco's plans and priorities.

They also should have been directing people to their YouTube channel where videos are waiting to explain to people about how they set infrastructure priority, how they put power back on line, what happens to transformers when they blow, etc. These videos should be produced when they are not dealing with an emergency crisis.

What to do next time, Pepco:
When people have information, they feel less powerless (pun intended). Here's a short list for Pepco:
1. Prepare articles, videos and short how-tos for people between now and the next storm
2. Create a better app that directs people to this information
3. Develop better educational programs so you don't have to waste people's time explaining certain basics during the height of a crisis
4. Accept responsibility and don't make excuses
5. Communicate with your audience as much as possible with critical information

How about you? What are your thought on this latest Pepco fiasco? What should they do differently next time (Heaven forbid!)?