How To Use SEO the Pitch to Health Care Reporters

Earlier this week, we shared some insights we learned about pitching to health care reporters and jumpstarting your health care public relations efforts. Boston Globe columnist, Scott Kirsner, shared a lot of advice on how to relate better to journalists and his lessons translate well in regards to pitching to health care writers as well.

Read our Top 5 takeaways from “Getting Ink: Inbound Strategies for Building Relationships with Traditional Media Outlets and Bloggers”

Now, let’s explore the advice Arment Dietrich’s CEO, Gini Dietrich, shared at Inbound 2015. Her session about the power of combining media relations efforts with your search engine optimization strategy gave a unique approach to pitching to health care reporters.

Gini’s presentation; “Using Media Relations to Drive SEO,” was an intensive presentation filled with insanely helpful tricks and lessons for anyone trying to improve their health care public relations efforts. Check out her most valuable lessons:

1. Be aware of your domain authority. You can check the scores of any of your competition as well by downloading the MOZ Chrome extension at moz.com/tools/SEO-toolbar. When this is turned on, you’ll be able to see the domain authority of any website you visit. You can also see the DA scores in search results.
2. You should pick 3-4 phrases or long-tail key terms you want to rank for and use as your anchor text. You can use Google’s free keyword planner to see how often those key terms are being searched and how competitive it will be to rank for them. You want to focus on terms with a high search volume and low competition.
3. Trying to decide if you can rank higher than another website in organic listings? Check out their domain authority in comparison to yours. If you’re within a 10-point range, you can compete. If not, you might need to pick another term to focus on first. Gini made this analogy… “If you’re walking you can speed up to beat someone running, but you can’t beat a bike. If you’re biking you can’t beat a car and if you’re driving you can’t beat a helicopter. The same rule applies for competing with higher domain authorities.”
4. When reaching out to reporters asking to be a written about on their blog or in their articles, share a piece of valuable content within your blog that they can link to, rather than your home page. Writers want to send their readers to more content they can engage with, not a dead end.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask writers if you can share syndicated content with them. Most publications do this, the only one who won’t is TechCrunch. Share with the writer what your health care organization does, mention that you know they syndicate content and then provide five ideas for content to share.

Want to learn more about the importance of having a strong health care public relations team, check out our article on why your practice needs a PR strategy. 

How To Pitch to Health Care Reporters

Pitching to health care reporters can be challenging, but if you know some of the tricks of their trade you can capture the attention of top writers from publications like Huffington Post, The New York Times and USA Today.  The trick is realizing that there really isn’t a trick. Health care writers are people too! Keep in mind that they have a job to do too and they want to do it well, so if you can be a genuine health care industry resource to them to help produce better content, they will see the value in your relationship.

Need more help pitching to healthcare reporters? Download our Press Release Checklist

Recently, we attended Hubspot’s Inbound Conference in Boston and we learned a lot from two knowledgeable speakers, Gini Dietrich (CEO of Arment Dietrich and SpinSucks) and Scott Kirsner (Columnist from The Boston Globe). Both discussed ways to get more out of your public relations efforts, but their diverse backgrounds gave us a unique insight to what public relations professionals can do to get the attention of reporters.

Scott’s presentation; “Getting Ink: Inbound Strategies for Building Relationships with Traditional Media Outlets and Bloggers,” taught us a lot about what reporters and writers are looking for, here are our top takeaways:

1. Journalists are skeptical by nature, but if you show them that you want to help them succeed, you’ll get farther.
2. Your website’s “Media Inquiry” page can help you or hurt you. Contact forms will often be ignored, but if you have the contact name and direct phone number and email address of someone on your team a reporter is more likely to reach out to you.
3. Unique bios showcasing your affinity for kickball and cat shirts can be fun, but ultimately could be hurting your chances of getting found. Meatier bios of your staff, especially your leadership team, can help you catch the attention of a reporter who, for instance, is looking for a Florida State University alum working for a health care startup.
4. Steer clear of sending comprehensive Ebooks and whitepapers, no matter how interesting YOU find them. You are not your audience. Think about how the journalist you are targeting would search for a subject and tailor your messaging to fit them. Keep in mind, sharing infographics and short videos can be a great idea.
5. Create lists in Twitter of reporters and writers who write about companies in your space, then tweet to them regularly about their articles. When it comes time to share your content, they’ll be more receptive.

For takeaways from Gini Dietriche’s presentation, Using Media Relations to Drive SEO, read our next blog post.