Could a Content Strategy Increase Your U.S. News & World Report Reputation Ranking? [Case Study]

Physician engagement matters when it comes to U.S. News & World Report rankings. During the open voting period, board-certified physicians who are members of Doximity are eligible to vote for the best hospital in a range of specialties.

The results impact everything from patient opinion to physician recruitment to research funding. That’s a lot of pressure to rank high and hold your position year after year.

With voting happening in the medical community, do you (dear marketer) have any control over your hospital’s ranking?

It turns out you do.

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Increase Your U.S. News & World Report Reputation Ranking With Compelling Content and Smart Distribution Strategy

A Client Win

Our client, a prestigious national health center, moved from 27^th to 7^th highest in the country in their specialty, according to U.S. News & World Report Reputation Ranking. The remarkable achievement was driven by the captivating thought leadership pieces we created and an energizing engagement campaign.

The Details

The health center’s team approached Aha Media Group, seeking to increase its reach and reputation with referring physicians. They wanted to:

• Develop a stronger presence on Doximity, the online medical network for physicians
• Increase their Reputation Ranking on U.S. News & World Report
• Build their email newsletter distribution list

How We Did It

The Aha Media and client teams built an engagement campaign on the hospital website to:

• Increase the client’s presence there
• Encourage physicians to vote on Doximity
• Increase U.S. News & World Report Reputation Ranking in their specialty

Aha Media then developed more than a dozen thought leadership blogs to showcase the client’s expertise in research and their breadth of leading-edge treatments. These content pieces attracted the attention of referring physicians and the medical community during the Reputation Ranking voting period.

To ensure the pieces got noticed, our team followed SEO best practices. Our team:

• Researched keywords to match what physicians are looking for
• Used keywords in the meta description and h1/h2 tags
• Covered topics in-depth

The client repurposed the blog content among multiple platforms, including:

• Provider website pages
• Doximity platform
• Hospital e-newsletter to community physicians and specialists

The e-newsletter was an essential element of the campaign, highlighting features from the blog and sharing them with subscribers. To ensure open rates (and votes), the health center targeted eligible physician voters in the region and sent them blogs related to their specialties. The marketing team noted that the e-newsletters had especially high open rates for the blogs that physicians received.

Physicians’ opinions matter when it comes to U.S. News & World Report rankings. Making an impact on physicians was crucial for raising the reputation ranking of this specialty center. And Aha Media’s strategy worked. The well-written blogs, engagement campaign and distribution strategy resulted in the hospital’s Reputation Ranking reaching the No. 7 spot.

Praise from the client:
“The U.S. News & World Report results are now public. The thought leadership pieces we worked on with a strong engagement campaign were key drivers in increasing our reputation score from 27 to the 7th strongest reputation score in this year’s ranking for our specialty. This is a huge improvement. BRAVO! Thanks for producing great content with us.”

The Takeaway

Working with a team who has strong expertise in healthcare writing, SEO and writing for physicians elevates your content. SEO-rich, compelling healthcare content gets you results that are:

• High level but not full of jargon: Physicians connected to the content because articles were well-written, data-rich and full of the latest innovations in research and care — while remaining clear, straightforward and easy to read.
• Widely read: The distribution strategy ensured the content reached lots of eyes and was easy to share with a click.
• Measurable: By setting a goal at the launch of a project, teams can measure the success of their work. The KPIs for this project were reach and reputation, and the results exceeded expectations.

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