Connect With Reporters To Spread the Word About Your Health Care Organization

The trend of using online relationship sites continues to be a popular way for singles to meet potential mates. Now, some savvy hospital marketers are using similar types of matching tools to connect them with reporters and bloggers as a way to build strategic relationships to help promote their services to a larger audience.

The end goal is also a “marriage” of sorts—but this one is made by getting their organization’s name on popular media outlet websites, as well as on television and in print publications.

A Continuing Trend

“Online media query [and] subject matter expert match services are valuable to integrated marketing programs, especially ones with an emphasis on publicity,” says Karyn Odway, principal at CyanPoint Communications, a Chicago-based boutique PR firm focused on health care. She says she has been using these types of channels to connect her clients to journalists for more than a decade and it seems like this trend is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

“This key tool is one more way to connect physicians and other health care professionals with editors and producers to share their expertise. The resulting visibility helps to boost the hospital’s reputation and can potentially grow a patient base.”

Weiss Memorial Hospital

Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago is one organization that has discovered first-hand how such online journalist tools can help them build a stronger presence in the news. With the help of Odway’s firm, the hospital’s goal is to elevate its reputation both in the local market and also to raise its visibility in the medical community nationwide. In addition, Weiss also wants to promote its orthopedics program broadly. Online journalist-query matching services have provided some important avenues to accomplish these goals.

For instance, “we recognized a media query [from a respected medical website] as a good match,” says Odway. The website provided a very visible opportunity for the medical director of the Chicago Center for Orthopedics at Weiss to offer advice about joint replacement surgery. The resulting article also highlighted a couple of Weiss’ strengths, including experienced surgeons and quality patient care.

For more on Weiss’ experience with getting the word out, as well as an important caveat about this sort of marketing—plus a list of journalist/query-matching services you can use—click here to read the full article now: Online Journalist Tools Make Ideal Match for Health Care Organizations.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President