August 15, 2018

Healthcare content marketing is like making wine. Depending on the quality of ingredients, you may end up with a bottle of bargain bin rotgut, a fine blend that starts a click-storm. Web analytics can help.

You can fine-tune your scheduling and content by kicking Google Analytics (GA) into the mix. This sheds light on what information your visitors value when they’re available and online, and which social channels are truly delivering the goods. Would that help you with your content marketing? Then read on.

Web Traffic and Social Media Channels

Our first stop will be at Traffic Overview. We’ll learn how well your social traffic is performing overall compared to other sources of traffic. Don’t be too disappointed if your social traffic is low on the totem pole. It’s not quantity brute force quantity that matters with social media. It’s quality of the visit. You’ll find that social media visitors tend to spend much more time on a site and visit more pages. And if you’re tracking conversions, you’ll often find social visits in the attribution change.

Let’s drill down. Click on the SOCIAL link, and you’ll get more numbers and graphs. That’s always a safe bet when you click on anything in GA. This page breaks down social media traffic by channel. Check not only the number of visits but the quality. Which channels are working the hardest?

Search Queries Yield Ideas for Content Marketing

Search queries are nestled under GA’s ACQUISITION TAB > Search Console > Queries. It’s well worth the drilling required! Search queries show almost all terms for which Google has displayed your medical company, and how many clicks the result received. If you showed below 20, chances are that you haven’t received any clicks for the term.

Sort the table by the number of impressions high to low. The highest ranks will usually be the brand name of your medical company or hospital. Followed by generic category names, e.g. hospital cardiac, or medical device manufacturer.

Tap Into Hidden Terms

What you’re looking for in this report are terms that have a high number of impressions, but a low number of clicks. This is called opportunity! Consider making content related to the topic of that search to distribute through your social channels. For example, the term “hip replacement” may rank 25, you receive 10 clicks, but the term receives 300 searches per month. We’ll let you take it from there.

Refining Social Scheduling with Google

Do you get a gambler’s high every time you schedule a post? Then getting inside information from Google will make your life duller. What you need to do first is to install a custom report. No worries, it’s snap together. Here’s how you do it:

Click on the Customization Tab
Tap Custom Reports
Search for Rattan, the author of the report we’re installing
Scroll down until you find the report labelled “Track Visits by Hour of the Day (Hourly), Day of the Week or Date of the Month (Daily)”
Hit Import

The report with your data already filled in will almost instantly appear on your analytics page. The title of the report explains what the report contains. Keep in mind that this is showing when visitors are rustling around the site. The big question is, does your social schedule match? There’s a tendency to look at scheduling in the context of our local time zone. But, with web analytics, you may find spikes and pockets of traffic at odd hours that you’re missing with your postings.

If your medical device company is targeting an international market, you may want to adjust (or reschedule) your content marketing schedule for your friends across the pond. While a hospital may not have the same geographical reach, times of day and days of the week may be critical to your schedule.

These techniques are based on the behavior of your website visitors. And they may be contrary to the standard advice, or the whisper in the hall that Tuesdays at 1 p.m. is the hot time for social media.

Now you can skip the fluff, and start drilling into your web analytics for the real answers.

For a deeper dive, learn how to create segments for your website, go here.