Image source: JD Hancock on flickr.

Social Media and the Amateur Physicians

While I’m not a Facebook super-user, I do like to scroll through my activity stream in the mornings to see what’s going on with friends and family. Recently, I saw a post from a close friend. He was not feeling well and posted his symptoms on Facebook.

By the time I saw the post, there were over 20 comments with suggestions and diagnoses. With a sarcastic tone, I wrote: “Why don’t you stop making democratic decisions with your health and visit the good old doctor? He may also have an opinion about what’s going on with you.”

A Similar Situation

A similar situation happened to me. I work for DNN in Canada, but travel often to our headquarters in the Bay Area (U.S.). Two months ago (while there) I was not feeling well. I was actually feeling really bad. I wondered whether to visit the doctor once I was back in Canada, or go in the US where I have no insurance.

So I did what many people do in the same situation: I visited Google and started searching. In reading articles that appeared in the search results, there were a number of possibilities. The one I thought was the closest to my symptoms was a peptic ulcer. Since tests would take a few days, I thought I could wait: by that time, I’d be back in Canada. In the end, it turned out I had nothing, just a temporary imbalance because of a change in diet and the lack of exercise.

So, my initial diagnosis was wrong. I did a few searches and found an article from CNN.com. The article mentions a study done by the Pew Research Center that reports that over 80% of internet users have looked up health information online.

The Importance of Content

Clearly, my friend and I are not alone. And guess what? Doctors are not alone either. They’re not the only professionals (or businesses) dealing with patients (or customers) who perform research before they talk to a vendor. People perform “self-diagnosis” when they need a camera, a computer, a software application, a trip, and anything else you can think of.

The Internet has given consumers complete control over the buying cycle.

According to Google, consumers make between 60% and 70% of purchase decisions before they talk to a vendor. They call this the “ZMOT” (Zero Moment Of Truth). In this study, they also found that consumers are using a higher average number of online sources in their research (10.4 in 2011 versus 5.27 in 2010), and are spending more time in these sources (17 percent of time in 2011 versus 9 percent in 2010). The key takeaway from this research is that the ZMOT is the best time for organizations to influence potential buyers.

But how?

Provide Answers to Potential Buyers’ Questions

Potential buyers are looking to educate themselves and the best way to engage with them is by providing answers to their questions. The process of creating and distributing relevant and high quality content is called content marketing.

Let’s revisit the case of my self-diagnosis. As I’m researching the cause for my symptoms, how could health practitioners gain my attention? A clinic, hospital, doctor, or group of doctors could create a library of articles or blogs with information about the benefits, risks, and most common illnesses when traveling.

When searching for symptoms related to my condition, for example, I came across an article from Drugs.com. They published an article about peptic ulcers and a number of the symptoms matched mine.

Define Your Objectives Before Jumping In to Content Marketing

By Israel Martinez

It describes what a peptic ulcer is, what causes them, the symptoms, how they’re diagnosed, how to treat them, when to seek attention, etc.

Drugs.com is a website that “provides accurate and independent information on more than 24,000 prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines and natural products.” By publishing useful content, sites like these can answer questions for readers – and providing answers can, in turn, lead readers to become future customers.

Use Content at Every Stage of the Sales Cycle

But the benefits of content marketing go beyond the ZMOT. Potential buyers and advocates can use your content at every stage of the funnel. Consider this example: a buyer looking for a content marketing solution.

1. Prospective customers start with the intention of buying a Content Marketing solution. At this phase, they may first want to learn more about the content marketing process and what to look for in a solution.
2. After learning about the process, prospects can now start researching the solutions available in the market. For this, they may ask friends in social networks or use Google to find lists of solutions and reviews.
3. After narrowing the list down, prospects can look for direct product comparisons and feature matrices to make a final decision.
4. After becoming customers, they may want to stay engaged to learn about new products or updates. And at this point, you can turn these customers into advocates if they like your product or service and decide to promote your content.

And the last benefit of content marketing is that your content pays ongoing returns. Once it is created and posted online, it will stay there. As people gain value from your content, they may link to it from their blog posts and articles. And day after day, your content pays dividends via continual visits.

Now go ahead and give content marketing a try. Please share your feedback and experiences in the comments area below.

Related Presentation

Have a look through a related presentation on “Why Content Matters”: