6 Easy Ways to Repurpose Existing Pharma Content

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Date posted: 21 September 2017

 

Hello and welcome to the another Method Minute | Pharma Blog.

Today, we’ll look at how you can take the sting out of content development by repurposing your existing assets. We’ll provide How To advice so that you can get more value from your original content and save time and money in the process. 

PDF: Pharma’s Go To Format

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good PDF. Working in the pharmaceutical industry, you have to.

We PDF a lot of content: clinical papers, posters, abstracts, ebooks, white papers, case studies, sales content, patient materials.

And why not? It’s safe. It works. It conveys the message.

Plus, we all know what a highly-regulated industry this is. Let’s keep it safe.

PDF! PDF! PDF!

Well, let’s take a look at why PDF may not be the best approach for pharmaceutical marketing and medical communications, and consider what you can do instead to deliver more value for your customers and your brand.

Two Important Reasons Why PDF Isn’t Pharma’s Friend:

1. Doctors are people. People like good design. Well designed content increases information consumption, engagement and retention. Data from the World Bank supports this, showing that if you want someone to read your report and act on your data, PDF is a bad choice
2. Google is not people. But Google does like good design and user experience. Using a variety of user metrics, Google can tell whether your web pages and content are well designed and received by your customers. This is a significant ranking factor. If you’re not sure how your pages are ranked by Google, check-out our on-page SEO checklist

If you want to engage your customers, your content must be relevant, actionable and of high-quality. It must be worthy of their time. If physicians don’t engage with your content, you cannot build relationships with them or earn their trust. Both of  which are important if you want to sell to them in the future.

Create High Quality Content From Existing Assets

Creating new, original content in the pharmaceutical industry is expensive and time-consuming.

So why spend your valuable time, energy and budget creating new content, when you can repurpose what you have into fresh, user-friendly media that will broaden their appeal and make them easier to find online?

Let’s take a look at our favourite alternative media formats, which can be quickly and easily created from your existing content assets. 

#1 Infographics

Infographics, like ours, allow you to visualize data and communicate complex information clearly and efficiently. They turn your content into easy-to-understand pieces of art that you can share (whole, or in chunks) via all your media channels.

Credit: Method Medical Media. 

And why do I love them so much? Because people (including doctors):

• Remember 80% of what they see vs 20% of what they read
• Process visuals 60,000 times faster than text
• Read only 28% of the text on a web page

Infographics are also shared more frequently than traditional, text-based content on social media. Like! 

Warning: creating high quality infographics is not easy. It’s not the same as designing a brochure, flyer or poster. If done incorrectly, they can over-complicate things, confuse readers and introduce errors. Use content agencies you trust to convey your data effectively. Take a look at one of our latest infographics on on-page SEO.

Pharma tips for creating quality infographics:

1. Identify and address your audience’s information needs
2. Convey your message following a clear, logical storyflow
3. Keep the content and design simple and clear
4. Size your content to meet channel best practices

#2 SlideShare

One of my favourites, given how proficient the pharmaceutical industry is at creating PowerPoint presentations. You’ve probably got mountains of slides waiting to be shared with the world already. If so, why not post them to SlideShare: a site that gets 60 million visitors and 3 billion slide views every month.

Plus, once you’ve posted to SlideShare you can syndicate this out across all your channels and use the content to drive traffic back to your website.

#3 Quizzes

According to research by BuzzSumo and BoomBox people really love a quiz. Quizzes have:

• 82% click conversion rate
• 78% completion rate
• 1,900 social shares (on average)

And why are quizzes so popular?

Because most people’s favourite subject is…THEMSELVES. Sad but true.

A good quiz will do one of two things for your audience:

1. It will help them learn more about themselves, or
2. Help them show to other people how cool/clever/awesome they are

Quiz formats for pharma to consider:

• Graded quizzes: let me show everyone how clever I am. Score me!
  • Pharma tip: make it easy. High scores get more social shares. And we ‘like’ social shares
• Outcome, or personality quizzes: tell me how awesome I am. Define me!
  • Pharma tip: make sure every result is something people are proud to share (i.e.don’t tell them their Lord of the Rings doppelganger is Gollum).

Of your existing content, what can you turn into a quiz? Thankfully, just about anything with data. Just ensure your content is relevant to your target audience and prompts engagement.

And remember, we’re trying to drive engagement by making people look and feel good about themselves. Which, is essentially the aim of everything we do. Right?

#4 Live Video Streaming

Research by Ashfield, has shown that fewer doctors are likely to attend conferences in the future, with 53% of specialists citing restrictive codes of practice as the primary reason.

This means that many of our key customers may never get to see our beautiful posters, presentations and abstracts. Or attend any of our well-balanced, educational symposia, and workshops.

In the past, you may have created a congress highlights report for them. In PDF.

Not now! Apps such as Periscope and Meerkat make it easier than ever to share live (and archived) video content in a broadcast-like experience.

How can the pharmaceutical industry use these tools?

1. Summarise: present daily congress highlights for those unable to attend
2. Expand: offer expert deep-dives on key topics, data and issues from the congress
3. Stream: put audiences ‘in the room’ and allow them to submit comments and questions

#5 Instructographics

Think, ‘IKEA manual. But prettier and with less stress’.

Instructographics provide your target audiences with a step-by-step guide to anything you want: injector training, proper inhaler use, clinical study execution. Anything that requires a How To, or step-by-step guide.

Like an infographic, creating high quality instructographics is challenging. But if done well, can enhance the learning experience for your audience, which is important for engagement, information retention and behavioural change.

Image credit: Carrington College

Pharma tips for creating high quality instructographics:

1. Consider frequently asked questions at each stage of the How To process
2. Create original graphical or photographic content
3. Offer succinct, supporting commentary to address audiences’ information needs

#6 Podcasts

A format many of us know and love. They’re convenient to consume and easy/cheap for the pharmaceutical industry to produce and distribute.

Repurpose your existing written content by putting conversational narrative to it. Or go one step further and discuss it with experts to get their insights and observations. Put it into context and translate its meaning into clinical practice. In short, add value.

Possible pharma podcast topics include, but are not limited to:

• Clinical trial results
• Disease awareness
• Policy issues
• Industry research
• Drug mechanisms
• Company information – financial and corporate
• General information related to the industry or sector
• West Ham United Football Club. Not really. Just checking you’re still awake

What Are You Waiting For?

Creating content doesn’t have to be a chore. As you’ve seen, there are many ways you can repurpose and publish what you already have to increase your audience reach and engagement. 

 

What other media have you used when repurposing content?

Which would you recommend or avoid? Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

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