As regular readers of our blog will learn, I am fascinated by the intersection of marketing and health behavior change. Lately, I am most intrigued by the positive effects of content marketing and social marketing on the delivery of personalized, preventive health care.
Most public health professionals are at least somewhat familiar with social marketing, which should not be confused with social media. Social marketing applies commercial marketing principles and techniques with the goal of influencing voluntary behavior to benefit a target audience and society as a whole.
Content marketing, an important aspect of an effective social marketing strategy, is fast becoming a requirement for establishing your brand and building trust with an audience. Trust will increase the effectiveness of your message and sharpen your social marketing campaign.
To assist you in your exploration of social and content marketing, you can check out these five helpful (and free!) resources:
Social Marketing Quick Reference Guide
Nancy Lee and Philip Kotler of Social Marketing Services Inc.
A concise 2-page infographic with the first page dedicated to definitions, background, and applications. The second page describes all 10 steps in their social marketing planning process. I think this site would be most useful for individuals generally familiar with social marketing who need a reminder to help them walk through the planning process. Lee and Kotler have released a slightly edited version with their new Social Marketing: Changing Behaviors for Good, Fifth Edition.
Content Marketing Works
Vertical Measures
If you’re interested in an organized, in-depth, and free ebook, I suggest this one from Vertical Measures. The comprehensive guide looks a little long at 290 pages, but is well worth the read for someone looking to implement or improve on their content marketing. The organization of the book makes it easy to consume in chunks and has numerous tangible strategies. It covers everything from initial strategy development to measuring the performance of your efforts.
Social Marketing CDC Web Course
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The CDC developed and maintained a complete web course for Social Marketing for Nutrition and Physical Activity. The course was created for public health professionals and contains nearly four hours worth of material. The course includes a nice glossary and links to other, non-CDC resources.
Gateway to Health Communication & Social Marketing Practice
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Using some language from their site, “CDC’s Gateway to Communication and Social Marketing Practice provides resources to help build your health communication or social marketing campaigns and programs.” I find the Audience Insights to be helpful for market segmentation. The tip sheets provide credible and straightforward info to use as a start for your blog post, infographic or your own fact sheet. And the list of example campaigns is also nice to get a feel for what others have done to address specific health issues.
Content Marketing Institute
A great website for those interested in content marketing. CMI presents a collection of videos, articles, e-books, how-to-guides, podcasts, and so on, that contain plenty of content for the beginner as well as the advanced practitioner. I recommend beginning on the Getting Started page and that is where the above link will send you.
I hope you find these resources useful. Feel free to share some of your favorite online resources in the comments.