City of Hope’s effort is a model for others

 

City of Hope has executed brilliantly on the concept of covering itself. For this, the cancer research and treatment center wins the Best Use of Social Media category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

By rethinking the content for its Breakthroughs blog and using the blog as the launching point for its content, City of Hope was able to deploy its stories through multiple channels. The focus of the blog has been narrowed to four key topics: research and patient care, patient stories, people profiles, and fundraising-related content. 

A newsroom was established with a team of content creators who were coached on the development of material that would generate buzz and inspire sharing. Each member of the team was given responsibility for promoting his or her own content, which, as the effort expanded, began reaching channels beyond the blog. In fact, one requirement that made tremendous sense was ensuring every piece of content would work in at least two channels.

A strategy for integrating content between City of Hope’s owned-media channels cemented the efficacy of the strategy, which was crafted to improve visibility of the multitude of stories emerging from patients, staff, researchers, educators, and others associated with the institution. In addition to dramatically increasing the volume of content, the strategy has led to mind-boggling results, like an 827 percent increase in impressions delivered by Facebook and Twitter alone, along with increases in followers and subscribers across all channels. 

Even more impressive, in an era when pundits proclaim blogs are dead, City of Hope’s Breakthroughs blog has enjoyed a traffic increase of 734 percent, with 20,000 visitors reading posts each month.
We congratulate the entire team on this stellar entry: Tami Dennis, Randy Hui, Nicole White, Dominique Grignetti, H. Chung So, Denise Heady, Andy Featherston, Kim Proescholdt, and Erica Helwick.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.