How To Create Content Your Patients Actually Care About
The hardest part about creating patient-centric content is overcoming the "curse or knowledge". Here's how
Oct 4, 2022 •
Every doctor suffers from the curse of knowledge.
As an expert in your field, you don’t remember what it was like before you learned what you now know. Even when trying to “dumb things down”, your content ends up being too advanced for your audience.
Your audience wants simple answers for basic questions
Think of the questions your patients ask during their visits.
To you, they are mundane, obvious. But your patients don’t have the training and experience you have. So for them, these questions are anything but obvious. In fact, the more obvious the question, the more important it is for your content to answer it!
Yet for some reason we skip past the easy questions and go straight for the “harder stuff”.
No wonder our content doesn’t connect with our patients.
If your patients all seem to ask the same question, pay attention!
Get in the habit of documenting every question your patients, friends, or anyone else asks you regarding your field or specialty.
At the end of the day, take 5 minutes, open a notebook, a google doc, or your preferred note-taking app and write down every question from that day.
Then close your notebook and forget about them. For now.
Whenever you sit down to create content, simply look at your notebook and choose a question to answer.
In case you don’t believe it can be so simple, here are 3 more tips:
Tip #1: Keep it simple. Resist the urge to use jargon or to overcomplicate things. You’re giving an answer to one of your patients, not to a colleague.
Tip #2: Just answer one question. When questions feel “easy”, it is tempting to want to address multiple questions in a single piece of content. Don’t do it. Patients are just looking for the answer to their specific question, not a mini course on your specialty.
Tip #3: Don’t be afraid of answering the same question more than once. Especially in social media. Believe me, nobody remembers your content the way you remember your content. If you keep getting the same question over and over in your office, chances are patients like yours keep having the question. So keep answering it!
In conclusion, patients are not looking to become medical experts. Keep things simple and meet them where they are.
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