Healthcare PR can be rough even in the best of times. The question is, how do we do PR in the age of COVID? Beth Friedman, Founder and CEO of Agency Ten22, joins me on Leading with Health to share her experiences navigating the new normal.
Prior to starting the firm in 2005, Beth served in a variety of sales, marketing and public relations leadership roles for several health IT companies including McKesson and eWebCoding. She holds degrees in health information management and healthcare administration.
Highlights include:
10:30 – BF: “For the companies that don’t have direct impact (such as with telehealth), where they can be most helpful is in customer service. Expanding the services for their hospital and doctor clients.”
12:39 – BF: “Some tips on virtual presentations and webinars are to have a great speaker lineup. I think that people are going to engage tune in, sign up and attend if you do have somebody from the front lines. Somebody that’s from a provider site or on the front lines of testing. Or back-to-work protocols. Things like that. I think having a good speaker is key because people don’t have time right now.”
13:30 – BF: “I kind of like using the FAQ format for a webinar. Maybe structure your webinar, you know, Five Quick Questions with Mr. Expert.”
15:40 – BF: “This is not the time for selling. This is the time for sharing education, sharing lessons learned, sharing. Sharing what’s working on the front lines or what you predict.”
16:20 – BF: “When it comes to communications, the best person I’ve seen in the news in the past 30 to 45 days is Andrew Cuomo. He has actually, if you ever watch his talks, his updates, he has a pattern and it repeats itself all the time. So he has three steps. The first thing he does is he shares the facts. The second thing he does is he states how the facts that he just mentioned impact a trend. So he talks then about the trend related to the facts. And the third thing he does is he adds a personal story. So I found that that’s a really good formula.”
18:31 – BF: “Lean into your existing relationships (with editors). Really work on those existing relationships. Now is probably not the time to try and build a new editorial or media relationship. The editors still want email pitches, which is what we do all day long, but they want them to be very brief. You don’t have to talk to an editor in a pitch about the troubles with COVID.”
Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. She is on a mission to create a healthcare system that actually cares about the patients and the providers.