My post poses two questions: What original content do you produce for your web site? What format do you use?

We’re often told that content is king, but what does this mean? What makes good health care content? Third party health information draws a lot of attention and money these days, but as recently discussed on WebiScope, third party content does little for search engine optimization, as many sites now have similar material; the articles are difficult to integrate elegantly and dynamically; such content rarely speaks strategically about your unique service strengths as an organization.

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Last time I looked at one aspect of what Google did right with their very intuitive and fun to use Reader.

This time, I’d like to focus on the group management and collaboration software: Basecamp.

Designed and built by 37signals. They really hit the nail on the head with a easy to use and intuitive product. Today I’ll be looking at a specific aspect that really made me go ‘wow, that’s so simple - why doesn’t everyone do that?’

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I recently went to the web site for a company that manages one of the college loans we’ve taken out for my son. I spent 20 minutes trying to get the answer to what I thought was a simple question, only to give up and send them an email (don’t get me started on how long it took to get a worthless answer – I wound up using the phone to get the info I needed). But after my unsuccessful visit, I’m sure the webmaster at that company bragged that the average length of my visit went up.

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When I look to make improvements on our own website, I often first consider what other organizations have done. Not even because what they’re doing could be right, but I want to see, in a consumer’s perspective, if what they’re doing is effective. Of course, as someone in the biz, I’m biased, but I try to consider what the organization offers the potential patient. That includes service line content, third party content, and calls-to-action.

In most instances it seems that third party content is misused. In my reply to the recent post Question: What’s the Role and Value of Healthcare Content on Hospital Sites?, I explored three reasons why third party content is misused: structure/integration, patient motivation, and the content itself. Not to reiterate my comments, but I’d like to explore further the first concern: structure and integration.

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I often joke that we have two members who help our small team get it all done — Smoke and Mirrors. The truth is we get by with a lot of help from friends in other departments. Our group of six relies on robust content management systems to enable staff outside of Interactive Communications to upload content to our Internet, Intranet and Spanish language sites. Web administrators assigned to each area have come to feel empowered by it all, even though many disliked the notion of the additional responsibility at first.

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