Client: M*Modal (Franklin, TN)
Agency: Airfoil (Detroit, MI)
Campaign: M*Modal Social Strategy Launch
Duration: May 1, 2013 – present
Budget: About $100,000 annually
M*Modal, which provides medical transcription services, clinical-documentation technology, and speech-recognition products, has been through numerous changes in recent years.
MedQuist Holdings, a Franklin, TN-based medical-transcription services and software vendor, acquired M*Modal in July 2011, rebranded as M*Modal in January 2012, and then was acquired by One Equity Partners and taken private.
The company hired Airfoil in spring 2013 to head social media efforts.
“We wanted to employ a content-marketing strategy across the board,” explains M*Modal's digital marketing director, Joe Folan. “Social media is one of the most obvious ways to execute that. Our transcription business has been around a long time, but our offerings are relatively new in the medical tech space. Our goals are to increase brand awareness and engagement and illustrate our desire to improve healthcare as a whole.”
Strategy
The team creates content and refreshes existing material to position M*Modal's executives as healthcare industry thought leaders and innovators. It uses the content to spark conversation on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and to draw visitors to M*Modal's website, which Folan's team redesigned early this year to be “more of a destination site full of content.”
“LinkedIn is a big focus because M*Modal's target audience is very active on LinkedIn,” explains agency VP Keith Donovan. “We want to create conversation, humanize the brand, and ensure the voice of M*Modal comes through in the content. We want M*Modal's social channels to be a destination for people to learn something about the industry.”
Tactics
Content development has included whitepapers, bylined articles, case studies, infographics, webinars, and videos. All of these address healthcare issues that are priorities to senior healthcare industry leaders.
Both original content and media coverage, which is driven by M*Modal's corporate communications department, are posted on the website and amplified through social channels. Original content is also used in media outreach.
The company also places LinkedIn posts on M*Modal's company page and engages relevant LinkedIn groups in discussions on industry topics.
“We continually monitor performance and engagement, and we change the groups we target as necessary,” Donovan says.
The company also monitors and targets key media and healthcare industry influencers on Twitter. The team uses relevant hashtags such as #ICD10, #EHR, and #HealthIT to expand reach.
The majority of Facebook posts relate to company culture. Examples include fun health fact posts on Fridays.
Results
Folan says the campaign successfully illustrated the power and value of content marketing, and M*Modal upped its content-development budget in late summer.
Between May and September, referral traffic to M*Modal's website increased by 66% from LinkedIn, 63% from Twitter, and 64% from Facebook, compared with the baseline average of the previous six months. Comparing the same time periods, pages viewed per visit by people coming from Twitter increased 77%.
LinkedIn comments in August jumped 425% over July.
Facebook comments, general Twitter mentions, and retweets in September were up 155%, 90%, and 38%, respectively, over August.
Future
M*Modal will continue working with Airfoil. Plans include increasing multimedia content and primary research.
