Although traditional marketing still has its value, your overall strategy simply isn’t complete until you’ve mastered digital and content marketing, as well. But if your healthcare practice or facility is like most, your already busy team will need a lot of help generating all of the assets you’ll need.
You need optimized, keyword-rich copy for your website and a steady stream of well-researched, relevant content for your company blog. You’ll need to keep your social media feeds active, as well. And everything needs to demonstrate authority and next-level expertise.
That’s where today’s best freelance healthcare marketing experts come in. Here’s a closer look at why they’re the solution your team has been searching for, as well as a spotlight on some of today’s best and brightest.
Why Hire a Healthcare Marketing Expert to Write for You?
Naturally, you can add a full-time staff writer to your payroll if you need someone to help you with healthcare SEO, content production, and so forth. But you won’t get to take advantage of incredible benefits like the following.
Reduced expenses
It’s not just a staff writer’s salary you need to cover when you add one to your employee roster. You also need to take care of their benefits, 401K plan, and more. And you’ll need to give them a dedicated place to work and supply any equipment needed.
A freelance healthcare writer comes with the same expertise and experience. But you don’t need to commit to providing a full-time salary, an office, benefits, etc.
Save a fortune in time
Freelance healthcare marketing experts are used to self-managing and likely already have a system that works for them. They’re also used to adapting what they do to suit multiple clients.
In other words, you won’t have to spend time and money training a freelance medical writer. Just let them know what needs to be done, and they’ll take care of all the rest.
Enjoy limitless flexibility
Adding the right freelancers to your team opens the door to unbeatable flexibility. When you need something done, you order and pay for only the work you need. With a staff writer, you’ll need to pay their full salary whether you have tasks for them at the moment or not.
When it is Time to Hire a Writer for Your Healthcare Company?
When it comes time to create content for your website, hire a writer with experience in writing medicine for websites. A professional writer can articulate the mission of your healthcare organization in a voice that you would use.
Publishing updated content on your website establishes your organization as a leader in your industry. You will find it easy to review the content for accuracy and you will likely enjoy reading the interesting industry-related news created by your writer.
Skilled medical writers keep their finger on the pulse of medicine, following sites like Medical News Today, ScienceDaily, and 2 Minute Medicine to help them create blogs, articles, and white papers on the latest breakthroughs in your particular field.
Medical writers, in particular, are experts in explaining complex medical concepts in simple and engaging ways. Finding a writer with experience in your particular field is helpful but not necessary as long as you provide informative documents or links to helpful websites.
While you can hire a writer to create content for your SMB’s website, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure the medical information on your company or practice website is accurate.
What to Look For When Hiring a Freelance Health Writer?
Writing about health and medicine today requires that the writer be able to look at highly technical information prepared by medical professionals and re-create it into a form that anyone can easily understand.
At its essence, it takes a background or strong interest in health topics combined with conversational writing skills to be successful.
Whether you are a healthcare-related business owner, medical office, or marketing specialist for the healthcare industry, knowing what to look for when hiring a freelance health writer is essential. Here are some tips for what to look for in a writer for your health content marketing projects.
Experience and/or a Deep Interest in Health and Medicine
By having a background or a deep interest in health and medicine-related topics, the writer will understand complex subjects and terminology essential to crafting a new article. For example, they can write about the latest brain imaging scans and what they can reveal about Alzheimer’s disease.
Exceptional health writers, in general, usually have some type of employment or educational background in the health or medical field. Some will even have personal experience with a particular illness or condition, for themselves, friends, or family members, and in the interaction between medical professionals and patients during consultations and treatments.
Overall, look for a writer who maintains an in-depth knowledge or familiarity of the healthcare industry overall as well as specific topics that you are seeking content for each time.
Type of Health-Related Writer
There is a distinct difference between a freelance writer who believes cancer can be cured by natural remedies, such as drinking slippery elm tea and one who thoroughly understands the medical technology involved with cancer treatments, including anti-carcinogenic drugs, chemotherapy, and surgical techniques.
As such, understand where the writer is coming from, and if you are not looking for an article on a homeopathic solution, be sure to limit your search to those with more medical-related experience and knowledge.
You also want to ensure that the freelance writer has top-notch research skills, understanding how to tell the difference between reputable websites versus those less reliable or trustworthy.
Ability To Use Proper Keywords With Supporting Content
Look for a writer who knows how best to use the proper keywords and phrases (for SEO) and surrounds them with supporting, high-quality content.
For instance, an example of a poor article for your needs might include the keyword phrase ‘reasons for varicose veins’ with only content about how waitressing may cause them, failing to cover why those varicose veins emerge.
This type of article can indicate that the writer did not do the required in-depth research or does not understand the required terminology for describing varicose vein formation. Such an article has the power to alienate your readers and also compromise your website’s integrity.
Compelling and Convincing Writing Skills
While a deep interest in health, diseases, and medicine is a requirement, you also want to know that the writer can formulate an article in such a way that makes it not only straightforward to the general public but also compelling and convincing. This is where excellent writing skills are imperative.
The writer should be able to compose content that speaks more to the non-professional seeking information.
How can you determine if a writer has this ability?
Ask to see a portfolio of samples to better show their writing style and proper use of health and medical terminology. These samples should also show their ability to write in such a way as to clearly express concepts in a more general way while also maintaining attention to detail.
How to Find Certified and Credentialed Health Writers?
One way you can verify the background and knowledge of a writer in the health niche is to check their credentials. A medical writer willing to get certified by the American Medical Writers Association is golden. This certification isn’t one of those pay-for-a-piece-of-paper deals you find online.
To be certified by the AMWA you have to have a bachelor’s degree in your field of study, along with 2 years of full-time working experience within the past 5 years.
Also, once you take the exam, in person at an AMWA or Drug Information Association (DIA) conference, you have to get recertified every 5 years by attending lectures, taking college courses, publishing material, or maintaining professional membership with the AMWA. In other words, this is some serious certification.
For anyone hiring a medical writer worth their healthy verbiage, ask to see if they have this in their repertoire.
Health Information Provider Check-Up
For writers focused on health information management, healthcare data privacy, coding, or health data analysis, there’s a certification for that, too. The American Health Information Management Association offers a certification program for industry professionals. Here is a list of the specific areas of certification:
- Registered health information administrator
- Registered health information technician
- Certified coding associate
- Certified coding specialist and/or physician-based
- Certified documentation improvement practitioner
- Certified health data analyst
- Certified in healthcare privacy and security
- Certified healthcare technology specialist
When hiring freelance writers to handle patient data or privacy concerns, you must ensure you have someone qualified and well-versed in security issues. Getting this certification from the AHIMA requires freelancers to have the educational background associated with their accreditation.
8 of WriterAccess’ Top Health Marketing Experts
1. Kristy S
Kristy S has over a decade of professional experience under her belt; she is an expert with many different types of content. However, with a Washington State certification in health communication and promotion to her credit, she’s especially well-versed in all aspects of healthcare marketing.
2. Rynae G
Rynae G isn’t just a terrific healthcare writer with multiple glowing endorsements from past and present clients. Her industry expertise is due to years of hands-on career experience in patient care, healthcare administration, and more. She’s also passionate about all aspects of health and wellness in her daily life.
3. Lisa K
An accomplished author and versatile writer, Lisa K specializes in a variety of different industries, including healthcare and common health issues. She also has a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and mass communication and a professional certification in search engine optimization.
4. Sharon T
Since 2007, Sharon T has been doing what she does best – serving top-tier clients across multiple industries with her talent for copywriting, blogging, ghostwriting, and more. She possesses certifications in both health and fitness, as well as career experience in the healthcare industry, all of which she uses to write from a place of authority.
5. Chelsea A
With nearly 20 years of professional writing experience behind her, Chelsea A has accumulated an impressive portfolio and a lot of experience across multiple industries, including healthcare. Her healthcare experience includes custom content written for surgeons, physical therapists, dentists, and even household names like Blue Shield.
6. Diana R
Diana R is a clinical pharmacist, as well as a clinic reviewer in cooperation with the California State Board of Pharmacy. She also brings three decades as a professor in subjects like ethics and pharmacology to the table, so she’s an excellent potential asset to anyone’s team of healthcare marketing experts.
7. Dave C
Dave C is a passionate, curious professional copywriter with thousands of well-crafted articles on various topics to his credit. Interests, specialties, and pet topics include nutrition, health, and disability. He also has hands-on experience as a healthcare newsletter consultant and writing credits in association with Future Medicine.
8. Randi R
Randi R is a professional journalist with 30 years of experience behind her, as well as, a wealth of publishing credits across numerous outlets and publications. She also knows her way around many different topics from a content writing standpoint, including staffing, general healthcare, and multiple research-backed medical topics.
How To Vet Healthcare Writers and Get Great Content?
Hiring a writer to create medical website content is a great way to generate business for your marketing agency and tap into the growing field of healthcare.
But before you begin putting together a team of health writers, you need to make sure that you know how to identify experienced writers who can put together content that is accurate and ethically sound.
Experience Counts
While it would be ideal to have a certified medical professional writing your content, the reality is that you should be looking instead for experienced content writers with a solid track record of producing reliable written material for trustworthy organizations.
Most expert health writers are proud to share a brief history of their experience, and a seasoned pro will have experience writing content for hospital websites, healthcare newsletters, home healthcare aid organizations, or other promotional material for a reputable medical website or organization.
Be careful hiring writers whose medical experience amounts to product descriptions for strange supplements without FDA approval. These writers may have the skills to describe the effects of a powerful love potion, but they’re probably not the ones you want on the front lines of writing medical copy.
Savvy Source Material
In addition to a good writing background, you’ll also want to make sure that the writers you hire know how to appropriately source and credit their supporting information.
Professional medical writers know to rely on trusted sites, typically those with a .gov or .edu domain name. Be cautious with medical writers who source or link to uncredited blogs, commerce sites, or Internet forums in their work.
Medical writing should be taken seriously, and a clear trail back to a peer-reviewed study is always a good foundation for any medical website content.
Set The Ethical Example
If your goal is to hire strong, experienced, professional healthcare writers, then make sure your content will be up to their standards as well.
Experienced industry content writers may turn down an assignment that prioritizes product sales over accurate information, so make sure that the clients you take on are actually worthy of the excellent medical writers you seek.
Medical and health-related writing is a great industry with plenty of room for growth, but it’s vital to be responsible and careful about providing information to the public on sensitive medical issues.
Conclusion
As you can see, the world of freelance copywriting is filled with experienced healthcare marketing experts from all walks of life and with many areas of expertise. And the best of the best – including all the incredible experts listed above – are available for hire on WriterAccess.
Sign up for your free two-week WriterAccess trial today and connect with your choice of these incredible professionals or thousands of others. You’ll love what they can do for your digital marketing campaign!
