6 tips for writing a stellar hospital blog

While most organizations have made the foray into social media, the decision to launch a blog comes with many questions.

How do you leverage existing content and publications? Should you have regular contributors? Who will read it?

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute launched our blog, Insight in fall 2011, after a long and thorough planning process. It provides an opportunity to share the patient stories that inspire us, and the research discoveries that give us hope. Here are a few of the lessons we learned along the way:

1. Be strategic

Before you start designing the blog’s layout and assigning stories, think first about what you would like to achieve. Do you want to increase awareness of your organization’s expertise in a particular area? Who do you hope to reach? All content decisions should be tied directly to your objective and key audiences, so take the time to answers these questions first.

2. Show, don’t tell