Explore these resources from Stamats content experts:

• Connect with Marion Abrams on LinkedIn
• Listen to the Search Everywhere Optimization podcast Marion mentioned

 

Mariah Tang: Did I say that out loud? Welcome to “Did I Say that Out Loud?”, a podcast where Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang reflect on agency life and answer questions from our higher ed and healthcare clients about the latest in digital marketing, content and SEO.

 

Mariah Tang: Stu and I are so tickled today because we have a very special guest, Marion Abrams. She is the Director of Content at Dartmouth Health. She’s a multimedia content expert with skills ranging from creating documentaries to launching successful audio, video and social content across major networks, including the Spartan Race podcast, which we’re going to touch on just briefly. She’s joining us today to talk about video marketing, why it matters, how to scale, and how impactful it can be for healthcare audiences. So thanks for joining us.

 

Marion Abrams: You bet, I’m looking forward to it.

 

Mariah: Awesome. Well, let’s just start right at the spot that you know I’m super interested in. Tell me a little bit about your background with Spartan Race podcast. I’ve gotta hear this story.

 

Marion: Well, I’m pretty unusual for a director of content, because I think most directors of content come either from a writing background or from a journalism background, and I really come from a video production background. That’s the language I speak, and so from that basis, that skill set, then I learned sort of all the other stuff about content strategy and SEO and but I think of it more inclusively of video and all the other channels. So the Spartan we called it Spartan up at the time. I think it’s changed its name since I left to the hard way. It was an amazing experience again. At the time, I had to when I, when I started working in this kind of work, I guess I would have clients hire me to make videos, and they didn’t know what to do with them, and they weren’t deploying them right. And that’s when, you know, however many years ago, 20 plus, I started saying, Okay, I need to start learning all about content strategy and the marketing sides of things in order to help them. And so I had just kind of started that journey. And I connected with Joe de Sena, who is the founder and CEO of Spartan Race, and I had done some video, some really fun video series. We had a guy named Chris Davis, who came and lived on Joe’s farm and lost a couple 100 pounds over a two month period. We did an update, a weekly update, and we had this guy, Miguel Medina, who was a Spartan athlete, who lived in the woods and tried to build a cabin. And so we had done a bunch of these sort of like serialized short series. And Joe was starting to sell his first book, and he started to do a lot of research about what was working. And he saw that the things that were getting him the most attention for his book were podcasts. And so being a seat of the pants kind of guy, he said, Let’s start a podcast. Because my video was back. My background was video from day one. We made the podcast a video podcast, so we published it on YouTube as well as iTunes and all the other audio channels from the very beginning. And it was an amazing ride. I learned a ton. We did that for eight years, and the the first six or seven, we did all the interviews in person. So it’s like, pretty chaotic, pretty exciting. And not only did I learn a ton about content and content strategy, but also self development and wellness and health and endurance sports. So it was a pretty fun ride.

 

Mariah: That’s amazing. That’s going to be my next career, living in the woods and having somebody make a documentary about me. I love that.

 

Marion: Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know if you saw I posted something on LinkedIn a couple days ago about sort of how people pitch podcasts and how they’re not always so scrupulous about it, but we did. We were in early we had a lot of resources, not in terms of production, but in terms of reach, because we were able to meet a lot of well known people and get them on the show. And so we were able to grow a really big and valuable following for that project.

 

Mariah: Yeah, that foresight to have the video component with it. I mean, it had to have just been so exciting over the last couple of years, as you see all these podcasters rolling out the video with their own pieces.

 

Marion: It’s been a real, really interesting. I mean, I am a pretty, I would say, a risky hire for my boss, and I’m really glad she took that risk. I like to think it’s paying off for her, but I was not a traditional pick for the role. As I said, most content strategy people come from a writing background? And I had really never worked in a corporate environment. I had always worked in either startup or freelance or just very like kind of chaotic and fast paced environments. So it’s been I have learned a ton working in healthcare, but what I have found is there’s i. Actually quite a lot of common ground. And so one of the things that we’ve had a lot of success with in our first couple of years is looking at, what are the topics that the sort of wellness gurus are out there talking about, and how can we address those? Because we know people want those answers, and we know they’re interested in them. How can we address those from a really medically accurate and more factual and reliable basis. And that’s worked pretty well even in our editorial what we call our editorial content, what a lot of people call blog content, and you know, we’ve seen huge increases in traffic when a lot of people are seeing decreases because of AI and all that. So at least knock on wood, that sort of strategy has been working. Well, I think the other thing that let me know, if I’m talking too much, I never know how long to answer, but.

 

Mariah: Go, my friend.

 

Marion: The other thing about coming from a YouTube background is YouTube is so valuable in the level of data it gives you, and so you can see retention rates. You can see literally when people stop watching. You can see the click through rate, so separating whether the title and the image are grabby enough from whether the video is good enough and whether the hook in the video is good enough to pull people in, and then whether the content is good enough to keep them in. And you can really see a lot of that data. And what I found is my experience in editing video and my background in really looking at all the YouTube data has made me, I think, a much better partner for my writers, because the same principles apply, right? How do we, how do we speak to people about what they’re looking to hear? How do we keep them interested the whole time? How do we grab their attention? You know, all of those things, and YouTube, particularly, is like a mix of, sort of a cross between a search platform and a social platform. So I think it’s, it’s actually been really helpful for me to bring the video knowledge into some of the other content we create.

 

Mariah: Absolutely. Stu looks like he has a question.

 

Stu Eddins: I’ve got, I’ve got a dozen questions, and they’re just all over the map. That’s the fun of this. We get to edit and put things in order. The one thing that I’m curious about, you’ve made a transition from video into a space that encompasses not just video, but the written word and audio and anything else. As far as content is concerned, do you find you still start out when you’re looking and assessing the content in front of you, blocking it out as though or a video script in a shooting order?

 

Marion: It’s a good question. I’m really lucky that my writers for the for what, you know, what we call editorial content, what a lot of people call blog content, they’re really good, and so they, you know, we’ll talk about the angle, and they will really structure the article. And then I can come in and I might say, like, usually I say, you know, the intro is too long. Move this part to the top, you know, simplify this part. Speed this part up. Those are kind of things people are sick of me say on my team. But for that, for the writing, I try to be, you know, I try not to micromanage up front. I try to just give them helpful feedback, because I’m very fortunate that they’re I have some really good, experienced writers.

 

Stu: Okay, in kind of following along with that, the kind of the continuity between the visual media that is video and then the written word that’s going to be a blog post or something. Do you find that that a lot of what you shoot for video can also translate well into a blog written piece for use elsewhere? Is it an easy trans transition for you to make? Or do you find you have to rewrite from the top, from the top down?

 

Marion: So we wouldn’t like just transcribe it, I would say, right, but so first of all, I will say we have not been able to do as much video production as I would have liked. You know, we really were restructuring the whole content team when I arrived so and becoming a system versus a single entity of multiple hospitals. So there’s just been a lot of kind of culture change and relationship building and education that has been happening. And I would say, you know, we’ve done lots of video production, and we have more video on all of our channels, but it’s nowhere near what I’d like it to be. So in terms of, in answering your question, when we design, excuse me, when we design something specifically for that purpose, which we occasionally get the opportunity to do, then it pretty well works. And so we, we would, for example, we have a product, we’ve named our Video FAQ Engine. And so we start with, you know, finding a good partner in one of our, you know, not only from an on camera person, but also from our marketing team. And then we’ll do some research, and we’ll do a lot of SEO research, and also a lot of Tube Buddy, which is kind of an SEO tool for YouTube, and looking at Google Trends, and all the tools we have available to get as many clues as we can into, you know, what are the questions on that topic that people have? And so, you know, next week, we’re going to be shooting one of these on menopause. And so we do lots of research to find the best questions, and then we meet with the SME and make sure that those align with their priorities and they feel comfortable with those questions. Obviously, questions. Obviously, you know, I try to remind my team all the time like every piece of the puzzle is just one piece of the puzzle. So we look at a lot of data, but that doesn’t mean you ignore your sort of your gut instincts and what your SME says and all those things, right? They’re all pieces of the puzzle. So we start with that, and then we’ll shoot a video where we answer all of those questions. And from that, we’ll make one long video which is designed really for YouTube. We’ll make a series of short videos which are designed to be interspersed in an article, so they would be embedded in an article on a topic. So for example, we did one on knee replacement. And you know, you’ll recognize my YouTube background when that you hear the title, which is what orthopedic surgeons really do. You know, we threw the word really in there

 

Mariah: Click bait!

 

Marion: But you know what they really tell? You know what they really think about knee replacement, or whatever it is. And so then they answer a bunch of those questions, and there’s copy, which is mostly pulled from the interview, but it’s not, it wouldn’t be a transcript, because it just doesn’t work. The writer does have to kind of organize it and and fill that out a little bit, and we hope that they don’t have to go back to the SME, but sometimes they do to just really kind of fill, fill in the gaps. We’re working to get better at that. And then we pull all the individual, obviously, the short questions. And not only do we use them horizontally embedded in the articles, but then we’re also using them on social media as vertical cuts. So we try to really like, you know, we are creating months and months worth of content out of this one video shoot. When we get to do it, well,

 

Stu: Most of the clients we deal with want video, and they understand that the benefit of it, but, but, and I don’t want to phrase this as they’re afraid of it, to some extent though, they’re afraid of the commitment. They don’t know the the finished product, what the quality that has to be to be useful. In other words, the minimum viable product versus full out, full production. What we what we’re what we need to figure out is some way to help them understand that video can be a nimble medium, that they can use it, and that for different story levels, there can be different quality levels as well. Is that something that I would imagine, that a healthcare environment gives you a lot of opportunities for different levels of quality? Are you finding that to be true?

 

Marion: Yeah, it does. And to be honest, one of the things that I have sort of been wrestling with is how to change the culture and the expectations that there is a middle ground, and I’m a big fan of the middle ground, so it doesn’t mean, you know, I think a lot of the the doctors, the experts, are reasonably nervous. They say, I don’t want to be like, pointing at the green screen in the background, and I don’t want to be in my car, and I don’t. And although I wish some of them would, frankly, because we know, we know we have data. You know, I have some numbers here. You know, I think 87% of the participants in this 2024 study said they were seeking health related content on YouTube, and the numbers on social media are the same. And I actually think we have a real response to. Ability to be out there. And it’s something that I am constantly advocating for in our organization, showing the data, showing the importance of our you know, just I think we have a responsibility again to be out there. We’ve kind of abdicated that space to, you know, some of the less reliable people who have commercial interests, you know, whether they’re selling a supplement or selling a program or whatever. And I think, you know, there’s a little bit of maybe snobbery or something, where some of the, you know, some of the, especially at an academic medical center, some of the experts, feel like maybe it’s below them, or it’s not the right place.

 

And to make the case that they would never treat a patient that way, right? If a patient came in with a quote, dumb question, or didn’t understand something, they would explain it in their language, right, right? And this is, this is the same thing. I just went to this seminar at the coop Institute. This named after C Everett coop, and one of the things they mentioned was articles he had written for Reader’s Digest, right? And it just made me think, like he understood at that time, right? That you just, you have to talk to people where they are and and understand too. I think, you know, there’s the sort of department heads who maybe feel like, maybe it’s inappropriate from a brand perspective. There’s also the day to day frontline clinicians who say, like, I’m trying to just take care of my patients. I don’t have time for this extra stuff. It’s not my job description. And we had a really interesting conversation last week with a couple of them, where what they realized was, these are their patients, right? And what’s happening is their patients are coming in with, with negative impacts on health incomes because outcomes, because with, let me say that again, with negative impacts on their health outcomes because they are, you know, either taking something they shouldn’t be, or, you know, we’ve seen articles about negative impacts of supplements, right? There’s been issues with that. There’s been, you know, when they’re not having the appropriate test to know if they’re the right supplements, right? Or, you know, again, vaccine hesitancy in pregnant moms, these kinds of issues. So I think we’re gradually starting to convince people of the importance.

 

Mariah: I think the younger doctors, interns, residents that are coming out really understand this and have lived this life themselves, right? I mean, I have an 18 year old daughter, and I’ve been doing this job for basically her whole life, and she still will go to Tiktok first and look at what some influencer says, instead of, like asking our nurse practitioner, or, you know, going and talking with a healthcare provider who understands these things. So, you know, as these influencers continue to grow, and as the responsibility of the health system and the providers grows to work with them and make sure that those proper messages are being put out. What do you feel like the role for video in healthcare marketing will look like in the next couple of years compared to say, you know, the past 10 years?

 

Marion: Yeah, I think. I mean, first of all, I have learned not to predict too far in advance, because all of the world of social media and internet content, right? I mean, one of the things we know is it is constantly changing, and it’s actually what kind of makes it exciting and interesting for me is like just trying to stay a half a step ahead all the time. But I think, number one, I think I was talking to my social media manager about this today, and she was saying, you know, just being able to have the face of that provider out there, in a world where there’s a real lack of trust, is really valuable. I think we also need to educate people about what channels they are getting their information from, because with AI fakes, this is happening now. I know you know, from the World of Wellness, I know several wellness podcasters that are quite well known, who have had their likeness imitated by AI and put into a quote a pretend interview, where there’s they are, you know, advertising a product which they have no interest in and have never used, right? So I think part of the message there is, if you’re following that, that podcaster, watch them on their channel. If you want to know reliable health care information from medical experts, go to the hospital channels, because if you’re seeing their experts elsewhere, you know, we’re getting into a world where you can’t be completely sure of what that is.

 

So that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s one piece of the future. The other piece, I think, is that, as of today, the impact of AI on search, you know, I sort of think of it in three ways. I think there is, there’s the impact on the algorithms themselves, right? Because, you know, Google and. All those places are trying to, not, they’re trying to avoid some of the AI slop in their results, so that, you know, as we know, they’re prioritizing things like Reddit and YouTube right now, because those are a little bit more, you know, seem safer at the moment, and that will probably change soon, right? But then the second way that it’s changing is how people search, right? Because whether they are searching Google or they’re using perplexity or something else they’re getting, as you know, these snippets, these short answers that answer their question, and there’s no click through resulting from that, and then the third way is just how it actually impacts the people themselves, right? Like Mark Schaefer’s new book about how our customers are actually changing and how they think is changing.

 

So there are these three kind of categories, but I think that video is definitely a place where, at the moment, I feel like we have an opportunity. Particularly right now, YouTube videos are coming up in Google results, we’ve had some of our best success, not with people searching on YouTube, but with people searching on Google and being fed to a YouTube video. So I feel like it is going to become more and more important, both for all the reasons, because at the moment, the algorithms seem to be prioritizing it, because the way people consume media is changing. They like to see things by video with the AI transcriptions and scraping. Oftentimes, you will actually get sent directly to the part of the YouTube video that answers your specific question instead of the whole video. So at least at the moment, I don’t see that changing. I did want to circle back. I know, Stu you asked me about the multiple levels of production, and I don’t know if I answered that, if, if you still wanted to hit that

 

Stu: Yeah, it does come back to a couple things. First off, user generated content is, is, is a fact. People prefer that and they trust it more. And then there’s the corporate version of user generated content, which they kind of trust, but kind of look at and say, Yeah, production is a little too high quality here for that. Do you think that there’s a good dividing line that says, you know, the organization needs to have this message out there. They want to make it something that is that is sincere. How do you think that that where’s the line that crosses that makes it just too far to go, to make it look like we just gave the camera to a patient and let them wander the halls?

 

Marion: Yeah, I’ll give you an example. I don’t know if this is going to this is going to answer the question exactly, but we wanted to get out vaccine messaging for particularly for pediatrics, and we decided to take two texts simultaneously. One was to record some of our, you know, pediatric leadership in the studio, because we felt like that, sort of felt like the official message from our Health Network, and we wanted that to be out there, that this is a sort of like approved official message. But we also took what we call our DIY kit, which is basically an iPhone and a microphone, into one of the pediatricians offices and shot, you know, we had our social media person sit in the patient’s seat, and had the the pediatrician, sort of like, you know, spin over on their chair and, you know, put their stethoscope around their shoulder, and then just talk to you as they would talk to a patient. And so we did both of those because we felt like we wanted we know that people trust their pediatricians, and we wanted them to feel like their pediatrician is talking to them. And we also felt like there was a place to say like this isn’t just this one doctor’s opinion. This is our official organizational perspective. So we ended up doing both of those in that case.

 

Stu: Okay, very good. And thank you for that. That’s actually quite clarifying. The other thing that we found, and you have touched on this, is the value of video and social media. And there’s definitely a difference between the amount of video somebody’s going to watch on Tiktok versus the amount they’re going to watch on YouTube. It has nothing to do with, with, in my opinion, with attention span. It’s experience span. I’m on Tiktok. I’m moving through things quickly. I’m snacking on information. I’m not, you know, having a feast on this stuff. To that end, have you found anything in your experience where you have put something on a platform like Tiktok that you felt hit the qualification as far as brevity, but was too overproduced? What was, was there? Was there some drawback to the production value that may have impacted the success of it?

 

Marion: Yeah. It’s a great question I am going to answer in two parts. Okay, first, I say about your sort of question about the the length. There was a great piece by Andy Crestodina, which I’m sure you guys saw about sort of the difference in the mindset, the mental space of somebody who’s searching for an answer, right? They go to Google and they want to know an answer, and they are kind of in a hurry and they just want to get right to the point, versus someone who is on social media, and they’re more in a sort of like, I want to be entertained. I don’t really know what I’m looking for. I’m sort of just scrolling along. So it’s a different kind of mental space. And I think that supports what you were saying. Stu is like, it’s not that people don’t have a long enough attention span, it’s just not what they’re looking for in that platform. So we have not had the capacity yet. And we actually talked about this today. My social media manager and I, we haven’t really had the capacity to start creating content at a channel specific level. We really want to, we know it’s important, but at this point, we’re trying to be efficient, and so we have built a present on Tiktok, but it has been completely with repurposed content. So we’re not really able to say, like, you know, what are the production values and how do they impact this piece? Because we’re just sort of saying, like, we have this stuff. We know we want to be there. Let’s put the stuff there, and eventually we’ll start, we’ll start creating specifically for it.

 

The one thing that I think people might find surprising is one of our big hits was a knee replacement, a video about knee replacement, and it was from one of these Video FAQ Engine series where we created all this cascading content from the one video. And first of all, there’s a meme, and you can look it up, which is that feeling when knee replacement is tomorrow. I can’t explain it to you. It’s a bizarre meme on Tiktok. But what was most interesting to us was, yes, this video benefited from association with that meme. But when you looked even though the Tiktok audience overall is much younger than the Facebook audience, the audience on that specific post was much larger than we would have gotten on any other channel, and was mostly 45 and over, and even, like a higher percentage, was 55 and over. So there are older people there, and maybe there’s not content for them. So we think there’s also a big opportunity there.

 

And honestly, I can tell you all these questions you’re asking about, like, sort of, like, level of production values and how important they are. I think are really important questions, but I don’t think I or you or anybody else can answer them, because, one, it’s person to person, and so depending on your audience, you just have to try and frankly, it changes, right? I mean, think about ourselves, and even our consumption habits have changed so much, probably in the last two years. So I really am a firm believer in you just have to be comfortable trying things and adapting and trying things and adapting, and that’s never going to stop. It’s not like we’re going to figure it out and be done.

 

Stu: Yeah, and I kind of keyed in on that, because it is the one concern I hear, mostly from clients, when we recommend doing more video, we don’t have the time for good production. We need to have a a single tone and voice across our productions and so on. And I think that that’s more dependent on the intended platform than the actual thing you’re doing in the moment. Sometimes, I mean, again, the Tiktok versus YouTube book can be different. The other thing that they run into is the perceived difficulty of editing. They don’t have a lot of staff that would be good at that, and it can be a little daunting, by the way, I am going to take a little bunny trail here. I typed into Google that feeling, and I only got that far before the meme came up. But because of my age, what came up was the Grinch knee surgery tomorrow. Meme explained on Forbes. So it didn’t go to Tiktok for somebody who’s 60 some years old. It went to explaining it to the 60 year old what it meant.

 

Marion: I’m in the same category. I get the like this. We learned slang from NPR, and, you know, it’s way too late by the time you’re hearing it there.

 

Stu: I guess if there’s any advice on something about the the end use of the video, I’ve heard you say several times you’re talking about a video of fact, you’re talking about something that is a place to go to as a video. Reference is that something you came into when you took the job, or something you’ve been building since you’ve had the job?

 

Marion: So it’s something I’ve been building kind of like what we talked about in the beginning, this service journalism concept, this idea that you know, can we know that there are questions people have, and we believe that we can answer them from a medically reliable point of view. And that is the same sort of strategy, whether we’re doing that in our blog or on YouTube or in social media. So you know, it is something that I’ve developed and haven’t taken nearly as far as I’d like to. I just want to address really quickly the point you made about people’s concern about the complications of editing. I mean, truthfully, yes, being a good videographer, even for social media with your iPhone. And being a good editor is hard. It’s a skill, and so is writing. And so I think we don’t say, Oh, we’re not going to write anything on our website, because we would have to have a good writer for that, right? We hire a good writer. And I think there is still a tendency to just think like, oh, anybody can do it, or it’s too hard, because anybody can’t do it, and it’s actually, you know, there are people that are good at it, there are people that practice it, there are people that learn it, and those are the people we need to hire if we want to do that kind of work.

 

Stu: Thank you. That’s a good conclusion for that one. I appreciate that.

 

Mariah: Yeah, we always like to end these conversations, Marion, with a little piece of advice for up and coming marketers. So if you had maybe two to three key takeaways that you’d give to a healthcare marketing team that wants to create more video, create more blog, podcast content, anything like that, what would you say?

 

Marion: Oh my gosh, this is a hard one. I think whenever you can get a meeting with the SME, with the marketing leader, with the department head, and explain to them, I have this, you know, my Venn diagram, which has the three circles and the one circle is their goal, right? You know, are they trying to increase volume? Are they trying to increase brand awareness. The second circle is resources or opportunities, right? So, like, is there a new procedure? Do we have a writer that’s good at it? Do we have a videographer? All the resources involved? Do we have a good SME? And then the third circle is interest, right? Is there an audience for this, and do they care about it? And the middle of those three circles is the sweet spot, right? And so I would say, having that opportunity to have those meetings and say, like, Yep, we’re going to make a video. That’s not exactly what you’re asking for. It might be about the question that your procedure is the answer to right? It might be about something that people are interested in and that we can show you data to show that people are asking these questions on YouTube, on social media, more than they are, in many cases, on Google searches, on websites. And so just being able to have that conversation come in with the data, come in with like a really explain it. And I’ve found when I can have a conversation, I can understand what they’re trying to achieve, and I can help them see that this is a way. This isn’t just something random or something sort of cute or new or chaotic. This is actually the best way to achieve the goals that they have.

 

Mariah: I love that. That’s perfect. All right. Thank you so much for joining us, Marion.

 

Marion: This is more fun than my real job, you guys. I just want to sit around and nerd out all day.

 

Mariah: You should come work with us, we nerd out all day long, every day.

 

Mariah Tang: Thanks for listening to “Did I Say That Out Loud?” with Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang. Check out the show notes for more information about today’s episode. And if you have any questions, concerns or comments, hit us up anytime at stamats.com.