Content Strategy in the AI Era: Balancing Discoverability and Trust

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Welcome to the healthcare success podcast. Today, I am going to be interviewing Kirsten Lecky. She is EVP of Insights and Growth at WG Content and today we're going to talk about content, content, content. Welcome, Kirsten.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yes, the topic on everyone's mind, right?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Well, that's not on my mind. So Kirsten's firm is very respected, especially in the health system space, and I'm sure others as well, as a producer of content that's just really good. And so we were just comparing notes offline and we at Healthcare Success, of course, produce some content as well. But I thought Kirsten would have some unique insights just based upon that's their focus completely. again, Kirsten, super glad to have you today.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Thanks for having me. It's so nice to be here and to see you and to talk content. So it takes a whole village of us to do this work. So you're not alone. It's not just us. Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, that's true. It is a lot but, so first of all, know about you but our listeners may not just give us a quick overview of yourself and your firm and what you guys do and we can go from there.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, so you introduced me and my role and so WG Content, early Writer Girl, still people refer to us as writer girl, which we're absolutely okay with. We've been around for about 25 years. We work exclusively in healthcare. So for us, what that means is providers, systems, academic medical centers, pediatric institutions. We also work with a lot of organizations that support the delivery of healthcare. So like revenue cycle management, health IT, those types of businesses, as well as payers.

I've spent my entire career, supporting the delivery of healthcare. So whether that's working with HR leaders to create better employee experiences in healthcare or working with like patient experience officers to deliver better non-clinical experiences to patients. And now more, most recently here at WG, I've been here for over 11 years and I work with marketing leaders to help create better experiences for consumers looking for healthcare. So it's been a good career and it's been fun working with all the different facets of healthcare especially.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's really intriguing, by the way. The patient experience, years ago I was invited to speak at Cleveland Clinic on patient experience when it was a thing. And that's how Dr. Jim Merlino has been on this podcast, till barrage. I have a real passion for that and I think it was such a new concept to think about what the patient's experience was at the time. Fortunately, we’ve come a long way, baby, since then. But that was pretty innovative and you were right in middle of it sounds like too, as well, at the same time.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, I worked for a company that staffed concierge services on site in hospitals. And so it was a way to provide non-clinical support to patients and their families that were in the hospital. So like running their errands or taking care of something at home or picking up forgotten items at home or comfort items at the bedside. So it was really about being of service to these patients and families from a non-clinical perspective.

I think they're still around and I think they still do this service. I've heard of it. But I was doing that for about 15 years.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Wow. So let's talk about content and talk about how content has evolved over the years. I think that's an important place to start.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, it certainly has evolved a lot, hasn't it? I think you and I don't, we've never talked about our ages, but I think it's safe to say we probably both started working before like really websites were around or internet, you know? I remember my first job, was like somebody was talking about doing a website and it was like, wait, what's that? You know, it was, so anyway, it's evolved a lot in terms of how we access content. It's overwhelming. It's always around. It's in our back pocket. It's everywhere we go.

But I think what hasn't changed is really at its core, content is communication. And I can kind of get on my soapbox about this sometimes. Content to me feels a little bit like a commodity or can sound that way. But really, it's at its core and in its most simplistic form, it's communication. It's informing, it's educating, it's inspiring, it's aligning, it's connecting. I you need to have the words and the images and the videos and the audio to be able to communicate to whoever your audience is.

So I think it's really still the same, right? I mean, for 25 years, I mean, we're all human beings communicating with human beings. How we go about doing it has definitely evolved a lot.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, for sure.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content):  And that's where the digital age, you know, certainly has introduced a lot of evolutions in terms of how we produce it, how we get it, how we read it, how we consume it, lots to unpack with that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah. So Kirsten, you and I chose to work in healthcare, which I know everybody has, I'm sure in travel. Like it's hard to do content and travel too, I'm sure. But healthcare is unique in its category. So in terms of the health systems and hospitals that you guys work with and other kinds of clients in this space, like what are the historical challenges? And I'd probably just focus on the health systems and hospitals because that's really like, you know, we don’t drift too far into too many different sort of adjuncts. Tell me about some challenges there.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content):  Well, and I would love to hear how you answer this question too. And maybe all these questions, because we kind of…

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I think I'll have input on all of it. But you're the guest. You have to start.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, there's a lot of challenges. I think that's because healthcare is so challenging, right? I mean, it's complex, it's confusing. And so going back to content's purpose of communication: communicating healthcare is really very challenging. And so I really can get very passionate about plain language, writing, you know, for health literacy.

I think that's where, you know, agencies like yours and mine and others really bring that value is taking, you know, translating the very confusing complex to, for consumers to understand. But with, you know, just the whole vast number of challenges that we face in producing this content, one of the things that I've found, and I don't have an answer for this, and I don't even know exactly… I'm sure there's a number of ways to address it, but it's really the process of the, it's like the review process.

So it's really when the marketing team is creating, let's just talk about a website, for example, a website, you want to have your stakeholders involved. You want to have your clinicians and your physicians involved in reviewing the content. Perhaps you even need them involved upfront. It's critical and absolutely important that they have their input.

But sometimes when it gets to the review process, the content can maybe lose its effectiveness because you have someone that's wanting to use the big words and use all of their credibility. They don't want it to get lost. And what they see is on that web page.

And so then it creates this tension between what the marketing team is trying to achieve, the objective of discoverability and search intent to what the stakeholder wants to achieve. And that is all of this really rich information that they feel like needs to be included that maybe they're not seeing on the webpage.

So I think that's a real challenge that I find has not, you know, it exists all the time. It's always there and it's always challenging. I mean, have you experienced that in your...

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Oh, for sure. And I think that, you know, just backing up a little and then we'll come back into that comment. You know, the idea in case you're sort of new to the whole content world here is we're going to try to translate. First of all, you need the clinical input as a stakeholder because you want it to be accurate, right? You want to talk about things that are absolutely true and not just found on the Internet, but also the authority today, especially, and this may come up later when we talk about AI SEO is even more important than it was before from an SEO standpoint.

We want those stakeholders to be involved, but you're right. I found the same thing that, you know, like we're thinking about it from a marketing point of view of what's compelling, right? First of all, what does this solve a need from the consumer standpoint? What's going to show up in SEO? What's authoritative?

And another thing, Kristen, we might talk about later is who are the audiences? Because a lot of times there's multiple audiences, right? So, you know, and what's our overall objective and what's the objective of this particular piece of content, right? Is this educational, is this high funnel, low funnel, mid funnel? Like, what is the, you know, there's a lot there.

And so you're right, when you're working with a clinician, for example, it can get very technical and very challenging. And it's interesting too. I'm curious, Kirsten, from your experience, I do notice that at least In general, we'll just call doctors, although it's broader than that. It's healthcare professionals. Let's use the word doctors.

They definitely seem, some seem to be more marketing friendly than they used to be. In the past, like nobody wanted any part of it. It was beneath them. Today, they at least want to be, probably some of your doctors want to be too involved and too excited about it, but more like how do you balance that when you, and how do you work when you have somebody who's getting too technical, for example, or going off track and… How does that work for you guys process wis

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Well, I'm not sure exactly which piece of that to answer, but I think you're right in that there's a lot of different challenges here. And I think a couple of things. So one of the things that I always think about is something that I heard years ago during a keynote at one of the conferences that we all go to, and it was Larry Bailin from Single Thrill Marketing. I don't know if you know who that is.

But he talked about, know, content's role is it's not just to be found, but it's to be chosen, right? You need to have, it is kind of like, and I think about it like the science and art of content. So the science is, you know, is really the being found. It's like what you were just describing. It's that there's a lot of analytics and there's a technical and there's SEO and others, AEO and there's all of this that's packed into how does a hospital, how can they be found in search and in LLMs?

And then once they get to your site, why are you choosing them? And that's the real art of storytelling and you're bringing your patient stories forward and you're talking maybe more about your credentials and all of those important things. And so it's really balancing those two things. And I think when we're working with our physicians, our clinicians or any of our stakeholders that are involved in this process, I think it really requires that education upfront.

It's not even really education, it's just like orientation. It's like, you're gonna start to see a lot of content, we're building this new website. Trust that there's going to be a lot of pieces to this. And we're really looking at two main objectives. Objective number one is we need this website to be found. And this strategy is going to look this way and it's going to sound this way and it's going to achieve these three things. So when we have pieces of content that are aimed at achieving this piece of the strategy, being found, just informing and orienting everyone to that strategy.

And then once they get to this site, we're going to have a whole other strategy about being chosen. And this is what that's going to look like. And here's what you're going to read and what you're going to see and how that's going to look and feel different. And you have to trust that both of those things are going to be addressed in our strategy. And not one page is going to live in isolation. It all works together.

Because I think that's the other thing that happens in the review process is you get a page and you don't maybe know that there's going to be 10 other supporting pages that are going to tell more of the story. So I think it's a lot of setting expectations, orienting to a process, onboarding all the stakeholders to, these are our two main objectives. Here's how it's going to come forward when you start to review drafts.

And also to, you know, that the marketing's job is not to sell, it's not necessarily to sell. It's to get someone to raise their hand, to take some sort of action, to make an appointment, to want to do something next.

But them becoming a patient is, that's not, marketing is not going to solve the access problem, right? Or the patient experience problem or the wayfinding problem once they get there or the bedside manner if it's not great.

So marketing's job is to not to sell. It's really to get someone to raise their hand, pay attention, take action and move forward in the process. And I think that's important that people all understand the role of marketing.

I mean, do you really, feel like that sometimes you throw all your eggs in this basket and they're all about patient acquisition. Well, certainly that's the end game here, but you know, there's a lot to that. And it's really getting more clear about what the objective of this, you know, content or a website is.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Well, what I like, first of all, that I think as an agency on our standpoint, we're doing better at is to set expectations to all the stakeholders. And that can be challenging because a lot of times the stakeholders aren't all in the room, right? They don't all have that. But to make sure that expectations are clear because that makes everything else so much better.

And it depends on… Again, I think that's kind of nirvana to do that perfectly because, like I said, a lot of the stakeholders aren't involved at all during the onboarding process. But I still think that's really critical because that's going to make it so much better. I think that's really key. Do you have comment on that?

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): I mean, I think it's, don't know. and I don't know you have any examples of that working really well. I mean, I have examples of it working well and it not being done at all, but I don't know if there's like a real best practice, but you know, I think, I think the more you can get them involved up front. And I think it's not just about pulling from them, you know, their service line, unique differentiators and what makes, you know, those sorts of things are critical and important, but also letting them know the role of this project, the types of content you're going to start reviewing, the different strategies that we have in play here. So know when you start reviewing these drafts, these are the kinds of things that you're going to notice. And please know that that's on purpose. And so I think it's a little bit of pulling and curating from them, but also informing and setting expectations so that they understand what the process is going to look like.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): It's funny, Kirsten, you ask about our experience. One of the things that we did years ago that we're bringing back now for this exact reason, we used to have an onboarding video that talked about, here's what to expect, here's what the process is, and then we had a help us help you. We're actually gonna bring that back.

So we've been doing that verbally now and the people, that was years ago and we wanna update it with the new team because that way people who aren't in the room can at least have a chance to watch it, especially if they're an A student. Most people won't. Most people are going to say I'm too busy, blah, blah. Or maybe even think through a combination of that because it is really important.

And when we talked before, you talked about when things start to break down between expertise and effectiveness. Can you talk about that a little bit, maybe give some examples and we can talk about how to solve this along the way. But I'm just curious that you raised that earlier and I think it's really an interesting topic.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Well, think that content doesn't always fail because of bad strategy. Sometimes it fails in the review process where opinions start to override intended outcomes.

The creative process can be a lot of tension. And I think that we all have a lot of passion and energy and that those opinions are rooted in our own experiences or the expertise that we have from where we sit. And so every stakeholder has a thought, right? And so then all of sudden we're trying to satisfy too many stakeholders versus, you know, the audience isn't even in the room, right? But all of the stakeholders are, and we're writing for the audience and they're not even in the room.

But yet we're trying to satisfy all the stakeholders in the room or those that are reviewing it. So I think that's where their expertise is absolutely critical and we can't lose sight of that, but it has to be balanced with the effectiveness. And so a very simplistic way to look at this is plain language, right? I mean, the physicians’ and the doctors’ expertise is really, you know, can be very sophisticated and very academic.

And it's so important that that's not lost, but it has to be translated into plain language. And sometimes that can create some tension. I'm sure you've experienced it. I think anyone that's in this space has. And so again, it's just informing everyone that's involved. And it's not just physicians. I see it all the time too on the B2B side where the sales leaders are the subject matter experts and the marketing people are creating a piece of collateral. And the salesperson is saying, it doesn't include this or it doesn't include that.

And I'm like, well, it's not the marketing's job to do all that. The marketing's job is to get them to raise their, you know, someone to raise their hand. Then your job is to sell it. Right. And so I just think that again, going back to, you know, content has two jobs: discoverbility and building trust. So reinforce and reinforce discoverability has a really different kind of feel, look, and strategy building trust has a different, you know, they have to work together and work in tandem.

But the effectiveness really has to be in the hands of the marketing department, right? And that expertise is lending into that process by the physicians or the sales, like whoever are those subject matter experts, experts, does that make sense?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, for sure. And I think what's interesting is this idea that one of the reasons why people like listening to people like you and to me is that just the real-world experience, like this isn't marketing theory. Like we know what's actually happens in the real world. It's really helpful to call this what it is. And so at subjectivity, can't you mention, I think I forget the word, but it was stressful or friction or whatever is just a real thing. It's yeah, it's real.

So on that subjective side, what do mean by that and how do you work around that to the extent that it's possible? mean, nobody has magic wands, right? But there's better ways than others. What's some of your experience doing that?

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, I think I sound like I'm repeating myself, but I think any way you can move from subjectivity to objectivity, right? I think it's like again, it goes back to setting expectations. And then as you're moving through the process, you're reinforcing the objectives and what those expectations are. You know, you're, even maybe it's even as simple as and I've done this before with our teams where, you know, our content templates have everyone has a different version of a content template, right?

But sometimes even just having at the very top, you have all of your metadata and you have all the things that are included on a content template, but maybe even having some sort of reinforcement around the objectives, the goals, the audience, those things are all in there, but calling that out when it's being sent to a stakeholder for review so that they're reminded again of what that content looks like or what we're trying to achieve with this content.

So it's moving from that subjectivity to that objectivity. And it's also really just saying, you have a lot to say. You're very proud of your work, as you should be. There are so much credible stories to tell about the work that we're doing here.

Trust the process. We are not gonna accomplish that entire objective of your experience, your credibility, and all of your innovations and everything on one page. It's going to be a series of things. It's going to be packaged together. So I think part of it too is just building trust with the stakeholders, you know, that they know that these don't work in isolation. This is really all, you know, there's more to it than just this.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I think that idea of just there's more to it and it's not an isolation is really important. It's easy because you're focused on this one thing, but it's like, yeah, we have this entire website. We're covering that.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Well, you're like reading something, right? And it's so important. And you're like, well, wait, they didn't talk about this award or, you know, or this, this clinical trial we did is not mentioned here or this, you know, that's not mentioned there.

And they're right. They're right. But that's going to come in a different place and it's going to show up somewhere else. so, you know, trusting that process, I think, you know, requires relationships, you know, among all this, you know, just between the marketing department and the stakeholders.

It requires a lot of that orientation and onboarding to a process like this, educating and informing along the way that their stories will be told. And I think, too, this idea that the content is going to satisfy the strategy around being found. And that's the whole search intent. And that's changing. That game has changed a lot. And so they need to understand how much do they want to know around like LLMs and AEOs and you know. All of that, along with just the traditional search intent to then once they get on the site, building all the trust through the stories and the awards and everything else.

So packaging your influence when you're talking to these stakeholders, I think sometimes is helpful.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): For sure. In addition, we've already been talking about the consequences when this doesn't work out. What are the things to look for when we don't heed your warning, Kirsten?

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Well, I'm sure we've all have those examples and those stories. think, you your search strategy, your discoverability strategy, gets very diluted because you're not thinking with the consumer in mind, right? You're thinking, I have all these things I want to say. And so if we're considering too many opinions and too many things that need to be said, well, that's not what the consumer or what the audience is looking for.

So I think you risk discoverability or diluting your SEO strategy or now your AEO or any of those strategies. And then I think you risk building trust with consumers once they get to your site. So again, if the content feels too academic and it feels too, I mean, even for those of us that read this information because we live in this world, understand it, boy, we don't have time to read it, right?

We still want strong headlines, good use of bullet points, short paragraphs, simple words. I don't necessarily need or want all of the explanations and all of that information. That's not how I'm consuming content anymore. It's probably not how you are. And so I think if I want to find that information, I can go looking and find that information. But I don't know if that's necessarily, that's what you risk is if you put too much information out there that the consumer is just going to get lost and give up.

They're not going to want to take action and make an appointment if they just can't get to what they need because there's too much to read and there's too much on a page.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So it's really funny. A couple of things on that. One is, you know, the and we haven't talked about this yet about AI and what's different about AI is it's not just giving you a list of options. It's making recommendations. That's a fundamental difference in what happens.

So when we're thinking about the strategy of the SEO side, traditional SEO needs to be there. The AI needs to be there. And then the plating and convincing the patient needs to be there. And sometimes if it's B2B other stakeholders. So there's a lot.

And so that starts getting off base by just a little by the time you get done with the process, you're unrecognizable to what it needs to be.

And the other thing is that, you know, if sometimes I’ve found if you're working with a stakeholder that if you remind them, like, would you read 2,000 words on something like this or 3,000 or 5,000? Like they don't people approach things motion much more emotionally than they do rationally. So all this stuff that should matter needs to be woven in but you have to recognize the way people actually behave and so you know again this is a lot easier if you set the expectations up front and you can reach people but it is challenging for sure so like what…,

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, it's just changing. So I think it's changing so much too, because like, I had a conversation with our director of marketing recently where we have so much content on our, there's like certain pages on our website that there's just so much content. I'm like, Heather, is anyone reading? No one's going to read this.

She's like, well, I'm not writing it for the reader. I'm writing it for AI. And then, so then there's this whole other strategy that's new and different that's evolving, right, around, well, how do we make sure that we're bringing in the reputation signals, right? For AI overviews or for AI to find us. And how are we telling the full story? Cause like you said, they're making recommendations.

So we need to have all of this really rich, current, great content in order for us to be found and recommended in an AI search. And so I think it's just a completely different, it's just changing. And that strategy is different than it was even probably six months ago.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, I would say for us, it's funny because most of our new business comes to us from SEO. We designed the business that way years ago. most of our clients find us. We have some outbound and we do conferences the same ones you do to us.

But really, and so what's interesting is for us, because like this is a big part of what we are doing these days is AI-driven SEO is probably like half our conversations beginning in there. what's interesting, Kirsten, that we're seeing is that a lot of times, like the content, very much like you were just saying, we're running content with AI in mind, not because people are using it. I think the differentiation I would give is we're not writing it for keywords, we're writing it for context, and we're covering topics that we normally would not really care about from an SEO standpoint.

And like, for example, of this is probably not the best, but the one that comes to mind is our company values are now on our website, and there's a specific page for that. Nobody's looking up, I want to hire an agency with values like X.

But the machines are now getting a better sense of the user as an individual and it's making the context so it's not just all about SEO. And so that's really important because we find that we have content about various target audiences because we work with a lot of different target audiences. And it's making that you don't have to say that like content in the old model would have been like, okay. SEO for medical device, SEO for telehealth, SEO for...

That isn't necessary anymore. The machines are smarter than that. And that changes everything. Because now we can tell the machines more about what we do. And we're doing this for our clients as well. So to help the machines understand the context would be the easiest way I would put it. But it's a different strategy. And it can lead to a lot of content that before...

And I always felt a little frustrated. Like, do I really have to write the same thing 10 times? You know, does the same with different keywords? Because you kind of did. And now... So there is always duplicate content, was the machines. It's just a big difference when it's searching for keywords versus understanding the context.

And that is accelerated so fast over the last few months that it's, and we find that for ourselves and for clients, people call not just because they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to you because you answered. It's like I've asked everything I could possibly want. And it says you just you like I can talk to you.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, I know we get more and more web inquiries. Well, because we ask how they hear about us and the majority of the inquiries that come through our website today are actually through LLM. So it's people, you know, they're finding us through ChatGPT or Claude or otherwise. I mean, certainly still they'll look through Google, but finding us that way. And so it's a whole different, you know, way of looking at being found.

And you're right. It's about like, it's, sourcing not just one place, but kind of the whole ecosystem of your brand. And then it's saying, I think the best recommendations would be these three. And then it sources for validations to say, these recommendations make the most sense. So when we're talking to clients too, it's not just about, now it's like, let's revisit all those reputations signals, right? You like you kind of have this place on your site for your awards or for your best-ofs or those sorts of things, but let's make sure we're really weaving it into your content more appropriately. Let's make sure that those provider bios have stories about why they got into care and, you know, certain philosophies and things like that, because that's how people are searching for information. They always have, but I think it just matters even more today. And so it's not just one kind of piece that's really bringing in all of those elements.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Well, you just said something there that we're going to be talking about a lot in coming weeks. Claude says, you know, today, given this historic change, and this is a big change, this isn't like a little change. This is the biggest change I've seen since this whole building started. Like it's like a real, there's been minor issues along the way. Google makes this algorithm, that's changed. And those were important, but this is like a whole new world. And essentially most people's websites are out of date. Like they're just not. Like they have fundamentally flawed for the way the consumer is searching today.

So doesn't mean you throw everything you have out, but it typically means there's a lot of content that needs to be thought through and a lot of the strategy. And, you know, for example, we talk about a lot, like, you know, the old strategy may have called for 10 different mini blogs on this topic, building to a crescendo. And that's not the way AI works at all. So it's like really thoughtful strategy and, you know, trying to figure out how to optimize the website going forward is really important.

I want ask you, going back to the, as we're getting a little closer to the end here, how do the healthcare marketing leaders better manage the stakeholder input without losing effectiveness? Like what, any secrets you have along the lines there?

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Probably nothing different than what we've already talked about, you know, in terms of, you know, getting them involved upfront and setting those expectations.

And I liked your comment earlier about, you know, there, I don't know if we said this while we were being recorded or before, but that, you know, some stakeholders or SMEs that are not in marketing, there some that are super passionate and understand and have a great relationship with marketing and understand the role of marketing.

And then there might be some that, don't understand that as well, right? And so even I think sometimes identifying who your stakeholders, who's involved in this process, maybe even just rethinking that too, I don't know, you know, in terms of like who owns this service line as our internal subject matter expert. And that part of that consideration is their relationship with marketing.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So, Kirsten, one of the things I've noticed is the, know, I've been doing tons of podcasts for a long time. And one of the things I've noticed, especially lately, for whatever reason, talking to a lot of hospital CMOs, their healthcare system as CMOs, is the ones that are really good at this are the ones that are really good at building alliances within their business.

They're at the table, they're not at the kids’ table, they're at the adult table and they work with the various leaders, and it can be CFOs and everybody else, but even clinicians, they develop a reputation internally and that's really helpful because if I were to give career advice to somebody who wants to grow up in the hospital market ranks, I'd have them listen to these CMOs because it's really insightful how so much of this is bringing the stakeholders together and going back to what said earlier about some doctors, you know, more excited about marketing than others, that's always been the case. But I feel like if you're going to try to get something done, it would be really helpful to get to identify those doctors who like this and probably are internally respected and then other doctors will follow because otherwise it's just going to be hard.

Do you have any other ideas? I'm just curious about sort of the endless loops that can happen there. Any, when that starts to get stuck in revisions, are there any other sort of secret anecdotes or antidotes? Not anecdotes, antidotes. To solve the problem.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Any descriptions that's all this condition. No, I think, you know, it's kind of what you were just describing, I think, too. It's like it's really trust, you know, I think that building relationships where there's trust between the marketing department and the leaders and the clinicians and that everyone, you know, has that.

I remember a few years ago, I led a panel at HMPS where I had three doctors come in and we talked about this very topic. And we were trying to really uncover, because we had done like an annual state of content planning and what are the biggest challenges that you have. And the top three were all related to physician involvement, like their time and availability, clearly, you know how to get them involved, to get them passionate about or you know about marketing and then the review process.

And so anyway, we had these three doctors and it was so interesting because they really were like, well, what, you know, they thought of marketing as like this very traditional, it's all about. I'm not, I think more like I'm not a marketer. like, is it like people place product price, something like that? Is that the traditional marketing?

So anyway, a of these doctors were like, yeah, you got, know, your job is, to sell and you think of it this way. And I'm like, I think if you were to ask everyone in this room, and it was over a hundred people, I was like, I think they would all tell you that that's not how they see their jobs. They see it more as building trust and informing and inspiring and educating and connecting and aligning and making sure that these people, you know, eventually see our care as their best solution for whatever sort of condition they might be facing. And that marketing is maybe it's not in healthcare because healthcare is so unique. It's not marketing.

Maybe we need to call it something different. I started this whole conversation where it was like, yeah, let's just abandon the word marketing and let's start like, let's call ourselves communicators or it's the communication department. And so these doctors were like, yeah, I really like that better. I think that's better. And so I said, well, I don't know if we're going to change this overnight, but you know, just then it kind of puts this function within the organization in a place of, you know, what it really is. You know, it really is communication.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So it's funny because I spent my career, earliest part of Health Care, I stumbled into it after a long story I won't cover today, which I've covered elsewhere. I spent about 10 years on the road working with doctors and leading seminars with doctors. And so I worked with thousands of doctors over the years. And the one thing I tell people is if you're trying to communicate with doctors, it comes down to three things, credibility, credibility, and credibility.

Especially then, but even now it's like they don't really understand marketing and it's not thought of as a, it's more of, it's not even a soft scientist, it's science, it's just soft. Like they don't really understand how this can be.

And so they understand the methodology, like, there is strategy behind this. This isn't just, you know, banging a drum. It's like, okay. So the more you can educate, the better. I have one comment at the end that we didn't talk about before, was we've sort of outlined this, which I'm curious if you've seen.

One of the things that I believe is really happening, like this is an insight I've had within the last few months, that people are becoming more and more used to AI in their day-to-day life. And so you mentioned a couple of things actually. One is that a lot of your inquiries are coming from AI versus Google, and we're seeing the same thing.

So what's interesting though is AI search share is still really small. It's like the last couple months ago was like 6%. Google's traditional search is 94.

But bottom of the funnel seems to be much more impacted. So when people are actually looking to buy something or to choose a vendor or to choose a healthcare provider, they tend to be using this stuff more. And as they get better and better at this, there's always in any population of people, like innovators, early majority, late majority laggards.

But as it gets past the innovator side and the early adopter side, we're going to see this happen more and more that the demands of the client is going to be much faster because if let's say, and it doesn't matter like where this is breaking down, client side or agency side, if it's taking too long people are going to get frustrated and just go to chat should be to you and write something and so the expectation is going to be harder and harder to manage because and it's of course ChatGPT doesn't have typically unless you're really a skilled practitioner at using it and not we don't use ChatGPT we use other AIs when we're working with tools. But have you seen that yet? Because that's my prediction. I think if you haven't seen it yet, because we've already beginning to see it. The expectation for content being turned around quickly is case for sure.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): And so your question is like, will we continue to see more and more expectations around like just the speed of content?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah and the quality of it, we're seeing, I'm just curious if you guys are seeing it as well.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, you know, I think we all are seeing that. And I think it's a real disciplined effort to make sure that you keep a very healthy balance on the use of the tool. Because, you know, you what is the the old saying like you can have speed, quality or budget, you can't have all you got to pick two or something like that.

So somewhere along the way, you know, with this AI stuff, you have speed and budget, right, it's saving time and money, but where is it compromising in quality?

And I think what we're seeing is not always, right? Like I think there was a recent study I've read that healthcare again, healthcare is different. So I'm going to make a general statement and then there's healthcare. But there was a study recently that, I don't know how many people, but they looked at human-generated content versus AI generated content. And the AI-generated content was chosen more often than the human generated content.

What gets scary in healthcare is certainly, you know, it's there's a lot more liability to and responsibility to the type of content that's being, I mean, all content should have, you know, responsibility to it. But, you know, if we start to face any kind of quality compromises because AI is only as good as what's already out there.

It's sourcing and pulling content that's already out there. So if that starts to get super watered down, because over time it's all AI-generated content, and so it's pulling AI generated content, and then I just feel like what's going to happen? Is this all going to become super watered down and just vanilla? Because we're just saying the same thing, because we're pulling in from the same content that's out there in the worldwide web. I don't know.

But I do think that we are in a position to embrace it and to be really super smart about how it's being used and finding a really nice balance. And so I think that's where we live at WG Content. We're very AI forward with humans at the center of everything we do and finding ways that we're, are the best practices for it? And so that's kind of where we're living right now.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I agree. At the end of the day, like for SEO, example, and for cons, but just using SEO as an example, there's a lot of mundane stuff that before somebody in our usual billable rate had to do because it was fundamental. But now they can do that so much faster, which means we're not gypping clients. We're able to get into media, more important stuff faster versus doing all these other things that needed to get done first that may not have been as impactful.

It really is about ethically using AI in a way that benefits the client, benefits the consumer, and makes it more valuable. But it is interesting too, the caveat is that, you know, the AI, if somebody puts content out there with an AI engine, another engine sees that and then regurgitates that. So eventually the machines are eating each other. The human element is out, like they're all reading each other's stuff. Like, wait a minute, that's a little scary. Any last words, Kristen, as we wrap up here?

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content):  No, think we're all in this together and we're going to figure out our way. And I think we all have a shared interest in making sure we do this really well. I mean, it's an important responsibility that we have that the information that we're putting out there and the communication that is being put in front of consumers and patients and otherwise is done well. And so I think it's good work that we get to do. And I'm glad you invited me to the conversation. Thanks for having me.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, I told you it was going to be good. It's been awesome. So I will thank you, Kirsten. I appreciate your time. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks over in Salt Lake City, probably. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Kirsten Lecky (WG Content): Yeah, our team will be there. Bye bye.