Bringing our integrated PR and digital communications approach to Children’s Hospital Colorado

Challenge

Around Children’s Hospital Colorado (Children’s Colorado), there is no shortage of astounding stories of medical expertise that are also incredibly heartwarming. That means the media and digital teams – who are responsible for first securing, then curating and sharing those stories – are kept busy. Both the media relations team and the digital team at Children’s Colorado wanted greater exposure for the outstanding media stories that came in nearly every day. They understood that, despite their likely interest, not every person who followed Children’s Colorado’s social properties saw every story featuring the organization when it played on TV. However, with a large digital brand to manage, the digital team didn’t have the resources to develop a deep knowledge of each story in order to write and post about them. While the media relations team had deep knowledge of the stories, they had limited digital expertise which was needed to put a strategy in place and write social-friendly posts about the stories.

Solution

GFM|CenterTable has a long-standing relationship with the Children’s Colorado media relations team. It made sense to leverage our digital expertise to work in an integrated way with the digital and media relations teams at Children’s Colorado. GFM|CenterTable worked closely with the media relations team to prioritize stories that aligned with Children’s Colorado’s communications goals. The team applied digital strategies to determine which platforms would best amplify the value of each media story so that they could serve as examples of quality third-party validation of Children’s Colorado’s pediatric expertise. The integrated efforts included coordinating with both teams to develop a strategy for tagging partners and including top-line messages whether or not the messages made it into the media story.

Results

Both the media relations and digital teams were pleased to have strategically and consistently produced quality content for the social channels. The media relations team saw an amplified and more highly targeted audience for the quality stories they earned. The digital team saw amplified engagement in the earned media content.

In some cases, although it is not the primary goal of Children’s Colorado’s social media, patients cited news articles that they saw on Children’s Colorado’s social media channels as the way they discovered and made an appointment with a specialist that could help their child.