How to Do Healthcare PR Right | 5 Top Tips

Are you keen to learn how to do healthcare PR the right way? 

In the social care sector, Public Relations (PR) is a crucial aspect of any organisation's communication strategy. It involves creating and maintaining a positive image and reputation for your brand through effective communication with the public, media, and other stakeholders. 

But how do you do social and healthcare PR right? Here are five key elements to consider:

Social and Healthcare PR: Understand Your Audience

One of the most important elements of social and healthcare PR is understanding your target audience. 

By identifying the demographics and media habits of the people you want to reach, you can tailor your PR efforts to be more effective and engaging. 

Of course, this will vary based on what you want to achieve, with certain PR material being better suited for local, industry or even national news media.

Healthcare PR: Don’t Neglect Local News Media 

Placement within local news publications through earned media is a great way to raise the profile of your offering. 

This acts as a shop window for your business, and the likelihood is that most prospective residents will reside in the same region as your home. 

This is why painting a positive image of your brand within local media can really serve to boost your reputation — ensuring your care home is the first to come to mind for people considering moving a loved one into social care.

Your Residents Are Your Most Valuable Asset

In social care, most successful news stories, especially within the national consumer press, have a person at its heart. 

Care homes are a unique collection of well-storied individuals and this offers an abundance of healthcare PR opportunities — whether it’s fulfilling bucket list wishes, or celebrating birthday milestones. 

It’s important to get to know your residents, as you never know where a PR story might be hiding. A great example of this is revisiting past careers or hobbies, which can be a great foundation for a feel-good story whereby a resident has the opportunity to reconnect with their past. 

Healthcare PR: Develop a Strong and Consistent Message

Ultimately, social and healthcare PR is a tool to enhance and mould the reputation of a business. Therefore, it's essential that the messaging around your care home is consistent across all platforms.

For example, if you’re a particularly tech savvy care provider, then championing this consistently across social media and PR activity can really help paint you as a contemporary and innovative business.

Similarly, if you pride yourself on providing diverse and engaging activities for residents, then shout about this, as it could be a determining factor for someone considering your care home for a loved one. 

Traditionally, the ‘feel’ and ‘culture’ of a care home is established when walking through the doors, however, healthcare PR allows you to generate this well before people even visit.

Shine a Light on Individual Expertise 

Thought leadership is an extremely valuable tool in PR and if a member of your team is particularly experienced in their field, be it nutrition, care home management or ancillary services, then positioning them to trade media as ‘experts’ can be a great way to garner brand exposure.

You’re looking to illuminate their expertise for the betterment of other professionals in the industry, which in turn, will demonstrate the quality of your staff.

You may also find that once this reputation is established, certain team members will become the go-to contact when publications are producing reactive content around current affairs in the industry.

If done correctly, healthcare PR is a very powerful tool within the social care sector, and it serves to increase public understanding of the important work that you do. 

There really is no ceiling as to how creative you can be and in an increasingly competitive industry, there has never been a more important time to stand out from the crowd.

If you’d like to discuss healthcare PR in more detail and find out how we can help, please get in touch. 

Alternatively, why not read our previous blog to discover the importance of your brand voice?