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Case Study

The Benefits Package: Launching the First Health Benefits Blog Carnival

Best Doctors, a global provider of clinical advocacy solutions, is committed to giving people access to the right healthcare decisions and treatments. The company’s offering is an employee healthcare benefit which enables members to seek advice, consultation, diagnosis and treatment plans from some of the top doctors around the world, regardless of physical location. In order to help promote the importance of healthcare benefits and decisions, Best Doctors President Evan Falchuk leverages social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the company’s message along with his opinions on the industry.

The Challenge

In the social media landscape, there was nothing that offered an opportunity for healthcare benefits bloggers to share their ideas and thoughts related specifically to the healthcare benefits industry. Working with PAN Communications, Best Doctors President Evan Falchuk decided to launch a healthcare benefits blog carnival. A blog carnival is similar to an online magazine that is run by a community of like-minded bloggers and serves as an open forum to build relationships and share best practices so that the blogging community can discover new blogs and stay abreast of industry news. Each edition of a carnival is hosted at a different blog on a bi-weekly basis. There are many benefits to a blog carnival, including the opportunity to share ideas, best practices and commentary with a broad audience of like-minded readers and providing hosts and contributors with the opportunity to increase traffic to their own blogs. Best Doctors sought to engage with the benefits community to have their voices heard and be counted in regards to healthcare policy and quality, as well as foster relationships with peers in the community and help benefits professionals better engage their employees. Using Evan’s blog, SeeFirst, as a launching pad, the PAN team set out to develop and launch the industry’s first health benefits blog carnival in under two months.

The Approach

There was significant planning that needed to go into the development of the blog carnival and the PAN team would manage it – from conception of the title and overview of the carnival, to inviting bloggers to participate to ensuring that the launch went off without a hitch. The PAN team and Best Doctors selected “The Benefits Package” as the name of the carnival and managed the following strategies and tactics:

• Development of content for The Benefits Package – including rules for hosting/submitting, key messages, goals and benefits.
• Creation of invitations and associated outreach – the PAN team crafted invitations to leading industry bloggers, explaining what the blog carnival was, why it would benefit them and asking them to participate.
• Support for participating bloggers – the PAN team worked closely with each participating blogger to help them understand the carnival process – from the type of submission to include to how to promote the carnival in order to drive traffic to their own blog and for the carnival as a whole.
• Social media promotion – PAN ensured that the carnival was well-promoted via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – including the creation of a hash tag - #benefitspackage.
• Press release – PAN crafted a formal press release launching the carnival and highlighting early results.
• Creating a “host schedule” – the blog carnival is a twice-a-month event and the PAN team was responsible for working with bloggers and getting them to agree to host upcoming editions of The Benefits Package. The team developed a calendar and secured hosts for each carnival through January, as a start.

The Results

As a result of the PAN’s team work, the first edition of The Benefits Package – hosted on Evan’s blog, SeeFirst – was a tremendous success:

• 13 bloggers submitted to the first carnival – exceeding Best Doctors’ goal of six – eight participants
• Contributing bloggers included some of the biggest names in the benefits and health benefits space, including Hank Stern from InsureBlog, Jen Benz from the Benz Communications blog, George Van Antwerp from Enabling Healthy Decisions and Jason Shafrin from Healthcare Economist
• Subsequent editions of The Benefits Package attracted new bloggers and contributors and each edition either grew or remained stable in terms of submissions – there was not a drop off
• Evan’s blog – SeeFirst – received 1,000 page views the first day of the carnival alone – a major uptick in traffic.

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