Off the Page with Ashling Lee

In her Off the Page interview, Ashling Lee dishes on the brand whose sustainable performance inspires her, on the type of content that’s ever-reliable to a business, and on the actual purpose of content.

Meet Ashling Lee

When it comes to using content to drive business, Ashling Lee isn’t into short-term thinking. The brands she admires, her go-to content, and even her perspective on content operations, they all lean into playing the long game. Because to her, it’s the long game that delivers the buying audience something that content, increasingly it seems, may be lacking: value.

Her perspective isn’t merely an echo of best practices shared on LinkedIn or Substack. It’s steeped in experience and hard-earned outcomes achieved at high-growth brands like POPSUGAR, Virgin, and, most recently, healthcare startups Quartet Health and Season, where she served as the director of content marketing.

Dive deeper into her candid point of view on content and the promise of long-term thinking in her interview below. And reach out to her on LinkedIn to discuss potential projects or roles.

What is a recent piece of content, outside of work, that you loved? 

This New Yorker article about how we often feel the pressure to be interesting came up on my feed recently. It captured such a common sentiment so perfectly.

Which brand’s content do you admire most, and why?

Intercom.

I've yet to see another tech brand take content to such a robust level, and importantly, sustain it. 

What is the most underrated type of content, and why? 

"Top-of-funnel" blog posts that are focused on educating an audience, based on your expertise.

When executed well and as part of a thoughtful strategy, they can do wonders for a brand. It's a long game for sure, but the payoff is huge in terms of building trust and loyalty. 

What skill are you learning this year?

Growing as a leader 

What type of content do you secretly hope to never see again?

Anything that has something along the lines of: "At <company name>, we provide a...." sprinkled within the content. Don't use every opportunity to make a sales pitch! 

What don't non-marketers understand about content? 

How it can truly be a business' superpower.

Investing in storytelling is never going to be wasted. Many often fall into the trap of thinking, if we build a good product/offering, people will come, but in reality, people need to see how your business fits into the/their world to really take that next step. And that comes through content! 

What part of the content-marketing workflow needs fixing? 

Briefing/conception.

This is where intent, messaging, and goals get muddled, or aren't clear. Getting this right sets the tone for the entire workflow. 

What is your favorite marketing tool? 

Asana.

I love getting a bird's eye view on editorial calendars, and being able to quickly update the status of projects. 

Fill in the blank: The purpose of content is to ________. 

Offer value 

What would you love to change about healthcare content? 

Setting goals!

Often, there's no clear guardrails or purpose for why content exists for a company. This makes it very hard for content marketers to do their jobs well, measure success, and prove their value to an organization. 

Who else should Off the Page Feature?

Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.

Recommend a friend

Who should Off the Page interview next?

Off the Page with Matthew Fisher

In his Off the Page interview, Carium’s and HealthcareNOW Radio’s Matthew Fisher shares what he considers to be premiere content in digital health and healthcare IT and reveals the biggest challenge he faces in content creation.

Meet Matthew Fisher

Matthew Fisher has something that most content marketers in healthcare don’t have—a JD. And that gives him a point of view and subject matter expertise that few content marketers have (and wish they had easy access to).

General counsel at Carium by day, Matthew also hosts a bi-weekly online radio show with HealthcareNOW Radio called Healthcare de Jure, where he focuses on trending topics in healthcare, ranging from privacy and security to population health and patient engagement.

Learn more about his perspective on content in his Off the Page interview below.

What recent piece of content made you jealous?

The four-part series on information blocking published by Brendan Keeler was very well done and extremely comprehensive. The breadth of what Brendan covers as well as the ability to make it easier to understand is a presentation style to emulate.

Beyond the amount of information packed into each article, I am also always impressed when people incorporate engaging images, whether substantive or just fun. It's a good way to break the text up and help ensure that all of the content is actually digested.

What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?

I'm hoping to learn how to do short video this year.

I have not dabbled in that area at all, but see that others can drive good engagement with video. It will also take overcoming my distaste of listening to myself talk.

Which other brand’s content do you admire most?

I admire the content from HIMSS.

The media team does a good job of creating content across a multitude of channels along with utilizing the material produced by the organization's members. The team also balance a wide array of perspectives since the organization represents pretty much all facets of the health IT industry.

From the tactical to the inspiring, they do a great job of weaving in a consistent perspective and adding value through all of their content.

If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?

I don't necessarily have one book to recommend, but do suggest that everyone read what appeals to them.

If you don't enjoy what you're reading, then it will feel like a chore and that is unfortunate for such a fun activity. There's nothing better than getting lost in a good book to inspire ideas. For me, Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors.

Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?

I would love to collaborate with either the HHS Office for Civil Rights or the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT to help spread good educational material and drive better understanding about HIPAA, information blocking, and other related regulations.

What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?

I think one of the hardest things to understand is how hard it can be to establish a consistent voice in content creation.

“One of the hardest things to understand is how hard it can be to establish a consistent voice in content creation.”

— Matthew Fisher

It can be very easy to develop an inauthentic voice or one that does not adequately convey the tone intended.

What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?

The feedback process.

It can often feel like many pieces are put into the wild without much response coming back. Seeing positive or negative notes come back more quickly would help refine the process more quickly.

What do you consider the most underrated type of content?

I don't have a good answer as different audiences will have different perspectives.

For some more written content is necessary whereas others need more video. If only one or two forms of content are being created, then opportunities are clearly being missed.

What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?

Very short videos.

Videos that are ten seconds or less do not really have sufficient time to develop a complete thought. The quickness is reflective of the downward spiral in attention spans that is not necessarily beneficial.

Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?

I would like more graphic skills. I can handle writing, but image creation is very far outside of what I will tackle.

What is your most treasured content marketing tool?

Blogging. I like the ability to write in shorter chunks and using a stream of consciousness approach, both of which are well aligned with the blogging form.

I also like to digest information from others in that form. At the same time, it is important to vet the source to minimize the likelihood of getting bad information.

What do you most value in your teammates?

Being inquisitive and open to suggesting different ideas. I find the best outcomes can be developed when different ideas and perspectives can be meshed together.

When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?

Authentic.

About the Off the Page series

Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.

Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.

Who else should Off the Page Feature?

Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.

Off the Page with Katie Smith Green

In her Off the Page interview, Katie Smith Green, content marketing manager at Current Health, shares why her secret tool for content marketing isn’t part of her team’s tech stack, and she gets real about those “broetry” LinkedIn posts.

Meet Katie Smith Green

Katie Smith Green, Current Health’s content marketing manager, wants to tell better stories. But not the usual stories we often hear about in healthcare and digital health marketing. She wants to uncover and share the stories about the people who need change in the healthcare system the most—patients.

And with five years of experience in healthcare already, with stops at AMSURG, Envision Healthcare, and ProviderTrust, her diverse, multi-audience background and points of view are perfect for her mission.

Learn more about Katie’s points of view on content and the opportunity to share more engaging, patient-centric stories in her interview below.

What recent piece of content made you jealous?

I really like a recent interactive report by Wellframe on the member experience..

I'm a big fan of interactive content in general, and I thought this was a great high-level piece that is also really useful.

What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?

At Current Health, we've been building a new website, so I've been focused on making sure everything I write will elevate and enrich the experience with the new site.

Since Current Health was founded in Edinburgh, I've also been brushing up on the various differences between UK and American English.

Which other brand’s content do you admire most?

I love what Drift, which has popularized “conversational marketing” and aimed to replace lead-generation forms with chatbots, is doing with content.

From the tactical to the inspiring, they do a great job of weaving in a consistent perspective and adding value through all of their content.

If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?

I recently read Dreyer's English and found it to be a helpful refresher on good copy practices.

Strong copy is the foundation of any good content piece.

Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?

Healthcare is in a really interesting moment, with more and more care being delivered remotely and within patients' homes. So the individuals I most want to collaborate with are the patients and providers currently having these experiences.

“I want to tell those personal stories about how healthcare is changing for the better.”

— Katie Smith Green

It really matters when someone can be taken care of at home instead of within the hospital, and I want to tell those personal stories about how healthcare is changing for the better.

What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?

How long it takes to create a blog post.

What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?

Stakeholder reviews are important, but often delay my hoped-for timelines.

This is something that is definitely more of a challenge in a remote work world.

What do you consider the most underrated type of content?

Blogs.

Someone might land on our website and click around without really absorbing anything, but if they get to a blog, find that first sentence compelling, and keep reading—that's a completely different experience with our brand.

What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?

I can't stand the LinkedIn posts that employ the dramatic paragraph break like there's no tomorrow.

Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?

I'd love to have more of a natural penchant for data and reporting.

As marketers, we're often drowning in data, and it takes real clarity of thought to isolate what is truly meaningful and ignore (or at least not worry about) the rest.

What is your most treasured content marketing tool?

The perspective of my audience. In the space we occupy (remote care / healthcare at home), the topics and market are evolving really fast, and most content input tools can't reflect that accurately.

“There’s nothing more valuable than listening to a real member of my target audience talk about what they care about and what their goals are. ”

— Katie Smith Green

There's nothing more valuable than listening to a real member of my target audience talk about what they care about and what their goals are. Practically, this might look like a first-hand interview, a webinar they presented on, or a Gong call.

What do you most value in your teammates?

Willingness to do something differently. I find a lot of energy in a team with the attitude of "let's try this and see what happens."

When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?

Trustworthy.

About the Off the Page series

Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.

Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.

Who else should Off the Page Feature?

Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.

Off the Page with Hannah Chudleigh

In her Off the Page interview, Hannah Chudleigh, communication specialist at Cook Medical and content contributor at SelectHealth, talks about getting creative in a regulated industry—and why that doesn’t mean creating white papers.

Meet Hannah Chudleigh

Hannah Chudleigh is a communication specialist at Cook Medical, a medical technology company that eliminates the need for open surgery. She’s also a content contributor at SelectHealth, a health plan that serves members in Utah and Idaho.

A people-centered marketer who prioritizes user-centric strategies, Hannah creates content to increase brands’ search visibility, reinforce brand values, and transform jargon into delightful content.

Those goals are tested daily in the medical-device industry, which can present a maze of reviews and a litany of rules and requirements. But for Hannah, that’s when innovation comes in.

“I recently worked on a set of guidelines for regulated content based on FDA standards. Content marketing in a regulated industry can be difficult, so we came up with some creative content categories to help inspire some content ideas that are still safe and accurate for readers.”

Learn more about her content marketing POV in the interview below.

What recent piece of content made you jealous?

Dr. Howard Luks makes a lot of relatable health content, but one piece I envied was his content on why shoulders hurt. It's a blog post that includes a video. His content is simple, engaging, and informative.

What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?

Data skills.

Content marketers need metrics so we can improve content and prove our worth. Currently, I'm recertifying in Google Analytics and learning more about the data functions in our media monitoring solution.

Which other brand’s content do you admire most?

For healthcare content, I love Cleveland Clinic. Their blogs are informative yet relatable.

If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?

Stories that Stick by Kindra Hall.

Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?

Eddie Shleyner would be hilarious to work with. His brand, Very Good Copy, is witty and aptly named.

What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?

Just because someone can write doesn't mean they can write well.

People don't always appreciate the skill it takes to write something thoroughly.

All my coworkers can write, but non-content marketers don't always appreciate the skill it takes to write something thoroughly.

What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?

Approvals.

Healthcare is a heavily regulated industry, so I understand that there is a need for regulatory checks, legal reviews, etc. But the approval process can take weeks, and in a content marketing world that's only going faster, sometimes relevancy is lost because the approval process took so long.

What do you consider the most underrated type of content?

Social media.

Sometimes I find myself publishing every day just to have something to feed the platform algorithms. But when I look back on what I've posted, I realize how much some posts have resonated with our audiences.

Social media is not just an intern’s job.

Social media is so ubiquitous that it's a part of people's lives, and people don't realize how much social media affects them. Social media is definitely underrated. It's not just an intern's job.

What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?

White papers.

They're too dry to be marketing content, not detailed enough to be clinically helpful, and not specific enough to be a case study. In trying to reach all audiences at once, white papers don't reach any.

Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?

Graphic design skills.

I'm learning some basic concepts, but there's an artistry to graphic design that I just don't have yet.

What is your most treasured content marketing tool?

Ubersuggest.

It helps me come up with keywords and content ideas based on competitors.

What do you most value in your teammates?

Honesty.

I can rely on my teammates for honest feedback, sincere compliments, and trustworthy advice. That honesty helps us communicate clearly and builds trust.

When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?

Supportive.

Especially after the pandemic, I hope my colleagues will know that I cared about them both as a coworker and as a person. Our lives outside of work can still affect our job performance and I want my team to know that I support them holistically.

About the Off the Page series

Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.

Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.

Who else should Off the Page Feature?

Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.

Off the Page with Amanda Weller

In her Off the Page interview, Amanda Weller, director of marketing and communications at Wellth, shares why content marketers need a crash course in sales and why video content isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Meet Amanda Weller

Amanda Weller leads the marketing and communications team at Wellth, a digital health company that improves adherence in chronic disease populations by blending the science of behavioral economics with an appreciation of human nature.

Amanda is a writer by education and at heart, but unlike the stereotypical content creator, she doesn’t hesitate to execute.

“As a writer, I have a major affinity for good content and good grammar,” Amanda says. “But I also enjoy executing projects and closing them out.”.

Amanda is also a self-professed “fan of collecting leads,” a professional hobby that will serve her well as she takes on her new role of director of marketing and communications at one of the fastest-growing digital health companies across the country.

What recent piece of content made you jealous?

HIMSS Media: "The 2021 Healthcare Technology Marketing Survey Report."

It does a great job of establishing need for and efficacy of their services in a way that brings significant educational value to me as a reader in my own role. This report was sent out following a webinar, and it sealed the deal on my commitment to register for their other webinars and subscribe for other content.

What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?

This year, I've been working on improving how we choose our SEO keywords.

It's easy to choose what you think they should be, or what you'd like to them to be, but without the right analytics know-how, it's easy to fill your content with keywords that are driving all the wrong traffic to your site.

(Anybody else struggled with inbound leads that turn out to be students working on some paper or project? Just me?) It's been an interesting learning goal for 2021.

Which other brand’s content do you admire most?

In healthcare, there's a joke that our marketing tends to be ten years behind the times. While I think that's unfair for a number of really amazing healthcare orgs, I will also admit that my favorite content crush is outside the healthcare industry: I fell in love with Nerdwallet's content marketing platform when I was working in marketing for a bank early in my marketing career.

The quality of content they're able to not only produce, but update regularly so that everything you read has been updated with stats within the past six months or so is incredible.

And while their monetization strategy won't work across industries, they do a great job keeping it educational while optimizing opportunities for profit through affiliate links and CTAs.

If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?

Victor Schwab's How to Write a Good Advertisement.

Most content marketers I meet fall into two main categories: sales people disguised as content marketers, or creative writers disguised as marketers. And between those two categories, I often meet more of the second.

As someone who graduated with degrees in music and English, I understand the allure of taking a job with "writer" in the title because you knew you didn't want to teach for a living, but weren't sure what else to do with your English or writing degree. And I think that those people make awesome content writers on my team because they bring life, a strong editor's eye, and an endless supply of ways to refresh content.

However, having a solid understanding of sales copy is needed to learn how people buy and how to optimize content for conversions. I love How to Write a Good Advertisement because it teaches those basics of copywriting within the context of advertisements—one of the shortest pieces (and often most difficult) pieces of content around.

If you can learn to master the hook and sell in a seven- to fourteen-word headline and ad, you'll be able to write subject lines that get emails opened, CTAs that get clicks, and landing pages that get conversions.

Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?

The National Health Care for the Homeless Council has done so much to support better care for patients experiencing homelessness and get them the care and housing they need for their physical and behavioral health conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated wealth gaps and lead to higher rates of evictions and homelessness, but stigmas surrounding homeless populations continue.

I'd love to work with NHCHC on a project that addressed those stigmas, clarified misconceptions about homeless populations, and advocated for funding to support programs like those with the NHCHC.

What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?

A common misconception I come across is that content marketing is synonymous with sales content.

While it's true that most content marketers do double duty, creating sell sheets, web content, decks, program overviews, etc., content marketing is about supporting long-term organizational growth by building brand and thought leadership with education-first content.

What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?

Final approvals.

No matter where, or with whom, I've worked, that last 10% of a piece of content always takes the longest. Whether it's working with a partner's communications team to get approval for logos, getting those last little design tweaks just perfect, or doing a "final" reading through something sixteen times and finding a new typo or missing footnote each time, that finalization step seems to take as long as the rest of the project sometimes!

What do you consider the most underrated type of content?

I'm a big fan of a thought leadership piece.

Getting a big name from a third party organization to speak to something tangental to your organization, without overly selling any product, can bring a lot of credibility quickly in a single article. Just make sure you've mentioned the piece was a collaborative effort and link back to your site at the bottom or in the author's byline.

What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?

I don't love video content.

It's expensive, time consuming, and inflexible once it's completed, which makes it hard to reuse and refresh in the constantly evolving healthcare industry.

That being said, with more people working from home with the pandemic, videos are becoming more popular (no more hurrying to mute your laptop when video audio starts and you're surrounded by coworkers), so I know they're unfortunately likely here to stay.

Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?

Better marketing automation skills, and the ability to enjoy doing said marketing automation tasks!

What is your most treasured content marketing tool?

Data.

Whether you get it from Pardot, Hubspot, Google Analytics, Marketo—when it comes to content marketing, it's easy to get caught up in the brilliance of your own creativity. Or to make excuses that it's impossible to objectively judge what writing is good and which is not.

However, my experience is that such excuses don't fly with execs, and it's important to be able to prove the value of your work in driving web or social media traffic.

Data that tracks sales team usage of your collateral also offers valuable insight into what content efforts are working—and which aren't worth continuing moving forward.

What do you most value in your teammates?

Forgiveness, especially with the little things.

We all make mistakes—or miss typos in content (after being reviewed 50 times!)—and a team where forgiveness is run-of-the mill fosters an environment of safe learning, helps newer/less-experienced team members feel more confident in accepting stretch projects and trying new things, and boosts accountability as employees are more willing to own up to mistakes and ask for help rather than hide them out of fear of repercussions.

When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?

Genuine.

About the Off the Page series

Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.

Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.

Who else should Off the Page Feature?

Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.