Off the Page with Katie Smith Green
David McCarthy
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.”
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. ”
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.
