The Overwhelming Power of Story: How Sharing Patient Impact Stories Increases Community Awareness and Donor Engagement

Stories have always connected people. When you think about your childhood, you likely have memories of sitting around with your grandparents or elders in your neighborhood, captivated by their life stories. These connections allow us to relate, celebrate, and sympathize. They are truly the great connector.

Hospitals have the unique fortune of being part of thousands of stories each year. Every person who enters your doors has a story, and as soon as a member of your team rushes to their aid, you become an instrumental part of their future. You are now forever connected to that patient and their family.

Your story is the story of your patients, and stories are meant to be shared. These stories become foundational to your brand.

The art of branding is discovering the uniqueness of your story and then learning how to tell it in a way that engages your community and connects them to your mission. 

Patient Stories Empower, Comfort, Educate, & Engage Your Audience

Capturing your patient’s stories creates impact in four primary ways:

1. Stories empower current patients: your care impacts the lives of families, and they want to thank the hospital. Not everyone can provide a financial gift, but they can all share their story. Their story is their gift.
2. Stories comfort future patients: when families enter your hospital doors, they are vulnerable and uncertain of what lies ahead. There is great comfort found in the stories of those who have made it to the other side.
3. Stories educate your community: it’s important for your community to understand the impact your hospital is making; it creates community pride and encourages service through volunteering and donating.
4. Stories engage potential donors: your community is full of people with the financial ability and desire to improve the lives of others, but they may not know where to start. Sharing these stories creates awareness and helps connect them to a cause.

Through storytelling, you have an opportunity to extend hope and courage to future patients, your community, and your donors. As you prepare your 2020 marketing strategy, storytelling should be a central component – statistically, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89% (source: SocialFresh).

Helpful Tips for Identifying Patient Stories

1. Share you vision: make your care team aware of your desire to begin sharing stories. Your physicians, nurses, and child life specialists are on the front lines with patients, and once they understand the impact of sharing these stories, they’ll look for opportunities.
2. Recognize an opportunity: if a parent or patient asks, “How can I repay you?,” there’s a simple answer – share your story with us! When you start looking, you’ll find that patients will self-identify – you won’t have to seek stories, they’ll come to you.
3. Engage on social: patients and families often share their story on your page or tag you in a post. Responding to the post can start a conversation and an opportunity to further connect.

As you begin to share patient stories with your community, more patients will want to share. They’ll feel empowered to shine light on a very difficult situation and demonstrate how they survived. The more stories you share, the easier it’ll be to identify them.

4 Ways to Help your Storyteller Become Comfortable Sharing Their Story

1. Be authentic: get to know the patient and their family before you get to know the details of their story – don’t rush the process. This will lighten the heaviness of the topic and put them at ease, which will allow them to tell their story more clearly.
2. Be transparent: let the families know why you want to share their story and how it’ll be shared. If it’s going to be used in print or TV, make sure they are OK with the exposure.
3. Be flexible: if at any time they become uncomfortable, allow them to back out. It’s voluntary. You should also allow them to proof the story and have input on how it’s told and shared.
4. Be strategic: ensure your questions will lead to dialogue that is meaningful and relevant to your purposes. It’s also helpful to provide your questions to the storyteller prior to your time together.

As your storyteller begins to share, it’s important to capture their words. Three great ways to do that is through an article, photography, and videography.

By writing a long-form article, you’ll be able to share their story in the local print or online newspaper, on your website blog, or through your newsletter. Your interviews will create all the content you need to form the article.

While an article has several uses, there’s nothing more powerful than visuals. Having great photography of the family and video of them interacting and retelling their story brings everything to life. The narrative and the visuals both come together and places the viewer in the story.

As you plan to tell your hospital’s stories, video is the most powerful and effective way to connect with your audience.

Research shows that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from the organizations they support. Visual content is also 40X more likely to be shared on social media than any other types of content (source: Hubspot).

5 Impactful Ways to Share & Preserve Patient Stories

1. Hospital signage: as patients walk through your hospital toward treatment, your stories can provide a sense of peace and confidence. As they see the smiling faces and read the stories, they’ll know they aren’t the first to walk this path. 
2. Social media: frequent posting of your stories will keep you top of mind. You can post articles, testimonials, pictures, videos, and more. A social media ad campaign featuring a video testimonial is also a hyper-targeted, highly-effective way to engage your ideal donor.
3. Mailers or print pieces: if you’re telling the story in-person, it’s helpful to leave a reminder behind. Whether that’s a direct mailer or a multi-page booklet, displaying your story in print is a great way to stay connected with your audience.
4. eNewsletter: if your Foundation has a monthly eNewsletter, start sharing stories with your audience. This is a great way to show the ongoing impact your hospital is making on the community. 
5. Traditional advertising: sharing your stories through radio, billboards, magazines, newspapers, and television are also great ways to extend your message to a diverse audience. If you have relationships with your local media, you can often secure in-kind space to share your organization’s message.

These are just a few of the ways to begin sharing your message. As you prepare your advertising campaign, you’ll want to build a landing page with a short and memorable URL and use it on all your advertising. This landing page will house all of your stories and create opportunities for your community to get involved through giving. As you design and develop this landing page, it’s important that it be highly visual. Having video on your landing pages can increase conversions by up to 86% (source: WebDam).

Your One Goal

As you seek to identify and tell your stories, above all, be relational. Your goal should be to build relationships with your patients, community, and donors. Sharing someone’s story keeps their experience alive and allows it to impact others.

Your patients are sharing their story, so why aren’t you!?