FROM BROADCAST TO BELONGING: University of VERMONT HEALTH NETWORK

Your local hospital accounts are doing something that works. The content feels human, relevant, and local. At the network level, though, it reads like a digital bulletin board for press releases, and the community you're trying to reach has noticed. Audience growth is flat, engagement is low, and your social team is saying yes to every leadership request because there's no data to say no with.

That's a specific kind of stuck. And it's one of the most common ones in multi-hospital health systems.

The Challenge

UVMHN's social media wasn't broken. But it was definitely scattered.

The local hospitals had voices that worked. Their content felt human and relevant to the communities they served. The network level was a different story. Posts read like press releases. Employee spotlights and accolades filled feeds designed for patients and community members. Leadership treated social channels like a distribution mechanism for announcements, not a place to build trust.

The social team caught the fallout. They were managing inbound requests from across the system with no shared framework to evaluate them, no real audience data to push back with, and no process that distinguished a useful content request from "someone important wants this posted today." Every week was another sprint, absorbing whatever came in, with no way to step back and ask whether any of it was building toward anything.

Here's what made it harder: the team already suspected the content mix was off. They knew employee-heavy posts weren't serving the community they wanted to reach. They knew local content was outperforming network. But they had no data to make the case for change. Suspicion doesn't move a leadership team. Numbers do.

• Fragmented content across network and local hospital accounts
• Lowest score for local content mix among the competitive peer set
• No presence on YouTube or Instagram at the network level
• Best-performing content came from local hospitals but got no coordination or support
• Employee-heavy content when the audience was primarily patients and the community
• Leadership sending press releases and expecting social posts
• Social team saying yes to every request because there was no framework to say no
• Low engagement despite a substantial following
• No audience data to guide content decisions or push back on requests that didn't serve the community

The Shift

What had to change wasn't just the content. It was the foundation underneath it.

UVMHN needed to know who was actually following them, what those people wanted from a health system on social media, and how to organize content creation across multiple hospitals without losing what made local content work. They needed that to become a shared operating framework, not another strategy document that would sit on a shelf.

The assumption that had to get challenged: that social was a broadcast channel for hospital updates. What the audience actually wanted, and what 710 survey responses eventually confirmed, was a trusted health resource that felt local, human, and useful to their actual lives.

Once the team had confirmed data on what the community wanted, the whole conversation shifted. Content decisions stopped being a negotiation between team members with different opinions and became a question of what the audience confirmed they needed.

The Work

The engagement covered the full scope: auditing where things were, benchmarking against peer health systems, going directly to the audience, and building a strategy and operating model the team could actually execute from.

Social Media and Content Audit

Started with a thorough audit of UVMHN's social presence across all network and local hospital accounts. Evaluated content mix, cadence, platform coverage, engagement patterns, tone, and what was actually performing versus what was just getting posted. Identified where local was outperforming network and why, so the strategy could build on what was working rather than replace it.

• Content mix analysis across network and local accounts
• Platform coverage and gap identification
• Engagement pattern review: what was performing, what wasn't, and why
• Identification of local content strengths the network strategy could learn from

Competitive Maturity Assessment

Benchmarked UVMHN's social presence against peer healthcare systems, including Mass General Brigham, Dartmouth Health, and Yale New Haven. Scored maturity across content mix, cadence, platform use, engagement, and voice. This revealed UVMHN had the lowest score for local content mix among peers, an inconsistent tone, and gaps at the platform level. It also made the case, in competitive terms, for a "localized network" approach that blends system credibility with local trust and storytelling.

• Maturity scores across content mix, cadence, platform use, engagement, and voice
• Competitive gap analysis against peer health systems
• The "localized network" model identified as the right approach based on peer performance
• Data showing where UVMHN fell short and what those gaps meant in competitive context

Audience Research

Leadership had assumptions about who was following UVMHN accounts. We went to the audience directly to confirm or challenge them. Ran a qualitative and quantitative survey that collected 710 complete responses to identify who was actually following UVMHN, what they wanted from health content on social, and where the gap between current content and community need was biggest.

What the audience actually said: they skew older and female, but these are the healthcare household decision-makers. They use social media as a guide for health resources. They want condition-specific guidance, localized wellness content, and real stories from real people. Not hospital accolades and press releases formatted as posts.

• Qualitative and quantitative audience survey
• Uncovered audience composition, channel preferences, content type preference
• Validated that audience was not primarily employees, clearing the way for community-first content decisions

Content Strategy Framework

Built five core content pillars grounded in the survey data: humanized storytelling (patients, providers, staff); localized health (condition-specific, relevant to the region); localized wellness (lifestyle, mental health, nutrition, food); community and events; and accolades and wins (done with human context, not corporate announcement format). Each pillar came with guidance on tone, format, and what good execution actually looked like.

Localized Network Operating Model

Mapped content by platform, audience, and priority. Defined what should go at the network level versus the local level, including when and how local hospitals could cross-pollinate content. Gave local hospitals clear roles and shared language so they could plan content with confidence, and gave the network a framework for system-wide initiatives that felt human instead of corporate.

• Network versus local content swim lanes, clearly defined
• Cross-pollination guidance for when local content should be amplified at the network level
• Platform-specific priorities for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn
• Consistent tone and voice guidance that positioned UVMHN as a neighbor and health resource, not a communications department

Request Management Framework

Built a framework for evaluating content requests so the social team could say yes to things that served the community and no to things that didn't. This stopped the cycle of posting whatever came in because someone with authority asked. The team now had something to point to besides personal judgment.

The Outcome 

The social team has something they didn't have before: a foundation they can point to.

Content decisions are no longer a negotiation between competing opinions. When a leader sends a press release and asks for a social post, the team has audience data and content pillars to evaluate that request against. When a local hospital wants to know whether to create original content or amplify something from the network, there are swim lanes for that. When a new platform or format comes up, there's a framework for deciding whether it's worth the effort.

Local hospital teams stopped feeling like they were on their own because they now have coordination and shared language instead of competing priorities. Network content can complement local efforts instead of drowning them out. The gap between "what leadership wants to post" and "what the community actually wants from us" now has data behind it instead of just instinct.

• Social team has audience-grounded criteria for evaluating every content request
• Local hospitals have clear roles and shared language for planning and coordination
• Network and local content work together instead of competing or talking past each other
• Content pillars connect every piece of content to something the audience confirmed it wants
• The team can make the case for community-first content with data, not just a gut feeling

The Takeaway

If your social content feels more like an internal newsletter than a community resource, the problem isn't the team producing it. It's that nobody has confirmed what the audience you're trying to reach actually needs from you. Leadership assumptions fill the gap, and the team posts what gets pushed to them because there's nothing to push back with.

That's what confidence in your audience fixes. Not the content itself, but the foundation that decides what content gets made, who it's for, and what it's trying to do. Once you have that, the social team stops absorbing everything and starts building something.

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