Shift MS | Content Strategy Case Study

A content strategy for Shift.ms to rank for generic MS symptoms, diagnosis and treatment search terms

Shift MS engaged us to help create a content strategy that helped people on their MS journey and ensure there was content to support them no matter what stage they were in.

CHALLENGE

The Shift.ms website was initially focused on driving people to the forum. The positioning was centred around user-generated content and community - connecting those living with multiple sclerosis with other ‘msers’.

Whilst the website drove a good amount of traffic it was landing on forum pages that were not contributing toward driving conversion. There was no visibility for the charity for any generic multiple sclerosis terms and no content to support people at different stages of the MS journey.

On engaging Honcho, the main goal was to develop a strategy that would allow Shift.ms to gain visibility for MS terms - but more importantly, support people at all stages from symptoms, to diagnosis, to living with the condition. We were also tasked with making the content work for msers but also for family, friends and carers wanting to find more information.

STRATEGY

The aim was to create a website to provide the audience with a view of the MS journey and ensure there was content to support people no matter what stage they were in. We had to strike the balance between being visible and relevant but also sensitive in delivery, particularly in the early stages of diagnosis.

The target audience:

People wanting to learn about MS.
People with MS Symptoms and unsure what they meant.
People going through the MS diagnosis and what to expect.
People going through treatments for MS.
People who were living with MS, whether this was the individual, or family, friends and carers so they could learn more and prepare for the journey themselves.

Our data led approach consisted of:

- completely redesigning the navigation

- creating brand new sections on the website

- building 20 new pages with long form content

- adhering to E-E-A-T guidelines by approving all content via an MS nurse

- Developing an internal linking strategy

STRATEGY

In order to build the most comprehensive dashboard to support and inform John Lewis’s marketing and buying teams, we knew our team had to think creatively in order to collect, process, analyse and present the findings in an easy-to-read and navigate format.

Creating a dashboard of this size and scope has many stages requiring a team of experts. Our overall strategy included the following stages:

Audit John Lewis’s taxonomy and categories
Use custom crawlers/web-scraping technology to extract and collect competitor data
Cleaning, sorting, mapping and analysing data
Collect web traffic data and ranking keywords
Use software/tools to analyse/predict trends
Dashboard build