Therapy Times: How one site went from idea to inception
By: Amy Storer, Therapy Times Senior Managing Editor

Today, Therapy Times is an established, thriving, award-winning publication. As the nation’s only daily online resource for physical, occupational, speech, nutrition, music and respiratory therapists, Therapy Times is proud to have more than 200,000 subscribers reading its editorial, watching its Webcasts, finding jobs on its job board and interacting on its active forums and blogs.

In fact, it’s hard to believe that two and a half years ago, Therapy Times was a mere light bulb over someone’s head.

The idea ignited when individuals at the Norristown, Pa.-based Valley Forge Publishing Group discussed the growing level of collaboration between various therapy professions in the healthcare field.

At that time, even though therapists collaborated with many different types of healthcare professionals in the field, each therapy-related newsprint publication focused on one therapy discipline. There was little information available to therapists interested in staying abreast of other therapy professions, as well as their own.

So, an intriguing question what posed in that Valley Forge Press boardroom: “What if therapists had one place to go to learn about their discipline, and the disciplines with which they work closely?”

This “Eureka Moment” was quickly faced with the realization of three major challenges:

·        Developing an Online Publication. With more and more news about well-known print publications, such as Time Magazine and The New York Times, making major efforts towards online readership, it was clear that the future of publishing was in the hands of online publications. However, a completely online publication was unknown territory, as Valley Forge Press specialized in newsprint publications.

·        Being Intangible. The idea behind this online publication was to have dynamic interactivity where therapists could message each other, discuss topics in forums and interact with bloggers. However, therapists usually favor “hands on,” tangible elements, such as a newsprint publication, versus intangible online elements.

·        A Therapist’s Limited Online Time. Therapists spend most of their time with patients during the day, not a computer.

 

A Virtual Reality

We took on the first challenge with open arms. After all, the future of publishing is in the virtual realm, so we would have to adapt at some point. We worked with our Web Developer consultants, IDT, and explained our idea and goal of having an online publication with a high level of interactivity. The developers custom-made our site so subscribers could seamlessly navigate through our editorial, blogs and forums with one profile.

This effort was difficult to say the least, as much of the publishing software available is segregated into each separate function (i.e., editorial, blogs, forums, calendar of events). By developing our own software, we were able to get exactly what we wanted and achieve seamless interoperability between the software plug-ins. 

Intangibly Yours

The best and worst thing about Therapy Times is that it’s online. The Internet is the only medium where therapists can interact, share and network with each other the way they do on TherapyTimes.com. But it was a challenge to get Therapy Times in front of the therapists’ faces with it being only online.

Therefore, we decided to develop a twice-monthly print newsletter. On the first and third Mondays of each month, we fill the newsletter with editorial from the past two or three weeks and send it to therapy conferences all over the nation.

It started as an eight-page color glossy newsletter, and then we bumped it up to 12 pages. We are now ready to expand again as we have more advertisements and editorial, due to our growth initiatives.

The print newsletters help us get the word out about Therapy Times without us needing to send people there to talk about the publication. It also gives therapists a tangible feel for what we are online. Our Web site address is printed on each page, and there are filler ads to drive people to various sections of our site, such as our job board, forums, blogs and calendar of events.

We send print newsletters to the smaller conferences – such as city, regional and state therapy association conferences – and we have a booth at the annual conferences of our six therapy disciplines’ national associations.

At the booth, we have an Internet connection so we navigate the site with attendees, and tangibly show them how the site can be of great benefit. We also have print newsletters at the booth so they can take one to share with colleagues.

Getting “Hands-On” the Computer

Inherently, the job of a therapist keeps them in front of a patient more than a computer during the day. There’s not much we could do about that.

With that said, therapists do have some time dedicated to documentation and research, which they primarily do on a computer. In addition, most of them have e-mail through their employer. 

So, we knew we had to make our information valuable to the reader and easy to access. We started sending our readers a weekly e-newsletter via e-mail that serves as a synopsis of all the content added to the site over the past week. Readers get one e-mail a week and can click on the headlines in which they’re interested. Therefore, the therapists don’t have to waste the little “computer time” they have searching for things on our site that may be of interest to them.

This proved to be a successful idea, as we see the highest site visit numbers of the week on the day after those e-newsletters are distributed.

Today and Tomorrow

Today, we’re proud recipients of seven national awards that honor a myriad of elements on TherapyTimes.com:

  • WebAward “Healthcare Standard of Excellence” and “Online Community Standard of Excellence”
  • ASHBE “Best Overall Web Publication” and “Best E-Newsletter”
  • ASBPE “New Web Publication” and “Original Web Feature”
  • APEX Award “Web Writing”

As for tomorrow, we plan to continue winning awards for our superior site with enhanced blogging features, Web conferencing and other exciting Web-based elements that are valuable and forward thinking, but also ready to be adapted by our audience.

We make a point to meet often in that Valley Forge Press boardroom to keep our minds on the needs of our audience and the light bulbs above our heads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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