Every year, pulmonology and ENT departments across north India run the same cycle. Air quality collapses, the outpatient queue doubles, the marketing team is asked for something about pollution, and a post goes up in the third week of November telling people to wear a mask.
By then the search has already happened. The parent who spent a week googling child cough not going away has either booked somewhere or decided to wait it out. The asthma patient who ran out of inhaler refills has already been to a chemist.
Smog season content has to be built in September and released on a trigger. That is the whole method.
The season has a structure. Your calendar should match it.
Late September and October: stubble burning in the neighbouring states, falling temperatures, the first bad days.
Late October and early November: the festival period stacks firecracker particulates onto an already loaded atmosphere.
November and December: temperature inversion traps everything at ground level. This is when the Commission for Air Quality Management typically escalates through the stages of the Graded Response Action Plan, and when schools, construction and traffic restrictions start being announced.
January: cold-wave conditions, a second wave of respiratory presentations.
The Central Pollution Control Board publishes the national Air Quality Index daily, with its named bands — Good, Satisfactory, Moderate, Poor, Very Poor, Severe. Those band names are what people see on their phone and what they type into a search box. Your content should be organised around them.
Build an AQI-triggered content system
Write everything in September. Hold it. Release it when the index crosses a threshold, not when someone remembers.
The mechanics are simple and almost nobody runs them: a folder of pre-approved assets mapped to each AQI band, a named person who checks the index each morning, a clinician who has already signed off the clinical content so no approval is needed on the day, and a publishing checklist covering the website, the Google Business Profile and the social accounts.
The advantage is timing. When the city wakes up to a Severe reading, the hospital that already has the right post live is the one that gets shared, quoted and linked. The hospital that starts writing at 10am is publishing into a conversation that has moved on by afternoon.
What people actually search in the season
AQI today Delhi. Throat pain due to pollution. Dry cough for weeks. Is my child's cough asthma. Best mask for pollution. Does an air purifier help asthma. Nebuliser vs inhaler. When to see a pulmonologist.
Notice what those are not. Nobody searches air pollution awareness. They search a symptom, a product decision, or a threshold question about whether this warrants a doctor.
Map each one to a page and write it as an answer. The three-layer structure that works on the pulmonology pages is symptom, then explanation, then what to do — with the appointment path at the end rather than the top.
Eight assets the department should own
1. The written action plan. An asthma or COPD action plan, downloadable, signed by a named consultant. Green, amber and red — what to do at each stage, when to increase medication, when to come in. This is the single most useful document a respiratory department can publish and very few hospitals in India have one on their site.
2. Mask guidance that is honest about fit. Which respirator does what, why fit matters more than the label, and the specific problem of masks on small children. Say what the evidence supports and stop.
3. An air purifier reality check. Room size, clean air delivery rate, filter replacement, and a clear statement of what a purifier does not do. If your hospital sells or is sponsored by one, that relationship has to be disclosed — the ASCI code applies.
4. When a cough stops being a cough. Duration, fever, breathlessness, wheeze, weight loss, blood. Red flags written as thresholds, not as a quiz.
5. Paediatric and elderly versions of everything. Different thresholds, different risk, and a different reader. The paediatric version reaches the parent; the elderly version reaches the adult child.
6. The ENT half of the season. Allergic rhinitis, sinusitis, throat irritation, voice change in teachers and singers. This is a large share of the seasonal presentation and it is almost always left out of a pollution campaign aimed at lungs. Route it properly through the ENT pages.
7. Outdoor exercise and school sport guidance. What band to stop at, what to substitute. Schools, coaches and residents' associations circulate this, which is distribution you cannot buy.
8. Post-festival airway and eye irritation. A short window, very high search volume, and content you can reuse each year.
Distribution beats reach in this season
The audience you want is not on your social feed. It is in a school WhatsApp group, a residents' association circular, a corporate HR mailer and a newspaper health page.
That changes what you make. A PDF a school can attach to a parent email travels further than a carousel. A one-page advisory a residents' association can forward reaches entire apartment blocks. A short piece written for a corporate wellness mailer lands in inboxes at companies whose employees are your catchment.
Build for forwarding. That means the hospital name and a phone number on the asset itself, no link that requires a login, a file size that survives WhatsApp compression, and language that works in Hindi as well as English — written in Hindi, not translated into it.
Then do the outreach deliberately: a list of the schools, societies, corporates and gyms in your catchment, a named person who sends the asset each season, and a follow-up offering a consultant for a parents' session. The session is where the referral relationship starts.
