• Understanding the “new YouTube”
• Why you should pay attention to trends
• Create a content strategy for your practice
• Patient testimonials in the COVID-era 

YouTube is a fantastic tool to use to help grow your practice. There are 2 billion active users worldwide, but only 9% of U.S. small businesses use it. As the second most visited site next to Google and the second largest search engine by volume, YouTube is a booming, free business tool waiting to help you market your medical practice.

Here’s how you can leverage YouTube to grow your medical practice.

Understanding the “New YouTube”

Since YouTube started back in 2005, a lot of things have changed. When founded more than 15 years ago, YouTube was a platform where you could upload videos, and the video that had the most clicks would pop up on the home page. Nowadays, YouTube is far more personalized and algorithm-driven. 

According to YouTube, their updated algorithm is basically a “real-time feedback loop that tailors videos to each viewer’s different interests.”  This basically means that YouTube will “pick” the types of videos viewers watch and keep suggesting videos that are similar in order to keep them watching.

It’s important to understand that you’re making videos for people, not robots. Focus on content that your viewers, and in this case patients, want to watch. You want to have human elements that people can connect to. For example, patient testimonial videos are a GREAT way to showcase what your practice does as well as show the positive patient experience you deliver at your practice. 

Patient testimonials allow you to have that human connection and feel with your audience while promoting your practice at the same time.

Why You Should Pay Attention to Trends

Trends come and go, but it’s important to realize how they can help bring attention to your videos. There are 3 questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to jump on a trend:

1. What can you add to the trend?
2. Why does your opinion matter on the trend?
3. What value can you add?

It’s important to note that whatever trend you want to focus on is relevant to your brand. For example, acne due to wearing face masks (a.k.a. maskne) is a growing trend right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Men and women are looking for ways to treat a prevent maskne from happening. If you’re an orthopaedic practice, there might be no reason why you should create content on this trend. However, if you’re a dermatology practice, this would be a perfect trend to jump on. Your skincare experts can provide helpful tips and tricks for viewers as well as treatment options, which is exactly what viewers are looking for.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, one of our ENT clients did a simple video (at our urging) about the loss of smell or taste as a symptom of COVID-19. We expected this  6-minute, cell phone video to generate somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 views for a “quick win”. In actuality, the video has more than 119,000 views and counting! This video went viral not because of any special effects, but because COVID-19 and the loss of taste and smell were growing trends; as a result of focusing on what people wanted to learn about, ENT saw an exponential increase in their channel subscribers.

Create a Content Strategy for Your Practice

Sometimes it’s not about the quality of the video, but instead the quality of the content. Your doctors are all experts, and these are incredibly easy to produce (plus they provide the viewer with a lot of value). 

Still, creating successful YouTube videos is more than just a doctor talking into a camera. You need a strategy to engage the proper audience you’re trying to reach and get them to engage with your content. 

When starting your content strategy, think about your audience. Keep in mind what you want them to feel, think, and do after watching your videos. Ask yourself, “Why are patients seeking out our content?” and set goals to set your audience up. 

In the process of creating a content strategy, make sure you’re creating content that is meaningful and engaging. You can create content that gets you noticed (trend-related videos, events, stories), guides your audience to your practice (case studies, education-based videos, inspirational videos), or helps your audience achieve what they need (instructional videos, reviews, Q&A).

Patient Testimonials in the COVID-Era

Generating quality videos during the COVID-era may seem impossible, but it’s actually a lot easier than you may think. Nowadays, there are many video-conferencing programs available that you can use to get the footage you need for your videos. Zoom is a great program to use since it allows you to easily record your meeting and save it to your desktop or the cloud for safekeeping. 

As patients and providers alike have grown accustomed to “Zoom meetings”, the barrier to entry (aka user error) has diminished almost entirely and you’ll find that some patients are more willing to do testimonials today because they can be done from the comfort of their home in a fraction of the time. 

You may be asking, “What about the quality of the video?” Great question. It won’t rival a 4K production you’d hire someone to do, in fact it may be a little grainy and dark – but that’s OK. We’ve found that the quality of the video doesn’t matter as much as the quality of the content (what the patient or provider is actually saying). It’s all about providing value to the viewer, and in the COVID environment, viewers are frankly used to subpar video quality. In other words, don’t use it as an excuse to not produce testimonials. 

Listen to our recent podcast detailing how your practice can generate content in the COVID-era in more detail.

Whichever program you decide to use, getting footage and content for your videos while following COVID protocols is now possible.

With these steps in mind, you’re ready to get started with production.