How to Optimize Your Health System’s Video Content Online

// Ask the Expert, with Allen Gottfried //

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more is video worth? We are visual, and moving images capture our attention. More than 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. Video is becoming the preferred method of information consumption for many. Last year, while attending HCIC in Orlando, I had the opportunity to speak about video marketing with digital marketers from healthcare systems large and small, from all across the country. Many marketers admitted to not knowing how best to optimize their video content, although they were producing plenty of videos.

A recent survey from Ascend2 revealed that 85 percent of companies find success with video marketing. They use video for building brand awareness, online engagement, customer/patient education, and lead generation. The biggest challenges for many organizations include:

• Lack of compelling or engaging content
• Small budgets for video
• Limited organizational buy-in
• Lack of an effective video strategy

If you are producing video content, you need to make video part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

As connection speed and video quality on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices increases, the ease of producing quality video content for consumers, physicians, job candidates, or prospective patients becomes easier and costs a fraction of what it would have cost only a few years ago. Short on resources or money to buy expensive equipment? With a few extra tools such as a microphone and basic lighting, you can shoot a professional-looking video on a mobile device.

At Saint Peter’s Healthcare System, we have produced and shared more than 300+ videos, including physician profiles, patient testimonials, ask the physician, quick tips, news clips that are shared across a variety of channels: YouTube, Facebook, and our own website.

How Saint Peter’s Healthcare System Uses Video

We use video to continually build brand awareness and position ourselves as local medical experts. In addition to the videos produced for consumption online, we use our professionally produced television spots for paid video advertising through a variety of targeted video networks, including YouTube and Facebook.

Here’s a list of some of our best practices and tips for optimizing your video production projects for YouTube, Facebook, and local search.

Log in below to access this content: