How to make the most of your Instagram and Youtube accounts.
Keep it clear
Your content needs to be clear, concise and targeted. It should capture the philosophy of your clinic, and can include testimonials, tutorials, treatment segments, tours and staff videos. Visually, the content should be calm and easy to follow. Nothing too busy. Decide on a simple backdrop and focus the camera to capture the speaker from the waist up. No one likes the handi-cam effect, so ensure the camera is mounted on something stable.
You’re not the only hero
Staff involvement can be key in making your practice more approachable and attractive to viewers – indeed the clinic videos with the most “likes” on Instagram and YouTube are those with a team of staff involved. Delegate treatment tutorials from staff members, or use a generic video as an introduction to your clinic and its different staff members.
Educate and inform, don’t sell
Though it seems like a perfect opportunity to plug the clinic and its retail, hold back from selling and make your video educational. Avoid the sales pitch and instead talk about the benefits of certain treatment types in general, without mentioning their specific names or branding. Obviously, it’s important to keep the branding of your clinic visible, and it’s beneficial to drop the clinic’s name a few times throughout the clip.
YouTube isn’t only for video
If video isn’t your thing, a well-presented slide show of images can be just as effective when shared over both platforms. There are several smartphone apps that can facilitate instant sharing to your accounts, and the addition of text, background music and image effects.
Keep your social media short & sweet
Every piece of social media content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and no longer.
According to online portal AdWeek, tweets shorter than 100 characters have a 17 percent higher engagement rate, and Facebook posts with 40 characters generate 86 percent more engagement than posts with a higher character count.
Instagram clips should convey their message in the first minute of the video to get your message across when posted to your feed. Include additional information after this point and encourage followers to view the remainder on your Instagram TV Channel. The same goes for YouTube – the shorter, the sweeter. Generally, the most viewed clips last around three minutes, however anywhere between one and six minutes is acceptable. AMP
YouTube 101Harnessing the power of YouTube can help educate, inform and attract patients. A YouTube clip doesn’t have to be a perfect piece of cinematography – a smart phone, basic computer skills and an interesting topic of conversation is all that’s needed to reach thousands of people in a direct, personal and memorable fashion. |
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Instagram is still one of the fastest growing social media platforms. Statistics from 2019 indicate that the photo-sharing platform has over one billion monthly active users. The global community shares more than 500 million photos and video stories each day + what is posted on their feeds. Intimacy is key in Instagram use – people want to feel as if they know you and your brand. Instagram use should be geared at creating a community around an actionable hashtag. This hashtag should be something unique, linked to your brand name, which can also be used across Twitter and Pinterest. As well as promoting your own hashtags, using relevant hashtags in your photo captions can help boost the reach of your posts. Usually between four and seven tags are effective in engaging a wide range of followers, without being overwhelming to the viewer. Creative captions are an absolute necessity in Instagram marketing. Treat your Instagram followers like a close group of friend and caption photographs with something personal, insightful or amusing regarding you, your team or your clinic. Resist over-flooding your followers’ feeds, and generate a posting schedule when you think your followers are most active. Major brands post to their feed an average of 1.5 times a day and using Instagram Stories for more immediate and intimate information knowing that it will disappear in 24 hours – and any social media guru will tell you that consistency over a long time period, more than anything, is key, no matter the daily count of your posts. |
