How Do Veterinarians Integrate Video into Their Social Media Marketing?

Tips for Creating Excellent Content

Share fun and interesting content. People want to be entertained. Show them another side of your veterinary practice by sharing interviews with members of your staff, pet care how-to’s, or other funny animal-related content. Be creative and think about what your audience would like to see, and more importantly, what they’d be likely to share with their own networks.

Keep it short and sweet. Regardless of how entertaining your video is, anything over 5 minutes is likely to lose the interest of viewers, which defeats the purpose of participating in video marketing. Your videos don’t have to be feature films – the shorter, the better! This also takes the pressure off of you, knowing that you don’t have to invest hours upon hours of time in this one marketing technique.

Be yourself. If you’re filming within your practice, be yourself and encourage your staff to do the same. People naturally like and are drawn to others with whom they can relate. If you are honest and open, you will endear your audience to yourself and to your veterinary practice and continue to foster a sense of trust with your clients and prospects.

Do some homework. Not sure what you should make your videos about? Why not take a look around the web to see what’s working for other veterinary practices or animal-related businesses? This should get your creative juices flowing and help you develop your own video marketing strategy.

Encourage active participation. The best way to be successful with video marketing is by encouraging your audience to join in. The more interactive your videos are, the more likely they’ll be to go viral, which means the more exposure your veterinary practice will get online.

Optimizing Your Videos for Best Results

Leverage your tags. We’ve talked a lot about the importance of using keywords throughout your website and blog content – the same principle applies to video marketing. Be sure to use your targeted keywords in the tags of your videos to improve the likelihood that they’ll be found on the search engines.

Get the word out. You can’t expect people to just come across your videos – you have to spread the word. Share them on your veterinary Facebook page, tweet about them on Twitter, include them in a blog post, and integrate them into your email newsletters. The more you get the word out, the more responses you’ll receive.

Share the love. A great way to draw attention to your veterinary practice and get others to view your videos is to go out and comment on others. Just like any other type of social media marketing, interaction is the key to success.

Pay attention to your thumbnails. A thumbnail is the tiny snapshot that goes along with a link or video when it is shared online. With videos, it’s typically a still shot of a certain part of the clip. YouTube gives you a choice between three thumbnails, so make sure the one you choose is the most appealing, and the one that would be most likely to get people to click and watch.

Don’t give up. This is probably the most important tip, and unfortunately, it’s something that many veterinary practices are guilty of. Just because the first couple of videos you made didn’t get huge responses doesn’t mean you should abandon the strategy altogether. It just means you need to change your approach a little. Again, look around the web to get some ideas for videos that will capture people’s’ interest and keep at it. Eventually, your hard work and determination will pay off.

One of the keys to online veterinary marketing success is diversification. The more robust your veterinary marketing strategy, the more favorable the results. Video marketing adds another layer to your veterinary social media plan and will help you to engage your current clients and attract the new ones you need to realize continued growth for your practice.