Do you know what’s hotter than a summer day in south Texas?
Online videos!
Want proof?
Go visit Alexa.com and see which website is sitting at #3 as the top websites in the world.
Matter of fact, a day after the release of the new video-capable iPhone 3GS, video uploading to YouTube had increased by over 400%!
Why?
Because people LOVE video! It connects us in ways that text and audio simply can’t. Case in point, look at television. Until the internet came on the scene, it rivaled both print media and radio in consumer consumption.
So, doc, one of the questions I’ll ask you is why aren’t you using video to grow your practice? With the ease-of-use and low cost of video cameras today, it needs to be an integral part of your online marketing strategy.
Now, your first step is to open and setup a YouTube account. The purpose of this post isn’t to explain how. It really is simple. Just visit YouTube.com to get started. If you already have a Google account, it’ll be that much faster since Google owns YouTube.
Once you setup your YouTube account, brand your channel and upload content, then make sure you promote it through your blog, email newsletters and other social media sites. You should leverage YouTube’s dominance by linking it back to your blog.
Remember — your blog is the hub of your online world. Drive traffic to your blog through big name social media websites like YouTube.
However, DO NOT embed YouTube videos on your blog.
Why?
Because potentially one of your competitor’s videos will be played. This can lead traffic away from your blog and increase their business.
How?
Through YouTube’s automatic queueing of content that relates to yours.
For example, once you upload a video, YouTube asks you to title, describe and tag the video. If you tag it with keyword-rich words (which obviously you should so that people can find you via search) then YouTube links related videos to yours. Once your video finishes playing, the next related video is queued up to watch. This not only confuses the prospect and patient but can drive traffic away from your blog.
So, how do you solve this problem?
By cloning YouTube which can be accomplished through the following three websites:
1. ClipBucket.com is an opensource and free script that will let you start your own video sharing website in matter of minutes.
2. Clip-Share.com which allows you to build an online community based around your videos and content.
3. PHPmotion.com which is not as robust as the aforementioned paid sites but allows you to clone YouTube for FREE!
Whichever site you choose, once it’s created, your videos remain at your prospects and patients top-of-the-mind awareness simply because that’s all they see. They won’t be confused, overwhelmed or inundated with other content and messages that weren’t created by you.
Plus, you can completely control the video messages that are embedded in your blog. This will not only increase your chance of capturing that prospect as a quality lead but also help in converting them into a quality new patient.
Enhance Your Blog with Thesis
What do you look for in a WordPress theme? Loads of options? Unsurpassed support? A beautiful base style?
Look no further than Thesis, the premier WordPress theme framework from the one and only Chris Pearson.
Rock solid semantics. Bulletproof search engine optimization. Crystal clear typography. And more options than you can shake a stick at. What are you waiting for? Get Thesis today!
Please Write a Review
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Information. Thanks Dr. Patrick MacNamara. Now I know how to keep traffic on my blog. I’ve been holding off putting my YouTube information on my blog because I noticed it would link to other’s “related videos” which I knew wouldn’t be very good.
Dr Heins :: As always, glad I can help!
I found this plug in on Word Press, but have not attempted to tackle it yet. Hosting video’s on our host server will definitely eat up space, but it may help solve this video problem.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stream-video-player/
I’ll report back after I install and test.
Dr. Doughty :: Allow me to make two suggestions:
1. I’d recommend opening a S3 account with Amazon to host your videos.
2. Instead of experimenting with the plug-in you mentioned, I’d recommend Flowplayer, an excellent player for streaming video. You can find it at http://flowplayer.org/
Dr. Mac,
I understand conceptually what your suggesting. Have the http://flowplayer.org/index.html play video’s stored on the S3 servers. How to do this, I have yet to grok. In time.
Word Press plug-in’s have a flowplayer plug-in that I have been able to install on my site:
(still trying to figure out how to get the player to play my video content)
http://www.saiweb.co.uk/wordpress-flowplayer
It may not be as robust and I have to host the video content locally, (until I figure how to get the s3 servers to do it) but it should suffice for the few video’s I wish to host and keep exclusive to the site.
My big concern with much of this process is the time involved with the learning curve. Quick and working tends to beat out optimized and ideal.
Looking at Vimeo.com
http://vimeo.com/plus
It appears you can control what websites are able to embed your video content and they have no ads. At $59 per yars thats a bargain for a quick fix to this solution.
Dr. Doughty :: Besides Vimeo, you may also want to consider Blip.tv. You can host videos privately which allows your embed code to only show your content instead of others.
Will do. I have an account with Blip and some videos posted there, but, I haven’t looked at them any closer.
Thanks
Blip.tv is $96 for 14 months to host “hidden” videos you can embed on your blog site.
http://blip.tv/dashboard/pro/
Vimeo is $59 for 12 months.
http://www.vimeo.com/plus
Vimeo has a strong creative community, perhaps great for new ideas. Blip is more content distribution based.
Just wanted to share this info with the other docs who are looking into this.
Dr. Doughty :: Thanks again, doc, for the information!
Hello Dr. MacNamara,
I have been reading your blog for some time now. You are a Web 2.0 leader in Chiropractic Community. Thumbs up Doc.
I could not leave a comment becasue my site was still in dark ages. Today my developer finished the design and I am happy to report that it is LIVE.
I have read this entry about two months ago and tried the services that you have recommmended. By the way you might want to remove the first recommended link – it is no longer active.
I went back to embeding YouTube Video on my site. I have discovered a quick fix to the “related videos” on YouTube video. If you’d like to turn off the option to see related videos through your embedded player, simply add “&rel=0″ after the video ID number in the embed code. Here’s an example of what your embed code should look like if you’d like to turn off this feature:
Hope this helps everyone with the YouTube videos on their blogs.
PS: What plug in do you use on your site that does not allow highlight text on your blog? Thank you
Thanks for connecting with me, Dr. Burt! And, I’m glad you’re receiving value out of the content provided. It’s chiropractors like yourself that keep me motivated to continue to do what I do — which, by the way and if you can’t tell, I absolutely love doing!
Also, thanks for giving me a heads up regarding the dead link. I replaced it with another free service called ClipBucket. Technology changes so fast that I’m sure there are numerous dead links throughout my blog. But, am happy to change them if readers find them. So, great job! That’s the power of community.
And, you are correct regarding YouTube. One is now able to embed YouTube videos on their blog or website without worrying about “related content” showing up. I’m glad that YouTube allows this now and will be utilizing its feature in future posts. Matter of fact, you’ll see much more video content coming from me in the near future.
Regarding the plug-in, I use WP-CopyRightPro and absolutely LOVE IT!
Again, thanks for connecting and CONGRATULATIONS on your new site!
Here is a link for embeded code. For some reason it did not show up in my first comment.
http://blogs.sun.com/lskrocki/entry/how_to_disable_youtube_s
Thanks again! When BloggingChiros relaunches, I’ll make a point to cover this in the YouTube module.
Thank you for wp-copyrightpro.com link. Installed and I love it already.
Glad I could help, doc!
{ 1 trackback }