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Why Video Marketing is Such an Important Piece of Your Online Strategy

Video marketing is such an important piece of your digital marketing strategy. In today’s marketing world people want to be able to connect with their healthcare providers and know who they are.

Videos are such an easy way to be able to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Gone are the days of making extravagant videos, going WAY over budget, having a studio, etc. Let’s get back to the basics, being authentic in the videos, recording on smartphones or newer computers with good quality.

Should I be doing video?

Should I be doing video? Clients ask us this question all the time. And the answer is yes, it’s very simple, yes.

Video marketing is such an important piece of your online digital marketing strategy. Because digital marketing has grown so much, people really wanna be able to see who you are, to feel like they know you, and get a sense of how the office runs, especially in the healthcare industry. You have to think of that patient journey, what they are struggling with, what they’re going through, why they may be reaching out to you for your services, whether it’s chiropractic, acupuncture, ob/GYN, medical issues, lifethreatening diseases, cancer, all these different things, you have to think of what they’re going through.

And even though there’s a ton of content online to read, and they can call the office, if they can see videos, and they can see the doctors, and they can see the front desk and the staff at the front desk, and they can see the nurses.

Videos help build trust

Videos help build that gap when they are reaching out for a healthcare provider. And they feel like they know, like, and trust you, which are the three main factors in marketing. Remember, people need to know, like, and trust you in order to do business with you.

Studies suggest that 80% of online visitors will watch a video, while only 20% will completely read a piece of written content. So if getting your audience engaged and fully immersed in your healthcarerelated information is important to you, then so should video. As stats show, your audience is more likely to consume your content to its full capacity when there’s a video involved. This is also something, you have to think of the healthcare industry when you are explaining, maybe it’s symptoms, or a process, a procedure.

When they can hear it straight from the doctor’s mouth, that builds that trust. They’re able to really know what the doctor and the staff, that they know what they’re talking about.

Tools for creating videos

And there are so many different tools out there that make video marketing so easy. There’s a reason or a process to everything and having a professional videographer come in for a commercial shoot, maybe a video on the website, that’s really important. I am not discrediting that at all; that is something that’s really important to have. And it’s really easy to do your videos inhouse for your daily tips, your blogs, even your YouTube videos. So it’s not a huge cost item anymore either.

So I wanted to share with you some tools that we use for screen sharing. So this is really good if a doctor puts together maybe a PowerPoint, or has images they wanna share, diagrams. If you wanna walk through a process, you can have it just on your computer, and you can share your screen, and you can go through that presentation

Zoom

So the tool that we use a lot is called Zoom, ZOOM. And this allows you to do video recording such as this, and it gives us the video file and the audio file, which serves two purposes. Obviously, the video is great for the website, for YouTube, and your social media marketing.

The audio file is great for podcasts, and that’s exactly what we do. There’s no point in recreating that wheel when you can use one piece of information for multiple purposes.

Loom

The other one is Loom, and that works the same way as Zoom does.

I know, Zoom and Loom, it can get a little bit more confusing. But those are two great tools that you can if you wan to share your screen while recording a video.

Animoto and Ripl

And the other two that we like to use are Animoto and Riple. These are more for those cute, fun videos to throw into social media if you have a new staff member coming on. This is where you take pictures of them, maybe it’s them in the office, a couple of pictures of their personal life. And you can make a cute video, I use Animoto and Ripl.

There are free versions and paid versions. I would do the paid version, just so you don’t have their logo on it, and you can actually add your logo, and add text to it. They’re not expensive at all. So those are two videos that have fun little templates, holiday theme if you wanna have a little office video that says Happy Holidays. You can do little snippets of videos and images together and then they put it together into a video format.

So those are what we call more of the fluff posts for social media, but they’re videos that people like to see. You can do fun facts, so you can do facts around a certain topic in an Animoto video and share it, you can ask questions.

Tips for recording videos

So videos don’t need to be complicated. If you have a Mac, you can just use QuickTime Player and record yourself. Again, if you’re gonna do that, I would highly recommend using Zoom because you do get that audio file and the video file. And if you use your phone, you can use your iPhone or Android as well.

If I’m recording a video for social media and I also want it to go onto YouTube, I will have my Zoom screen up, and then I also would have my phone vertical recording as well, so I can use that for Instagram Stories and Facebook. I know it sounds complicated, and a lot of times it’s just getting used to being in front of the camera.

Having those bullet points of what you wanna talk about. I have my bullet points right here with some stats written down that I will go into. I have another screen pulled up so I know what those bullet points are that I wanna cover. And so it’s really figuring out that system for you. Some people write full-on strips and tape them up. So you have to find that system that works for you, you don’t have a choice anymore in digital marketing, you have to be doing videos. And the more videos you do, the better.

Getting started with video marketing

So if you’re thinking, “where I would start with this video marketing strategy?.” Start by asking yourself the following questions:

What are your clients or your patients asking you?
What questions are they coming to you with, and how can you address those?
What are those hot topics in your industry? Is it around vaping, opioids, vitamins? Is it working out, is it diet?
Are they asking you what they can do to improve the quality of their life? And so start paying attention to what are they asking you, and then start doing videos around that.

Start with small things, maybe it’s just one question. Keep it short, simple, and to the point. So less than three minutes is great.

If you’re doing a presentation, you’re explaining diagrams, or you’re teaching them something, then I will go up to 10 minutes. Keep in mind that if you’re posting it onto Instagram, it can’t be more than 10 minutes for Instagram TV. And you also have to think of, what are you talking about that you wanna be able to keep their attention. So their attention span is gonna be shorter, too, so you wanna make sure that that video is giving them a lot of details, a lot of valuable information that they wanna keep watching it.

Importance of video marketing

83% of marketers believe that video is growing in importance. Duh. It is so important. We have to be doing it. 53% of customers engage with a brand or a business after watching a video

Your audience is cyberstalking you, which sounds horrible, but they are doing their research. They are looking at multiple different healthcare practices, from who they are, where they’re at, what their expertise is, what are they talking about on social media, are being consistent with social media, do they have the videos? Is their website userfriendly? And we talked about that user experience, that digital experience for your patients, for your audience, is that an easy process?

So even if you do an intro video on your website, like welcome to our website, here’s where you need to go to book your appointment, here’s where our expertise is, it’s really important to make sure that you have these videos and you make that experience as simple as possible for your audience. So you just gotta get in there, you gotta get in front of the camera. You’re gonna have 10 takes before it’s perfect, and that’s okay, and keep going.

Editing your videos

So then my next question I get is, “Well, what about editing? Do you edit your videos? And if so, what software do you use to edit your videos”?

I’m usually the type of person that I wanna get it done in one take. I don’t wanna have to stop and splice it together. I like to have my points, get it done in one take, and that may take me three or four times, but I’m not editing a lot. So in your first couple of videos, you may have it at the beginning where there’s a pause and then you say, “Hi!” Or in the end, you pause and then you talk again.

So some simple editing, beginning and ending. If you have a Mac, you can use iMovie, if you have a PC you can use the Movie Maker, which does a good job. You can use Adobe Premiere Clip. And also YouTube does have some video editing tools in there, and they work great, so you can edit a beginning. So again, if there’s that pause at the beginning or a pause at the end, you can use that.

Sometimes you wanna add an intro. You can do that in Movie Maker or iMovie. There’s a ton of different video editing software out there. And again, we like to keep it as simple as possible, so find the one that works best for you. As I said, YouTube, iMovie, or Movie Maker for those beginning, pieces is a great idea just to get used to it and then if you wanna add more effects or different things to it, you can start doing some more research and looking at Adobe Premiere Clip and other video editing software.

Maximizing your video content

So start by, again, listening to your patients, what are they asking, what are those hot topics that people are talking about in your industry? Do some research on your competitors: Are they doing videos? What are they talking about? Looking at other videos, just YouTubing videos on those topics, those keywords that you’re thinking about, seeing how many views they have.

Once you take your video and you upload it to YouTube, think that SEO, think those keywords, what would they be typing in to find this video? In your description, make sure that you have a link back to your website, so if you’re talking about a treatment or a condition that… Or even a blog post, tie it back to a link on your website, so there’s that call to action.

So it’s really important, you’ve gotta think about this as another process in your marketing. So you find your bullet points for your video, you record your video, you upload it to YouTube, and you share it with social media. Once the video’s on YouTube, you can take that video and insert it into your blog posts as well.

Videos are a great addition to add to your blog posts. And so we usually will write a blog post and then do a video, so we’re touching both parts. People can watch a video and then they can read the blog. And so the blog is great for SEO, the video is great for our audience. So finding that balance, and start doing some videos, and just get it in the habit, whether you’re doing one per week to start, and then start moving it up to maybe two per week.

What is the point of that video? Again, is it an FAQ, is it a treatment condition, is it a blog post? And then what’s a call to action for each video? And our call to action for our podcasts is to be sure to go to Podbean or iTunes and subscribe to our podcast so you can listen to all these amazing tips that we’re sharing with you. And also if you are struggling with that video strategy, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and request a free 30minute consultation, and we can walk through this video strategy with you.

So I look forward to seeing your videos. Please drop a link below to your YouTube channel, we would love to take a look at them, and get a recording. Have a great day.

August 4, 2021/by Amber Irwin

Social Media, Social Speak

7 Tips for Creating a Social Media Content Calendar

When you manage several social media channels and create lots of content, it can be challenging to keep up.

A social media content calendar helps you plan your content and visualize your strategy over time. It allows plenty of time to fill the spaces with relevant content, preventing you from publishing poorly written posts. It will prevent you from going into a full panic mode since everything was planned and pre-scheduled.

Need help in creating social media content calendar? Follow the tips below.

Audit your social network

What’s great about digital marketing is that almost everything is measurable.

Take time to go through your social media accounts and posts to see how your content is received.

When auditing your social media profiles and your previous posts, you will begin to notice a trend. Identify what types of content are getting more engagements on each platform. Also, identify which posts sparked the most conversation. This will clue you in to where you should focus your efforts over the next month or two.

Define your goals

Before you start creating content, it is a good idea to ask yourself: what is the primary goal?

Do you wish to drive more traffic to your website? Are you hoping to get more leads? Or do you want to grow your following? By defining your goals early on, you’ll have a clear idea of the expected results.

Pushing out content without a clear purpose won’t benefit your business or your practice. Instead, it will only lead to wasted time, effort, and resources.

Plan your content

Once you’re clear on your goals for social media marketing, it’s time to plan your content.

When you hit a high-performing piece of content, it can be tempting to keep posting similar content week after week. While this might work initially, it will have diminishing returns over time. Come to think of it. Even the best dinner gets old if you serve it every night.

When creating content, make sure you’re not posting the same sort of content. If you do, your followers may find your posts boring and can lead to disengagement or unfollowing.

Decide on the publishing frequency

Now, it’s time to decide on the publishing frequency. You see, social media success isn’t something you can achieve overnight. It will require hard work and patience. Posting consistently on social media makes you more visible to your audience. But that doesn’t mean you should spam them with too many posts each day. Posting seldomly may cause your audience to forget you.

This is why it’s essential to choose a publishing frequency that works for you. Think about how often you can publish fresh content realistically. If you can only commit to posting three times a week, then that’s fine as long as you stick to your posting schedule.

Keep evergreen content at hand

Evergreen content is something that can provide value to your audience over long periods.

If you’ve been interviewed, you are free to share it again at a later date, so those who missed it will have the opportunity to watch it. You can also share blog posts that list out various tips and tricks. We bet most of these tips are timeless and can be shared with your audience again and again. Of course, you can also post evergreen content from other websites.

Don’t miss out on relevant moments

There are so many holidays and pseudo-holidays each year. Some marketers tend to consider social media holiday posts as “fluff’. But your audience doesn’t see it that way. As long as you keep your audience in mind, they’ll create emotional touchpoints in your marketing campaign and get the engagement you seek.

Holidays and special events are a great way to connect with your audience. You may find companies that use unusual holidays to sell their products and services. Don’t be left out – become one of them.

The year is full of special events. Do your due diligence and take note of local, national, and international holidays. Identify those holidays and somehow connect to the products or services you provide. A content calendar will reduce the risk of forgetting or missing out on these events.

Choose your publishing tool

Forget setting the alarm to remind yourself to post. Instead, choose a publishing tool that will help you make the most of your time.

Automation helps you save time, achieve consistency in your social media marketing efforts, and gives you greater control over the content.

Buffer, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial are just some of the best tools that can help you streamline and automate your social media content so that you can focus on more critical aspects of your business.

Final thoughts

A well-thought-out and organized social media calendar serves as a framework for what you plan to share and promote across all social platforms.

If you need help planning and creating a social media content calendar, please let us know. Book a 30-minute consultation call with us, and we’ll help you take your social media marketing game to the next level.

July 21, 2021/by Kathlyn Angeles

Social Speak, Video Marketing

How to upload a video to YouTube correctly

Today, we are going to walk through how to upload a video correctly to YouTube. And it’s kind of one of those things, fill out all the blanks, but there are some things that people don’t understand that play a big piece in the SEO of your YouTube channel. When you login to your YouTube channel, you will have this create video here. Now, a tool that we use is called Tube Buddy, and this is a great add-on to really help add SEO, Search Engine Optimization to your YouTube videos. We’ll get to that within this tutorial, but it’s called Tube Buddy, and right here, you’re going click to upload your video. And after you upload your video, and it just takes a quick second since I’m doing a screen share. You’re going to have an option to select the files from your computer. I’m going go ahead and just do this Zoom recording I had done earlier with a client, it’s going upload the video. Based on the length of your video, it will determine how long it takes to upload it. Okay, once you have the video, it’s processing the video, YouTube does a great job on walking you through what you should be doing, okay, again, filling out those blanks.

Adding a Title and Description to Your YouTube Video

You are required to have a title, and again, the title you want to make sure is using those keywords of what the video is on and what people would be searching for. Here I’m going say, how to create custom images in Canva? Now, in your description, I like having a how to or step, something where people… What the title you should be thinking is what would people be typing into YouTube or Google to find that video? How to is a great way, healthy eating ideas, healthy snacks for kids, whatever that topic is your video is around, this is where that title comes in. Now with your description, you have 5000 characters you can use for your video description. And with that, you need to have at least 500 for each video. What I’d like to do is when you are recording a video. What we do is we record our video and then we transcribe our video on Scribie. And then I would take that first paragraph of that transcription from our blog and put it in here. Maybe it would say, in this video, you will learn how to create custom images in Canva, building a brand with your digital marketing, yada, yada yada, we want to keep on going.

Then you would say to learn more, visit our blog at, and then you could put the URL to your blog there. Okay, this is a great area in here, you want to make sure that you have your keyword and that you are describing what that video is about. It’s clear to the viewer that they understand what it is they are going to be learning. Now, the next thing is the thumbnail, you can create a custom thumbnail in Canva, and what we’ll do is they have… This moved me… If you have used Canva, you’ll know that they have a ton of designs on here, there’s a free version and a paid version. We have the paid version, and it’s running a little bit slow today, but you can actually create a custom YouTube thumbnail. We’ll let that load. But what you would do here is then click upload thumbnail and you would upload that thumbnail from your computer to here. YouTube tends to have, especially if it’s a video of you talking, they pick the worst thumbnails where your eyes are closed. It’s a horrible thumbnail, I always recommend creating a custom thumbnail in Canva, you can have that correct size and then you can upload that to here.

Additonal Features When Uploading Your YouTube Video

Once you have your custom thumbnail uploaded, then what you’re going to do is choose playlist. We have a ton of playlists, this helps keep our channel organized, and what you could do is, if this is, let’s say you are a pediatrician, this can be tips for parents, this can be eating healthy for kids, whatever those categories are, are what your playlists are going to be. I’m going click this to be… We’ll do social media tips, and it could be more than one category, you can choose two or three and then click done. Now, what you want to come down and do is, this is where if it’s made for kids or not. And what this does, if it says yes it’s made for kids, then kids that have access to YouTube Kids, and for whatever reasons they were to type in something similar to what your video is talking about, your video could show up in YouTube Kids. Even though this video there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a great tutorial. I’m going say it’s not made for kids because they don’t need to know this. You could do an age restriction if you need to, but I just say no, not made for kids, and it’s fine. Here’s a piece you want to make sure you do not skip over, this show more. And this is where Tube Buddy comes in action, right here, your tag, these are keywords that people would type into YouTube to find a video.

This says tag to be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video. You want to have things like how to, very broad and then very niche, I can type in Canva. And then this is where YouTube comes into play, I can do Canva tutorial for beginners. Now, if I scroll down a tad bit, you’ll see these tag tools, these recommended tags. This is Tube Buddy, helping me figure out what I should put into that tag area, you can do it by relevance or keyword score. I like keywords score ’cause I feel like that’s what people are searching more for, this is Canva templates, then we would come down to… And I would just pick the ones that I feel best fit my video that I was talking about. Okay. You can add up to 500 characters in here. I always like to have at least between five and 20, if you can tags in here. TubeBuddy is a great way to help. Obviously, these ones that are in orange and yellow are the best to choose from, and then as they go to red, they become a little bit less searched for. I’m going do one more. And then what I’m going do is I’m going click next.

This is where if you want to have subtitles, you can add subtitles to your video, you can also add an end screen. You can create a template and then add it to there, or you can create your own. And this is just helping people stay on your channel, and be able to find other videos that you have put on. Promote related content at the end of your video. And if you do this, it will tell you, and again, based on the popularity of your channel, how long you have had your channel, if you’re verified, all these things will allow you what you can and cannot have on here. This will say, subscribe to Social Speak, you can choose where you want this to show up. I like to have it towards the end it’s not blocking the content. At the end of your video, if you are just chit-chatting a little bit, that’s where then I would have this come up so people can subscribe to that video or to your channel. And then you could also add a card, and this is, if you’re talking about maybe a free PDF and in your video, you say, “Be sure to download my free PDF on my website about such and such.” This is where you can promote another video once you reach a certain… When you join the partner program with YouTube, that’s when you’re going have a link. But you can promote your channel, a certain playlist, another video.

This is where you would say, be sure to watch this other video that explains our freebie or how to download our freebie, whatever that is, that call to action. These cards are great for call to action, I may want to do a playlist and I’m going click into, let’s just do healthcare digital marketing tips. Then I can choose at what point in the video, I want this to show up right here. If you are watching a YouTube video and you see this little eye icon, that is an info card. And if you click onto it, it will take you to somewhere else, whether it is a playlist, a video, or if they are a partner of YouTube, take them to a link. Then you can click next and they’ll make sure if you have any music in the background, if you are talking about anything, YouTube just check to make sure that you’re following all of the copyright rules that YouTube set. No issues found, which is great, I can click next. Here, what we have, I get a check mark here. Video elements, I’m going go back to there to see, that’s where these are. I don’t have a check mark here because I didn’t add those to this video. You click next, next, this is where you can schedule a video to post, you can make it public, which means it’s going to be found in YouTube, you can use this link to promote it out, and it’s searchable within YouTube.

Unlisted means that anyone with the video link can watch that video. I like to use unlisted for our newsletters, we may just do a video just for our newsletter subscribers. And I don’t want to be found on YouTube. I’m just housing that video on YouTube, and using unlisted is a great idea because then I can still email that link out to people and they can watch it, but it’s not searchable within YouTube. The other one is private. Private is great, if you’re doing an online course or a private, like maybe telehealth or a coaching session where you recorded that session just for that person, and then you can share it just with them, it’s only viewable to the people that you invite. Okay? For this one, I’m just going do unlisted because this is a video that I am going to publish to the public, and then you will click save, and then what you’ll do is you can from here, share it to any of these. But if you go to the video and you right click on it, and you could copy the embedded code to put that into your blog post. If you’re using Mailchimp or Constant Contact and you want to put this video into your email, then you just need the link and then within there, they would show you how to add that video.

Final Steps to Upload Your YouTube Video

Those are just a few steps you want to take to make sure that your video is being uploaded correctly to YouTube, and you have all of the boxes checked, everything to just make sure that you are optimizing your YouTube videos the best you can. If you need help with creating that YouTube strategy and how to upload your videos to your channel, please let us know. You can schedule a free 30-minute consultation and we would love to walk through that with you. Thank you guys, have a great day.

July 14, 2021/by Amber Irwin

Content Marketing, Social Media, Social Speak

6 Tips for a Successful Healthcare Marketing Campaign

Digital marketing is becoming the new wave of healthcare marketing. With the growing competition in the healthcare industry, it is important to stay on top of digital marketing and keep your organization at the forefront of change.

Today, the competition is getting tougher and patients are getting smarter. Many of them even turn to Google for quick answers to health-related concerns. If you want to get more customers to your door, then you need to get in front of your audience and have a solid online presence. Otherwise, someone else will. This is why it’s important to have a healthcare marketing plan — so you can reach potential and existing patients at the best time.

Ever wonder what it takes to create a successful healthcare marketing campaign?

We listed down some tips that you can incorporate into your marketing plan right away.

Know your target audience

A successful healthcare marketing campaign starts with knowing who your audience is and what they value. To produce great results, you first need to create a well-defined persona profile.

Vividly picture who is it that you want to attract to your doorstep and what matters most to them. The more specifically you define your audience, the more likely you are to inspire a positive response.

Carefully and precisely defining your target audience will ensure that you’re not making the wrong assumption about what your audience values. Plus, it will improve your efficiency since you’ll have a good idea about what media to use and how to shape a compelling message that brings a response.

Combine healthcare and social media

Today, social media isn’t just a place for family and friends to stay in touch. People also use them to promote their business and reach their audience.

The power of social media extends to all industries, including healthcare. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn can help you reach a wider audience and connect with your followers. It can also help you drive traffic and leads to your website.

Now that you know who your target audience is, it will be easier for you to reach your key audience. Tapping into online communities and sharing health information can be a game-changer in your healthcare marketing plan. Keep in mind, though, that each platform has its own voice and audience. When you create social media content, make sure that the message is tailored to different audiences and channels.

You can also use paid advertising to increase brand awareness, improve visibility, and widen your reach. Don’t worry. You don’t need to spend a huge sum of money in order to get results. In fact, you can run a Facebook ad for a minimum budget of $5 a day. So go ahead and try it out, and adjust your budget later on.

Make wellness a lot more fun

Health and wellness is a serious topic, but that doesn’t mean that your campaign should be boring and uninspiring. Let’s take cues from UnitedHealthCare’s successful healthcare marketing campaign – We Dare You.

UnitedHealthcare created an interactive campaign that dares people to make one small change to live healthier lives and document it on social media. Each month, there are new challenges and quizzes aimed at inspiring people to live a healthier lifestyle. There are prizes involved too.

The multi-awarded “We Dare You” campaign not only led to healthier habits, but it also fostered an interactive online community of brand loyalists.

Establish an email marketing plan

Email marketing is an effective means of transmitting messages to your current and prospective audience. In fact, studies suggest that email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers as compared to Facebook and Twitter. When done right, it can help you grow your practice and reach a larger amount of patients.

With email marketing, the audience is openly receptive, and relative cost is low, and the rate of return can be exceptionally high. You can promote your services in a cost-effective way while building a relationship with your patients.

If you’re new to email marketing, you might want to start with growing your email list. To do that, you need to focus on reaching as many people as possible. Don’t worry. Getting your first 100 email subscribers isn’t as complicated as it seems. With an irresistible lead magnet, a killer landing page, and the power of social media, you’ll be able to grow your email list in no time.

Google yourself

Studies suggest that physicians and other medical practitioners receive up to 45% of new patients through referral. Though most patients would consider the referral of other doctors, family, and friends, the majority of them will run a Google search of your name and check out your reputation before booking an appointment.

The survey revealed that 60% of patients wouldn’t book an appointment with a medical practitioner that has bad reviews. This is why you should Google yourself now. It might seem silly, but it’s actually important.

By running a quick Google search of yourself, you’ll have a good idea of how your practice looks from a consumer’s perspective and know where to start when creating your digital strategy. You also want to make sure that all the information about you is correct and updated.

If you unearth some negative results when you Google yourself, try to have the post taken down. But if that doesn’t work, then the best thing you can do is suppress them with positive content.

Be a source of helpful information

In today’s digital world, most people’s inclination would be to open up a browser in Google and research about their own or their loved one’s condition. With so many people turning to the internet for answers, it is important that healthcare marketing is there to be a helpful and supportive guide.

Regularly post high-quality content that answers people’s questions. This will help them learn more about medical conditions they may be searching for or procedures they may have to undergo. It is also a good idea to share important and relevant medical information to help people improve their health. This will help build your credibility and position yourself as an authority in your field. People may not run off and make an appointment, but you will be in their minds the next time they get sick.

May 12, 2021/by Amber Irwin

LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Speak

How to use LinkedIn for both personal and business

In today’s blog, we are going to cover LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is actually the oldest social media platform. It has been around since 2002 but it wasn’t considered a social media platform back then. As of now, there are over 660 active monthly users and in 200 countries and over 30 million companies on LinkedIn that are actively using it each and every month. This is huge, this is huge. LinkedIn, I feel, is a very overlooked platform. A lot of people still think of LinkedIn as just a recruitment tool, just to find jobs, and that is not the case whatsoever. LinkedIn has come such a far way and they have really implemented some really cool things to help you grow your business, and it is… I see a lot of B2B but I also do see a lot of B2C, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer.

I wanted to cover today the differences between your personal profile and a company page. LinkedIn works similarly to Facebook where you have one username and password and from that username and password, it brings you to your personal profile which then you can get into your different groups and your company pages. Once you log in, this is what you’re going to see. You’ll see your personal profile over here, you’ll see your news feed which is the people you’re connected with, the topics you follow, the company pages that you follow, this is where it’s coming into your personal news feed, okay. Then you have your pages on the left-hand side, you have different groups that you’re a part of here if you’re doing any events, also hashtags. Hashtags are huge on LinkedIn which is great because you can really find those niche hashtags and follow them similar to Instagram.

Personal LinkedIn Profile Tips

On your personal profile, there are a few things that you can do on your personal profile that you cannot do on a company page such as write an article. This is great if you are actively blogging, you can write a… You can take some of the content from your blog or your entire blog and put it into here. You can have a weekly thought, you can have… If you are a physician, you can have maybe a weekly FAQ article that just highlights the questions that your patients had asked you through the week that you’re just typing in here, answering, and maybe each week can have a theme. You can add an image here, and this is a great way to just really add value to your personal profile. Now, with the personal profile, you can also add your photo, a video, and a document. These two things are just for your personal profile.

Again, it’s similar to Facebook in a way that you… It’s easier to get connections on LinkedIn and when you post onto your personal profile and you’re building that personal brand, you’re going to get more engagement than you would on your company page. It’s important to use both of them ’cause they each have great features and they each serve a purpose. If you’re utilizing LinkedIn, make sure you’re utilizing this write an article feature and you’re posting to your personal profile as well as your company page. If maybe you’ve had LinkedIn for a long time, but you haven’t updated your profile, let’s start there. So making sure that your profile is filled out. This is space for advertising or your personal brand. To me, this image speaks of digital marketing. We’re always on the computer and this is something that I really… It just kind of resonated with me. You have a professional headshot or it’s you, it’s not you and your kids or you and your husband, this is more about you and your expertise than it is the personal side of things. You want to make sure that you have all of your information filled out and that…

One great thing about LinkedIn is it will tell you what else you need to add to your profile. It will give you a percentage of your profile as, like here, you can add… It’ll tell you what else you need to add. And they’re always adding new things it may not always be 100% filled out. You want to make sure that you have the about section filled out that this is talking about what it is you do use keywords in here: Healthcare, digital marketing, content marketing. Make sure that you’re utilizing those keywords of what it is you do. You can also have featured videos and this is something that you want to make sure you update and as you can see, I have not updated I’m going to come back in here and make sure that I update my featured videos as well. And maybe add that to your monthly list is as you’re creating different videos and blogs or infographics, you can add different things to this featured section, you want to make sure that this stays up-to-date or even if it is maybe a year old video, but content that’s super valuable and things that are able to provide that value to your audience even if they click on it and it’s a year old.

This is just your profile, this is your activity, this is what I’ve posted, things that I’ve liked, things I’ve commented on, things I’ve shared, this is what your activity is. And then it goes into your experience. You do want to make sure that your profile is 100% filled out before you start posting because people are going to view your profile and they want to know who you are and what you do. Once you have your profile updated and you start utilizing these different features on your personal profile in what’s called My Network, you can start adding connections, and, again, with LinkedIn I love how niche you can get. You can really look for those people that you want to connect with and as you can see, I have a ton of invitations. I’m very picky about who I want to connect with, sometimes, I will let them sit here. I’ll look at their profile, I’ll see if it’s really something that makes sense for me to connect with. If not, then I click ignore.

My connections on LinkedIn, I want to make sure that they are quality over quantity. I don’t care about this number but I want people that I’m connected with that are going to engage on my posts and make sure that we have things in common. Maybe they would be a great referral partner, maybe a potential client, and that’s the important thing about your connections. LinkedIn is going to give you suggestions on who to connect with based on your profile. This is going to say similar roles as me or in the location, I’m in. This is great because, again, it gives you that opportunity to connect with people that you may not have a chance to connect with and one of the great things is once you hit this connect button, you can also, you can click connect but then you can, if you’re searching for someone, let’s say… I’ll just say a family, let’s do a family physician. Okay. And I’m obviously wanting to search in people because I want to connect with these people and right here… Oh, great. Ken, I want to connect.

Once you click connect, I can add a note, “Hi, Ken. I was looking at your profile. I love what you’re doing.” So before you click that Connect, be sure to click on their profile, learn a little bit about them, see if they’re actually active. Right now, it says that he has commented on things. You can look at if he’s posted any articles, you can see when the last time he posted. And the reason why I say… he hasn’t posted anything for a year. The reason I say that you want to do your research on someone before you connect with them, again, is that quality. You don’t want to connect with people that aren’t active because then they’re not seeing your messages and they’re not going to be responding because they are not actively using LinkedIn. Make sure that before you click that Connect button and you add a note that you take a look at their profile and more importantly, their activity. What have they been posting?

Even if they haven’t posted anything but they have shared a lot of things or commented on things, that’s okay. A week ago, he liked this post that’s great. He may not be actively posting but he is actively using LinkedIn. That’s a great connection. So this is how you build the personal side of your LinkedIn account. Now, let’s go into the company page side of things. If you click here underneath your profile and you go down to, it will say, company and we have a few company pages but we’re going to go to Social Speak Network. And on here, this is your company page. Again, you have this header, utilize it to highlight what you do. Digital marketing management for healthcare professionals, that is what Social Speak does. I’m here and it is… I keep referring back to Facebook because when you have, especially now, if you just set up a Facebook business page, to increase those likes, it’s hard because you have to actively be inviting people or paying for ads, and that’s how LinkedIn is as well. It’s hard to increase this follower unless you are actively doing an ad campaign on LinkedIn to increase those followers or inviting people.

This is a great way to do this: As you’re adding connections, you can click here and invite more connections and you can look at… Again, I don’t want every single person I’m connected with to like my page, I want specific people that I am connected with that are in the healthcare and health and wellness industry to like my page because our content’s going to resonate with them the most. Again, each month as you’re adding that featured content to your personal profile and you’ve been adding new connections each month, invite them to like your company page. This helps increase the followers and it gives you your analytics, how many visitors you’ve had. We’ve had six new visitors in the past 30 days, which is down from last month, that lets me know. We have no new followers, hat lets me know, “Okay. Is my content not right or I’m just not getting people to the page?” Monitoring those analytics is a good idea to do, and you can really dive deeper into what does this means and it will let you know to share trending articles, invite your connections to follow.

Using LinkedIn for Business

LinkedIn does a great job of actively promoting you on what you need to do, or prompting you on what you need to do next. This is your company page, these are the hashtags that we follow, these are the posts that we put up every day. We do post daily on our LinkedIn platform and you need to create that content strategy of what works best for you. And so, you just need to know, is it going to be one time a week, is it going to be three times a week, five days a week, what does that look like for you and stick to that consistent schedule. One thing with LinkedIn, and you can see, you can add a document to your LinkedIn company page but you cannot do the article. You can, however, do a poll which is great to really dive into your audience and see, what are they thinking? How can you interact with them? And maybe doing different polls as a piece of your content strategy to help increase that engagement is a great idea try out that feature for your company page.

The other thing is, on your Facebook business page, you can go to your page and can click the little share button and post it directly to your personal profile. With LinkedIn, you cannot do that. What you would do is follow your own company and then as you post to your company page, it’s going to show up in your news feed and then from there, you can click share. And when you click share, it’s going to bring up exactly similar, again, to Facebook. You can type in, “This is a great blog that we just published.” Make a comment to the post that you put up, add hashtags, and then click post. These are just a few different ways to utilize LinkedIn to increase your network, grow your followers on your company page and start building your business.

Utilize LinkedIn just as you would Facebook. Take the time to engage yourself on here. Take the time to upload a video to your personal profile and to your company page and if you’re utilizing a scheduling tool such as Buffer or HootSuite, you can also schedule posts to your personal and your business account. If you’re utilizing HootSuite, you can upload a video to HootSuite for your company page but you cannot upload a video to HootSuite for your personal page. If you want to do those videos, I suggest just coming directly to LinkedIn and posting. You can also download the LinkedIn app and post directly from there, which is great. It’s very user-friendly, just jump on there. The mobile version’s great. You can upload your videos, your pictures, write an article from the app as well. Just figure out how you want to use LinkedIn, jot down some ideas, jot down who do you want to connect with. If you don’t have a company page, if you go under Work and at the bottom, it will say Create Company Page, that’s where you can create your page there.

Groups are great for LinkedIn and, again, you’re going to be posting in those groups as your own personal profile but groups are a great way to be able to share your blog posts, your videos, answer questions, ask questions and get involved with very niche groups. You can browse groups and make sure that they are a good group for you. And then, if you do have a job, you can also post a job on here utilizing LinkedIn Premium, or they have different options depending on what your needs are. Take time to go through your LinkedIn profile and see how you can have it work for you and implement this into your social media strategy. If you are needing help with LinkedIn and you just don’t know where to start or what that strategy should look like, let us know. Let’s schedule a free consultation and go over your LinkedIn strategy. Thank you.

April 28, 2021/by Amber Irwin

Social Speak

White Hat vs Black Hat SEO

Today, I wanted to talk about black hat versus white hat SEO.

Basically, black hat SEO is where you’re doing everything you can, you’re finding loopholes, and you’re just working the system in order to have your website ranked quickly for specific keywords. White hat SEO, on the other hand, is a much more long endgame. You’re not only creating content and doing strategies to please Google, but you also are thinking about that end user and how people are interacting with your website. You’re creating more authentic, is how I view it, content that’s really informative and educational and solving problems.

This then allows you to get those backlinks and really create partnerships with other websites so that they are also linking to you because they see what a valuable resource you’ve created.

With over 7.5 million blog posts published every single day, and 61% of the blogs that are out there publishing more than one blog post per week, SEO really is a long-term strategy that you have to really consistently nurture and build over time. It’s not something where in the first week you’re going to see results. It’s not something in the first month you’re going to see results. Depending on what industry you’re in, what niche you’re in, it could take years to really stand apart from your competition and make sure Google has found you.

Listen to the Digital Marketing Podcast

Always utilizing white hat SEO strategies is a great way to make sure that you consistently are staying on the radar of Google and that they’re not going to ding you for doing something incorrectly and trying to play the system. So let’s just go through a couple of typical black hat versus white hat strategies that we see.

Black Hat SEO Strategies

The first black hat strategy is creating duplicate content.

The second is having invisible text and stuffed keywords.

And let me actually talk a little bit about this invisible text and stuffed keywords.

Way back in the day, maybe seven years ago, we had a client who had hired us to work on their SEO on their website. And we did a review and they were missing a couple of header tags and a couple of keywords, and those mains or traces within the header tags. Their resolution to this was creating a white H1 tag and adding it to every page and listing off all the keywords that we had recommended. They were making sure the keywords were on the website because that’s what people were searching for, but they didn’t want readers to actually see the headers. That is considered a black hat SEO strategy. You should not be doing this. This client wanted to add the content but didn’t want people to see that he had the content on there. So he did it in a not very user friendly way, and it’s something that Google can very clearly see white text, white background. So don’t do this. When you’re writing content, think of variations of the words that people are using, variations of the phrases people are using, rather than, you know, putting that same phrase or keyword in your content multiple times.

The next one, the third one is cloaking or redirecting the user to another site or page.

This is kind of a more advanced strategy, but you want to make sure, again, that that user experience is really there. And then the other one is links from sites with non-relevant content. So this is when you’re going out, you’re getting all the links that you can into your site, but they have nothing to do with your business.

We have a client now who does a fantastic job with helping self-publishers get noticed and ranked on Amazon. If you do want an introduction to her, let’s say you’ve written a novel or a book and you are self-publishing it, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll put you in touch with her.

One of the things that she talks about is this exact same strategy but on Amazon. So if you have a Kindle book, for example, and you have all of your friends, all of your neighbors go on, buy the Kindle book on Amazon and leave a review.

The problem here is that all of these people in your network enjoy reading different things. So Amazon will have no idea of what category your book should be listed in, what type of people should actually be reading the book and enjoying it.

This is the same thing as having links from non-relevant content. You are basically telling Google, you have no idea what niche you’re in, what industry you’re in, and what your content is about.

Another client, a brewery, who’s in the gluten-free industry, he had a cannabis company reach out and the cannabis company was saying they’ve write a blog for him and all they wanted was a link back to their site. This really made no sense whatsoever because then his site would be telling Google they’re related to cannabis, and the cannabis site would be telling Google they were related to beer. Think about this as you’re going out and building these links with other websites.

White Hat SEO Strategies

Now, let’s talk about white hat strategies. These are those long-term strategies that really you’re thinking about your business, you’re thinking about Google, you’re not trying to find loopholes, and you’re thinking about that end user.

The first one is relevant content.

Make sure that you are writing content that is relevant to the needs of your consumer, of your patients, of your practice. You want to make sure that the content you’re putting out there isn’t fluff and that it really is relevant.

Number two, have well-labeled images.

Images should clearly describe what’s going on in the picture, and I often try and relate it to the page as well. Especially if you are taking your own photos and loading them to the website, you want to make sure that these clearly state what they are about. So this is very, very important and it’s very easy to implement, also making sure that you have those alt tags on the images as well.

The third is to build relevant links and references

The next, and this is what we just were talking about with the black hat strategies, it’s building relevant links and references. And so the relevant links and references really show Google what the content is about, and if it’s a high quality website that’s linking to you, that’s even better. The next is complete sentences with good spelling and grammar, I’m sure this will become more and more important. Websites like Grammarly or there are a few AI writing websites, that have done an incredible job making sure that automatically you can tell what’s written properly and what’s not. And so I’m sure, Google will continue to get better at telling what’s broken English or broken Spanish or whatever language you’re speaking, and where is grammar not good, because they want to show people the best content that’s out there.

If you’ve been writing for a long time and you know some of your blogs aren’t that great, you can either go back and edit them, create new versions of them, and redirect the old version to the new version, or even consider taking it down. That’s okay.

The next is making sure that you are following HTML best practices.

For this, if you’re using a website that’s built on Squarespace, WordPress, Shopify, even Wix, typically, you are in good hands. So websites like this, they follow best practices. So I wouldn’t be too worried. Make sure in your content, however, you’re using those header tags and things like that though. And then the last one is having unique and relevant page titles. So make sure each page title refers directly to what is on that page and what people will learn from reading that content.

SEO is one of those things that does take time. You want to make sure that you are trying to consistently get better and better at the content that you’re creating, at the websites that you’re attracting to link back into your site, and if you ever hear somebody talk about a strategy that’s going to work overnight, I would steer clear of it. Maybe it will work overnight this time, but the next Google update, you might see your rankings plummet.

If you have any questions about search engine optimization, white hat versus black hat strategies, even how to track how well you’re doing, head on over to our digital marketing consultation page. I’d be happy to chat, just fill out that request a consultation. Thanks so much and I’ll see you next time.

April 21, 2021/by Caitlin McDonald

Blog, Blogging, Copy Writing, SEO, Social Speak

How to Easily Write a Good Blog Post for your Business (Top Tips)

how to write high quality blog posts quickly

In 2018 we published a blog on how to easily write a blog post for your business. This is a supplemental video to that blog with updates for blogging in 2021!

Namely, don’t hesitate to write shorter blogs if they fully answer the question at hand.

With the rise in mobile searches and voice searches, Google has prioritized some answers that get straight to the point rather than blogs that include the answer within a long drawn-out piece of content.

You’ve been told that you need to write blogs for your business, you now understand these blogs need to be >2,500 words, but how do you find the time in your schedule to actually write a good blog post?

Everything in marketing always comes back to finding systems that will work for your schedule to write an educational and informative blog post quickly.

In this post I’ll be going through my top tips for writing a good blog post quickly.

If you are just tuning in, over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about how to perform keyword research and find related keywords to include in your blogs:

Ok, so let’s jump in an get started.

First and foremost, when you write a piece of web content, it should be about something you are knowledgeable about.

If you are a psychotherapist who specializes in EMDR, but have never done Brainspotting, don’t try to write a blog post explaining the intricate details of Brainspotting. (I’m not an expert in either, so for our psychotherapist clients, I pass the writing of those blog posts to one of our all-star copywriters.)

As you are creating your content strategy and your blogging calendar, try to include blogs that are timely and relevant, but make sure you feel comfortable actually sharing information on them.

A 2,500 blog post may seem daunting as you are getting started, but it really doesn’t need to be when you follow the tips outlined below.

Tip 1: Once you have your topic, see what other articles have been written about it

Before you even get in the writing zone, do a quick Google search about the topic you want to write about. Remember, you want to get a sense of what those related keywords are to include in your content anyways, so this step has a dual purpose.

For this post, my search was for Write a Good Blog Post Quickly.

Guess what comes up?

A blog titled 5 Ways to Write High-Quality Content – Fast

Hey! That looks right on the mark for my blog post.

Ehh, actually after a quick read-through, this blog doesn’t include all the information I want to, but that’s okay! I know it is highly ranked on Google for my proposed keyword and includes super basic topics:

Have a brainstorm of ideas you can pull from
Batch your time
Know your own self and when you are most creative
Write ahead
Keep it simple

These are great tips, but again, I want to be more technical in this blog post on easily creating systems for writing a blog post quickly.

Don’t worry, my efforts to research what other people are already writing haven’t gone to waste.

If you do find a blog post that nails your topic on the head, make a quick note of the outline they follow including:

The headers they use

What keywords or topics stand out

The general flow

Then … CLOSE THE WINDOW. This is your blog and you need to make sure you aren’t plagiarizing. You want to make the blog post your own not a word by word replica of what you just read.

So why is it okay to open up an article or two that just don’t include the information you want to include? Well… It could be that you want to write about something completely off the grid or it could be that nobody has actually taken the time yet to post a detailed enough guide on the topic you want to explore.

If I open up an article that just doesn’t seem to include the information I want to share, I take a moment to consider what I would include in my blog post that is missing from the blog I just read.

Tip 2: Take a Moment to Write Down What is Missing from the Blog Post you just read

Let’s go back to 5 Ways to Write High-Quality Content – Fast. Though the author has some great content tips, he’s missing some major items that help me write my own blog posts effectively.

Namely, the author is missing the steps to:

Research what other pieces of good content are ranking on Google
Create an outline for your blog post
Transcribe audio or video to create not only great written content for your website, but also to include multimedia in your blog posts.
Include filler adjectives and words
Outsource writing for blog posts

The post also has an incorrect fact about how short, concise content is the way to go. You don’t want to ramble on and on, but you want to give valuable information that will actually benefit the reader rather than a quick 300 word blog post (I’m already at 800 words and only on tip 2 for writing high quality blog posts quickly… you better buckle up).

Creating a list of what is missing from the example blog posts will help you create an outline for the informational blog that you want to write for your website.

Tip 3: Write down an outline for the content you are writing for your blog post

You now have the list of elements that are typically included in blogs related to your chosen topic.

You also have the specifics that are missing from the posts that you would like to include in your blog post.

AND, from before you even started your blog, you have the keywords you wish to include and the related keywords from Google.

Even though you already have this information compiled, I always find it helpful to write an actual outline for your blog post.

Why?

There are a number of reasons why you should, but most importantly it is because:

You are a busy professional who will get called into a meeting or be interrupted by a conference call.
You are a mom (or parent) like Amber and myself who will need to change a diaper, make sure homework is getting done, or run their child to T-ball.
Do you really have the focus to write 2,500 words in one sitting?

As you get interrupted, it may feel like you can jump right back into the task at hand, but in reality, it takes your brain a few moments to get back on track and figure out where you are with your blog post.

Creating an outline allows you to more easily spend 15-30 minutes here and there on the blog without out feeling like you are spending half the time rereading what you’ve already written and trying to decide where to go next in the blog post.

Having an outline also keeps you on track for the final parts of your blog. Many writers often cut their blog short towards the end because they are just over the process of writing. Having an outline allows you to take a break, but not loose focus.

This process is called Batching your time (see I am including some of the information from the blog post example).

Tip 4: Batch your time while you are preparing to write and actually writing the blog post for your website

As I just mentioned, batching your time is the process of focusing on one at a time rather than trying to multitask.

Here, it means not checking your email or jumping to Facebook while you are writing.

Each time you shift your focus, your brain needs to reorient itself.

In the process of writing your blog post for your website, there are some things you can do to help you batch your time:

Focus on each step in sequence: Keyword research and finding related keywords, researching similar blog posts, creating your outline for your own blog, actually writing the blog, going back and editing the blog, finding images for your blog, writing the title of your blog post.
Don’t try to edit your blog post until you’ve gotten all of your information down.
If you realize you need more information to write thoughtfully on a topic, but you’ve already done your initial research and are in your writing stage, make a note and then jump to the following section that you can write about. Unfortunately, if you jump back to reading articles, trust me, your blog will take 10 times longer to write.
I’m sure I have more, but because I am using this blog as a way to show my own blog writing process, I’m jumping to the next section because additional points are not coming to me at this time. I may come back and add them, but for now, I move on. 🙂

So again, you want to think of writing your quality blog post as a process. Just like anything else in business, processes help to make you efficient and effective. Batching is one way to help you write your long blog post quickly.

Tip 5: Don’t Write! Transcribe from Audio and Video to Create your Blog Post

This is one of my favorite tips for busy professionals who just don’t seem to have the time to get into a writing groove.

10 minutes of audio creates a blog that is about 2,500 words long.

So, after writing your outline for your blog post you could use an audio converter or record a video to transcribe your words to text to include in your blog post.

Some tools I recommend are Google Docs and YouTube.

Let’s take a look at Google Docs first.

Head on over to Google Drive and click to create a new document. Better yet, you could create your outline as a Google Doc so you can add to it on the go if needed.

Under Tools, there is an option for Voice typing (Ctrl+Shift+S).

Click this, start talking, and your document will start filling up with words.

Now when I do this speech to text, I do find that I need to edit the text as I go. I’ll talk for about 5 sentences, stop the recording, and then edit what was written. You may be able to do the entire document based off your outline and notes, however.

The iPhone speech to text works well, as well. I’ve actually ‘written’ blogs while out for walks with the girls, but Apple will stop transcribing every couple of minutes, so you need to make sure you don’t keep talking with nothing being written down.

I’m sure there is other software you can use that also records your audio for use in a Podcast. Or you can send the audio file off to Rev.com for transcription at $1/minute. Totally worthwhile if you have spent hours trying to get into writing, but not filling the page with any content.

The other option is to use YouTube to transcribe a video.

Using your computer camera or your phone, record yourself talking through the outline you created.

When you upload your video to YouTube, you may need to first verify your account (enter in your phone number in the settings) to post videos that are over 10 minutes long.

Typically, most of our clients who generate a transcription of their blog upload their videos as Unlisted or Private, though I am all for listing these videos as Public to get more of a reach – blogs with videos perform really well, YouTube is a search engine, and you can share your video to social media (always think of how you can repurpose your content as you create it). Make sure the space you are in looks professional if you also plan to publish the video as Public and include it in your blog post.

After you have uploaded your video, click in to edit it and find the link that says Subtitles/CC.

You will be prompted to select your language (I use English though at times I’m not sure).

Then, click under Published where English is listed again.

On the next screen you can download the subtitles created by YouTube as .srt.

I’m not sure what a .srt file actually is, but all you need to do is convert it to a .txt file online and you will be able to open it with your computer. In the past I’ve used Subtitle Tools for the conversion, though a Google search for “Convert .srt file to .txt for free” will work just fine.

The text that is created will be formatted a little strangely with about 7 words per line and no punctuation. Honestly, I get a little overwhelmed by this, but the ability to create the video and written blog in one go is well worth the effort to run through your post and edit it.

Your outline makes this easier as well.

You can work through small chunks and sections by pasting the text under the corresponding blog header. Please let me know if you often work through your transcripts, I’d love to feature more tips about converting a YouTube video into a blog post.

Again, if spending $10-$20 isn’t a problem, you can submit the video to Rev.com and utilize their transcription services.

Tip 6: Outsource your Blog Writing

We frequently outsource blog writing. I’ll keep this section short, but you can find experts in your industry who cost anywhere from $0.03 per word to $0.65 or more per word. So, depending on your budget and time you have available to provide an outline and edit your blog post, you may decide for yourself what budget for the blog writing really makes sense.

We utilize freelancers on Upwork.com and WritersAccess.com to find niche bloggers for our clients. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not an EMDR or Brainspotting expert, so why would I spend hours trying to write that blog post when someone else can write it for a fraction of the cost of my time to research.

Depending on your industry, you can also probably find Guest Bloggers who would write a post on your site for free if they can include their bio and a link back to their own website.

With Guest Bloggers, just make sure their content is unique and reserve the right to edit it slightly so the headers include your focus keywords and related keywords.

I love guest bloggers because they often then will share the link to their own networks or link to it from their website, which then in turn helps get new visitors to your website and helps in SEO.

Wrap Up

Writing a high quality, long blog post doesn’t need to be a difficult task. Depending on how you work you may find that you are better suited to transcribe and audio or video file rather than sitting down and typing.

The most important starting point for any blog, however, is to make sure that you create an outline. I just sat down and busted out this blog before 9am, but it is on a topic I am VERY familiar with (have you checked out our blogging course yet?).

You may not have time to finish a blog in one chunk, so be sure to batch your time to most effective and efficient.

What long blog posts are you working on writing? I’d love to check out your work!

Interested in learning more? Take a look at these articles:

Blogging in 2017 – The Startling Truth About Blogging

Blog SEO Checklist

4 Reasons Why Contests Should be a Part of Your Marketing Strategy

April 6, 2021/by Caitlin McDonald

Content Creation, Social Speak, Video, Video Marketing

How important is video marketing? We ask the experts

In our most recent podcast, we interview G. the Creative Director at B.Co Agency.

With over 11+ years in design and creative visuals, I have been able to study and learn the creative industry and the impact of having proper marketing tools. With my role as the Producer and Creative Director at B.Co Agency, it is my mission to continue to study, learn and produce for companies big and small to help their clients take action! My goal is to produce visual tools that can exponentially grow the company’s byways of video marketing.

Well, we have, as you all know, we talk about videos a lot and how important they are to your digital marketing strategy, especially after our wonderful year of 2020. I think people really realized how important they are and you have to have them. So we brought G on, we have some questions we’re gonna ask him today.

Tell us a little bit about you and your business –

My name is G, it’s short for Gagan. I have been in the creative industry for over… I wanna say 11 plus years now, and my background has been graphics and web design. But seeing how marketing was going and where my team was building, we started a video production company. And I’ve been in that industry for going on six years now. We just had our fifth year anniversary last month. So yeah, my company’s name is B.Co Creative Agency. And yeah, we do story-based advertising, we do a lot of commercial work, we do YouTube, Vimeo. We do videos for tech companies, we do videos for sports companies. We do… A huge range of our clients, but primarily focused on the tech world, on healthcare and startups and things of that nature. So yeah, that’s us.

Why is video so important to a client’s digital marketing strategy?

My personal philosophy and B.Co’s personal philosophy are always in four parts, in how I kind of break it down. And we’ve turned a lot of our clients away because they don’t have these four elements before they work with us. And those four elements are branding, website, content creation, and advertising. We kind of build that marketing house with our partners that we have, but those things are essential for the success of our clients. So branding, which… Branding and website are absolutely foundational, so if our clients do not have that, we actually partner with other marketing agencies such as yourself to handle that part of it. So without good branding and a good website, your content creation, which is where we play in the marketing world of video, that video cannot go as far without the proper foundational elements when it comes to marketing. So with that in mind, you’re doing yourself an injustice if you don’t have the proper content strategy. And the video is the most efficient and easiest to consume, the easiest to consume marketing tool out there to reach your clients.

Video is more important than having reading materials or photos, and it’s still the most effective way to market your audience to understand your messaging. And I believe it was Hootsuite who put out a stat from last year stating a survey that said about 70% of consumers would rather watch a video about your product. So to answer your question, if you’re trying to reach your audience in the most effective way then a video is absolutely, enormously important.

Yes, definitely. I liked how you start with the foundation because a lot of people jump in, they don’t have that strategy behind it, and they wanna create a video. With that one video, they want 50,000 views overnight, and it’s just not gonna happen. Unless you have a million dollars to spend on ads, and even then it may not happen.

How often should you update your videos on your website?

This is actually a really hard question to answer. Probably the right answer is, it depends, but I know people probably don’t like hearing that. Because it’s so specific to your industry and whatever campaigns you have out, you know what time of year you’ve been posting things, right? It depends also on what type of videos are on your website and where exactly. For example, an intro video about your company might last longer than say your fall collection of your clothing line would. There’s a time limit on it. I would say, as a blanket statement, you should update your videos on your site as often as you can or need to. I personally do not believe in evergreen content, even though some… Again, some videos might last longer than others.

The questions to that question I would ask are, are your clients changing, are your client’s interests changing, are your audiences consuming the same video over and over again and not seeing… Or you are seeing a drop in a wash rate or conversion? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then the answer is probably it’s time to update your video and your marketing agency or your marketing experts that you trust should have access to your analytics and they should be able to tell you when time is due for a new video.

Is it okay to record your own videos for social media use? Do you think there’s a difference between video quality on social media and website?

Generally speaking… I actually get this question asked a lot. Generally speaking, I believe not only is it okay, but sometimes even needed. Having you record video from your perspective gives you and your company character and personality, but I also believe your customers need to know that you are legitimate and your product or service is worth it, and that’s why you are a professional. So there has to be a mix of the two. The heart of this question usually stems from, do I need a video production company in the first place? Can I do it myself? And my answer to that is usually, “Yeah, try it.” If you need it to be cost-effective, then do it. Equipment is more and more affordable nowadays, but I would also say the majority of businesses or professionals who have come to us usually have tried to film themselves or have worked with less experienced video production companies. And currently, that’s where I’ll leave it at for that question there.

At what point or what types of videos should they really think about hiring a professional company like yourselves? When do you know it’s that time?

When you sent me these questions over, hiring a professional videographer is how you worded it, and I kinda wanted to… Part of it, as I believe I have probably answered this question above as well, but I wanna preface my answer by defining the difference between a professional videographer and a video production company or agency. And a videographer, by definition, is one person, and a videographer is someone who usually operates a camera. But what about an editor? What about a scriptwriter? A lot of people do these things all in one. There are a lot of one-man bands out there that wear a lot of these hats, which is great, and no knock against anyone who is hustling and grinding in that way, but generally those relationships are not long-lasting and because they are usually looking for the next gig or cannot stretch their capacity to make the types of videos or content that you might want out. What’s gonna happen when you have to operate two cameras? What’s gonna happen when you need a faster turnaround and this person has multiple projects asking the same thing?

Think about this. When you see credits to the next show or movie that you watch, granted a lot of businesses are not creating Hollywood blockbusters, but think about how many tasking experts are out there that need to complete this show or movie. There’s a reason why a commercial or show or movie have teams and teams of people. If you’re expecting a videographer to handle 0.01% of those tasks, you are sacrificing something somewhere.

Whether that be speed, cost, quality, or output, those one-man bands that are producing at a high level are very rare. So the difference in working with a video production company is that you are working with the video team. We are a production company. We hire for specific duties before we ever roll the camera, and they range from director level to editors or animation teams. And we’ve already taken the time to connect with the assets or resources to produce at a high level, or get your message across and connect with your audience. So to answer your question, so when to hire, it is when you have tried it yourself when you have worked with the one-man band, and the message is not coming across as needed or when you need your product or service to be thrown out in a wider net when you are ready to spend advertising dollars. These are just some of the whens you should hire those professionals, but the real answer is as soon as possible. Because most likely your competitors are doing video, 50% of your audience is online daily and 70% of America is online weekly. And those numbers are specifically during the pandemic. Video is becoming more and more of a need rather than a nice to have, due to the ease of access of info, and you want to get your message out there again quickly and in the most effective way.

I think you bring up a great point as far as that team because if anyone has tried to edit their own videos, oh my gosh, it’s painful and that alone is a lot. It’s just as you’re hiring a digital marketing team, it’s not just me at Social Speak. We have a whole team of people that have that special niche in what they do. And so video production is no different, and I think that that sometimes can get people… They can be a little scared to jump into it because as soon as they hear the video, they think of dollar signs. But when you break it down to those videos that they are producing, if it’s able to bring them in patients or clients or customers in their door, then it pays for themselves. I think that’s something that people really need to think of. With video being as big as it is, and it’s not going anywhere, and I think the pandemic really showed that it’s even more important because that’s how people are connecting. If you’ve been putting it off, the time is now to do it.

How do you think that these videos help streamline a company’s brand?

As you mentioned, we’ve talked about some of the elements already based on the stats that are out there. Again, 50% of your audience is online daily and 70% of America is online weekly. But to streamline, by definition, is to be the most effective and your consumers want an easy way to consume. Whichever company takes it easy or makes it easy, rather, or is more visually engaging or a company is effective in conveying their brand messaging is going to win. And to be quite honest, video can do all of that. To have videos in your strategy, I would say is streamlining your business [chuckle] and your brand itself. To have video is to streamline. To be more effective, to reach your audience, isn’t that what you want to do?

Yes. It really adds that, again, going back to that question, one of the foundations. You have your website, you have your social media. You start with your logo and your brand colors and all of that and then add the video into the mix, it really allows your brand to step outside the box and just live its fullest potential, adding in these different types of videos.

Right. Absolutely. Actually, this is one point I wanted to go back on. You mentioned dollar signs in the previous question.

My immediate thought process was also, what is the opportunity cost of not having video? Again, those competitors are out there doing it and going back to streamlining, those things go hand-in-hand. You wanna get, again, your message out and show the product or service that you have to the world. That is the most effective way and if you’re not doing that, then you’re missing out on something there.

How has the pandemic affected the filming process and is it something that businesses need to worry about?

This definitely is a topical question, obviously. The film industry has taken a hit because filming is such an art form that it thrives off collaboration. The fact that you have to gather and film, the pandemic has made filming obviously very difficult. And we were stuck in that same wave early last year as well. And I was lucky enough to have partners who had specific insight early on the pandemic which led us to think about how to counter that. We have certain protocols now that help us gather and film, but what inspired us to make these protocols were actually Apple. They were continuing their famous keynotes but converted to videos instead of having live audiences attend. People who know me personally, I’m a huge fan of Apple, so, of course, I watched their pandemic presentation, their latest, greatest releases. But what intrigued me was their end credits which also specified how they filmed their pandemic keynotes.

I looked at those and thought of those precautions that they took. To be quite honest, they’re not hard or difficult to execute. So our protocols essentially became the same as Apple’s. We took those and the ordinances that were made by our county in Santa Clara and our industry, and merged those with those of Apple’s. And out came B.Co’s protocols. So I guess my final advice would be, when you are looking to hire a video professional or a production team, to be safe is, ask for their safety protocols. The last thing you want is your marketing efforts to kinda lead to health problems [chuckle] which that obviously is not what you want there. So there are plenty of other high-stress situations specifically that comes to marketing, but COVID should definitely not be one of them.

As people are recording and doing their own videos, I know the iPhones are of great quality, we use Zoom a lot for our interviews. What types of tools or tips can you give people that are recording on their own?

This goes actually not even to people who are doing it themselves but even the camera operators or directors that are coming up, is focus less on the equipment that you have and focus more on the story that you’re trying to tell. Because, as you mentioned, literally every camera phone that’s out there has a great and amazing camera on it. So it’s hard to mess up on the camera, the lenses that you have at your disposal. The only thing, if it does come to equipment and it does come to what it looks like in front of the lens, is definitely focused more on the lighting aspect of it. If something is less lit, then it’s just harder and less appealing. You want something that is either dramatically lit or well lit. Generally, those, from what I have experienced, go further as far as likes go on your Instagram. I think there was another stat by Hootsuite that said people are more likely to like a clearer, more well-lit picture versus the opposite. So focus on the story and make sure you have good lighting and yeah, use your phone. Absolutely.

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March 9, 2021/by Amber Irwin

Healthcare Marketing, Social Speak

Digital Marketing Tips for Family Practice

Digital marketing tips for a family practice

In today’s blog, we’re going to dive into a digital marketing strategy for a family practice.

Be a resource.

It’s really important to make sure that you are sharing valuable content that your patients and potential patients want to know about, and this can be through social media, blogging, and curated content. When you’re using social media to be a resource, you wanna make sure that you are sharing different kinds of content. Think of what your patients are into, what questions they’re asking. If they’re asking you questions about the pandemic, about kids with COVID, answer those questions. You can do that by, creating an image on Canva and then writing content around it. You can do it by a quick little five-minute video answering some questions that your patients have been asking utilizing social media to be in front of your audience and with social media.

Social Media Ideas

We mentioned videos, also talk about patient stories, ask your patients if they’re willing to share their story if they’ve been coming to you for one condition and they are healing and getting better, and they want to share that story, or maybe they brought their child into your family practice with something and you helped them. Get those patients’ stories. How have you been able to change their lives and get them back to the life they had before they had come into your office? The other one is being able to highlight your employees and your staff, your nurses, your front desk, your doctors, and I think that this is really a turning point for Family Practice marketing, because when your patients, especially now with telehealth, they wanna know who they’re going to see, and they wanna know if they’re coming into the office, that they’re gonna be safe, and especially during these times, reiterating to them that you are taking the right protocols to make sure that they remain safe and you and your staff remain safe.

Highlighting the staff is great because they can see who they are and learn more about their personal life. Do they have kids? Do they have pets? Who are the nurses? Who are the doctors? Highlight somebody every week, and you can do that again just by making a little collage of images, maybe just one of them at the front desk, one of them with their family or their pets. What do they like to do outside of work? Allow those relationships to really start being built by highlighting them on social media. You could also have them do a quick one-minute video. It’s great like this is a great way to utilize social media to really highlight what you guys are or what you guys do and who you are.

Blogging

The other part of being a good resource is having a blog. Blogging is so important, and again, as a family practice, you can cover so many different topics if you just listen to your patients. What are they dealing with? You could have different categories for your blog to be a resource. Once you have that written blog post on your website, that’s social media content that you can then share, your video or your blog post can also be a video, and so think about if it’s easier for you to sit in front of your computer and record a blog. You can also give a transcription ordered of that video, so you have the written content and the video content.

We do this a lot for ourselves and also our clients because you’re killing two birds with one stone. It makes so much sense. If you’re not naturally a writer or you simply don’t have the time, and if you are not hiring a digital marketing agency like ours, sometimes it’s just easier to sit down in front of the computer record and get it done with, and you don’t even have to use a video, you can just use the transcription if you want to. So under being a resource, social media, blogging.

Curated Content.

This is sharing content from sources that you know, like, and trust, so this can be… If you are looking at WebMD, this could be the CDC website with all of the new information that’s coming out on COVID, maybe talking about the vaccines of your area is one of the areas that’s providing them, or you have news tips being able to provide information outside of your original content. This can also be local news. So you are, as a family practice, in this geographical area that maybe you may reach 25-mile radius, so you wanna show that you are involved in the community. So you may wanna highlight if there are new things in your area that are opening or fun safe family activities to do on the weekends, just letting, again, letting your audience know that you’re a resource.

Be Found Online

The second big tip for your digital marketing strategy is being found online. Now, this is really important. We’ve talked about this a few times, making sure that you have claimed your directory listings.

Directory Listings

This can be your WebMD listing, your vitals, your health grades, Google My Business, also just making sure your social media links are all updated that you have one account per social media platform, and also making sure that your website content is updated as well and that contact information is correct. Sometimes we change a phone number or we change something that we forget to then update it everywhere and especially, if you don’t utilize that social platform as much and especially Google My Business if you’re not using that and you haven’t updated it, make sure you take a look and do your due diligence of making sure everything that’s reflecting your practice is updated online.

SEO Strategy

This also ties into your SEO strategy. Making sure you have a strong website presence and that you do have a strong SEO team that’s building that back-end because your audience is going to Google, they’re searching, and so you wanna make sure that you are pulling up for those keywords.

Email Marketing

Number three, the big next digital marketing strategy is email marketing. Email marketing is not dead. This is still a great way to stay top of mind with your current patients because again, they may not come in on a regular checkup, they just may come in if something’s wrong, but you can keep them up-to-date with things that are outside of what you’re posting on social media.

Newsletters

You can do an exclusive doctor interview or FAQ video, and put that just in your newsletter. You can also have an email signup on your newsletter, maybe even offer depending on the season.

Updates and Freebies

You could offer a freebie for them to download, maybe top five remedies for allergy season or 10 healthy snacks for kids age five and over, something along those lines where your audience wants to sign up, they get that freebie, you’re collecting those names and emails. This can be, if you’re giving away a freebie, this could be a lead generation, which we’ll get into, but you’re collecting those names and emails for them to go on to your email list, you have a consistent plan of sending them a monthly newsletter, and then they say oh, I need a new physician. I know where to go, I get their newsletters, I love them. I feel like I already know them. And in the door, they come.

Website Functionality

The fourth digital marketing strategy tip is your website. So it is really, really important that you make sure you have a user-friendly, up-to-date website. It is 2021 and in 2020, we learned a lot about the pandemic and making sure that we had the telehealth implemented into your strategy, that your website is… Your patients can go on there and book an appointment, whether they come in or it’s a telehealth consultation, they… On there, there’s a patient portal, so it’s easy for them to use, to go in and they feel safe to type in all of their information, it’s a secure site that it’s HIPAA compliant, and especially, you may still have, in your patient portal, the new client paperwork, it could still have an option to be printed if you have the older demographics that may not be tech-savvy to fill that out online, but being able to have the option to fill it out online or they can print it and bring it into you.

Have your website looked over by a website expert, see how you can improve your site, making sure you have your blog on there, your social media, about us, you’re highlighting your doctors, you have a strong back-end with SEO, and that when patients come to the site, they understand where to go, that is key. A lot of times and if you’re monitoring your website traffic with Google Analytics, if your bounce rate is really high, over 80%, that means people are coming to your site and leaving quickly because they’re not finding what they need. With Google Analytics, you can also monitor where people are coming from, but also how long are they spending on your website. Are they reading the blog, are they looking at your… If you treat certain conditions and each condition has a page, what page are they staying on and where are they going, making sure that you do have a Contact Us area and that you monitor that.

Patients may be putting in information there, and if you don’t have that right system in place to know where those emails are going, you could be missing out on, not only your current patients and building that relationship with them, but potential patients as well, so just doing that website overview and making sure that is up-to-date is huge.

Lead Generation

Number five for our digital marketing strategy tips is lead generation. So everything that we’ve talked about has really been organic. Social media, you’re creating the content, you’re creating the videos unless you pay for a digital marketing agency to do that, all of these things are things you’re gonna be doing in-house for organic reach. One way to increase and step up your game from your efforts is doing some paid advertising on Facebook and on Google AdWords.

Google AdWords are great for that search engine optimization. So as you do your keyword analysis, then you would make sure that you’re ranking for those keywords, so when somebody types in family physician near me, your ads would show up, your Google My Business listings would show up, so making sure you have that strong Google AdWord campaign running and also Facebook ads. Again, that kinda goes back to number three of email marketing. If you have that freebie, we call that a lead generation tool, that’s something that we can create a landing page for. We can promote on social media, and we’re going to collect names and emails of people that are interested in that freebie, then we’re allowed to market towards them and they’re able to… They see oh, they’re a family physician, this is what they do, and they get the freebie and we stay top of mind with them.

With Facebook ads, it’s also important to run a like campaign to make sure that you’re reaching more people in your demographic, that… And especially in your geographical location, because again, if you have multiple practices, you want a campaign running for each practice or each area, because you wanna make sure that you’re reaching those people within a 25-mile radius, and so lead generation is a really important piece. I wouldn’t start there if you don’t have these other things in place first. Lead generation is kind of the cherry on top, and you wanna make sure you have built that foundation and all these other things are working together before you start your lead generation.

If you need help creating and implementing this digital marketing strategy for your family practice we are here to help you. Click here for a free 30-minute consultation.

January 27, 2021/by Amber Irwin

Growth Prompts, Social Media, Social Media, Social Speak

How to Build Your Followers on Social Media

Today we are going to talk about growing followers organically on social media. This is something that our clients ask all the time: “How do I increase my followers? How do I increase my followers?” And you can do it organically. We’re gonna talk about Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn company pages today, okay so we have a lot to cover.

Twitter

With your Twitter account, you need to make sure you are tweeting consistently. So whatever that schedule is, make sure you’re sticking to it. Maybe it’s one time a day, two times a day, three times a day. Optimize your posting time, so try different times. Thinking of your ideal client or patient, when are they home? Usually, Twitter’s always done by your mobile device, so most likely they’re on Twitter from their phone, so think of lunches, break times, maybe if your patients are parents, maybe later in the evening. Get creative with that posting time. It doesn’t always have to be 9:00 to 5:00. It could be at 6:00 AM, it could be 9:00 PM. So playing around with those posting times and seeing where, what times, and what days you’re getting the most engagement. You may be thinking, okay because you’re open Monday through Friday that that’s when you need to post, but maybe doing weekend posts is a great idea as well.

Post visual content. So Twitter used to be just all text. It doesn’t have to be now. Upload images, upload videos, make it eye-appealing, and utilize hashtags. We will put in the description below different hashtag tools to help you, but Twitter and Instagram, even LinkedIn, they thrive off of those hashtags, and you can follow different hashtags. People are always searching certain hashtags, and those are the people they follow. So look for those hashtags, follow the people that are utilizing those hashtags, make sure that you are Retweeting. So have a list of people in your industry that are like-minded. Not necessarily competition, but maybe it’s news articles. So if you are a OB-GYN, you may wanna look at the Women’s Health Magazine and Retweet stories that they’re posting. Look at those resources and make sure that you are utilizing those Retweets because then their audience will start to see you as well.

One great thing with all social media is that famous little search button on every single social media platform, whether it’s in the right-hand corner or in the middle, up top. Usually, it’s always up top. With Instagram, there’s a search icon when you open up the mobile app and search for certain people. If you are looking for… If your office is only within a 25-mile radius in that location, search for people in that location. Start following more people, and set a goal to maybe follow 20 people per week. One thing with all platforms and this is just a personal preference, but when you’re following people, don’t go follower happy, okay, and what I mean by that is you’ll look at some accounts and they’ll say they’re following 1000 people, but they only have 60 followers. Well, that ratio, it just seems kind of spammy, so when you start growing your followers, follow people, but do ’em in low numbers. So follow maybe five a day, 20 per week. Figure out what that looks like and make sure that those people are following you back. The more people that you follow that are in your niche, in your target market, they’re more likely to follow you back. Okay. So those are just a few tips for Twitter.

Instagram

Let’s go into Instagram. So again, you’ll see these… The same tips are, again, staying consistent, making sure that you’re posting at least once a day on Instagram, utilizing different content, trying live videos, doing Instagram stories, doing Instagram TV, along with just your regular posts. Share content from other users. So it’s user-generated content, so mentioning them, “This is a great article or a great story from so-and-so,” and make sure that you are collaborating with others. So thinking of your referral partners, is there a way where you guys can share a post every week or a couple of posts per month? How can you work with your referral partners on a much bigger scale to be able to help grow each other’s social media? Look at your analytics. Find out… Instagram does a great job with letting you know who’s looking at your posts, what days are your best days and what times, and then also your demographics. So where are they at, are they male, female, what stories are getting the most engagement? So paying attention to your analytics so you can make sure you’re giving that content back to them and that they are engaging with it.

Engage with your fans. Every follower you have… And again, you can search for your target market and follow them, engage with them, take the time to like their posts, to comment on them. Also look at those resources, those same people that you are gonna be retweeting on Twitter or sharing stories on Facebook, look at what they’re posting and start commenting on it because if they are a resource that you like, again, if it’s Women’s Health Magazine, and you start commenting on their stuff on Instagram, their followers are gonna see those comments as well. So being active and engaging with these platforms is a great way to be able to increase your followers. Again, it takes time. It’s not gonna be an overnight success by any means, but to have somebody that’s dedicated to your social media to make sure that they are reaching those correct people, that is key.

Facebook

Facebook, you can always invite your friends to like your page. So that’s always a great starting point. And then really with Facebook having your icon on, and all your social media icons and your email signature, having a sign at the front desk, follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, you know, because each person is gonna have that social media platform that they like, and they trust, and that’s kind of their go-to. So giving them the option of where they wanna follow you and engage with you as great.

So being able to put those signs up there, you know, on your marketing materials, but then with Facebook, working on having a little bit of ad spend, and you’ll see with especially with LinkedIn, as we get into that, you know, running those targeted ads, and having like campaigns following, follow our campaigns running, that’s where we’ve been able to see the most growth with our clients. And again, this is a paid feature, this isn’t an organic feature.

Start by inviting your friends and family to like your page. You’re always gonna have more friends because that’s where you most likely started doing Facebook was having a personal profile, and then you created your business page. So you could also have your employees of your company, also invite people to like the Facebook page. So consistency, inviting and then working on some of the paid options of boosting and running a paid like campaign to reach your target market.

Going into LinkedIn, so you have your LinkedIn profile, and LinkedIn company pages are really growing. LinkedIn, what they’re doing with their platform I mean, it’s huge. And it’s a great b2b tool. So again, thinking of those referral partners, and inviting them to like the page, inviting your contacts to like your page, adding your employees to your page. And so they can say, “Okay, but it’s not just this one person, but they have a whole team and what their roles are.

Then for them to share the page to their personal profile, and for them to invite their contacts to like that page. So that process is really important too, is really to get your employees involved with your LinkedIn company page. And so that’s a great way to grow your followers organically with LinkedIn, you know, utilizing LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups as well, finding those targeted groups, being able to… Now with Facebook, you can share your content from your business page into a group, which is awesome. With LinkedIn, you can’t, but you can still post and be able to mention the company page.

Utilizing those LinkedIn groups, inviting your connections to like, following the page, and sharing your content from the company page to your personal profile, as well, is a great way to grow those followers organically.

YouTube

So last but not least, is YouTube. YouTube is a little bit different. It’s not so much of a social media platform, as it is more of a search engine. And really, that’s what it is. It is a video search engine. Google owns YouTube. So having videos on there is great for your SEO as well.

A few things to help your channel be found and to increase those subscribers to your channel is making sure you’re utilizing playlists and that they’re clear. So when people go there, they can see what type, what categories, and that’s really what the playlists are, they are categories that you have of different videos. Publishing longer videos, so having a mix between short tips, you know those three to five-minute videos, and then the longer ones that are 10 plus minutes that are really educating your audience on certain topics.

You know, maybe again, I always like to use the OB-GYN’s example, you know, maybe you’re talking about a eating plan for a pregnant woman or a birth plan or certain tips. These videos can be longer because they’re going to be educational. Maybe you’ll put together a PowerPoint presentation, and you’re walking through that as you’re talking. So publishing 10-plus minute videos is a great way to increase your subscribers.

Promoting your videos on an end-screen. Using those options that YouTube gives you, it will say end screen, you can say subscribe to our channel there, it will also allow you to promote your… Like another playlist, or if you’re doing a video that’s specific to that playlist, you want them to stay in that loop of that playlist. And so utilizing those tools to be able to do that.

Reply to every comment, if you get comments, and a lot of them, not a lot of them, but some of them can be spam. And just, you know, like it, but reply to the comments that need to be… That need to have a reply because those are gonna be the people that are gonna subscribe to your channel. Another one is just making sure your channel’s optimized completely. So having a tagline with your channel, making sure you have your channel app up top, and it’s clear and that they can… YouTube does this where it will show you what it’s gonna look like on a computer, on a TV because smart TVs people are watching YouTube all the time from their TV, and then what it’s gonna look like on their mobile device.

So you wanna make sure that that header is clear so when they come to it, it’s not cut off on every device that they are watching your videos from. They know exactly who it is. Making sure that you have a clear description, that your contact information, your website is in there, so they can reach you if they need to from your channel, but then also each video making sure you have that clear description, that keyword friendly title, the tag words, you know, making sure you have a YouTube thumbnail.

Just going through that little checklist to make sure everything is filled out correctly with your channel and your videos. Then also when you’re doing these videos, we always take our video and we put it onto YouTube and then we take the code from YouTube and we embed our videos into our blog post, which is a great way to get viewers to watch your videos, promote them on social media, have a video within your email signature, use them in your newsletters, people love listening and watching videos. So being able to utilize them in multiple places and having them link back to YouTube is a great way to be able to grow your subscribers.

I know we covered a lot today, if you need help putting together this strategy, this… And again, what we talked about today was really looking at that organic growth. You can run ads on all of these platforms to increase your followers and that we do help our clients with both the organic growth and the paid growth to make sure that you’re reaching your target market. If you need help with that and would like to talk more about the increasing your followers on all these platforms, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and click on free consultation.

Schedule your 30-minute free consultation today.

October 28, 2020/by Amber Irwin

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