Creating a successful YouTube channel for your practice

Whether you use your practice’s website or a personal site, each video you produce should link back to that location. You can connect videos to your website in many ways:

• In the description section of each video

• On the Channel page, where visitors can pick from all your videos

• In the introduction and throughout the video itself

• By embedding your videos on your own website

A professional-looking profile image is reassuring to visitors that the channel is maintained and created by a real person. Most people are suspicious of a doctor who claims to be an expert but doesn’t show what he or she looks like.

Even most iPhone and smartphone cameras take high-resolution pictures. You can spend as much or as little as you want to do this.

I recommend physicians use the same picture across all online media: Facebook, Twitter, website, YouTube, etc.

Most search engine experts believe this may have implications for how Google ranks your pages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Google can recognize a profile picture across your "web properties." More consistency likely leads to higher rankings.

Spend some time using YouTube as a search engine.

Look for YouTube channels with videos on subjects your patients will be interested in. You’ll get ideas for future videos and can subscribe to these channels for updates when new videos are posted.

If you need ideas for what to post on your practice blog or your Facebook page, try posting a simple link to one of these videos and make some comments about it. Agree, disagree, or use it as a springboard to educate your patients on another related topic. You can do this even if you haven’t made any videos yourself.

It’s easy to connect your YouTube channel videos to your Facebook account, Twitter account, and other social media sites.

For example, if you follow a few dozen colleagues or peers within your specialty on Twitter (which I highly recommend), you can share your posted videos with them automatically by linking YouTube and Twitter together.

Every time you create a video, a Tweet is automatically posted, announcing your video’s existence. Your video then reaches hundreds or thousands of peers and/or potential patients if your colleagues share your video with their followers.

In advertising, this is called a "call to action," or CTA. Never create a video without a message at the end telling your viewer what action to take.

This could be as simple as, "For more information about topic X, visit our website at..."

For a more sophisticated technique, you can tell potential patients to download a free guide on a clinical topic on a certain website. If you have this set up correctly, you can follow up with them over e-mail with even more detailed information.

YouTube offers free tracking and analytics features built right into your account.

Statistics like viewers per month, number of subscribers to your channel, and where viewers looked at your videos (desktop versus mobile), are calculated for you.

It’s important to track visitor traffic on your website as well. If your most complete educational information is on your own practice website, you’ll want to get people to visit the site after they watch your video.

Google Analytics is a free product that tracks visitors to your website, and can tell you how many visitors came to your website from a site like YouTube.

Use this information to guide future video and article creation.

Since my most popular video is on ganglion cysts, I should probably create more web pages and videos on similar subjects. I wouldn’t know this without the data Google provides.