Chances are you’re starting to shoot a lot more video to support your social media marketing efforts. Lately, here at My Social Practice, many of our clients are asking us the question, “For maximum effectiveness, should we be uploading our videos to YouTube or to Facebook?”
Our answer is, “It depends…”
Determining The Video’s Primary Objective
When making a determination about where to post the video, the first thing you should ask yourself is, “What was the objective for shooting the video in the first place, and what ‘type’ of video content is it?” We’ve found that there are three general categories of video content.
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The Three General Categories of Video Content in Dental Practice Marketing
We refer to the first category of video content as “Evergreen” content. Evergreen content is primarily about longer-term branding than it really is about marketing. The second category of content is referred to as “Campaign” content, which is more marketing-centric than branding-centric. And the third category of video content is called “Transitory”. Transitory content is more evaporative and perishable.
A typical Evergreen video may be a general introduction to the practice and the team. It may be an office tour, or a video that highlights testimonials and endorsements from current patients. Often, Evergreen videos are embedded on a website’s homepage or About page.
As the name suggests, Campaign videos often focus on short-term marketing awareness, an event, a charity effort, or something else that highlights your practice culture. These kinds of videos may focus on the activities of team members, or they’re designed to get patients and prospective new patients to participate in something. These kinds of videos often get great viral engagement on Facebook.
Transitory videos are often very short, candid and short-lived. They also include “live” video streaming. Mori Orthodontics is one of our remarkably savvy clients that produces a lot of video content. In the case shown below, they did a little contest where they offered a prize for the best original jingle someone could create and perform about the practice!
Uploading And Sharing Your Dental Practice Marketing Videos
Now, keep in mind that there’s not an absolute, definitive way to do this. You can categorize your video content any way that makes the most sense to you. We just offer this as a suggested framework based on our experience working with thousands of practices. If you have a better way of thinking this through, let us know in the comments below. We love learning from our clients and fans!
Once you’ve determined which of the three categories described above best fits your video, it’s easier to know where to upload it first.
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If you consider your content Evergreen, we suggest that the best place to upload it first is to YouTube. As you may know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google. Uploading your video to YouTube gives you a golden opportunity to optimize it for search. Here is an example of Evergreen content by Mori Orthodontics:
Most of the time, after you’ve uploaded your Evergreen video to YouTube, we suggest that you upload it to Facebook as well. You may be thinking, “Can’t I just copy the YouTube link and paste it in on Facebook?” Well, you could do that, but there are three pretty good reasons not to. First, the video simply doesn’t look as good in the newsfeed. Second, the video doesn’t autoplay when people scroll by. And third, viewer will often see distracting YouTube ads when they watch your video on Facebook. So our suggestion is to go ahead and upload the original video directly to Facebook. Often, this type of Evergreen content may be the kind of video that you’ll want to designate as your “Featured Video” on your Facebook Video tab.
When it comes to more marketing-centric Campaign videos, the best place to upload them first is to Facebook. Again, here’s an example from our awesome client, Mori Orthodontics:
Like many of Mori Orthodontics’ videos, this one got great engagement and viral sharing on Facebook.
After you’ve uploaded Campaign videos to Facebook, if you’d like, it’s fine to upload them to your YouTube channel as well.
And finally, the more perishable Transitory videos should probably just be uploaded to your Facebook page. Of course it’s up to you whether or not you want to also upload these to YouTube… But for the most part, we typically don’t see much value in doing that.
Keep Shooting Dental Practice Marketing Videos From Each Category
There are no real hard-set rules about how to best upload and distribute your video content. These are suggestions we have based on all the experience we have with client practices across the country and around the world. However you choose to distribute your video content, keep shooting videos! They’re an important part of effective social media marketing.
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About the Author: Jack Hadley is a dental marketing expert and one of the founding members of My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a digital dental marketing company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Jack is passionate about helping dental practices grow. If you’d like to book Jack or one of the other members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of SEO for dentists, our dental websites service? Learn More Here.
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