Digital communication is becoming more visual every day. And the power of video to help communicate about your practice is another way you can more dynamically convey your expertise to current and prospective patients.

Education videos have a special purpose, which is to help explain eyecare and eyewear related topics to visitors to your website. These videos are typically placed on a special section of a website (i.e. labeled Education Library). It is a good idea to have references to specific videos in content in other parts of the website with hyperlinks to that video. This not only lets website visitors know that the video content is available on the site, but promotes more engagement (encourages website visitors to click on something). Search engines love to see internal links on a website and as a result will reward you with improved search engine results.

Practitioners use short educational videos to explain eye conditions to patients as well as to enhance their reputations and build connections. Here are some examples (l to r) : Schaeffer Eye Center, Barnet-Dulaney-Perkins Eye Center and Dr. David Chang.

It is also a good idea to put educational videos on social media sites. This can be done as permanent content on the site and/or as a post. A good place to put these videos, for example, is on Facebook tabs. Did you know that you can have internal pages on a business Facebook page? These internal pages can be found by clicking on the Tabs section of a Facebook timelines layout (see inset). These tabs are a terrific place to put videos, especially educational videos. (More about Facebook Tabs in Part 3 of this series). Use a third-party software company, like Tabsite.com to create the content for a Facebook tab (or internal page) and then automatically upload that page to your Facebook page.

Many suppliers can provide video content to help ECPs educate patients via their websites or Facebook pages. This series of short videos is from Transitions Optical's Eyeglass Guide, via simple uploads on their YouTube page.

Examples of Educational Videos - Here are some examples of practices that are using educational videos on their website:

  • Schaeffer Eye Center: This multi-location optometric practice in Alabama uses a combination of professionally developed videos and doctor-produced videos. See here how they have created an entire educational library of videos to describe common eye conditions.
  • Barnet-Dulaney-Perkins Eye Center: This busy multi-location practice in Arizona uses video in several ways on their website; Video Education Library, patient testimonials and doctor interview format. Visit the site to see how they are using video to communicate and educate.
  • Dr. David Chang: This MD practice specializes in the treatment of cataracts. This website has a video about cataracts that starts playing as soon as you come to the home page. Watch how Dr. Chang uses video to start the education process as a cornerstone of his website.

How/Where to Get Educational Videos

  • Professionally produced: There are several companies that have professionally produced educational videos available to put on your web properties (subscription based). One is EyeMaginations with a wide selection of videos on a variety of eyecare topics. You can customize which videos show up on your website.
    Another company that has professionally produced videos is Glacial Multimedia. See how they produced a customized educational video for Thomas Eye Group.
  • Vendors: Frame and lens vendors are a great source to get professionally developed video content that can be embedded on a website or social media platform. Typically, they will have the videos posted on their YouTube channel that you (or your webmaster) can embed on your website. A great example of non-commercial educational videos that are available from a vendor is the YouTube channel, Eyeglass Guide. This channel has several videos professionally produced by Transitions.
    You can also see a short video from ECPWebCoach on how to embed a YouTube video on your site.
  • Do-it-yourself: There are many examples on YouTube of how easy it is to create a video without expensive equipment or video production experience. The key is to do a bit of research on how to shoot a nonprofessional video and then simply go for it. After you have shot and edited the video, upload it on YouTube (or other video platform such as Vimeo.com). To get several tips on how to shoot a video yourself, watch this YouTube video.
    Harvey and Lewis Opticians has created a range of "home-made" educational videos which are posted on their YouTube channel.

Click Puts Video in Focus

The value of video within your website and used on your Facebook page can be significant. It's not as difficult or expensive as you might think. The return on investment and effort is good.

CLICK has several resources to help ECPs learn more about the potential of video. See contributor Bob Main's recent post on CLICK which takes you through the basics: How To Use Video To Help Grow Your Practice.

A Few Additional Tips

  • One reason to use educational videos is to get the attention of search engines so they will show your educational content high in search engine results. However, the search engines cannot tell what the topic/content of a video is unless some special coding is put in the website HTML code (i.e. ALT tags, video sitemaps, etc.). It is best to work with your webmaster to insure all of videos are properly identified with this backend coding.
  • You don't need expensive equipment to shoot videos yourself. In fact, the cameras on the latest versions of smartphones are pretty good and can be used if special attention is paid to the audio part of the video.
  • Use an editing program to put that final touch on your self-produced video. There are many great video editing programs, but most can be expensive and complicated to use. I have used Camtasia by Techsmith for years and have found it to be easy to use with all of the editing features necessary to produce a quality video. They have a trial period to make sure you are comfortable with the program before committing to purchase it.

Educational Videos can be a powerful addition to your website or Facebook page. And you can spend as much or as little as your budget will allow to be able to get great educational video content. So give it a shot (pardon the pun), do some homework by using the resource links in this article and start using educational videos to help grow your practice.

Bob Main is an optical industry veteran, with over 35 years of experience in the eyecare industry with the last 10 years specifically focused on the internet and social media. Main is the Head Coach and Founder of ECPWebCoach.com; an education company that teaches ECPs how to use the internet and social media to grow their practice. He can be reached at bobmain@ECPWebCoach.com.