7 Tips on Using Hospital Videos Strategically

Your hospital should be using video as part of a social media marketing campaign to capitalize on a huge opportunity to engage Web visitors and draw new traffic to your site. However, there are certain things you want to consider.

Videos make your website more interesting and helpful for visitors. And, most importantly, videos help viewers make a personal connection to your facility and doctors. Posting brief doctor introductions or video tours of maternity rooms or pediatric floors demonstrates in a very powerful way that you care about the patient experience.

Examples of Good Hospital Videos

Consider this short but effective video tour of the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Pennsylvania. In just 2.5 minutes, viewers – likely parents – can clearly see this is a facility that prioritizes children, from the decorated elevators to playroom spaces and kid-level nurses stations. There’s no written description or single photo that can drive home that marketing message in the same way.
If you’re still not convinced, consider these stats about how video can help prospective patients find your site:

• Staying competitive is not just about Google hits anymore. YouTube is the third most-visited site in both the U.S. and worldwide, according to Alexa, a web information company
• When key words are used correctly, web pages with videos are 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of a Google search than those with only text, according to Forrester Research

Aha Media and Johns Hopkins Hospital Video Findings

When our company researched the use of video on Johns Hopkins Hospital’s website, we were amazed by our results. For example, when we tested users’ ability to remember a certain health fact that would help them lower their risk of diabetes, we found that 63% remembered what they read. But when we put video on the page, some users elected not to watch it, and when they did, their retainment rate fell. Only 20% who watched the video could remember the health fact, as opposed to 63% who had read it.

You can learn more about this study by watching our presentation on Slideshare: Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Healthcare Content Conundrum.

7 Ways to Make Hospital Videos More Effective

Whether video is a new marketing effort, or the videos you have aren’t working hard enough, these best practices will ensure you are getting the most out of your video content:

1. Content matters: Don’t upload videos for the sake of having video on your site. If viewers watch one video that isn’t helpful, they are less likely to watch others.

2. Complement, don’t substitute: Videos should never replace webpage text. Don’t rely on video to communicate key patient information, because not everyone watches videos or finishes them. In health care, the best videos provide a personal connection. Take a look at this video introducing the chief radiologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. It adds value by allowing viewers to hear him talk about how he works with patients. It should not, however, replace any text page about him (listing his title, degrees, contact info, etc.) or about the radiation department.

3. Keep it short: Aim for videos that last 2-3 minutes, quick and to the point. Videos any longer don’t hold the viewer’s attention.

4. Brand the video: Don’t forget your hospital’s name and logo! Viewers who arrive at the video via Google or YouTube should know right away this is your video. Keep your logo at the bottom of the screen throughout, or display it prominently in both opening and closing credits.

5. Remember SEO: Those same search-engine optimization rules governing text titles and keywords still apply to videos. How you name and tag everything matters. Be clear and concise in your descriptions: creative and catchy won’t work on Google.

6. Share videos on YouTube: Posting your video on YouTube makes it highly visible to your audience and allows the video to be easily shared by viewers. Create a YouTube channel for your hospital’s videos and include clear titles, descriptions and tags to make yours videos easy to locate in search. In addition, include a link back to your hospital URL (i.e. “Learn more at [your hospital URL].”) in the description. These links allow the viewer to find your website, and also add authority to your video so that Google ranks it higher in search results.

7. Remind users to take action.  Think "Lights, Camera, Take Action." You want the video to tell you where to go after you've watched it, so users can continue to engage with your brand.

How you found an effective video strategy? If so, please share in the comments below or give us examples of other hospital videos you've enjoyed.

What we cry about when we cry about Whitney Houston

I found out about Whitney Houston's passing from this world under the same circumstances she entered mine: sitting in a car with girlfriends. Things were obviously different; one of my friends was driving--not her mother--and I was able to do a search on my phone to find out about her death, not pray for her song to come on the radio again in the next hour.

At first I accepted it mildly. We all knew she has been on the edge for years. Why was I surprised she had fallen off today? And yet, as I watched her videos and performances, I grew increasingly more despondent, so much so that my 9-year old had to comfort me. And through all the tears, I asked myself why? Why did I find her death so affecting?

Having experienced Michael Jackson's death, I knew that when we mourn a celebrity we are grieving our own mortality, as well as our youth. And what a prominent role she played in my youth! She's always been there--as the girl with the crush, as the glamorous movie star, as the one that promised me that I, as a child, was the future.

But there was more than that about Whitney. She was the everygirl--the one who sang about boys, and love and breakups. She was worried about the same things we were worried about. How will we know if he really loves us, Whitney? She was asking us, because we know about these things! (Hint: He will not hand you a crack pipe.)

Beyond her joyous pop songs and made for dancing around your room with your hairbrush as a mike music, she had a voice that made you believe in a God who handed those voices out once every generation. Though she had peers, there was an effortless, magical, joyous quality to her singing. She commanded the stage, the angels in Heaven and all of us when she sang.

After explaining her marriage and her drug use to my daughter (the most organic just say no parental lecture, ever), my insightful child asked me "If she had so much, why didn't she love herself on the inside?" In other words, why didn't she have the greatest love of all?

While I can't answer her question, I do think she answered mine. We cry about Whitney Houston because we don't understand why someone gifted with so much would also have so many demons. When we saw Whitney perform, she seemed to have everything, but clearly there were dark shadows tormenting her dreams.

Now when we watch Whitney sing, we know the tragedy of her death. We glimpse what should have been, what could have been. And for that we mourn and cry, like we mourn and cry when anything is tragic: it so easily could have been different, should have been different and yet, is exactly the opposite of the way we wanted it to be.

3 Tools You Need for Better Usability Testing

If you ever perform usability testing on the quick and dirty, then you probably already have some tried and true tricks you use to make it more efficient.

Quick and dirty usability testing is a type of usability testing where you assemble small groups of users at each iteration (usually no more than 7-9) to ascertain that you’re moving in the right direction with your designs and content.

How to Perform Quick and Dirty Usability Testing

You can pull a couple of people into a room and ask them a short script of tasks.  I’ve done this type of usability testing often, as well as the more formal larger studies and I’ve found that these 3 tools are must haves:


1. Have both a MAC and a PC: Nothing drives users crazier than not feeling comfortable on a computer. While most users adapt quickly, especially younger users, it can take too much time to develop coping strategies during a test.  When performing quick and dirty studies, you might be halfway through the test before your users have accommodated. So have both machines available.

2. Have a mouse on the ready: Users hate to navigate using touchpad mouses. So have a mouse handy—and a standard mouse. Don’t use a fancy ergonomic one—it will cause adaptability issues.

3. Use a scoring grid: This is so helpful, especially if you’re not running usability software in the background, like Silverback, which helps you capture what’s going on for the user on screen.  I’ve attached a picture of a sample scoring grid I use below—it just makes it so much easier to calcluate your results when you write your report.  Remember to set your scoring metrics before you start scoring and make sure all scorers are in agreement if you're conducting usability testing with more than one scorer.

Scoring grid for usability testing

WWhat are some of the tools you use for quick and dirty usability studies?