The Most Effective Instagram Features and Apps for Your Successful Healthcare Video Marketing
The global healthcare industry is worth over $9 trillion, and many healthcare companies leverage Instagram’s social network reach to promote their brands, achieve better visibility, and enhance sales. Instagram’s unique offering is found in the level of engagement businesses enjoy when using the social sharing platform. More than 30% of IG users have purchased on the platform, and Instagram boasts of at least 25 million active businesses making direct sales and connecting with consumers.
Studies from Quintly show that Instagram videos get 19.4% more engagement than carousels, and carousels get 24.9% more engagement than photos. With 18% of Instagram posts published as videos, it’s time to take your campaign to a whole new level by understanding the advantages of using Instagram TV views and how you can successfully market your healthcare brands using all Instagram’s video features.
Let’s Understand the Basics: Why are Instagram Videos Important?
- Better engagement: If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand stories. Back in the day, brands used YouTube to advertise their products, showcase their stories, visions, and develop their brands. YouTube is still a great platform today; however, Instagram brings live to video marketing because it allows users to shoot and post mostly one-minute short videos (and now, 15 seconds reels). Studies have shown that the quicker the video, the higher the engagement.
- Ease of producing: There was a time people had to churn out big budgets for video campaigns. Then, you literally needed a Pepsi campaign budget, luxurious cameras, and crew members with ‘Titanic’ standards to create one video. One campaign could cost as much as a million dollars. Today, it’s different, you can turn on your phone camera or your IG story, start a video (with or without a script), and shoot, and it will still be great. As long as you can leverage mobile apps’ ability, you can make amazing videos that will have the personal touch your fans will love.
Instagram Feed or In-Feed Videos
These are the regular video options on the Instagram platform. These videos, like Instagram photos, appear in your feed. To make an Instagram feed video, tap the + button on your Instagram account. You get the option of either posting a video or photo on your device or taking a video or photo with your camera and sharing immediately. You also get the option of posting carousels.
An Instagram feed video is, at most, 60 seconds long. If you want to post longer videos, you can use the carousel option by breaking your video into one-minute parts. A carousel can only take ten videos or photos.
But How Does Instagram Feed Work?
Many marketers often wonder what Instagram algorithm considers when they rank videos in users’ feeds for healthcare marketing. Only Instagram can give the complete parameters they use; however, research has shown that the steps below will influence Instagram’s algorithm decision to rank your videos higher in people’s feeds.
- Make your videos engaging and fan-friendly: There are over a billion Instagram users. Of course, all of them cannot follow you. However, if you take your time to define what your potential audience will like, you can tailor your videos to meet their needs. For example, the healthcare industry consumers want products that work. A ‘before and after’ video can go a long way in proving that your product is excellent. This can be a great healthcare marketing strategy to reach millennials.
- Consumer interaction: People no longer follow nameless and faceless brands — except you sell your services to the government. If not, make sure that you interact with your fans in the comment sections. Some of your followers may want to make purchases or comment on your videos or make inquiries, and you must be available to engage with them. Research shows that DMs and questions answered within an hour have a better chance of leading to a sale.
- Frequency of post: Don’t make a post and go AWOL for the next two weeks. It shows a lack of consistency, and Instagram’s algorithm will punish your inconsistency by pushing your video into obscurity. To ensure consistency, you should have a calendar. It details the numbers of posts per day and their type.
- Use Thumbnails: Thumbnails are what your users will see when they scroll through your feed. Thumbnails should always attract the attention of your audience. You can pick the best or most intriguing part of your video and use it as a thumbnail. Set your post to allow thumbnails. Also, you can pique potential-audience interest by putting a subtitle over your thumbnail. And of course, if you need a thumbnail tool, In video has an endless supply of templates to create creative thumbnails.
Instagram Stories
Stories are a great way to get your healthcare brand out there. The most distinctive feature of Instagram stories is that videos or pictures you post disappear within 24-hours.
So, why will I post a video that will disappear after 24 hours?
Instagram Stories are meant to tell stories as they happen in real life: As a healthcare professional, you can use the Instagram Story feature to record a session with a patient. Or maybe you are performing a non-intrusive surgery on a patient; you can easily share the experience with your other followers without posting the video on your main feed.
But is 15 seconds not too short?
The human brain absorbs videos 60,000 times more than it absorbs texts. Fifteen seconds is more than enough to get a message across. What’s better? It will leave your followers asking for more.
Utilize the power of Instagram stories and make short videos that show you practicing your healthcare profession. A perfect example of a Healthcare professional using Instagram stories to reach more audiences and connect with existing ones, check out Dr. Pimple Popper, who has amassed 4 million followers on Instagram.
To post a Story, click on the Camera Icon on the top left of your Instagram page and make a video or capture a picture. You can also post recent pictures (no more than 24 hours) from your camera roll.
Professional Ideas for Your Healthcare Instagram Story
- Learn how it works: Often, we advise people that the best way to learn Instagram is to do Instagram. You can only learn by experimenting and doing. There is a vast information resource online for creating unique IG Stories.
- Be creative: Instagrammers must be creative. The great news is you don’t always have to do too much to be creative with your Instagram feed videos or stories. A video of you playing with your dog is personal. A lot of your followers should have dogs or know people who do. You can also make short videos to do special treatments on your patient’s or client’s body.
Reels
Instagram Reels is a recent Instagram video feature. It’s an exciting feature with many editing tools, speed controls, and effects that help you create more engaging and fun videos. If you don’t use Reels for your Instagram campaign, you may be missing so much.
Another fantastic feature of Instagram Reels is the ability to clip multiple videos with exceptional effects, just like TikTok.
Reels is Instagram’s answer to Tik Tok, and if you already have a Tik Tok account, Instagram Reels should come easy to you. If you are new to Instagram Reels, the best way to understand how it works is to play around with the effects and features, and in no time, you will realize just how it works.
Instagram TV
Instagram TV is another feature of Instagram that allows you to post longer videos on the platform. Instagram’s vision of creating an all-purpose video campaign means creating features that will enable long and short videos. Instagram TV was created by the social sharing platform to compete with YouTube’s feature of allowing hours-long videos.
While short videos are great, you can use Instagram TV for purposes like:
- Interviews: You can do videos to interview people who have used your products or people who have had experience with your brand. Of course, an interview like this cannot be done in 15 seconds or even a minute. While you upload the full video as an IGTV video, you can post moments in your feed and stories, and you can clip a few videos together to make beautiful video reels.
- Product review: You can shoot a ten-minute video of some of your best-selling products and produce them as an Instagram TV post. Videos like these will lead to more engagement and trustworthiness between you and your clients.
Instructional videos: Thanks to Instagram TV, you can now post instructional videos. As a healthcare professional, there are certain things that you can teach your clients. Instructional videos are a great way to connect with your fans, and your followers will appreciate the fact that you went out of your way to teach them how to take care of their bodies and minds.
Instagram TV can also push Instagram’s algorithm to suggest your account to many more users. This is especially true if you have a great number of Instagram TV views. One of the advantages of using Instagram TV views is that you can make Instagram’s algorithm to favor your account, suggesting your content to more users.
