Add Interactivity to Your YouTube Channel: Annotate!

More than 1 billion unique users view the over 6 billion hours of video streaming each month on top video portal YouTube — and it’s not all fun and games! Serious businesses like hospitals have leveraged the channel to distribute non-static content enhancing brand reach and personality by targeting everyday people searching for infotainment.

More than 1 billion unique users view the over 6 billion hours of video streaming each month on top video portal YouTube — and it’s not all fun and games! Serious businesses like hospitals have leveraged the channel to distribute non-static content enhancing brand reach and personality by targeting everyday people searching for infotainment.

There’s so many vital ways to incorporate YouTube into your campaign.  Videos can make patient education come alive, allow patients to share first-person perspectives and give physicians the chance to explain medical procedures in simplified terms that put a friendly face on care. These strategies all spark interest, yet they don’t necessarily get viewers physically involved.

To capitalize on actual viewer participation, add annotations to your videos: it will give them new dimensionality. Annotations are text boxes that you can embed into your videos after they have been uploaded. They encourage active viewership, allowing interested parties to click through to other relevant videos on your channel or even to a page outside of YouTube on your own website.

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By getting viewers actively involved, annotations facilitate viewer retention, mainly because the act of participation itself psychologically creates a bond. Some creative examples of what you can do with your YouTube annotations:

• If your facility produces an inspirational video on your channel, why not create an annotation with a link to a donation page on your website? This will give people the opportunity to contribute.

• If you utilize YouTube to provide video biographies of your physicians, you can utilize annotations to direct them to their CVs located on your website.  They’ll be interested to learn about where their doctors studied, interned and took part in residency programs.

• If you sense a theme developing, create a videocluster, then use annotations to inscribe a storyline so viewers are encouraged to click onto other videos in the series.

Annotations give this powerful tool we call YouTube even more impact for every marketing genre — especially healthcare.