You’ve made it to the final SAQ (should ask question) in this series and I hope you have implemented some of what you’ve learned so far. Today we’re discussing how much of your online marketing can and should be automated and/or outsourced. Coming from an online marketing consultant the answers may surprise you.

So check the final video of the series and let me know your thought and questions. I look forward to our continued conversation.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

You can always read the transcript below if you would prefer:

Hello, its Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant. We are going to be covering the very last question, question number ten of the should-ask questions list. And that question is, “Can I automate and outsource all of my online marketing and still be successful?”

I really want you to be asking that question. because the answer, believe it or not, is yes and no. You can outsource and automate all of it. The question is, will that be effective? So that’s where the question sort of shifts to, no, you probably don’t want to automate and outsource all of it.

So how do we make this the right ratio? I am going to go ahead and say you probably want to do about 30% to 40% of it on your own and then outsource/automate all of the rest. And we did talk about in lots of the other questions that we answered earlier how to outsource a few of those things, but let’s talk about what you really want to focus on.

Let’s start with your blog. You want to have a blog. Please take the time to do it, find somebody on your team who is willing to make that happen or outsource it, let us do it. Sesame Communications can do it for you. There are companies that are going to make that work.

However, I want you to really consider what the value is of your voice in this online marketing system. So that’s where the answer kind of shifts to no, you have to be able to put your voice into this social media.

And what’s happened is in the online world we have reached this place where everything is transparent. No matter what you are doing or saying in your marketing, because people can post anything online at anytime, at any moment, anything that actually happens in your office is fair game. We live in this world of transparency where if you are not out there promoting yourself in your own way, it doesn’t work very well.

So I have put a few of these posts on my blog brianjdevine.com. You can take a look at some of the posts, but what I have been finding is that some of these offices that have been outsourcing this kind of marketing, this blog marketing or this article marketing, it’s very clear that they are outsourcing it.

Because when you start reading it you realize, “Wow, this wasn’t written by a doctor, nor was this written by anybody in the United States, nor is it written by somebody of any real understanding of orthodontics or of the practice or of the area that they are in.”

So that’s why you want to step back and say, “OK, I can automate certain things using the RSS feeds and all of the WordPress plugins, but there is still a certain amount that you want to make sure that you’re doing on your own so it’s in your voice and that you are in control of that conversation.

So think of all of your online marketing as a conversation between and your visitor, you and the viewer, whether its video, articles, blog posts, your website. Whatever it is, it really is this conversation and the ability for people to now make comments on it makes it a two-way conversation, not just a one-way.

So that’s why, yes you can automate it, yes you can outsource it, however, you still want to be involved at a certain level. Now, if you as the doctor just say, “I don’t have time. I can’t possibly handle anymore, especially if it is going to feel like uncomfortable marketing,” then find somebody on your team that can help you do it.

And if you can’t find somebody on your team to help you do it or you’re not confident that you have somebody that can do that, give us a call, we can help you because it’s really just a matter of you taking a few minutes, and I mean a few minutes, to make a comment on something. And now we have new content to build your online presence.

Maybe it’s about taking a few minutes during your week to say, “This has been interesting to me and I want to share it.” And we put that all over the place, and there are things like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube. All of these places where you can just spend a few minutes to make sure that your voice is involved, and then you can have everything else outsourced and automated.

So hopefully that gives you some more food for thought. I’ve covered 20 of the top questions that either have been asked or should be asked. So if there’s anything else that you need or if there are any other questions that you have, let me know what they are.

Feel free to go to brianjdevine.com. Go to orthovideosnow.com and see what we’re doing over there. And if you would like to take advantage of everything that we offer, give me a call, shoot me an email. Put your email and name in any of those forms and we will get in touch with you to see what might work out. I look forward to it.

Have yourself a great one. Let me know what we can do to be of service.

That’s it for today, bye for now.

Watch today’s video for more insight on YouTube and what it really means to building your practice. I look forward to your comments and questions so feel free to post them here.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

You can always read the transcript below if you’re tired of seeing my mug on the screen:

Hello. It’s Brian Devine, your online marketing consultant, and we are going to be covering question number nine of the “Should Ask” questions. That question is: “How do I use YouTube to build my practice?” That’s really the question that I want you to be asking yourself. I want you thinking that way. I don’t want you thinking about, “Well, geez, you know, am I really going to find somebody on YouTube that wants to come to my practice?” That’s not the point. I want you to be thinking about, “How do I leverage that tool to build up my practice through online marketing?”

So how do we do that? We talked a little bit about that in the Frequently Asked Questions section. Let’s really get into it a little bit further. When it comes to YouTube, I want you to think about all of the different kinds of video that you can produce that you can put out there to promote your website. Now, I tend to call it your money site, the place where you’re going to send people so that they’ll pick up the phone and call. So the place that you want them to go is what I would call your money site, but YouTube gives you an opportunity to do that over and over and over again, OK?

So you don’t just need to have all these brilliant videos out there. Hey, maybe you’ve got some people in your practice that love playing with video. You know, maybe you can run a contest where people do a video promoting your practice and whoever wins gets, I don’t know, a $50 gift certificate or an iPod, I mean, anything like that. But think about the amount of free marketing that you could be getting just from having that done.

So there are a million ways to get lots of videos up onto YouTube that promote your practice. Maybe it’s a new technique, a new software. Get a little camera and film just about anything and everything. It’s not so important that people watch it. Yes, you want people to watch it, and the more people that watch it, the better off you are. But even if they don’t, it is another opportunity for you to put something online that points back to your website. And it’s not just about utilizing YouTube. Start thinking about, “How do I leverage video in general?” because there are tons of video sharing sites that will allow you to upload your video for free. And when you do this, you are able to put what are called tags into that website underneath your video. So your video is tagged with specific keywords, and those keywords are geared towards whatever it is that you’re promoting at the time.

So let’s say you are desperately trying to move up your search engine results for a specific keyword in your area, and maybe it’s a Damon system, maybe it’s Invisalign, and maybe it’s just orthodontics in your area. So what you do is you start sending out these videos to multiple sharing sites, not just YouTube, lots of different sharing sites, and you tag them with just a few keywords that are specific that you are trying to start to move up on the search engine rankings. And you start sending those out on a regular basis. And what happens is you now have more and more things for Google, Yahoo, Bing, to start pulling from and saying, “Hey. Here’s another place where you can get this information, ” when somebody types in that keyword.

So this is an extremely powerful tool. It’s something you can continue to do over and over again. And don’t worry about what the material is. There’s tons of material out there. Get one of those flip cameras. Leave it in your pocket. Put it on the counter. Get a couple of them. Like, let people play with them in the practice. You know, obviously you don’t want them to walk with them, but make sure that you’re utilizing video, and you’re not too concerned about how it looks. The research that I have seen, which is very interesting, is that the quality of the video itself is not nearly as important as the quality of the audio. And those little cameras, their video isn’t great. Their audio is good enough. And when you put it on YouTube, it’s fine because everything gets compressed. Everything’s small. Everything looks about the same. So you don’t have to worry about it.

So start getting that video out there. Get it out to as many of those video sharing sites as you can, and be certain that you know what keywords you’re going to focus on when you do it. Hope you found that useful. Go ahead and start doing that today. Go get that video camera today. Stop thinking about it. Just do it. If you want to know more about how to make it all work, how to tie it all together, give me a call, shoot me an email. Let me know how I can help. You can always go to BrianJDevine.com and get in touch with me there, or go toOrthoVideosNow.com and see what we’re doing over there.

I look forward to the continued conversation, and we’ll see you next time for the “Should Ask” question number 10.

Bye for now.

Make sure your website can turn a qualified visitor into an excited caller before you go spending time and money getting people to your site. Watch this video for the key concepts on doing just that. Leave me your comments, questions and thoughts by posting them here and I’ll get right back to you.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

If you would prefer to read the transcript, here it is…enjoy:

Welcome back. Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant. We are going to talk about the question number eight. The should ask questions.

Question number eight. This one is about not only Websites. I get a lot of questions about how I should I design a Website, what should be on my Website. That’s really not the right question.

The question that you should be asking is “what specifically do I need, in my Website, to get people to call?”

Because hopefully you’ve already determined that the purpose of your Website, the only reason you have a Website, is to get the phone to ring. So it’s not just an online brochure that says “yes, here I am. You can call me if you want. Maybe, maybe not. Don’t worry about it.”

No. You want to be very clear. I have a Website because I want to give you the right information, at the right time. When you’re interested in looking, so that you’ll call me.

The question is “what do I put on my Website to get you to call?”

The very first thing, really the only thing that matters the most, is that you have a “call to action” on your Website.

What is a “call to action?” It is some place on your Website that is in the same place on every page, over and over again, that says “do this for that.” So if at any point in the process, somebody goes “this is the office for me. What do I do next?” Don’t make them work for it. Don’t make them think about it. Have a place on your Website that says “click here for your free consultation. Call today for your free consultation.” Make sure that your phone number is crystal clear or the form that you fill in is super quick and easy.

I see a lot of forms online now that if you click on it, it says “click here for you free consultation.” You get to this form and there’s about 13 different things that you have to fill out and they’re all mandatory; meaning if you don’t fill them out you can’t submit.

Don’t do that! One of the basic things you need to for someone to raise their hand and have you go “I’m willing to talk to you now.”

You need to have what? A name so that you can call them and know what their name is. You need to have their phone number so that you can call them. You might want to get their email. People are generally comfortable giving out an email, but maybe, maybe not. I would test that kind of a thing.

The other thing is maybe you want to know is if it is for them or for a child.

Other than that, an address, zip codes, all that kinds of stuff: Do you really need it in order to find out whether or not this is somebody you want to work with or somebody that’s willing to come to your office for that first appointment. Really think about that part of the process.

What else do you need on your Website?

There are hundreds of things that you can do, but I want you to consider number 1, have a call to action.

Number 2, make it easy. Don’t make them work for it. It’s all about making it easy.

Number 3, you want to make sure you have what are called “testimonials.”

“Testimonials” are a marketing term. It’s a way for you to build a show up it’s called “social proof”. It’s a way for you to be able to say how terrific you are, how great of an orthodontist you are without actually saying it. You let other people say it for you.

Please do me a favor. Don’t call them testimonials on your Website. That’s a marketing term and it throws up all kinds of red flags. People throw up a wall and they go “OK, great. Now he’s going to tell me how great he is.” What my patients are saying, what people say about us, anything like that, that’s a bit little more comfortable. You want to have that socially proof with testimonials on your Website.

The last thing that I’ll throw out there; when it comes to any marketing that you’re doing, make sure that you’re talking to your audience and that you’re not just talking about yourself. It’s not “I believe,” “we this,” “Our that,” it’s “you’ll enjoy,” “You’ll be happy to know.” That’s how you can shift the focus to what they get as opposed to what you do. That’s just a matter of talking about benefits instead of features.

If what you’re thinking is that your job, in life as an orthodontist, is to straighten teeth. That’s not how you market it. People don’t want straight teeth. What they want is more self confidence, what they want is to be able to get that raise. There’s all these things that come with the straight teeth that have nothing to with the straight teeth other than what’s going on up here. You want to be talking about those benefits.

Think about that with everything you talk about. If you talk about a specific feature; maybe you’re using the Damon System. Who cares? You or I know exactly why you would care. There’s all kinds of great things about that Damon System, but the average person doesn’t know what they are unless you tell them.

So it’s not cool, it’s faster. Well, maybe it is faster, but that’s really a feature. It’s faster, so what that means is you come into the office less, you have more time with your family. Or your treatment is going to be completed faster so you’ll have that great new confidence much sooner so you can go do XYZ, whatever it is.

That’s what I want you to consider, what I want you to think about.

That’s it for number eight. Hope you found that interesting.

Again, go to brianjdevine.com anytime. Take a look at what we’ve got going on over there. Always, you can go to orthovideosnow.com and see what we’ve got going on over there.

I look forward to the continuing conversation. We’ll see you again for question number nine.

Bye for now!

Watch the video to get some new ways of looking at your offline marketing and why combining it with you online marketing can create huge returns for your practice. Let me know your thoughts, comments and questions by posting them here.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

If you would prefer to read, here is a copy of the transcript:

OK, Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant and we’re going to talk about question number seven, the seventh question that people should be asking me and typically don’t.

This is one of the more exciting questions that I wish more people would ask. You might remember in the Frequently Asked Questions section that we did talk about postcard marketing, and whether or not we should stop doing that, continue doing that. It’s all based on return on investment, so if it’s working, continue.

So question number seven is, “How do I combine my offline marketing, like my postcards, with my online marketing in order to improve the impact of both?” That’s the question I really want people asking, I want you thinking about.

Because when you start utilizing your offline marketing and combining it with your online marketing, you have a really amazing potential, not only for improving the results but for being able to track the results much, much easier.

So how do we do that? Well, let me give you a brief overview. Let’s say you’ve been doing some postcard marketing and it’s been working OK. You’ve been getting maybe one 1.5% to 2% return which, believe it or not, that’s fantastic.

So if you’re getting that kind of return and you’re able to track it, now what you can consider is in that postcard, in your call to action, give them a reason to go to your website. Don’t just put your website on there so that they can maybe go to it. Give them a reason to go to your website and give them a specific page on your website to go to.

You’ll notice that, for you to sign up for these videos, I have the orthovideosnow.com/free. OK, so that’s specific page I want you to go to.

So on your postcards, you might have a specific page that is /contest or /postcardone. Whatever it is, if you do postcard one, then you can actually start segmenting your postcards and tracking which ones are working better. You could have postcard one, postcard two, postcard three, and see which pages are going to get more activity.

So what you’re able to do now is you’re able to say, “Go to my website to do X, Y, and Z.” Now don’t just leave it up to the person to figure out why they would go to your website. Tell them exactly why, give them a reason, give them a coupon, give them some kind of bonus if they go to your website and do something.

What you’re doing is you’re really narrowing down the interested parties. When people have to take a specific series of actions, they are much more likely to follow through with the process.

If all they have to do is send you an email, that might work, it might not. If all they have to do is give you a call, maybe they won’t show up, so you have to work pretty hard to get them to come. But if they go to your website, follow steps one, two and three and print something out, they have taken multiple steps and raised their hand on multiple occasions to tell you just how interested they are.

So that can be extremely powerful when you combine your offline postcard marketing with your online marketing efforts. So that’s just one idea, one thing you can do. There are hundreds of other ways to do that, but I want you to start thinking about how you can combine the two, not only to track the results but to improve the results and to get people to take more action to say, “Yes, I am interested.”

I hope you found that interesting. I want you to start thinking a little bit outside of the box when it comes to combing these online and offline marketing campaigns, because it can be extremely effective and lucrative.

So that’s it for today, we have answered number seven. I look forward to talking with you real soon here with question number eight.

Today’s video will walk you through using other people’s recourses and their RSS feeds to help automate your blog. As always, please leave me your thoughts, comments and questions by posting them here. I look forward to the continued conversation.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

If you prefer to read, here is a copy of the transcript from the video:

Welcome back, its Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant. We’re going to cover question number six of the should ask questions today. Question number six is “how do I utilize RSS feeds to automate some of my online marketing efforts?” So you might remember in the frequently asked questions we did talk about RSS feeds and what do they mean. Feel free to go back and take a look at that video because I don’t want to completely go over that information again, but this question is different. This is about utilizing RSS feeds to automate your marketing. If you remember in question number five we talked about utilizing blogs to really build your online presence and promote your practice and start getting new patients that way. With an RSS feed, you’re able to do- well there’s a tremendous amount you can do, but let’s talk about one thing that if you set up today will have a huge impact on your ability to market yourself online. So you already have your blog setup, you have already set up your WordPress.

Now, what you can do is use a plug-in in WordPress that’s called Freeburn and it is allowing you setup RSS feeds, those Real Simple Syndications, that automatically pull into your blog. So whatever it is that you are interested in, whatever it that you want to talk about on your blog, You set up these RSS feeds based on the key words that you want to have pulling to your blog.

What I recommend is that you pull them into your blog and have them automatically set up a post, but don’t automatically publish the post. So then once a week, or really this is the best way to do it, have somebody on your team, at least every other day, go into your blog, look at what’s been pulled in your RSS feeds. Maybe it’s fishing and you want to talk about fishing because you love it, maybe it’s skiing and you are an avid skier and you want to talk about skiing on your blog. Even though as an orthodontist you want to talk about orthodontics, you still want to talk about some personal stuff.

Then let’s pull in orthodontics. Let’s pull in some feeds that are specific to orthodontics. Then, when this person on your team goes in there and looks at your blog and looks at those feeds that are coming in, they can scan through everything that’s coming in, delete all the junk, the things that you don’t want. Then, the things that seem interesting, either have this person on your team that is looking at it make a comment on that particular feed and post it live to your blog and instantly you’ve got new content to your blog, even though you didn’t need to write it, you just commented on it.

If it’s really fascinating, maybe its something that you as the doctor might want to go ahead and comment on. So that gives you the ability to hopefully have some controversy. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you’ll see another doctor’s information come across your RSS feed and you can say “I completely disagree for these reasons…,” slay a little bit of mud and you do what’s called a “trackback” so that whoever wrote the original blog knows that you above posted it on theirs. If they’re any good at what they are doing, they will know what you did that and read it.

Hopefully, that will cause a little bit of concern for them and they’ll respond, and they’ll link back to your site. Now, what that’s doing is its building up your links and is building up their links. So this has a very positive effect, even if you’re disagreeing, it’s still going to give both of you a positive effect.

So when you can disagree and you can create that back and forth, now everybody that’s been reading your blog now has the ability read that other person’s blog; however, everybody that has been reading the other person’s blog is reading your blog. So if those people are more in tune with whatever it is that you’re saying or how you are stating that situation, they might become fans of yours and eventually come into your office.

So, I want you to really think about how all of that works. The RSS feed allows you to automate that process so that you can just maybe once a week take a look at what’s come in, anything that catches your interest so that you can go “yup, here’s a little comment on it. Here’s my two cents on this particularly subject, ” hit publish and you have brand new content on your blog and it took you about five minutes.

So that’s how you utilize RSS feeds to automate your marketing. I hope you found that interesting. If you want to know exactly how to do it, let me know, shoot me an email, give me a call. Whatever is easiest for you, always feel free to go to brianjdevine.com and contact me from there or go to www.orthovideosnow.com and see what we’ve got going on over there. I look forward to talking to you next time for question number seven, until then, bye for now.

Take a look at today’s video to dive deeper into your blog and why you should be psyched that you have one!

Let me know your thoughts, questions and concerns by posting a comment today.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

If you prefer to read, here is a copy of the transcript from the video:

Hello again, it’s Brian Devine, your online marketing consultant, and we’re going to cover the fifth question of the should-ask questions today. And that question is, “How do I utilize my blog to build my practice and build my online presence?” So when people are asking me about blogs, they’re generally asking the wrong question. The right question is, “How do I utilize that tool, how do I utilize that blog to build my website’s presence, to have more people find me online, and find me faster?”

So I’m going to cover this really quickly, because this is a very long conversation, but I wanted you to get the nuts and the bolts here.

Number one, when you’re going to do a blog online, use WordPress. WordPress is that 800-pound gorilla in the marketplace right now. The reason it is so powerful to use WordPress is because it’s a free tool, so you don’t have to pay for the software. It’s very easy to utilize; it uses what’s called cascading style sheets, so it’s very easy to make it look like your website.

And it has thousands upon thousands of what are called plugins. And a plugin is a little piece of software that you add to your WordPress blog to have it do whatever it is that you want it to do.

So let’s talk about some of the plugins that I recommend you use. Number one, is a Google Analytics plugin. You press a little button, it installs the plugin, you put your UA account, which is what Google gives you, you put it right into your blog, and now Google Analytics is tracking everything that happens on your blog automatically. You don’t even need to know what’s going on.

And then whenever you want to see how many people come to your website, it’ll all be there in Google Analytics, it’ll have more information than you’ll even know what to do with.

So another one that I highly recommend you put on your WordPress blog is SEO Complete. This is a very powerful tool, and what it does is it allows you to enter meta-information inside of your blog. It allows you to count the search engines, like Google, Yahoo, Bing, exactly what each post is about. It is a very interesting tool because it makes it easy for people like you and I to just very quickly optimize that website.

So I’ve just given you two, there are hundreds. I use probably about 20 different plugins for my blogs in order to make sure that they show up higher on search engine results.

The right question here is how I utilize a blog to really build that practice. And use WordPress, that’s number one; get those plugins in place, that’s number two. And if you’d like a list of the plugins, just shoot me an email, I’ll tell you exactly what I use, they’re all free.

And once you’ve got your blog, once you’ve got your plugins in place, now we start creating these back-links to your website. So what can happen if you do this right is when somebody puts in the keyword terms to find someone like you in your area – let’s say they put orthodontists in your town — you now have the ability to show up for your website, for your blog, maybe for your Facebook.

But your blog is able to very quickly and easily update, you’re constantly updating it, so it is pointing to your Facebook, it’s pointing to your home pages, pointing to a page on your website that’s a “contact us” page. It gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility, it is constantly being updated.

Let me rephrase that. Constantly update your blog. If you’re not willing to do it, then don’t do a blog. It can end up hurting you in the long run. So make sure that you’re going to update it at the very least once a week.

Hopefully that’s going to give you some new information, but I really want you to consider having a blog to promote your website, promote your practice. It will give you a tremendous return on investment, and really just a return on your time.

So make that happen, give me a call, shoot me an email, let me know what you need to know, and I’d be happy to send you that list of plugins that I’m using, and I’m using them very effectively. It’s been really neat to see what you can do with a WordPress blog.

So that’s it for question number five, and please feel free to go to brianjdevine.com, ask me any questions that you have, see what we’ve got going on. And you can always go towww.orthovideosnow.com to see what we’ve got going on over there.

I look forward to the conversation. That’s it for today. Bye for now.

Check out today’s video for a quick run down on how you should be thinking about Facebook and connecting it to your practice, your patients, and your prospective patients. Let me know your questions and thoughts.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

If you prefer to read, here is a copy of the transcript from the video:

Hello, it’s Brian Devine, your online marketing consultant. We are here to talk about question number four of the “Should ask” questions. That question is: How do I leverage Facebook to build backlinks and instantly communicate with everyone that I want to online?

That’s really the question that I want you to be asking, because the power of Facebook is more than having a new presence. It is a way for you to instantly communicate with hundreds of people in your community.

Here’s what I want you to be thinking about when it comes to Facebook, and putting in the time and effort to build that kind of a website, or that kind of a web presence around Facebook.

What you’re able to do is take all of the patients that you have in your practice now and invite them to be fans of your Facebook page, or friends of yours on Facebook, OK? What happens is, when they’re friends of your Facebook page, your fan page, or friends of yours, whenever you update your page, you tell them what’s going on. You have some kind of a contest. You are doing something in the community to support them. Something at a school.

Whatever it might be, you can go ahead and put that on your Facebook wall, or on your fan page, and it [snaps fingers] automatically updates every single person that is connected to your Facebook page. So, it’s now showing up on their wall.

Think about what that means. When somebody that is in your practice has their information on their wall, and they think that it’s interesting at all, they can then say to all of their friends that are already connected to them, “Hey, look at this.”

Let’s say you have a very small number of people that have accepted your friendship, so to speak, on Facebook. It’s just what they call the way that people say, “Yes, I would like to receive your information, and pass information back and forth on Facebook.”

So, what’s happening is they’re able to then say… I’ve only got 15 or 20 people on Facebook, but they can then, all those 15 or 20 can then forward that information with a click of a button to everyone else on their pages. So, you have sudden access to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in your community, just by having a Facebook fan page, or even if you don’t do a fan page, at least have a Facebook profile.

If you’d like to know more about Facebook, about fan pages, about profiles, and even about utilizing their ad campaigns, which is another whole powerful system in itself, give us a call. Let us know how we can help. Come to BrianJDevine.Com and ask me any questions that you have. Give me a call or shoot me an email. Go to http://www.OrthoVideosNow.Com and see what we’re doing over there.

I look forward to conversation. Hope you found this interesting, and that’s it for now.

If you’ve ever wondered how some people get multiple listings on page one of Google, then this video is for you. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

Here is the transcript of the video for those who would prefer to read:

Question number three is, “How do I utilize video to improve my natural or organic search engine results?” And that is a very good question that people really aren’t asking me, they’re just asking me, “How do I get video on my website?” But that’s not what’s important, what’s important is how do I utilize this video to improve my search engine results. And we did talk about that a little bit when we talked about the Frequently Asked Questions. But I want to make this really clear, the power of video on your website is not about a great video. Yes, it can be that you’ve got a beautiful video that is extremely compelling and you’ve got wonderful testimonials from people that you’ve treated, and it draws people in and it makes them want to come to your office. The chances of that happening on a regular basis are pretty slim, so please don’t leave it up to just one video like that to get you what you need with your online marketing.

What I want you to consider is using lots of video. Whether it’s you talking to the camera like I am now, whether it’s your patients’ pictures, whether it’s a flip video camera that you walk around with in your office, and whenever someone says something nice you record it and put that online. Or if you have some new technique and you want to show people what that’s all about, record that, put that online.

But the more you can put something on video and put it on YouTube and Yahoo and Metacafe, Veoh, all of these different sites that point back to your website, is going to move you up in the natural or organic search engine results. And that’s the question you should be asking, “How do I use video to get better results in my search engine ranking?”

So hopefully you’ve got some new ideas now for what you can do with video. If you’d like our help, go to Orthovideosnow.com and check it out. We’ve got some really neat stuff that we’re doing and we look forward to doing that for you as well.

Because nothing beats being found quickly online for your top keywords at no cost to you so what this video for some insight into this process.

Feel free to leave me your comments and questions.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

Here is the transcript if you would rather read:

Welcome back, it’s Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant. We’re going to talk about question number two for the should ask questions. Questions number two is “how do I show up on page one of Google for the right keywords, naturally?” The reason I think you should be asking this question is because when people call you and they tell you that they’re SEO experts, they’re going to guarantee you placement on Google, top placement. You need to know if they are talking about “organic” or “natural” search results, or if they are talking about sponsored search results. Those are very different.

The natural search results are all the results that are listed for free on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. If somebody clicks on your listing, it doesn’t cost you a dime and those are highly valuable to be on page one. Then, there is the pay-per-click where you might see one to three on the very top of the screen and it’s highlighted and Google says “sponsored links.”

Then off on the right side you’ll see more links, those are more sponsored ads that you pay for when somebody clicks on them. It doesn’t mean that they’re not valuable. It doesn’t mean there isn’t some value to doing that but what you want to be asking is “how do I get onto page one naturally or organically?”

Because that won’t cost you anything when somebody clicks on it, and it will hold that place longer, and it doesn’t require that you have somebody constantly playing with those ads and managing that campaign. (this can really add to your costs)

You want to be in the natural search results, or the organic results because they are much more powerful and they are seen as more valuable to the people that are looking for you.

So that’s my answer to question number two and of course the question that I think you should be asking. I hope you found this helpful and feel more equipped to handle those incoming “guaranteed placement” calls from SEO companies.

Take a look at today’s video to discover what keywords are all about and why they matter to you and the growth of your practice.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

Here is the transcript for the video it you prefer to read…

Today we’re going to talk about the first of the top 10 questions that orthodontists should be asking but generally are not.  The very first question that you should be asking or should be thinking about when it comes to your online marketing campaign is: What keywords should I be focusing on? Not just “How do I get on page one for Google?”

Because, quite frankly, anyone can guarantee you page one Google results. But the question is what keywords are they going to be guaranteeing that on? It’s certainly not going to be “orthodontist” because you’re never going to be able to get on page one of orthodontist if you haven’t already had a website for years that has been optimized properly. So does that mean that you can maybe get on page one of Google for orthodontics in your area?

That would be “orthodontist Denver Colorado, ” “orthodontics Manhattan, Kansas?” That answer is yes, you can most certainly do that. You want to make sure you’re focusing on the right keywords.

How do you know what keywords you should be focusing on? There are a lot of tools out there to help you do that. Some are free, some you have to pay for. So let’s just talk about the one that is absolutely free, it works extremely well, it’s very effective, and it takes seconds to use. It is Google’s keyword tool. It is very powerful. What it does is allows you to put “orthodontist” into their keyword search term, and then it will pull up everything that it considers related to orthodontist and show you how many people are searching for that particular term, both in the U.S. and globally. So you have a really good feel for whether or not this is a valuable keyword or not.

What keywords do you put in?  Well, I would start with multiple words that include local modifiers.  So put in the keywords that are specific to your area.  If somebody puts “orthodontics” and then the name of your town, that’s a pretty good probability that they need orthodontics or they are pretty close to getting started.  That’s the kind of thing that you want to put into Google and find out.

You will learn how many people are putting in that search term and then you’ll discover what other related terms that those same people are looking for.   Google will give you a huge list to choose from.  Then you can sort it by the number of searches that are being done each month, and you know what search terms you want to focus on.

That’s the answer to the first question that should be asked.  I really want you to consider if you are focusing on the right keywords.  Is your web provider or whoever built your website taking the time to really think through the right keywords to focus on?  Are you doing Invisalign? Do you treat with Damon, Innovation?  Do you have something in there that people are searching for, and focused in your area?

So that’s it for question number one. I hope that you’ve found it interesting and it’s given you something new to start thinking about when you go about creating your online marketing campaign.