How Video Marketing Through Social Media Helps to Dispel Public Health Concerns

One of the major concerns among lawmakers is how to legislate public health so that if a crisis transpires the general public won’t go into a state of panic. In fact, a large emphasis on those pursuing a masters in health policy is directed towards helping health professionals market to the public to dispel fears such as those when the Hong Kong flu became epidemic and more recently when the Zika virus began making its rounds, scaring pregnant women into a frenzy.

Today, we have many tools at our disposal that weren’t available a generation ago that make it easier to get public health messages to the masses quickly and accurately to prevent widespread panic and convey accurate information. These include online social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and using videos within these social media channels to both convey healthcare messages in an easy to understand manner and to allow friends to share these videos with their friends instantly.

Let Videos Go Viral

A decade ago viral videos were unheard of as YouTube was founded in 2005 and didn’t gain popularity for at least a couple years. Now that everyone on every continent has access to YouTube and many with a smartphone videos go viral overnight. Public health officials would much rather have explainer videos go viral than the Zika virus go viral. The only safe ‘viral’ in all of that is the video marketing message produced by health officials to dissuade fear and panic. Some excellent examples of how healthcare professionals use YouTube to get important healthcare message to the public can be seen here: Top 10: Healthcare YouTube Channels You Need Watch. And here is the CDC’s YouTube Channel that is quite comprehensive. You probably cannot create such a comprehensive channel, but it’s nice to see what others are doing. And in keeping with the Zika virus example here is one of many CDC videos on the topic that can be easily shared across social media from their YouTube channel:

Zika Virus 101 – overiew of facts from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Video Marketing as a Teaching Aid

Then there are healthcare concerns that have no basis in fact that can also cause uproar and panic within their community. When this happens it is important to get on top of the facts immediately and get accurate information to everyone to avoid panic, fear and inappropriate actions that can lead to unsavory unintended consequences.

Again, let’s look to the Zika virus information vortex that set things into a panic mode quite quickly across the world. Part of the problem was that people quickly began engaging with friends and followers on social media with little accurate information and facts. If the WHO or the CDC acted quicker and posted accurate information and prevention methods to the public through social media much of the panic might have been avoided. Yes, they got the information out there but not before women around the world began overwhelming public health officials and clinics with phone calls, emails and even social media messages. It is far better to release a video with accurate information the public needs as a way of preventing unintended fear as fast as possible. It is amazing how fast a viral video message can spread – both accurate and not accurate – across social media channels as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and go viral. And, if you are interested, here are 10 tips to help your videos go viral; there are methods that work!

Health Social Video Marketing Can Prevent Widespread Panic

Globally everyone is connected via a smartphone and they love watching videos. Videos can be a very effective way to dispel fears, keep panic to a minimum, and, most important, convey accurate facts and solutions and using social media to share those videos is an important way to reach people quickly. Realistically, there is no way to prevent panic in some people because that is how they are ‘programmed’ to respond to any perceived threat. However, you can prevent an epidemic level of panic through the effective use of video marketing. And, even, healthcare law professionals could do with a few reminders and tips on how they also can use technology and video sharing to reassure the masses of facts over conspiracy theories related to global disease and their cause and effect.

So, realize that social video marketing is here to stay and is an important way people get and consume their information. Whilst some people abuse the instant connection of social video it can be used as an important teaching aid that:

1. presents facts
2. shows people on how to prevent the spread of a contagion
3. dispels panic by showing how health officials and the government are responding to keep their people safe

Video marketing for education and information dissemination works so why not use it more often to help people the world over and why not use social media to reach them?