hey it's Dr Amanda with Street smile Solutions streetsmilesolutions.com and today we're going to
talk a little bit more about YouTube I don't know if YouTube's going to take this down sometimes
they don't like it when you use their logo but I'm definitely going to be promoting the
use of YouTube for a dental office but you could totally extrapolate this into any medical office
any type of healthcare providing office so let's talk a little bit about why I started my YouTube
channel obviously if you're watching this you found me on YouTube the benefits of starting a
YouTube channel for your practice how much money I make from my YouTube channel no problem telling
you this it's not that much um how much money you expect to make from your YouTube channel and what
type of content you could put on there how much it costs to make the content etc etc um and honestly
I got started on YouTube because my daughter was like seven or eight and she started making a slime
YouTube channel and then later the Slime YouTube channel turned into Instagram and now she's more
interested in modeling bikinis she's a teenager now then she is making slime and she didn't get
that many hits on YouTube but she totally knew what she was doing seven or eight you know she's
like we gotta do this we gotta optimize it we gotta change the lighting I was like wow I mean
this girl how many views how many followers did I get so you know it was kind of crazy I really
doubled down on YouTube during the pandemic because my own Consulting business straight
smile Solutions slowed down um my customer base is dentists um generally General dentists pediatric
dentists some or some new grad orthodontists who are looking for help with not only learning more
about different types of orthodontic procedures but also implementing them in their office so
I was kind of looking around and seeing what's out there and this is the best way to consider
starting a YouTube channel is for example you know most um consumers under age 30 they don't
search for first of all they don't search in the Yellow Pages that's what we did 20 25 30 years
ago I remember when we first got out of dental school we talked about how big should our yellow
page ad be and now that's like super obsolete it's kind of funny when you think about it
um I think I had to convince my husband that he could stop listing in the Yellow Pages
um most consumer answers age 30 they search on YouTube and Instagram so and the cool thing
about YouTube well we'll get to that so anyways they'll search like dentists near me or dentists
in Charlotte North Carolina or Invisalign provider near me you know and that's how they find their
people they're not necessarily even going to go on Google and they're certainly not going to look in
the Yellow Pages so that's how they're going to find people so if you don't have a presence in
YouTube um not just saying Instagram but YouTube um they may not find you and you're going to miss
an opportunity to get a free referral why pay for marketing when you can do it for free and
that is the beauty of YouTube and you know what if you end up growing your channel and getting
lucky which shouldn't be your ultimate goal but if you end up growing your channel then fantastic
um you know extra bonus a little bit of residual money coming in for your Starbucks for your team
so anyways I have made over I think now 8 000 YouTube videos it's it's ultimately quite
ridiculous if you think about it but I don't it just kind of piled up and sometimes they're very
successful and wildly successful and sometimes they're not ultimately my videos were meant to
be for dentists but I mean a heck of a lot of consumers listen to them because I tried
to explain things extremely simply um in a simple manner so that anyone can follow along with what
a certain Appliance is while we do this method um and so on and so on so I mean Orthodontics is
fascinating and it's really really fun and it's very visual that's why I do what I do but also
because there was just terrible orthodontic education prior to me starting to do this
aggressively a few years ago towards General and pediatric dentists the vast majority was
sloppy Ortho anterior only Ortho very limited Ortho social six Ortho and that was pretty much
the education you could get there were a few programs out there that you could spend I mean
thousands and thousands of dollars to go to these weekend courses you had to travel and you were in
these kind of mini residencies and I'm not saying those are bad those are fine but that's not for
everyone and why not just put all the information out there for free I think for me so much Ortho
education that's out there towards General and pediatric dentists is so not Airway focused and
I know a lot of orthodontists roll their eyes when I say Airway Focus but I 100 believe in this down
to every little bone in my body I believe in it and I'm going to do my best to leave a digital
thumbprint I mean who knows 20 years from now YouTube might be Obsolete and there might be
no digital thumb print but a really really good orthodic education perhaps my kids can benefit
off of it later maybe they can at the very least hopefully I've done good work and I can retire in
peace knowing that I I left a really good Legacy even if it's mostly a digital Legacy so that's
the why behind my YouTube channel how do I get the inspiration for the videos that I make well
um you know they come by request I get requests every single day through social media through
email text I mean LinkedIn Instagram can you make a video about this I don't understand this but
for the most part I have my own consulting company where doctors will will talk about
cases and I'll realize that I need to teach them a certain subject something I learned either over
time or in my residency and there was nothing out there for me to teach them so it's the best
way for me to teach my doctors what they need to know um so I'll just give them a link I'm
like here I made you this video about reverse curve wires and how they work for your case or
um you know bite turbos versus bite plates when to use them and ultimately it snowballed into over 8
000 videos so do I make them completely myself yes and no so it really depends
um I'll often if I had more time I probably would but and during the pandemic I definitely did more
of the editing and stuff myself but if that's not something that I love to do I don't love to edit
videos and you can see a lot of my videos are static videos I'm not necessarily doing a demo
yes my husband and I own offices no I'm generally not in those offices he does most of the clinical
work I have my own Consulting business so I'm more flexible for my for our kids for travel
things like that who knows it might change in five years never yes he does do some Ortho but he does
it independently he doesn't need help so um yes I have access to an office that's a huge pain
um and to be honest the offices are almost always full and there's almost all these bodies in them
and where we are the air conditioning turns off on the evenings and weekends and it's free freaking
hot here so I have no desire to do that many demo videos I've done some in the past I don't
know that they're any more popular than the ones that aren't I don't think I need to do anymore and
there's plenty demo videos that are out there there's also very few orthodontic educational
videos that are in plain American English there's a there's a really good provider that's
in Australia I really follow him I got you know he's great he's fantastic I learn from him I'm
sure other people learn from me that orthodontist there's one in Japan everything's in Japanese
he's good you know but for the most part not too many Americans doing this that aren't completely
patient facing so hey if I can be the first one to do something why not so okay how much does it
cost me again I usually Outsource the editing I use the platform Fiverr which is completely legal
um yes you're going to pay sales tax on that um yes you're going to get a 1099 for expenses are
you going to be able to expense it because it is a legal way to purchase hire people and they're
getting paid legally so I'm sure there's ways that you could do things under the table I just decided
not to do it they helped me with my infographics and video editing if I need editing sometimes I do
um but sometimes I do my own stuff you can use canva canva is not hard and when I first got
started there was no canva that was easy to use so um I think it took them a little bit
longer I have people that I just completely trust that do editing for me um infographic making and
I'm super glad to be supporting people in other countries that I I completely trust and I have my
own little virtual team I also have people locally that I'm glad to hire if I need someone actually
local but for the most part that's significantly more expensive so I mean it is what it is so how
much money do I make well it's really hard to put your finger on it because a lot of my referrals
from my Consulting business do come from YouTube they find me via YouTube just like anyone else
finds anything on social media that's one less person I basically cut out all my marketing budget
um for a long long long time I paid marketing companies to run ads for me Facebook Instagram
a lot of Facebook some Amazon LinkedIn and that was thousand two thousand a month just in
the support fees let alone the ad spend which so that made was three four thousand dollars a month
um I was basically six months ago I basically took a risk and cut that completely out for all of you
that are in social media you know you're wonderful very wonderful lovely people I'd love to refer you
to some of those people but I just didn't need it anymore to be honest so I was able to really cut
down on my expenses and focus on making more content um you know on my own which is what I
really love to do um like I said I don't have a quota in terms of content if it comes to me and
it's an idea and it's by request I'm just gonna go ahead and make it it's either gonna sink or sale
um and it is what it is sometimes I take stuff down in terms of Revenue that I get in I mean
that's the that's the unspecific the I don't know I don't know how much that value is I
mean in terms of people who find me you know um certainly reputation-wise I think it's helpful
um as far as what my Revenue I get my 1099 from Google from alphabet I get about now it's about
300 a month I mean it's not bad don't get me wrong I mean I'll take a couple thousand dollars a
year I rationalize it as it pays for my Starbucks coffee and I know that's a complete waste of money
um but I love my Starbucks people I go down every morning at four or five in the morning as soon as
they open they're like hey how are you um kind of starts my day it's just how I do my day so
not a super expensive cup it's like five bucks um but it makes me happy I vary it up and that's what
pays for it it's the YouTube budget after taxes so um that's the why behind making YouTube but
certainly I know plenty of dentists who are crushing it on YouTube because remember my
customer base I may only have 11 000 followers right now granted it's it's snowballing it's
going up exponentially which is awesome you know started with one um but I know plenty of dentists
that have hundreds of thousands of followers because their team makes YouTube videos showing
demos talking about their patients talking about you know fun creative they have a great sense of
humor and that's their marketing you know they don't do Direct Mail marketing anymore they
don't do ads anymore or anything like that they just showcase who they are and what they know
and people find them and people come from all over the United States they fly in to see some of these
dentists because they really like these dentists and you know for the most part consumers don't
like dentists I mean they trust them but they just hate going so if they can find a team and a
dentist that they love who they trust who they've gotten to trust over you know through reels and
through other stuff you know amazing awesome so that is a great way to grow your grow your brand
and for those of you who are dental students or even if you're working as an associate for a DSO
there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting to grow your brand now talking about different
subjects obviously you have to be a lot more careful about you really probably can't be
showing records unless you have not only a release but talking to your employer so I mean but you can
talk about topics you can purchase stock images like I do oh yeah I didn't mention um I do have
a membership to Shutterstock because I do purchase a lot of shop stock images that I can show because
I can legally show them and I don't have to worry about getting sued do not steal other
people's images not only is that a huge violation but I can tell you about 20 years ago kind of
been 20 years ago when did we first start our first office website it must have been my son
was a baby or I was pregnant so it had to been 2005 2006 for our first office um and we didn't
know so we just found images on the internet and put them up and we ended up getting sued
um you know and we had to pay a lot of money and we had no idea I mean we didn't know now everybody
knows you can't take on images from somebody else but we didn't know you know so um oopsies um so
yeah don't do that that's highly not recommended make sure you have purchased your images not and
that's the other thing you got to watch out if you're using people making infographics
for you even Fiverr even upwork I've had people say oh these are free images you need to know
they actually are you know so it's better that you get the images and you give it to them and
they make the content that way you own the rights to the images and if they come back and if they
do a Google pixel Google pixel pixel search Google picture search Google photo search online and they
and they find that this is indeed a stock image if you can't prove that you've purchased it again
you can get sued by Getty Images or Shutterstock or whatever and you don't want to do that so yeah
go for it grow your brand this is the time to get in on YouTube why you still can it doesn't have
to cost anything incredible way to talk about what you know get your personality personality
out there even if you're just a dental student that's the first thing I would be doing right
now and talking about everything I'm learning in class you know or even what went on with the day
what dental school is like there's so many things you can do I know podcasts are hot and there's
absolutely nothing wrong with that but there's a heck of a lot of dental podcasts out there so why
not get started with YouTube glad to help you out as always we do offer each and every dentist out
there a free consultation we're not going to go over any of your patients we're just going
to chit chat about what you want to talk about be it social media Orthodontics whatever glad
to talk dental school you can schedule that at streetsmilesolutions.com all right thanks so much