Home Care U - How to Make Hard-Hitting Video Marketing Content On A Tight Budget (Nick Bonitatibus Pt. 1)

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

The episode for people who have repeatedly been told they need to be using video to market their home care agency, but don't know where to start. Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Hey, welcome to Home Care U, a podcast made by the team at Care Switch. Nobody went to school to learn how to run a home care agency, so we're bringing the education to you. Join our live audience by going to careswitch.com slash homecareu or listen on your own time wherever you get your podcasts. Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. Okay, welcome to Home Care U.

Thanks to those who are joining us live and thanks to our guest today who we'll introduce in a minute here. Just a few announcements to get us started. So first off, as a quick reminder, Home Care U is both a live Zoom class and a podcast. If you are listening to the podcast, you can get that wherever you get your podcasts as Home Care U. We update them every week. If you want to join live for future sessions, you can do that at Home Care U. That's uasununiversity.careswitch.com.

And we are every Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eastern. We always bring on great guests and experts to talk about super specific in the weeds topics about how to run a home care agency. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get started. So we have the owner and founder of marketing agency Digital Champions on with us today. So Nick, thanks for joining us. Do you want to give a second and introduce yourself? Sure, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

My name is Nick Bonitatibus. I know that is a mouthful, the way to remember it if you just say hippopotamus, Bonitatibus. There you go. Now you guys are going to remember me. So my favorite thing is to do what we're about to do, which is to teach and educate. And I am excited for the opportunity to share how you can leverage and help to attract more clients, hire more caregivers, and get more referrals from more referral sources. Thanks again for joining us. And do you mind just kind of sharing briefly, like, what does Digital Champions do? What's your background? How did you get into doing this?

It's interesting when you said like marketing agency, I don't really define my company as a marketing agency, although technically we kind of are. but we're kind of a twofold option, two parts, both creation and education, as well as a marketing agency. And basically what I help my clients do specifically working with home care agencies is to help them leverage video marketing to drive greater results in their business. And we do that through working with me as well as I have a whole team of editors on my team so that you don't have to worry about the post-production process and everything that goes into that. But the one thing that really separates us from other companies that are out there is really focusing on not just making videos that we're posting on social media,

but really building assets that you can continue to drive results and leverage again and again in your business for multiple areas within your business, from marketing to operations, from recruitment, retention. And there's so many applications. And I'm sure over this week and next week, we'll get an opportunity to dive into all of the things that you can start to do to really leverage this powerful medium. Awesome. And well said. So that's probably a good way to start this off. To introduce the topic today, we're going to be talking about the power of brands within home care, how to build a brand, and then going specifically into tactics around video marketing, how to make sure that your brand is serving your business goals, and probably start to get into social media too, although we'll continue that conversation into next week.

As kind of a preview and word of caution to those who are listening right now. So my experience is that marketing is a particular area where there are vastly varying levels of experience and knowledge within home care. And so we're going to start kind of a fundamental here, talking about brands and talking at a super general kind of high level and then get more and more specific. And so if you start to listen to this and you're like, all right, guys, like I'm experienced with brands. I understand what a brand is and that kind of thing. And you're talking kind of simply here, stay with us because we will get more and more into the weeds, into the meat here. But we want to make sure and start off with a good foundation. So that being said, I guess my first question,

Nick, is just, you know, talk to me about why it's important to build a brand for your home care agency, what that really means and doesn't mean. Absolutely. Yeah. So to quote Jeff Bezos, he says, your brand is what people say when you're not in the room. That is a fundamental principle about marketing in general. Realistically, really just do people know who you are and what you do? That really is just like the most simplistic way to understand how branding is effective. That if you go to somebody that's your brothers, your cousins, your friends,

your family, like, do they even know what it is that you do and how you help people? And so often, what I find in home care is that people are trying to go into the specifics of like, oh, well, we do activities of daily living and like all these other things. But you should be able to explain what you do in one to two sentences, right? They talk about the elevator pitch. And that's a huge part of your brand in addition to what people know you for. And one thing that's really unique about home care is that, unfortunately, everyone does the same thing that you do, right? Home care as a service is not unique. A caregiver going into somebody's home, doing some activities of daily living,

right? From that standpoint, from a broad perspective, that is home care. And so, that just magnifies even more how important it is that we're doing different things, that we're leveraging certain aspects that are going to make us stand out, that are going to showcase how we're different. Because at the end of the day, they can get the same thing from the person down the street. So what is it about your company? What is it about you? What is it about your brand that is making people want to work with you over the person down the street? And so the more that we can leverage different resources to get the word out there, to really understand how we can help people in a unique way is going to help us to

drive more and greater results in your business. Love it. Something I want to talk a little bit about here. I like that you make sure to mention that it's not just, you know, a logo and colors and things like that, and that it's your reputation, but it's also not just, you know, what is spoken verbally, but it's kind of the whole understanding perception of your company and how you're wanting it to be perceived. I think there are kind of at least two risks when we talk about brands and like what a brand is and how to build it, which is it's easy to think of it as like just the logo and colors and things like that. And, you know, think of a brand as something that's confined to

Canva or Microsoft Paint or whatever you're using. And it's also easy to think of it as only kind of a traditional word of mouth reputation and not in terms of how do the visual aspects like your logo and brand colors and things and assets you're using convey the message you want. Is there anything you would add to that clarification? Yeah. Well, I just want to say it's so funny that you brought that up because I see so many companies that when they're making social media posts, images, flyers, brochures, that there is a smorgasbord of fonts, colors, just this constant mix of different features in that regard. And from the minimalistic standpoint of just the actual look and feel,

branding is so easy. You have a couple colors, you got a couple fonts, just use the same ones so that you have that consistency within your own brand. So I did want to segment to that. But one thing from your overall brand image in what people are saying about you, a lot of times, our caregivers love us. And so one thing I would say, well, prove it. right? Oh, our clients love us. Prove it, right? And this goes into the power of just like leveraging social proof within our own market. And so often, I see agencies that aren't properly, one, just from like a Google reviews standpoint.

I mean, that is by far like the easiest way to increase your SEO is just getting more Google reviews. And that's a big part of your brand image in what people are saying about you. But then there's also the more subtle things about what your caregivers are saying about you. If you're struggling to retain caregivers, then getting more may not be the answer. The answer may be to why are these caregivers leaving? Why aren't you able to retain them? What kind of attention are you bringing? What kind of things are you doing? What kind of company culture are you bringing? And so that's a big aspect of the internal brand that you're creating within your organization. And the analogy that I often use, because I hear this all the time when it

comes to caregiver recruitment, is like, I need more caregivers, need more caregivers. But the analogy is like a bucket, right? And so, so often they're like, I need more caregivers, and you're just trying to dump as much water into your bucket as possible. But if you have holes in your bucket, then all that effort that goes into trying to get more caregivers, and maybe that's like spending money on Indeed ads or whatever these resources, but things just keep falling through the cracks, going through these holes. And I'm sure some of you guys have some gaping massive holes in your buckets. And those things need to be plugged before you're looking to try and get more. And the same thing works from a leads perspective

where people want more leads, but how's your closing process? And that's just part of business in general, that there's multiple aspects of these pieces. But that is one of the fundamental aspects that I see all the time, that more is not always the answer. You are getting caregivers to some capacity. Most of you guys are getting some caregivers coming in, but they're either applying and then not showing up, right? They're not coming to interviews or you hire them and they don't show

up for orientation. What's the reason? Mainly, they're just choosing another company over you. And so that makes an aspect of how are you thinking about your internal brand? How are you leveraging and marketing your own company culture that is not only going to get those people to want to apply for your organization, but also want to show up for those interviews, to show up for orientation. If we're waiting to talk about company culture and orientation, you're already too late, right? And so that becomes a fundamental piece of our brand.

And then not to mention that, the things that we're trying to... That we say that we do, right? Hey, here's why our caregivers love us. How are we leveraging what we're doing within our business that is working for a retention standpoint? And then leveraging that in our external marketing to drive more people and convert more people that are coming. We want to get people to say, I want to work for you above any other company and may even be willing to take less pay because of the way that you're running your organization, the way that you're treating your employees, the way that you're building your brand. Okay. So you said a lot of really good things in there and I want to

back up a little bit and hit on a few different parts of it. So toward the beginning, something you mentioned, I think that is really key here is the fact that your brand is not just what, what you say about your company or what you as the owner or manager or whatever, want people to think about it, but it's kind of in some ways the sum total of what your employees and clients and everyone are also saying about it. I think you talk first about caregivers and how to leverage the voices of your caregivers in creating your brand. So let's talk about that first. Go into more detail about how you can use your here and I can speak and I can say, you know, guys, I'm the best. Just like, I'm really great. You should probably work with me. I'm just like really cool. Right. But that's only going to have a very minimal impact. You

hopefully are laughing a little bit because that was supposed to be intended to be sarcastic, right? But it's so much more impactful when you can have people that are already working with you be your voices and speak for you, right? And say, have your caregivers, wow, this is the absolute most incredible employer. I love working for this person, right? So from a tactical standpoint, how do we do this? So this is actually what I do with my clients. This is the second video. There's a whole series of specific home care videos that we create. And this is video number two. And I call it your recruitment video. I know, not a super fancy

name, but it gets to the point. And the idea behind this is that we are leveraging what our caregivers are saying from a testimonial standpoint in a video format that we can use on a consistent basis. And so what's really great about this process and how we can leverage this is you only really need a handful of good caregivers that you have, four or five, right? Usually I recommend like four to six. And you basically conduct an interview. Now, there's very specific questions that we ask them that are geared towards getting them to open up

that's going to address certain objections and leveraging sales psychology based on the questions. So if that's a little high level, I'll get a little bit more specific here. So just to give you an example of one of the questions that we ask to our caregivers is, what was it like before working with us, right? Previous company, and what is it like now? And so just from that specific kind of two-part question, we're able to showcase the transformation. And that's what people want. People are stuck. They're not happy with where they are.

They want to get to where they want to go. And so if somebody comes on, one of your caregivers, and they say, the company I was working for, they were really bad at communication. I just felt like I was in another number. And then I started working for ABC Home Care Company. And I love it. They're so great. They take care of me. They're just friendly and so grateful for all the work that I do. And so now you're literally leveraging your caregiver testimonials, your caregiver video, talking about real people, right? Talking about their experience

in working with you and the transformation that's happened. Now, something to note, as I kind of touched on earlier, is that if you're not actually doing these things that caregivers want to stick around, that you are taking care of them, that you do have good communication, right? Then you're not going to have these testimonials to leverage. And that's why there's a lot of moving pieces to leveraging this. But if you get a couple caregivers, interview them, now you've got this series of videos that you can now put together in a compilation, right? Of just taking all of the best stuff that they say, and then use that video again, and again, and again, and again. And it becomes this asset that you can leverage. When somebody applies, right, boom, you send them this video. Now you have your specific team

members, your caregivers, selling why your organization is the best from real people from your organization, and why they should also work for your company. Because the biggest part from a recruitment standpoint is understanding that recruitment is selling. It is a fundamental aspect. And until we rewire our brain and change how we think about recruitment and start thinking about it as selling, then we're going to continue to struggle. But the better, right? Jim Rohn says, don't wish it was easier, wish you were better. If you can be better at how you're converting these individuals coming in, you'll be able to plug those holes in the buckets and attract more caregivers. And just from this one video can

be a powerful asset to use in not only your recruitment efforts, but also showcasing why it's beneficial for people to stick around from a retention standpoint as well. Love it. So you talked about having kind of a handful of caregivers who each answer several questions and you build up a library of videos that can be repurposed on different platforms in different ways and things. I liked your question about how are things before and how are things for you since working for this company? Do you mind me asking what some of the other questions are that you recommend asking caregivers to create these videos? Yeah, let me see if I can remember them off the top of my head. So

generally question number one and two are actually just a warmup questions. So it's like name, how, you know, what's your favorite holiday? What's your favorite ice cream? Just because talking on camera can be a little uncomfortable. So we wanted to get them to feel a little good, you know, feel better. We do the before we do after we also ask, what makes you different, right? What makes your organization different from other agencies that are out there? I believe that's question five, right? Yeah, three, four. Then we want to ask them, what do they like most about being a caregiver? This question is actually geared a little different. And the goal of that question is actually specifically geared towards people who may be thinking about the caregiver profession and not necessarily people that are already caregivers. And so people that are looking for a change. And this is a whole other rabbit hole of understanding that when we're trying to attract and sell to caregivers, that there's different people out there. There's people that are working for other companies. There's people that don't have any experience, right? Those are two totally different audiences that we may be

trying to attract. There may be people that work for an assisted living, right? Or that have always been in a facility and now we want to bring them into the home care space, right? So there's different audiences that are there that we're trying to target. And so that actually becomes like a separate video. And then the last question, I may have missed one along the way, but the last question then is, what would you say to someone thinking about applying or working with us? And basically what that last question is, is a call to action. We're trying to get people to take action. And so you can kind of imagine a compilation video when asking that question.

When I've done this with my clients, you get answers that are like, oh my gosh, you should have applied yesterday. Just do it right now. Apply right now, right? Come work for us. And then now it's this compilation of people being apply now, just do it, join our team, right? And so that becomes kind of the end, the call to action to getting them to join. And that's kind of the focal point. I have about eight questions. I don't know how many I just did right there. I think I covered most of them, but that's about the breakdown. Okay. Sounds good. Follow-up question to that. So it sounds like your suggestion here is to kind of

do the full interview, so to speak, with these caregivers, and then be prepared to use both the full video as like one single video, but also use the individual questions as their own videos, potentially, depending on like the setting. And like you said, if you're trying to communicate to people who aren't caregivers at all yet, or caregivers at a different company and get them to join you or whatever. Yeah, basically, what's cool about this process is, so let's say you have five caregivers that you're interviewing. What you end up getting is you actually get seven videos with this one interview process.

And so you get the one video, which is like how you're different. And that really focuses on a couple of the different questions. I think it's like three, four, seven, eight, and then what it's like being a caregiver, right? Or why to become a caregiver. And then that's like six or five and six. And then you're also getting each individual caregiver testimonial as its own video. So just like one individual person. And so you can imagine from like a YouTube perspective, right? It's like all of a sudden now you've got these seven videos that are on there. And if you think about it from a recruitment standpoint, what I like to call your sales page for recruiting caregivers, a lot of my clients have this on their page. And if you go to

my website, you can see it. If you go to the testimonials page, you'll see there's like 25, 30 videos on my channel. Now, is someone going to watch every single video? Absolutely not. It's going to take them like two plus hours to watch all the testimonial footage I have. But it speaks volumes just from a pure numbers standpoint. And so we're just leveraging these assets now, right? It's like, hey, you got this. We have these videos. Let's make sure that we're milking them for all they're worth. When I help my clients to create even educational content, we're breaking them down into shorter one-minute TikTok videos and Instagram Reels that you can now use. It's like, how can we get more out of the content that we're creating? And it's this aspect of working smarter, not harder. But yes,

so you end up with a good amount of video content that you can now leverage. And you can even transcribe the videos and then use that as just like social media posts that you're just using the text from what they say. So there's a lot of ways that it breaks down into really leveraging this interview. Oh, and one thing I wanted to say real quick that is super impactful, right? Is that this isn't just about getting them on video. The entire interview process is a touch point. It's a way to get your best caregivers into your office, right? Them to come in. You're like, hey, do you want some coffee? You want a drink, right? You're able to take care

of them. There may even be questions that you want to ask them that aren't part of the interview process because there's things to question, right? If they're not saying things like, oh my God, the communication is real great. You may consider asking them, hey, what are some things that we could do to better communicate? And so now, not only is this a way for you to create marketing assets, but it's a way to actually get feedback from your existing caregivers so that you can continue to improve to find out what they like and find out areas that you can now improve within your process from your top caregivers. Awesome. Love it. Again, like you give so much depth and meat in your answers that whenever you stop, I kind of have like four follow-up questions. I'm like, all right, where do we go first here? So a couple things, like first, just a kind of thought as a fellow marketer, for those listening, I just kind of want to like drawing from my experience back up what Nick is

saying specifically around my opinion is that one of the most important, if not in some cases, the most important asset you can make for your marketing and recruitment. Our caregiver made testimonial videos. I don't think that's just a Nick concept here. I totally agree with that. And I think that's really good to do. So a few more specific questions here. I mean, you kind of spoke from the perspective of this specific process that you've made that helps to provide a really specific library of the right kinds of videos and stuff. I think overall the concept here is, you know, have a variety of videos from several caregivers answering different questions you can use in lots of places. I can hear the owners listening to the podcast episode being like, okay, this is great guys,

but I'm already doing 70 hour weeks. I'm exhausted. My background is not in video marketing. And this sounds like lots of work. So talk to me about the practical side of how are you making these videos? How are you filming them? If there is editing to be done, how should they be doing that? Yeah. Well, the short answer is just work with me and it'll be really easy. No. But it is the truth. And it's delegation, right? There's certain things like having a whole team of editors that can help them with that process. But to be more tactical, right? It can be people overcomplicate the process.

I mean, it can be as simple as going on your phone and just recording these videos, right? I mean, just all I recommend, all I say, right? I'm going to say this slowly. Record your videos horizontally, right? I know that goes against what a lot of new trends are doing and TikTok and Instagram, and then people want to change to the vertical format, but horizontal is still the way to go because you can always go from horizontal and then convert it to vertical, but you can't convert it from vertical to horizontal. And that's one of the reasons. So another way that you can do it too, because I've, again, lots of troubleshooting that has

happened when working with clients. And there's been a huge evolution of how I've tweaked things that I do internally with my clients over the years to make things easier, is that I actually stopped having them record on their phone and started having them record on Zoom. Because it's a little easier. You can just have them sit down in the chair in your office, right? You put up the computer, you hit record on Zoom, and now they're able to record that content. And the reason I bring that up is because sometimes when it's on the phone, if it's a long file, it becomes difficult to then get it to a computer or get it to a Dropbox folder or Google Drive folder that you can then give to an editing team. If you were to edit yourself,

there are a lot of editing platforms out there, but I'm guessing that you're like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to spend that time, which again, why there's resources out there that can help you with this. But there's Canva, which I know Connor had mentioned earlier, which their video platform is, it's not great, but, you know, it can kind of do the job from a minimalistic standpoint. One of my favorite editing tools from a phone perspective is called InShot, I-N-S-H-O-T. And then from, uh, you know, if you have an Apple, if you have a Mac computer, like you can just edit on iMovie or, um, there's a software called Camtasia that is just kind of like a really simple, basic editing service. There's, you know, super advanced ones

like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut. And if you do that with no experience, you will look at it and go, all right, I'm leaving. And you will never do anything with it. Because even when I was, I transitioned from iMovie to Adobe Premiere, and there was a huge period where I had all this video work that's where I came from the industry. I used to make his videos. And I transitioned to this more difficult product, but I had all these projects I needed to do. And so I kept delaying on learning this new software. And so I recommend just keeping it simple. You don't need any fancy editing. It can be as simple as just like chopping up the bad stuff and deleting it and keeping all the good stuff. Like you don't need necessarily fancy transitions or B-roll. B-roll is basically like secondary footage that you overlay on top of the video to create more just like visual aids within the video, but don't overcomplicate the process. It can just be as

simple as just get your caregivers in your office, ask them some questions and record it. Awesome. I was listening to a podcast you were on the other day. Well, I mean, you were on this while I was listening to it the other day, and you talked about how it's actually beneficial to like not necessarily have the super high production quality on these videos because it can be helpful to have it just kind of be a selfie style video where a caregiver is talking into their phone or whatever, or in the Zoom, like you said. Talk to me about why that is a little bit. And then I have another question related to that. Yeah, absolutely. Great question. One of the things that comes to home care is that this is a very personal business. One of the things I love to say, right, and it's actually

from a guy named Pat Flynn. And he said, there's P2B, right? People to businesses, and then we got business to business, B2B, right? But really, it's P2P, people to people. People want to work with real people. And so from the home care aspect, they're not looking for some massive, huge brand because that's intimidating. They don't feel like that they're going to get the proper care that they need. And the same thing works from a caregiver perspective, right? Oh, I'm just going to be another number. And so end. It's like, if you want to do that, by all means. But if you Google how much video marketing costs for an agency to come to your office and actually make videos, you're going to pay like 10 grand for a 30 second video. You can Google that data. It's insane how much they charge for high quality professional video production.

I know most of you don't want to spend that kind of... And you shouldn't. That's the whole reason why I started my business because I wanted people to leverage this powerful medium without having to break the bank. And so when you leverage just real marketing, hey, here I am with my caregiver in the office. It doesn't take away from the level of your brand. This is how content is being created. People are doing it in-house. People are creating content. And so, I mean, I had one of my clients, he was supposed to record the video, the recruitment video on Zoom, and then he was having issues. And then he recorded the video vertical, which again, I addressed. So I was like, oh man, all right, but we can make this work.

We will make this work. And even though he didn't record on Zoom, we were able to leverage the content and it added this personal feel that it wasn't this massive corporation, that it was real people. It's not like paid actors or sometimes people work for franchises and they're using caregiver testimonials from corporate. It's like, but those aren't even your caregivers. I think it's dishonest when people use something... The franchisor probably won't like that I'm saying this, but it's just like, that's the overall branching brand, but that's not you. And so we want that real feel. And so the quality is less relevant. It is more about what people are saying. And that's just a whole other element too, of just like marketing in general. One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou is, people don't remember what you said,

they remember how you made them feel. And when we think about that, just in marketing in general, especially if you're thinking about as we're talking in video and, oh my God, I don't want to get on camera. I'll mess up. If you speak with passion and enthusiasm, that is what people are going to remember. They're not going to remember that you messed up on a few words, or you said this when you're like, oh, I should have said that. None of that matters. It's totally irrelevant. People forget that. If you just speak with passion and enthusiasm and your caregivers and you bring them in and they're real and it's raw, that's going to have the greatest impact for your business.

So one thing I want to recap here and just like see if this is accurate or if there's anything you'd add to this. So it sounds like while there is always benefit in, you know, kind of having more polished and like more produced videos eventually for the right purposes for someone who's listening to this and wants to get started and is like, I see the value in making and using videos like these that give voices to my caregivers on my team, you really can get started pretty simply by figuring out the right handful of questions to ask to the right handful of caregivers, recording that either on Zoom or on a phone, making sure it's horizontal, and then probably recording those. If you don't want to get bogged

down in the editing process, you can kind of record those each question as its own videos. You don't have to slice anything up. And while it may not be quite ideal in every way, like even just that simple process is a way that an agency could get started with this. Is there anything you'd add to that? That was an excellent recap. And I just want to hit on the last thing you said, which is just getting started. If we overcomplicate the process and you're like, oh, but I need to do this and I need to create this compilation and edit, it's like, just take out your phone, record the video and slap

the raw thing on your YouTube channel. Like that will be better than nothing. And when it comes to video, you know, and I, I've even had people, uh, there's one individual, she, she called me and she was asking about my services. And it was a little out of her budget for what I was offering, but she was still able to take what I create on YouTube and start making videos. And she's got a YouTube channel. She's making videos. So just take action. Just don't overthink it. Don't worry about things being perfect. You'll never be perfect. Perfect is the number one reason to not get started. Often when it comes to this element, you know, we're bogged down by things having to be a certain way. But the most successful people out there are just doing and then learning. And that's the quickest way to get success. You can speed your

learning process by investing in certain things, but you can also just learn by doing. And if you don't actually try, then you have no opportunity to get better. And video and digital marketing is no different than any other thing in your business or any other thing in your life that you may not be amazing at it the first time you do it. But if you do it more, you'll get better, you'll improve and continue to grow. And you can just focus on getting 1% better every single day. Well said. I kind of see this as having two halves to this discussion. So there's like the discussion on what videos are you making to support your brand? Like what content is in those, how you're doing that. And then there's like the second half that's like, um, how you're actually using the videos, what

like social media platforms you're putting them on, you know, what other places like your hiring process, you're using them, uh, before we jump to that kind of second bucket of questions, is there anything else we should talk about as far as the actual videos you should be making and how to make sure those are supporting your brand? One thing I will say, and again, we'll probably touch on a little bit more, is whatever you're doing in your own marketing, whether it's creating these videos or within your internal marketing, just make sure that you're leveraging it to the fullest extent. Right? I mean, the amount of people that I talk to, they're like, oh, I've got this great photo that I took with my client. I'm like, did you post it on social media? They're like, no. I'm like, why? Why not? I mean, so often we have these tools, these things that we're creating, these things that we're doing, these things that we're doing.

Just make sure that we're using them to the best of your ability to putting it out there. If you do a caregiver appreciation, post that on your Facebook pages. Put it on your recruitment page. Leverage these photos. Leverage these things that you're already doing. Because there's probably things that you are already doing in your things that you're already doing in your internal operations and in your marketing there's kind of a question in here of like should they be making client videos or like using kind of client voice content too

and if so like how should they navigate any questions about like privacy concerns and that kind of thing and using that content? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty simple. By all means, talk with a lawyer if you want, but you can just create a simple media release form that just says like, hey, you know, I agree to be able to record this content and post it on social media, sign here, right? And so that's like the minimalistic standpoint. I think one of the things, and again, not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice, but there's a certain element of, you know, you can just apologize. And like if somebody, if you post a testimonial, let's say, and they're like, I don't like that you post that testimonial.

You're like, okay, I'll delete it. And just like delete it, take it down. Right. And then you're like, all right, if they take it into like a further effort and like try and like, I mean, it is possible, but to me that would be like pretty extravagant effort when you can just like take it down. But again, a simple media release form is a quick way to just kind of solve that problem. And it was funny.

One of the things that I learned the time when I was working with Steve, I remember this photographer from the local paper or magazine came in and was taking photos of him and Steve's like posing in his office. And I asked the guy, I'm like, do you need like a media release form? And he's like, the guy's posing in the photos. He's giving permission. He's literally like posing These aren't candid photos at an event. And so there is potential legal merit that if somebody talk with a lawyer, simple media release form, get it signed if you want to, you know, cover. I have a template too that I give to my clients as well. Gotcha. That makes sense. And I would say, I mean, this might be one where we might see it a little bit differently. And that might just be because, you know, maybe you're more experienced in this than me or whatever. But I would kind of suggest my principle

here would be to err on the side of safety, caution, and consent here. And so, I mean, definitely like Nick said, be mindful of the context in which the video or whatever content is being created. Be mindful of who, like what type is this, like a client, a caregiver, a member of your staff, and just make sure that whatever form of content you're creating and however you're using it matches up with the expectations and understanding of the person who is in it.

Anything you'd add to that or whatever, and then we can move on. Yeah, no, I think that's well said. If you want to err on the side of caution, just, you know, again, a caregiver may come in and then they leave and they're like, oh, take the video down. You're like, no, you send a media release form. Boom. All right, you're covered. So, like, you know, if you want to cover yourself, then an error on the side of caution, then by all means, it's your decision on what you do. That's all I'm saying. I'm not a lawyer. So whatever you do, it's on you, not me. Don't come blaming me.

Okay. Sounds good. Hit this point hard so we can move on here. So let's start talking about how and where you should be using video content like we've talked about. Where are the most important places? Let's kind of start from a high level. Like where are the different types of places you should be using this and what might be some places that people wouldn't think about? Yeah, absolutely. So the short answer, which probably people won't like, is everywhere.

So it's like, if we're creating this content, then we might as well leverage it on multiple platforms. It can be simple if you're using a scheduling tool. I mean, you can potentially just like schedule content to every single platform at the same time. So it's not like it's adding that much more additional time. But one of the biggest things that I think is that there's two platforms that I believe are so underutilized. And this is not so much caregiver, but which is like overall home care marketing, what social platforms are the best. And the number one, and I promise I'm not just saying this because this is what I help businesses do, but YouTube is different from every single other platform that exists is that when you post something on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever it may be, you post that video, you post that content, it goes to the newsfeed, it is gone. People aren't going to see it anymore.

No one's going back into your Facebook videos and going into your like really old videos that you've posted and watching. You may get one like random weirdo that maybe like goes and does that. But for the most part, the current feed is all that really matters. Whereas YouTube, whatever your best content is, continues to get shown to your target audience again and again and again. And your highest performing content gets seen. So I've seen this with myself. I have one video on my YouTube channel right now that just is performing insanely well. And almost all of my, for the last like six months, all of my subscriber increases have come from this one single video. And so it goes to show you that like one powerful video can have

massive impact. One of my clients that I actually had a call with earlier today, they've got like 3000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. And they have a video about how to use a Hoyer lift and has over 350,000 views. And it's basically getting like hundreds of views a day, just like constantly getting viewership. And what ends up happening is that one video that has all of those views has this trickle down effect to other video content that you create. I actually have a question specific to that scenario, because this is something I've been wanting to ask someone with your knowledge. So let's take this example. So like, let's say that you've started a great YouTube channel for your agency that's informative for people who are

interested in these topics and you get hundreds of thousands of views on a video about a Hoyer lift like you said how much of it is location and geographic based meaning how many of those thousands of views that you're getting are actually people in your area who would be relevant to your company? And then maybe second to that, is there benefit in getting views from people who aren't in your area? And if so, what is that benefit? Great question. Yeah. And this brings up a really important topic that is important that I addressed that that's really about vanity metrics. You know, I'm talking about all these views and stuff, you know, so that I sound cool, but the views, a number of views is

less important and really about the quality of views, which actually brings up an important part about some of the short form content that like, Hey, if somebody is watching, uh, you know, Oh, you get, let's say you get 10,000 views on a one minute video, but you know, half the people or three quarters of the people only watch 15 seconds of the video. Whereas if you have 10 people that watch like four minutes of one of your longer form videos, the likelihood that those people are going to buy is so much greater. And so if you are creating content and you're not getting tons of views, don't worry about that because it's all about the quality of views that you are getting. To answer your question, Connor, there is a lot of merit in one, the viewership is going

to leverage your target audience. If your YouTube channel is optimized and set up where it's geared towards your geographic location, that you're tagging the videos of where you are so that when someone searches something, how to use a Hoyer lift or whatever it may be, how to care for my loved one with dementia, that based on where they are from an SEO standpoint, that you're going to now come up from the search results. The other aspect of this is our main goal from a home care agency is to not necessarily always to get sales. Yes, that's like a fundamental aspect, obviously, of growing your business and not enough agencies like focus

on just revenue generating activities. But the big aspect is that you are a resource and that is your goal. So when someone reaches out or contacts you, you're not necessarily just going to be like, oh, well, we don't service that area. So bye. Right? No, you're going to help them. You're going to gear them. And if you're part of a franchise, right, then you have this entire network that you can now like refer business to. So if you're getting this business from other areas, you have this opportunity to then refer. And I see this in a lot of the other home care groups where people are posting in the group, does someone service this area? So it is happening fairly regularly where someone may get a client

that's in a different area that they serve. And if you can go help someone out or direct them to somebody that you know is a good agency in another location, more power to it, right? You're giving that person what they need. You're helping them get the resources. You're guiding them on where they need to go. And isn't that what you're here to do, right?

To help people get the information that they need to go? And isn't that what you're here to do, right? To help people get the information that they need. And that's a big fundamental aspect of what we're doing and how we're leveraging our content. Yes, the main goal is to drive sales, drive leads, right? Get business for your local brand and your local organization. But from a greater aspect, and this is kind of like my why, right, is that there is a massive lack of education in the home care space where people don't even know what home care is, how to prevent falls in the home, how to better communicate with your loved one with dementia. What questions should you ask a home care agency? There are so many questions. And when people need help, they're at the hospital, they're stressed, they're frustrated, they don't

know what to do, they don't know where to go, they don't have the resources, right? And so, it is my mission and our mission to educate as many people as possible, regardless of whether or not that necessarily helps your bottom line. There is a huge lack of education. And I believe that we have an obligation and a duty to get as much of this information out there to help these people that need you, that need this information, that are in a massive time of need. And if you're here and you're in this business to make an impact and make a difference,

then this is one way that you can do that. Okay. So there are like three things that I got from that. The first one is that in terms of making sure that YouTube videos specifically are serving you in your geographic area, you need to make sure and use specific location settings when you're posting the videos and making your YouTube channel to make sure that YouTube knows you're located in this area and show it to people in this area. Sounds like the second one here is understanding the big picture of your role in helping kind of society as a whole, appreciate the value of home care and know how to take care of people, whatever their role may be in that process.

And then the third one is like specifically understanding for the people in your area, you know, who may be potential clients, they may be potential caregivers or referral sources in the future. Recognizing how your content can help to build relationships with them over time that may pay dividends in the future. Are those three points a pretty good summarization of what you just said to me? Yes. Excellent. You're a rock star. Well, well-reviewed. Yeah. I have no additional feedback there. Awesome. Love it. So we're going to start to wrap up here in a minute.

So we will be bringing Nick back on next week. And to give a little preview of that, we're going to go more specifically into the platforms and places you should be sharing and using videos to help build your brand. If you found this last part about like tactically how to use YouTube and some of the specific questions around that, you'll like next week because we'll do a lot more discussion on that kind of thing. We'll talk about TikTok. Should you be using it? Should you be not? How should you be using it? Should you be not? How should you be using it? If so, and other platforms like that, always kind of keeping it from a perspective of if you're a busy agency owner and or staff, what can you be realistically doing to apply

these principles without taking like a ton of time or budget on it? So join us again next week for that. Really excited for that. And Nick, thanks again for joining. This has been really good. Great to pick your brain. Great to talk to you as always. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I love sharing this stuff and I look forward to next week. Awesome. Thanks. Just as a quick reminder here for those listening or joining live, this is both a live class and a podcast. If you want to join live, ask your questions. You can sign up free at homecareu.careswitch.com. If you want to listen on your own time, you can listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. It's

called Home Care U, again, U as in university. And don't forget to check out Care Switch. We are an AI-powered home care management software platform. So we help you run your agency. And we use some of the recent advances in AI tech to help you run more efficiently than ever before, doing things like preventing no-call, no-shows, faster scheduling, and stronger caregiver matching. So go to careswitch.com to learn more and we'll see you all next time. Thanks.

That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.