5 Tips To Make Health and Wellness Videos People Care to Watch

The Internet is full of health and wellness videos that barely see the light of day. That’s because people make some serious mistakes in their health and wellness video or they don’t have the right strategy. These kinds of videos do nothing for your target audience and definitely nothing for your health and wellness marketing.

How do you get from any old video to one that your potential customers engage with and grows your business?

Here are 5 tips to make top-notch health and wellness videos people really want to watch.

1. Know Your Target Audience’s Toothpaste Brand

Yep, get that close.

You don’t really need to know their toothpaste brand. But, you should know more than their demographics. If you want your target audience to engage with your video content, you need to know them like the back of your hand. That means doing your research and really getting to know who your audience is. I bet you wouldn’t walk into a presentation without knowing your audience. Think of your video in the same way.

What do they want from your content? Do they need to know “how to live their best lives” or do they need to know which carbohydrates to eat for optimal health in a balanced diet?

Then, how will your content help them transform their lives? Knowing your target audience’s problem, goals, and level of awareness helps you craft a message for them. And when your message is for them, they’re more likely to watch your video.

2. Leave “Winging it” to the Birds

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”

Woodrow Wilson

Wilson understood the dangers of winging it. If you can get up anywhere, wing an entire presentation, video, or speech AND make it look practiced, you have some serious talent.

BUT! That’s not how “winging it” looks for most people. Especially on camera. Winging your video invites rambling, tangents, and all the things that make people abandon your video. Your future customers are going to engage with your video before they ever reach out to you. Do you want a rambling video to be their first impression of you? I thought not.

If the goal is to sell, always script your video. Your video script is the foundation for your video and will guide your entire production process. The scripting stage is where you can see whether you have a persuasive visual and verbal message before you begin production.

Learn more about how to write a video script here.

Now, if your goal isn’t selling, you can use an outline. Informative content videos like interviews or vlogs don’t need to be scripted word for work. An outline will give you the structure to stay on focused on the topic while giving you some flexibility.

3. Don’t Force Your Viewer To Breakout the Dictionary

Health and wellness gets technical, especially when the body is involved. I’m in the middle of my nutritional science degree witnessing how technical it gets. Remember that song that goes something like “the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone”? My Anatomy and Physiology class had me yearning for the days when the body was that simple.

Only break out the technical terms when absolutely necessary in your health and wellness videos. And when you do, give your viewer everything they need to understand what you’re talking about. If someone needs a dictionary to understand your content, you’ve lost them.

This doesn’t mean “dumb down” your content. When you research your target audience, find out what they already know about your topic and how they talk about it. Find out which words they use. Then, take your information and contextualize it in a way your audience understands.

Language teaching gave me a lot of practice in setting relevant contexts. My grammar lesson could be about the comparative adjective form (yawn)…or it could be about shopping for a new phone (using the comparative adjective structure).

Your health video could be about stress on the cervical spine or how to avoid neck pain when you sit down all day.

4. Mix Your Media (or Use B-roll)

There are a ton of video styles out there. Some of the most common health and wellness videos I’ve seen use:

• Animation
• Talking Head (you talking at a camera)
• Text (like a PPT)

But there is nothing that says you can’t mix up your video style. The goal of the visuals is to enhance your verbal message, so use what supports your message.

If you’re shooting a talking head video, B-roll can help keep viewers visually engaged because you’re introducing something new. B-roll can add more depth to your video, help people visualize points or just give them something different to look at.

5. Keep it Short

Nothing is worse than a video that drags on. So, make your video only as long as it’s valuable to your target audience. People will keep watching as long as they feel they are getting something.

It’s tempting to explain everything, but we don’t need it all.

Ideal Video Times

• Explainer videos: 60-90 seconds is ideal. You can go up to 2 minutes, but shorter is better.
• Informative videos: 8 minutes or less.

You can always cut your video into multiple ones. It’s better to have multiple videos than a really long one.