Virginia Chachati

I attended UK YouTube Health Creator Community online session on Wednesday 25th September 2024. Hosted by Dr Vishaal Virani, Head of Health at YouTube UK & Ireland, the session included presentations from Fangyue Chen from the Fleming Initiative and Doctor Azmain.

Overview from Vishaal

• Sign up to the Google Trends UK newsletter here and look out for any health topics that pop up
• Check out Google Trends here
• YouTube Health has partnered with UCL to help teens with their mental health – read about the UCL and YouTube partnership on LinkedIn here

Fangyue Chen health creators PhD research and Fleming Initiative

• Fangyue is looking to interview you if you have a YouTube channel and create health information videos. Contact me for Fangyue’s email address if you want to take part.
• This week the Fleming Initiative team was present at the UN General Assembly to raise awareness on the topic of anitmicrobial resistnace (AMR).
• Several health creators, part of CHAIN, created videos to explain what AMR is and how we can keep antibiotics working for the next 100 years. You can join CHAIN here.

Doctor Azmain’s top tips on creating health information videos

Doctor Azmain has 28,000 subscribers on YouTube and believes health information is a determinant of health. He started his content creation journey with short medical quizzes, now know as “Doctor Azmain’s medical quizzes”.

He said there are three main tenets of content: education, entertainment and inspiration. If your content includes all three of these, it’s more likely to go viral (reach lots of people and get lots of views).

His creation process looks like this: idea, research, script, film and edit, upload, and finally, look at analytics.

Doctor Azmain’s themes for video ideas

• if it’s a current news topic (such as whooping cough)
• is it to raise awareness about something
• is it for a public health campaign
• debunking misinformation
• CPR or first aid
• understanding medication
• healthy lifestyle
• mental health
• emerging medical technology

Top tips from Doctor Azmain

• When it comes to evidence sources, he recommends high quality sources such as WHO, NHS, DHSC, journal articles.
• Think about the relevance and timeliness of your content, for example, has it come up in the news recently? Is the topic trending across social media?
• Look at Google trends for ideas.
• Try to script your videos with the audience in mind, and think about making content that resonates with your audience – do not just make content for yourself.
• Check out the AoMRC and NHS content style guide.
• For your scripts, think about the level of language – simple or technical? Clarify jargon and do a readability test with hemingwayapp.
• Think about how you can maintain your audience’s attention – use hooks, create intrigue, use images and animations, add transitions, add subtitles.
• When uploading the final video, Doctor Azmain uploads it across all major platforms, at the “right time” for his audience, and thinks about SEO and metadate (title, description and thumbnail).
• When you monitor analytics, look at views, likes, comments, shares and saves. Also look at averge watch time, audience retention, clickthrough rate, impressions, accounts reached, accounts engages, countries, age ranges and gender.
• YouTube does not push out your content, it “pulls” it to viewers.

Health Media Consultancy

Health Media Consultancy is a collaborative created by Doctor Azmain.

Doctor Azmain’s content creation process

• Good video idea
• Attention grabbing hook (visual or verbal)
• Good script (clear, jargon-free language)
• Good verbal delivery and energy
• High quality video (clarity, lighting)
• High quality audio
• Appropriate b-roll (background, extra visuals)
• Subtitles
• Transitions and movement
• Appropriate sound effects and subtle background music

Keep in mind this is a “gold standard”.

Join the UK YouTube Health Creator Community here to attend the next session in October 2024.