5 Ways to Master Veterinary Social Media Marketing

Are you looking to engage with your followers on social media? The most popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are fueled by the constant flow of content from its users. From videos to pictures, shared links, and more, these platforms are essential in building your online presence and connecting with your target audience.

Veterinary social media marketing offers the opportunity to build strong, meaningful relationships with your clients along with being part of an online community and educating followers with your veterinary expertise. 

Take full advantage of social media marketing and boost traffic to your veterinary website with these 5 ways to master social media marketing.

Tip #1: Use Video Content to Showcase Your Vet Practice

Video content has become an essential part of successfully engaging with followers on social media and increasing brand awareness. Businesses are leveraging video to improve their online presence and stand out from their competition. 

According to The Marketing Helpline, social media posts with video have 48% more views. This shows that users are more willing to engage with posts on social media that include a video. Add video marketing to your content strategy by getting started with a few of our favorites ideas: 

• Introduce your veterinary team to your social media followers. You can share images of each staff member along with a quick biography in the video. Have fun with these! Share what your staff’s favorite animals are, what they like to do in their spare time, and what got them interested in the veterinary profession. This helps clients to familiarize themselves with everyone that works in your office. 

• ‘A day in the life of’ will give clients an insight into the behind the scenes work you and your staff do during your day to day tasks. 

• Explain the services you offer to your clients. This is an opportunity to show you and your team in action with your pet patients! You can use a step-by-step method for whatever procedure you’re performing and teach your clients. 

• A pet of the week video is an easy way to get more views on your social videos because who doesn’t love seeing adorable animals? Inform your followers of one of the patients you’ve treated at your practice that week and give details about their case. 

• If your office has any community involvement, post it! It could be an event you are hosting or taking part in and want others to join in, attend, or donate to. This shows that not only is veterinary care important to you, but so is community outreach.

• General education videos about pet care are always useful as well. Provide information to pet owners about grooming, boarding, feeding, exercise, and other tips for how they can maintain optimal health for their pets. You can make this even more fun by using the poll or questions feature on social media to ask clients what topics they’re interested in learning more about and have trivia with followers. 

Learn More: 5 Benefits of Using Social Media for Healthcare Practices

Tip #2: Have Conversations With Your Followers

Connecting with followers on social media isn’t a one-sided conversation. When your followers respond to something that you’ve posted on your page, don’t be afraid to continue the conversation with them! 

If they’re asking you a question about something vet-related, inquiring about your practice or services, or just want to interact with you, take this opportunity to build a relationship with them. Although it’s all online, remember that you are talking to another human being behind your screen. Be just as personable as you would be if you were talking to them in your veterinary office. 

The brand personality or voice that you display on social media should be consistent across all platforms. Once you’ve decided on what that looks and sounds like for your practice, it’s important to remember that for all social media updates. 

Tip #3: Use Social Media to Receive Feedback

Social media is a non-conventional, but very useful method of gathering information or feedback from your clients. There are a few ways that you can go about using your platform to learn about your clients’ experiences as well as their opinions on certain things. 

You can: 

• Conduct Polls or Surveys – It is now possible to conduct polls on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you want quick answers, the poll feature allows you to ask a question and list 3-4 options for followers to vote for. For example, you can ask your clients for feedback on your next blog post topic and the options may be doggie dental care, weight loss in cats, or how to prepare your home for a new pet. Surveys and polls tend to capture the attention of your audience and receive a lot of engagement from followers. You can even add gifs or pictures with the available options!

• Use Social Analytics – While your social media analytics are not direct responses from your followers, they still indirectly give you insight. Your analytics allow you to see which posts are performing the best among your audience. Are your pictures and videos getting the most engagement? Or are your blog and shared posts the most popular? Evaluating your analytics will show you how many users have viewed or interacted with your posts. Whichever ones tend to receive the most likes, comments, or shares will give you an idea for what type of updates you should post in the future that will continuously receive engagement. 

• Monitor Your Comments and Messages – The most surefire way to see how a post resonated with a follower is to read your comments or messages. Social media is a place where people tend to be very open and opinionated about things without holding back. If they love a post, they’ll let you know. If they aren’t so fond of another, you might want to steer clear of similar posts down the road. 

Read On: Using Facebook to Engage With Your Clientele

Tip #4: What You Should Post to Social Media

When it comes to deciding what type of content to share on your social media platforms, there are a few categories you can consider. 

• Seasonal or Celebratory Posts – these posts are timely or relevant for your following and help to keep your page fresh and engaged with updates. Some examples include Pet Dental Health Month or Pet Cancer Awareness Month. 

• Client Education – these posts can be used to inform your clients on a wide variety of veterinary topics ranging from general health to more in-depth surgical procedures. 

• Preventative Care – these posts raise awareness while also encouraging patients to schedule appointments or follow-ups for pet health screenings and annual exams.

Tip #5: Create a Social Media Calendar

What is the best way to avoid scrambling for posts? Plan ahead! If there is a special occasion, an event, a blog post, or other things you have in mind that you would like to post, create a calendar to house all of those ideas. The benefits of having a calendar for all your posts include: 

1. Being able to visualize and organize all of your content
2. Preventing you from missing posting dates
3. Reporting on how all your posts are performing
4. Developing a consistent flow of posts so you don’t spam or ignore any social channels
5. Keeping tracking of posts you’ve done before to avoid repetitiveness

Once you’ve decided on what content you want to share on your pages, start organizing your calendar! 

Ready to Get Social? Download Our Free Social Media Kit!

Most of your clients are most likely already active on social media and that means your practice should be too. Start taking action and implement these veterinary social media marketing strategies you’ve learned to effectively market your practice and increase social engagement.

To make it easy for you, we have created a social media kit with ready-to-use posts that you can publish on your social media channels. The kit includes a variety of educational and seasonal veterinary posts you can use to engage with your social followers. 

Download your free social media kit now!

Do you want us to help you with your social media strategy? Give us a call at 800.792.8384 to show you how you can find your ideal clients online.