For veterinary practices in 2021, having a social presence is a critical business function...

Although it can be difficult creating new content, scheduling, monitoring and responding, can all be daunting, leading to wasted time and poor results. Here is the good news, there are strategies we are going to discuss that will elevate your social presence and give you the community image to win new clients, educate your followers and help you thrive as a social practice. 

Social Media Ideas For Veterinarians

1. Showcase the care you provide at your practice
2. Highlight patients who benefit from your medicine
3. Show behind-the-scenes aspects of your work
4. Educate pet parents, so they can take better care of their pets. 

Social Media gives your brand a voice!

Social media gives your brand a voice. One important thing to remember about social media, it’s called SOCIAL for a reason. This is not a commercial, a blog, or a radio ad. This is a place to BE SOCIAL. To communicate, engage and interact. If you are not getting likes, followers or engagements on your channels it’s because you are using it as a push marketing channel.

Social media is about “pulling”. Fun, engaging and educational content you can attract new pet parents, then interact with them. If you are simply putting out content because “that's what you are supposed to do” you may as well shut down the page, it’s wasting your time.

Veterinary Social Media Resources

Let's talk about how to Enlighten, Engage and Educate your audience! I call this the 3 E’s. Notice it’s not sell, promote and advertise. Let's jump into some examples. I'm going to show you how Dr. Mac, at Mac Animal Clinic has been super successful in growing her practice with Social Media.

The “Highlight your practice” post;

Here is a post that speaks to an important yearly celebration. International Women's Day. This practice posted a picture of their staff and explained that they are a business led by women and are proud of it! You can see good engagement. You can also see that they are promoting information about who they are and what they are proud of! This post is an example of humanizing the brand, being authentic and showing off the fantastic culture Mac has built inside their clinic!

The “Veterinary Educational” post

Here is an educational post, interesting to look at and gives Dr. Macs clients the awareness they need to understand ticks and prevention. Educating pet parents to take better care of their pets.

When to post on Facebook and Instagram for Veterinarians?

This graph comes from a very popular social media company who runs studies on all different niches called sprout social, this data proves engagement on Facebook in the healthcare vertical. Going by this chart the suggestion is to post on Facebook, Monday to Friday between the hours of 6am and 6pm. However, you can check your insights on your Facebook page to see when your followers are engaging with your posts, ill show you how to do that next.

For Instagram, we know that younger demographics are on this channel. In the sprout social study, you can see that Tuesdays between 7am and 7pm is the clear winner. However, weekly posts during business hours are best as a general best practice. 

Most important, use your data, in real time to know the best times to post. Here is how;

 On the desktop app, when logged into your page, go to “Insights” 

You will get presented with data points like you are seeing below. It tells you the days of the weeks and times people are most engaged with your posts. Then follow the data!