19 Aug A Guide to Social Media for Veterinary Clinics
A strong social media presence allows you to reach, educate, and build relationships with more local pet owners. At New Wine Digital, we help veterinary clinics stand out on social media with an active, engaging presence and improve their local SEO to reach more pet owners in your area. Continue reading to learn how and why you should be using social media to market your veterinary practice.
The Importance of Social Media for Veterinary Professionals
Before someone decides to trust your veterinary practice with the care of their pet, they’ll likely want to learn as much as they can about your clinic. The best way for them to do that is to check out your online presence—including your website, reviews, and social media profiles.
Having an active social media presence gives you the opportunity to show potential clients important details about your clinic, staff, and services. It helps your veterinary practice stand out from the rest and allows you to develop relationships with current and potential clients through positive interactions.
In fact, 71% of people who have a positive social media interaction with a small business are likely to recommend it to their friends and family. When you also provide high quality veterinary care when their pets need it, you’ll likely see even more word-of-mouth referrals.
Another benefit of social media for veterinary professionals is that it makes your vet clinic more visible to local pet owners who have never heard of your practice. And, with 55% of people learning about new brands on social media, there’s a large local audience you could be reaching with your posts.
Social Media Platforms Your Vet Practice Should Be On
Your vet clinic doesn’t need to be active across all platforms, but you should at least be active on Facebook and/or Instagram. Here’s why:
As a community-based platform, Facebook allows you to connect with current and potential clients and strengthen those relationships. You can use Facebook to provide detailed information about your practice, direct traffic to your website, raise brand awareness, and more.
When you create a Facebook Business Page, you can analyze your engagement on the platform and track your success. You can also run customized Facebook ads that promote your business page and help you reach even more local pet owners.
This highly visual platform is a great place to post authentic photos and videos of your clinic, patients, staff, and more. Just like Facebook, you can create a business profile that allows you to run ads, or use its metrics to track your engagement. You can even link your vet clinic’s Instagram business profile with its Facebook page to conveniently share content on both platforms at the same time.
Make sure to take advantage of Instagram’s “stories” feature to showcase your clinic, ask questions, take polls, and more. Stories disappear after 24 hours, but you can add them to your profile as “highlights” for users to view at any time.
Veterinary Clinic Social Media Post Ideas
If you need ideas for what to share on your veterinary clinic’s social media profile, consider:
- Celebrating or acknowledging pet-related holidays like “National Train Your Dog Month” in January or “National Cat Day” on October 29th
- Creating educational and informative content about pet care, common diseases, treatments, diet, general health, veterinary services, and more with guides, infographics, videos, etc.
- Sharing content from trusted sources such as The American Veterinary Medical Association, Veterinary Practice News, and World Veterinary Association
- Spotlighting your staff members with photos and brief biographies
- Linking to your veterinary blog posts and newsletter signup
- Hosting “pet of the week” contests
Digital Marketing Services for Veterinarians
To build a strong social media presence, you’ll need to post regularly and frequently engage with your followers. At New Wine Digital, we understand that not all vets have the capacity to simultaneously tend to their patients and keep up with managing their social media profiles. If you’re interested in improving your veterinary practice’s social media presence, contact us today at 480-516-1819 to learn how we can assist you with reaching your local audience online.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (8/19/2022). Photo by dole777 on Unsplash
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