Veterinary Social Media Wellness

Veterinary Social Media Wellness WWW.LIFELEARN.COM

Introduction: Executive Summary Americans now spend more time on social media than any other Internet activity, including email. 1 How much of that time is spent looking at funny cat photos and dog videos, or discussing the latest high-tech litter box? Here are a few staggering numbers about the popularity of pet-related social media activity: On Facebook, more than 6.9 million people have Liked Grumpy Cat s Facebook page since it was launched in September 2012. On Twitter, @MySadCat has nearly 200,000 followers, and any individual Tweet gets hundreds of retweets and favorites. A French Bulldog known as Manny the Frenchie has almost 600,000 followers on Instagram, and his photos get thousands of Likes and comments. The good news is, you don t have to be a huge national or global sensation to get attention. Maine s Falmouth Veterinary Hospital, for example, shared this funny photo meme on Facebook, and it was shared more than 7,200 times. It s hard to know exactly what that sharing meant for this particular practice, but it certainly caught the attention of their followers, and several of them undoubtedly shared it with their friends. Imagine the awareness, goodwill, and potential referrals your practice can achieve by posting something that s shared by even a few hundred pet owners in your community giving them reasons to continue following you. _2 / 16

YouTube YouTube is the second largest search engine (behind Google), with well over a thousand searches performed every second and more than a billion unique monthly visitors. The Ultimate Dog Tease video pictured here has been viewed over 162 million times. In 2011, it was the second most popular YouTube video of the year beating out millions of videos on every topic imaginable. If you check it out, you ll understand why. It s clear that fun or useful pet videos can be popular, so how can your local practice attract more clients and business with YouTube? The Acworth/Marietta Georgia veterinary practice video shown here is a great example of providing helpful information to local pet parents that is appreciated, talked about, and shared. In this case, the video answers questions about pet microchips. The video is a sincere discussion of why microchipping is important in saving the lives of animals that get lost. If you re comfortable doing video presentations or demos, you may find yourself becoming a major hero to clients and other pet owners in your region and beyond. Plus, you can post your videos on your own website, which helps to set you apart from local competition when potential clients are looking online for local pet care. Social media provides veterinarians with the power to reach hundreds, if not thousands, of pet owners in your community. _3 / 16

Powerful and low cost what a great opportunity! Consider these key benefits that social media can bring your practice: 1. You can bet your clients and prospects will be wild about seeing and sharing your pet photos, videos, and stories online, and talking about their own pets. If you re the one posting lots of appealing pet-related content, you ll stay on top of your clients minds, and they re likely to share your posts with their local friends who have pets. 2. Social media is a low cost way to spread the word about your practice, especially compared to print advertising. Even if you choose to spend some money to get your posts seen, it is very reasonable. With Facebook, for example, you can increase the reach on a post for as little as $5. 3. Your fans spread the word for you! Keep your content entertaining and/or useful, and with the click of a button, your fans share with their friends. That probably doesn t happen with your ads in the local paper. 4. Perhaps most importantly, social media allows you to create a community around your practice in a way that was never possible before. People participate in social media to be social. That may sound obvious, but if people include you in their social networks, it is because they want to connect with you. They want to talk, and they are giving you permission to talk to them, to share laughs and important information that can help them be better pet parents. This gives you the opportunity to nurture an emotional bond that creates ongoing loyalty and trust, and makes you their go-to resource for everything related to their beloved pets health. That s what the Veterinary Social Media Wellness guide is all about: helping you minimize your time spent on social media while maximizing your impact with a simple approach for posting content that builds _4 / 16

relationships with current clients and hundreds of prospects. One of the first rules of social media success is: go where your audience is. Don t try to be everywhere at once. It s much more effective to focus your efforts on a few social networks that work well for you. According to our 2014 Veterinary Online Marketing Report, Facebook is the #1 choice among veterinary practices when it comes to social media, but more and more practices are seeing the benefits of other social media, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Also keep in mind that YouTube is a powerful search engine in its own right for people seeking how to pet care information and pet entertainment, making it a powerful tool for veterinary marketing. If you re not sure which channel is the best to start with, you can experiment with a couple and see where you start to gain the most traction, or you can keep it simple and ask your clients where they spend their time on social! 3 Simple Steps To Social Media Wellness Simply put, effective social media involves 3 key steps: 1. Creation 2. Curation 3. Conversation Now let s dive in to each step in more detail. _5 / 16

Step 1: CREATION Creation: Set your practice apart with local, friendly, and helpful content. Why do you think your Facebook fans signed up to follow you? Recent survey data3 found that people follow businesses in Facebook for these reasons: 82% feel Facebook is a good place to interact with the business, and some even feel the business listens to them there. 50% feel the Facebook page is more useful than the business website. (Perhaps it s because of the real-time opportunity to talk with staff about a variety of pet topics!) Saving money is a major reason people Like a Facebook business page (they re hoping for freebies or discounts) and also because they already like the business. It s also interesting to note that people don t want too much content from a brand. It clutters their News Feed and they may unlike the business as a result and that s good news for you! There s no need to spend time posting like crazy all day. Quality beats quantity, so consider posting once or twice per day with a nice mix of topics. You ll soon discover which types of content generate the biggest responses. What type of original content can you easily create? Post unique, friendly, and appealing messages in a voice that sounds as if you re talking with clients in the practice: Mention your community outreach efforts, rally others to join you, and report on the results. When you regularly demonstrate your local community involvement, you re developing a reputation as a great local resource for pet care. The example shown here fosters awareness that this practice supports _6 / 16

community pet charities. It received 95 likes quite good for one post. Note that the candid iphone photo is just fine. You don t always need fancy photography or graphics. Simple, real images are often preferred over slick professional photos when posting news from your team to your followers. Show what s going on in your practice, particularly with pets. In this example, the practice is trying to find homes for cats. The photo approach can be powerful for sharing, and even action, especially for pet adoption. We ve seen practices do a very effective job of using social media to find homes for rescue animals. It s a bonus if you post a compelling story with the photo. For instance, recently we saw a practice posting stories about a rescue puppy that was in very poor health (near death, in fact). But as time went by, we saw the puppy bounce back to health via Facebook posts that told the tale of the veterinary team s efforts. The puppy has been adopted and is thriving. With your clients permission, you can also share cute pictures of your patients. For example: Welcome posts. When clients bring a new pet to see you, welcome them to your community by posting a photo and a fun little welcome message Success stories. When pet owners follow through with your advice and their pets get or stay healthy, share their success! Cute moments. If one of your patients just does this really cute thing every time he comes in, share the joy Feature time-sensitive activities such as upcoming events in your practice, monthly specials, and health news. For instance, this practice changed their profile header to promote Pet Dental Health Month. Throughout February, they posted something each week to remind followers about clean teeth and pet dental health risks. Another practice posted daily photos of clever (and delicious looking) pet cupcakes to promote a fundraiser for the ASPCA. These generated _7 / 16

a lot of comments and attention. Other ideas include open houses, photo contests, and special wellness screenings. If you write blog posts on your website, share them on social media. Make it a habit to share every new post. Write a short, compelling teaser, include an attractive image, and share the link. For YouTube, create videos about your practice and what makes it special to local pet parents. This video gives new clients a tour of the practice, explaining the ways in which they exceed client expectations and continually work to improve. Note that this video has had 807 views. Your practice can have the same numbers or even more. IMPORTANT: Don t forget the SEARCH ENGINE value of your original social posts! Be sure to include your service area and the word veterinarians or veterinary in your posts, tags, and page descriptions. Why? Because that s how people search for pet care services. Those are the keywords they use in Google, Bing, and other search engines, and even Facebook. We ve conducted extensive searches to see which phrases pet owners use most in Google and other search engines, and they use the following phrases more than any other, no matter where you re located: [your town] or [state/province] veterinarians veterinarians in [your town] or [state/province] [your town] or [state/province] veterinarian If you use these phrases in your social media content, you ll be way ahead of your competitors that may be lagging in this area. _8 / 16

Here s how to use SEO (search engine optimization) in your content: Your Facebook page: In the About section and in your posts, make sure your service location and variations of veterinary are used in your content. For instance, the Facebook page for this Canadian practice is fortunate because the town and word veterinary are in their hospital name Brantford Veterinary Clinic. Their top keywords are automatically in their text. If you don t have this advantage, simply add veterinarian word variations and [your town] to the text. On Twitter: Include your location in your 160-character bio. Check out Winslow Animal Hospital s bio to see what we mean: Your YouTube videos and page: Use every opportunity to include veterinarian word variations and your service location(s) in the title of your video, in your YouTube page description, and in the tags YouTube prompts you to add when loading a new video. As you ll see in the following example, this practice s YouTube page includes the phrases Vet Marietta and Veterinarians in Alpharetta, Marietta and Canton, Georgia. Good for them! This helps their YouTube videos appear in search engine results when local potential clients look for pet care in their services region. If you re not sure how to add these SEO elements to your social media content, we encourage you to schedule a consultation with a LifeLearn WebDVM4 team member. Now let s move on the second important consideration for easy social media wellness. _9 / 16

Step 2: CURATION Curation: Share the good stuff your followers will love and pass along! Posting wonderful content from other sources is a really easy way to get attention, generate comments, and prompt your followers to share your posts with other pet fans. Pet people LOVE to see funny and cute pet photos and videos. Make your social media pages the place to find all kinds of fun pet-fan content. All you need to do is follow a wide range of pet-related social media accounts, find posts you like, and share the posts from your account. You can also share articles and images from other websites. Or, if you don t want to waste time looking through all those feeds, WebDVM4 Social can do the curating for you and send you a steady stream of choices each day. Let s explore two examples of how easy it is to share curated content people will respond to. In the example below on the left, 12 people Liked it, but even better, 12 people shared it with all their Facebook friends, which could equal several hundred people in the practice s community. In the example below on the right, the practice used a fun graphic to promote February Pet Dental Health Awareness Month and offer a free dental health exam. Have fun with shared content! And add your own comment when sharing it on your page to show your personality. _10 / 16

Step 3: CONVERSATION Conversation: Build solid relationships with warm and friendly discussions. Social media is all about conversations within a community of people with similar interests. The first online social media was designed to provide online chat rooms and forums for discussions. And while the sophistication of the media has evolved into Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more, the intent and value of social networking are still the same. Online conversations and relationships can bring people together in ways that benefit your practice. So, it s not enough to post great content. Ideally, you ll monitor the comments and questions you receive, and you ll cheerfully reply on a regular basis. Those conversations will create good feelings about your practice and can lead to appointments, purchases, and other revenue-generating actions. So how do you start conversations? First, make sure your website is inviting people to join you in your social media pages. Prominently display your Facebook, YouTube, and other icons/links on the top header area of your website. Now that you re continuously driving more and more people to your social pages, let s look at some of the easiest methods to generate conversations. Ask questions, invite feedback, and prompt people to provide their opinions. The example shown here is super easy to do. Post a photo and ask for caption ideas. Notice that followers started offering fun caption ideas very nice engagement. This probably took about 5 minutes to load. Easy, right? Just be _11 / 16

sure you thank folks who take the time to provide captions or other feedback! Ask your followers to share important alerts. Your followers will appreciate knowing about important pet health news or alerts, lost pet notices, and so on. In the sample shown here, the practice is asking followers to share an urgent jerky pet treat recall. When people comment on your posts, keep the conversations going! The worst mistake most businesses make it to ignore comments from their social media followers. Check your feeds each day to watch for comments, and respond to those who took the time to reach out to you. When you do, you may suddenly receive unsolicited praise like this: Now that you know WHAT to post, we re happy to share this simple plan for WHEN to post and how to keep it simple. _12 / 16

Managing Your Social Media in < 30 Minutes a Day Manage Your Social Media in < 30 Minutes a Day On average, it takes about 3 months for social media conversations to start flowing. To get started, plan on posting about 7-14 times a week, and engaging followers with questions about their favorite animals or topics. Here s how: 1. First, set your social media marketing objectives. What do you want your social media to DO for your practice? To know if your efforts are successful or not, identify specific, measurable sales objectives, such as: Gain 25 new Facebook fans each week Generate 50 dental cleaning visits in February (Pet Dental Health Month) Introduce a new service that generates revenue this year (grooming, boarding, etc.) Once you clearly define your social media marketing objectives, you and everyone on your team will truly understand the outcome you re hoping to achieve. 2. Choose what to post and share. Map out a content plan that includes a healthy balance of creation, curation, and conversation. Some ideas to get you started: Pet care tips Fun photos and videos (your own practice creations along with curated items) Special event or community outreach announcements Seasonal topics (Halloween contest, hot weather alerts, etc.) New services and new staff mentions Article and blog highlights that link to the full content on your site Client photo submissions, caption contests and other usergenerated ideas _13 / 16

3. Manage your social media calendar in less than 30 minutes a day. The key to not wandering around like a lost pup in social media is to schedule it. 3 ways scheduling can help you stay on top of your social media: Schedule a Social Media Posting appointment with yourself a designated time posted on your business calendar. This will help you to easily manage posts while keeping track of Facebook activity, YouTube views and other engagement. Create a calendar of topic ideas to help you come up with fresh content when you don t know what to post about. You want to stay flexible enough to respond to current events, but having some topics in mind will make it easy to find things to say. Schedule your actual posts. Whether you are using the scheduling function in Facebook, or using WebDVM4 Social, set your content up to post when you need it to so you don t have to remember to do it yourself throughout the day. Here s a 2-week example of a content calendar for a person using Facebook and YouTube. You ll see that it includes several original Facebook posts, as well as curated posts throughout the week as you find fun and timely content to share. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Post original content about March pet poison prevention; monitor conversations YouTube: Work on new video this week Post original content about local pets available for adoption; monitor conversations YouTube: Post new video on YouTube; fill in tags with local vet words Share a fun curated item (photo or video); monitor conversations Share a fun curated photo and ask for caption ideas; monitor conversations Post new video on your website Ask a question about a photo or health topic; monitor conversations Invite input on a topic such as What s your favorite local dog park?; monitor conversations Also mention new video, with a link Post original content about an upcoming local pet-charity event; monitor conversations Post a funny curated photo or video; monitor conversations Blog post of the week: If you write blog posts (hopefully you do!), feed to Facebook; monitor conversations Blog post of the week: Feed to Facebook; monitor conversations Also post a Happy Friday photo from another source Share a funny curated photo or video; monitor conversations Share a photo of your Patient of the Month; monitor conversations _14 / 16

Next, try the following schedule to make daily/weekly posting simple, first thing in the morning or during quiet lunchtime as we mentioned. You ll be amazed at how you can streamline the process and enjoy a steady stream of content in less time with better results. 30 minutes/day social media plan 10 min. Content Creation: Write a Facebook post about the latest service you offer, and link to your website page related to the topic. Also write a few original Facebook posts about your topic of the month and other updates of interest. 10 min. Content Curation/Sharing: For your blog, write a short summary to post on Facebook linking back to your blog. Also locate fun or interesting photos and videos to share for the week. 10 min. Connections, Conversation & Community Building: Search for more people to connect with, such as your current clients and community referral sources. Plus, monitor your online community, respond to comments, and start new conversations. _15 / 16

Make Social Media Wellness even easier! Now that you have an idea of what to post, how to post, and when to post, you may be interested in making it even more efficient and effective. Consider using WebDVM4 Social, and let LifeLearn do all the social media curating for your practice. Every week, you ll receive a stream of fun, informative and relevant items you can select for your practice. Simply select an item and post it with your practice s comment! This can shave your social media management time down to under 15 minutes a day. Sources: 1. http://www.businessinsider. com/social-mediaengagement-statistics-2013-12 2. http://www.humanesociety.org/ issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/ pet_ownership_statistics.html 3. http://en.community.dell.com/ dell-groups/sbc/b/weblog/ archive/2012/11/19/what-do-fansreally-want-from-your-facebookpage.aspx And, since we know what will appeal to pet owners, your posts may be even more effective than if you were trying to find content on your own. Plus we help you measure the results. At any time, you can view a secure report on the content published through WebDVM4 Social, indicating which content has generated the most clicks, Likes, or comments. Interested in trying WebDVM4 Social for free? Try WebDVM4 Social for 15 days at no cost, with no obligation to make a purchase you can cancel any time. Register online for immediate access. Start your free trial now. _16 / 16