The Veterinary Social Media Podcast | Social Media Marketing, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Hospital, Digital Marketing

VSMP 3: Time-Saving Tips for Managing Veterinary Social Media

December 09, 2023 • Cheyanne Flerx

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Want to save time when managing social media for your veterinary practice? Cheyanne shares 5 quick tips to help you save time and be more efficient in this episode.


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Welcome to the Veterinary Social Media Podcast, where you learn how to navigate social media and apply it to the world of veterinary medicine. I'm your host, Cheyenne Flerks, and let's get down to business. Hey, Hey, welcome to my podcast. If you are joining us for the first time. Welcome I'm Cheyenne. And if you are joining us. For another round. Thank you so much for coming back. Today's episode is going to be shorter. Hopefully that's my goal. But today I'm going to be sharing with you tips that I have used. Over the last wow. Eight years as a social veterinary social media manager. To really help me save time and become more efficient with my social media management in multiple departments. So. Let's dive on him. The first tip I want to share with you about saving time while managing social media. Is. Create a plan. Now I know some of you who like to fly by the seat of your pants might be like, no, please not a plan. It takes so much more time, but I promise you, it actually will save you a ton of time in the long run. And that's because. Once you have a plan, you spend less time and energy trying to figure out what you need to be posting from day to day. And you can just go straight to your plan and be like, oh, okay. Today is Tuesday. And I haven't planned out to be. Making a post on this. Right. So all you have to do is go about your day with curating that post or just knowing that it's going to be posted. We'll get to this, but I like to work on my posts and batches. So. I don't have to be posting every day, but with that creating a plan goes along the same lines as creating a content calendar. Now, if you're not familiar with a content calendar, A content calendar is basically a. Calendar that you have set up that has all your social media posts on it. And. Having a plan and a content calendar can be one in the same. But what I like to do is I like to have a digital calendar while there are lots of Google calendar, or I love working inside of air table. But I plot out all of my content in that calendar. And so that I can refer to it and know when I have a post that is going to be posted or what I need to be creating a post about. Oftentimes the content calendar will have other things like when an email is going out or when a block post is going out, but an hour use it's typically clique going to be a social media post. So. What that can look like is if you want to create something called content pillars, which are basically categories that you dedicate to a week. Our day of the week, and that is going to be posts ideas related to that category. So it can be services on Wednesdays. It could be a team highlight on Mondays or Fridays can be something silly or fun. So Then you create posts based upon those. I don't necessarily always like to recommend using content buckets or content pillars because that does involve a little bit more strategy. But if that is something that you're are ready to do, when you are creating your content calendar, then by all means do that. I will do a podcast episode on this, in the near future, but I wanted to mention a content calendar because I know too many of my colleagues who are creating. All of their social media posts inside Mehta business, suite scheduler. And I I've been a victim of Meadows. Fasting binge. Of eating posts, where I go in their crate. All the posts. Right? All the captions spent all my heart tears and sweat. And putting the content into Metta business suite. And I come in a couple of days later and I find that all my posts have been eaten by Mehta. Excuse me, like it's an old vending machine. So, if you have been a victim of Metta business, suite scheduler you'll know how this feels, but if you have a content calendar, what you can do is go back to your calendar. And what I like to do is I like to put a copy of all my. My posts in there, including the, the visual, which is the graphic or video. And then put my caption in that content calendar. So it's all stored just in case I need to pull it out. If my post scheduler eats it, or if I just want to bring back that post for later, revamp it. So that in itself is a huge, huge time saver because in a way it creates a content library or a bank of post ideas. And so that comes to my next post or my post. Tip is create a content library. And content libraries are basically what I just described. It's a bank or a place where you store post ideas or posts from the past. It's basically a area where you can just. If a post comes to mind, you can just store that idea and refer to it later. I call it my second brain sometimes because I get a lot of great post ideas or things that I thought would be great for marketing. And I write them down. And then I can never find that piece of paper or that notebook, or that note on my phone ever again. And I'm like, no, my genius, brilliant idea. So I like to, again, put this in a digital spot. I'd like to put this in a Google doc or an air table for you. It could be a physical notebook that you just label or designate. Only for your content library. But put it in one place where you can just refer to it often and get inspiration. This, I pull out all the time when I'm like so brain dead, or just need a brilliant idea. And this saves my butt every, every time. So. With our third tip. I mentioned I work in batches. And so what that means is I like to designate days of the week or work in certain time spans where I'm only working on one thing. So to give you an example of what my. Batches look like is I'm on Mondays. I'll write out my strategy. I do this typically about once a month, but if you are trying to get into the groove of it, you might want to do this once a week. But what I do is on Mondays, I create my strategy for social media or I review. How past posts have performed and kind of regroup my ideas and kind of put them into a structure. And put them into my content calendar. Tuesday's then I will start to formulate the the post. So I'll start creating the visuals or gathering the photos and videos I need for those posts. Then Wednesdays, I write the captions and I just go into pure writing mode. Then Thursdays, I review everything and upload it to my post gets scheduler. So. You don't have to break it up into days in the week like that. If it works better for you to just say K Mondays are the only day that I have time in the clinic to work on this or Mondays or my time away from the clinic you know, do it when it works best for you to do it on. Uninterrupted. But then you can say came Monday. The first Monday of the month is when I'm going to be creating my strategy for the upcoming month. Then the next Monday, the second. Monday of the month, you can create all the posts you need for that month. Then the following could be just captions. And then by the end of the month, you have everything ready to just schedule ups posts, and have it ready for the next month. And just kind of repeat. The cycle. So give that a try. I know it's kind of hard to get started and go into that motion of working in batches, but I promise the more that you just dedicate to yourself and focus on one task. The more efficient you will be in that and the quality of your work will go up. All right. So tip number four and time saving tips for social media managers. Is to make templates and automate what you can. So if you find yourself doing the same task again and again, and again, or writing similar captions or. Using a similar design or a layout and your posts. For graphics. For example, what I encourage you to do is make a master copy, a master template that you can just copy and then reuse and adjust as needed. This has saved my time. My, but time and time again. And is really my best A habit I've made for myself that I just am so thankful for. Also with automating what you can. So this is where I like to use like a project management tool or using AI. To help me really. Cut through the fluff of the, the ma manual or tedious stuff, but I don't necessarily have to do again and again. Like writing an email, if you are writing an email to your website management or what website designer to upload this on the website, for example you know, save as a copy An email template copy in your email. And so that you can copy that and adjust as needed. Again, AI has made has made it possible for us to speed up so many. Tedious tasks. So especially in content creation, I use it often for Content creation and grinding captions. Course. I. I edit it. So it's works for me. I don't just copy it word for word and use it, but I use it as a shortcut and just a time-saver. So consider using AI making templates. I do have a membership called vet social hub, where I do make templates for you post templates. And I send you post ideas every month and a calendar straight to your email. So that has been a great time-saver for a lot of practice managers overall. So if you are interested and becoming a vet social hub member. Definitely head to the show notes to grab the link for. For that, and to learn a lot more about what vet social hub is. But. That really has been a time-saver templates and automating what I can. So what that, the next tip in saving time. Is delegate when possible. Now I know this might be hard, especially if you are the only one working on social media and there isn't somebody else to help you. But. It's important to know. Your limitations as well. Right. Especially if you're doing another job in the practice, like if you're a technician or an assistant, you're probably working on the floor as well. Right. So and we all know that when you're sitting down to work on social media at that's when the emergencies. Or more likely to come in. So if possible, bring on another team member to help you, even if that's just sharing your. Your brain power with each other to come up with post ideas or having someone take photos for you so that you can create those posts a lot easier, or, you know, delegating, Hey, can you post for me this week? I needed a break, something like that. Just to really create those margins so that you can have some breathing room as well. And if possible, if like, again, if you're the practice manager of your hospital, You'll see if you can hire help. Either if that's a third-party company, Like your website. Developer. If they offer social media management. That might be an option for you or hire a freelancer. I have helped multiple hospitals with this exact thing. They just need a little bit more support in creating those social media posts. And that's where I come in and help them. So, There might be someone like me in your area that can definitely help you alleviate some of that. That pressure, or just save you some time in that alone. So if that is something that you are considering, definitely reach out. I know lots of people, I do it myself, and I can definitely point you in the right direction and get to support where needed. But what that, I promise to keep this episode short. So let me just do a recap of those tips, but the first one is to create a plan. Second is to create a content library. Third is to work in batches. Fourth is to make templates and automate what you can and finally delegate when possible. So, if you have found this episode to be helpful, could you do me a favor please? Pretty please. And consider sharing this with a friend and leaving me overview. I'm on a mission to get this podcast out to as many veterinary professionals as possible and with, so appreciate your support. So thanks for joining me and I will catch you later. Bye.