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

VSMP 5: Why Should YOUR Veterinary Hospital Have Social Media Accounts?

February 12, 2024 • Cheyanne Flerx • Episode 5

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In this episode, Cheyanne takes it back to the basics, emphasizing the importance of understanding why your hospital is pursuing social media.

While it's easy to follow trends or feel pressured to be online, Cheyanne breaks down the deeper impact social media can have on your veterinary practice, from attracting local pet owners to cultivating loyal clients and employees.

With practical insights and valuable tips, this episode will empower you to align your social media efforts with your hospital's goals and ultimately enhance the client experience while generating business. Don't miss out on this insightful discussion—tune in now!

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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 Flerx, and let's get down to business. hey, Hey, welcome to the episode today. I'm so excited. You could join me because I am going to be taking it way, way back to the basics. And talking about something. I feel like a lot of hospitals miss one late are on the start of their journey to pursuing social media. And that is to figure out why your hospital is pursuing. But social media, And that has been something that I feel like has become just such a blanket reason and, or a more generic answer is more so, oh, everybody's doing it. Or we're missing an opportunity if we're not. And while those can be valid reasons. I really want us to break it down further and for grow. Y our hospital is doing it and figuring out how our efforts on social media can really impact the overall purpose of the vet hospital, whether that's, you know, building a better culture or. Supporting our community better or some bull. Something as simple as really just building a better presence online for our business so we can attract business. All of those are great reasons, but today I really want to share some of the reasons why I think it's such an impactful tool for us to use. For veterinary hospitals and really hope that it encourages you to dive down deeper and discover. Your hospitals, why for using social media? Because when we know why we're doing something, this is something I firmly believe we are more likely to produce. And chase after it with more intention and provide more quality. You know, whether that's a product. For social media posts. You know it provides you a better north star to go after or just guide you better. So everything that I'm going to be sharing with you today. Definitely can be things that you pursue after. Absolutely. By really encourage you to nail down just like two or three of these, or just really one big Y And write it down and see how your current efforts are aligning with that. And if they're not, then either figuring out what you can do to fix it. Talk with management. Get clarity from them on what their why is. And if they don't have a clear why. Maybe just kind of taking back. All of this information. Digesting it and reflecting it and seeing what you can do as the social media manager to improve your own efforts. So my first point or reason why I'm a hospital. Would pursue social media would be to attract more local pet owners and I really emphasize on local pet owners because. As a veterinary hospital, the primary focus. Is to be serving your local community because it's very much a It's a brick and mortar business. Right? You can only serve the people that come into your business. It's not like a online store, like Amazon, where you can purchase something online. And comes all over the world to deliver to your door. So we have to change our mindset when we are pursuing social media in this way, because if we're trying to pursue all the followers in the world, you know everyone's goal. Back in the day was to get 10,000 followers. But if you are not attracting 10,000 people in your community and all of those people are, you know, 2000 miles away from you. Sure. A small portion of them could be moving to your neighborhood in the new future. But if they're not in the near vicinity, they're not going to be doing business with you. So. All that to say is you can have all the followers in the world, but that doesn't necessarily equal business. And I want to share that honestly with you, because if you're chasing. Just to go after all the numbers on social media, get all the followers. I fear that you're going to finally hit that or never hit that and then realize that it's not actually the results that you were looking to get. So. Focus more so on getting local pet owners attention or building community ties in that way. And I feel like you'll be set up for success in the long run. So. If that's not your goal, if your hospital is already a great. A multi-generational. Clientele that if that's already established that maybe want to pursue or consider the second point that I have is social media really helps to connect and communicate with your existing clients all year long. So what we like to call something that you can use over and over again, or that applies to all year long in the marketing world is evergreen. So it really provides you that evergreen opportunity to connect and communicate with your clients, because we all know that once we get into that exam room or if the client's in the hospital, We only have a short time with them and we can't cram, you know, this whole information they need to know about puppyhood and all this vaccine history and all these, you know, everything that we need to share with them. So. When we can use social media, we can get focused on one topic and highlight that in a few posts, or we can make sure that oh, We're continuing to communicate with them about the changes of hours and. Everything that that pertains when we are communicating with our clients in a hospital, we can do that all year long on social media. This also when it comes to connection. When we are coming, present on social media. Continuously over time, we are building a relationship with them in a sense, and getting them to know us a little bit better. And when we know someone on a different level versus just a transactional. Relationship then we are building that trust with them, showing them that we are here for their pet's best interest. Or for their best interest as the pet owner and really partnering up with them in their pets health. So. Really it's more of a long game long. Yeah. Longterm game that we're pursuing here with social media. With this point, but overall it builds. That more loyal clientele base that I feel like. Makes it a lot more enjoyable to work with. Now, if you work in emergency or a, an, a specialty or something that where your clients aren't coming back time after time Then when you're building that relationship in that short timeframe, it makes it easier for those clients to refer their friends and family. When they know that you are not only investing in the medicine and your procedures but knowing that you're investing that time in social media puts a little, little different impression on some people's minds. So. Just keep that in mind because it's not just us posting to keep a presence. It's us. Posting and making ourselves known in a different realm and communicating with people time after time, day after day. All right. So. With that I mentioned referrals. So another thing that social media can do. Is attract potential clients and employees. Yes. You heard me right employees. Social media is just a great tool to help people. To get to know you better before they even come into the practice. But with that. Social media can be. A little like a double-edged sword, because when people come to your social media page, they instantly get an impression. Of who you are now, whether that impression is true or not. Um, is one thing, but overall people create this impression of who you may be. When they go to social media or to your website. So knowing that you have the opportunity to create your social media page. To really highlight and show who your hospital is, and really give people a taste of what it's like to either do services with you or to work with you and your team. So, for example, if you're really active on social media, sharing pictures and videos of your patients and your team and sharing the exciting things that are happening in the hospital and the community, getting comments through engaging posts, getting information from clients in that way. It creates this lively vibe on your page and people can really see, oh, okay. There's faces behind the scenes. Or the patients look happy or there's. There's a buzz going on on this page. Right. So people will get this great vibe of oh, okay. Everyone seems to like this practice. I want to know more. But if you are. Uh, just posting. Things about you're closing early or you're closed for the holidays, or, um, you found this pet and that's really all you're posting. It doesn't give people a great impression of who you really are and things that might come into their mind are. Maybe are they close more than they're not? Or what kind of things do they do at this practice? It kind of turns people off, honestly. And I share this just to give you a better understanding of how your presence on social media can really make it or break how you're attracting clients or potential employees. So something just to keep in mind overall. On that note. another point is that when people come to your social media page or your post pop-up on their newsfeed, That can help keep your practice top of mind for when you for when they need veterinary services again. Now I know. Oh, A good chunk of your client tells not going to be coming in day after day, you know, even month after month. So with that It's important for us to stay active on social media so that people know that we are still around, they know that we can depend, or they can depend on us for business. Or for the care that their pet needs. Also. As I mentioned before, it kind of helps support. When your clients or other people in the neighborhood know that your there, they can refer people to you because they know you're going you're you're around still. Or if they need an instant. Oh, okay. I gotta go call, you know, dah, dah. They know that you're you're there. So it's just a quick reminder, so to speak and being consistent in sharing that reminder that we are here for you when you're ready to come in kind of a thing. Also if, again, if you're not a general practice. Then this kind of helps people to know like, okay, if you're on hospice care, then they know, okay, this is this business. The service is available for when I need it. Or this is something I could consider in a few months, you know, depending on where they are at, in their journey. They can come to you for that. All right. So on the more analytical and metric side of it. Social media really can help direct more traffic to your website and do and attract overall business to your practice. And for me, this is not like the ultimate. Goal for social media, but it's an important one. Because if we are generating traffic from social media. So in other words, the people who are on social media, they engage with our content. And if we can direct that attention that we have. Over to our practice, whether that's to the website that's preferred or giving us a call, which is super, super. Important or going to a book, an appointment, downloading our app, doing some sort of action through our business. That is going to be key. And if you are struggling as the social media manager to prove. Your Return on investment or your, your time is providing some fruit here. This is going to be key for you to know, because if you can say, Hey, that post that I made about new puppy appointments being available, something like that. I've got puppies on the brain for some reason. But if you can say that this post. Generated more appointments or got people interested in this service. Then they're going to know your management's going to know. Okay. This direct action is providing this direct result. Thus, it's going to bring more business or more awareness attention. Whatever you're trying to do with that post. Which we can talk about more in a different episode because that's a whole episode in itself. But they're going to see that. Okay. The time that you're investing on social media is very valuable to the business. So I hope that makes sense because I feel like a lot of people miss that as well. When they are trying to pursue social media for their veterinary business. So. Our second to last main point that I have for you. Is. I've teased this a bit, but it helps you to build a stronger bond and cultivate loyal clients overall. And this comes with time. I will say that. At my practice that I worked at. I was managing their social media for about four years. But within two years I started to see very few. Very active clients, very loyal clients. I worked at a GP. But It was great to see that because people knew that we were there. They could go to our content. It was content. They enjoyed. But a lot of our loyal clients connected to us in a different way through social media. And I got to know them a lot better through some of those posts, so who would have known, but over a time when people come back to your content time, after time, You can see. That loyalty starting to come to fruit. And that comes also with connecting with them in different ways and communicating with them. And posting a variety of things outside of just informational and education. But sharing behind the scenes stuff about your team and your practice. And your patients and including some fun posts in there that gets to gets your clients talking and helps you to get to know them better. So I won't talk about this one too much, because this also goes into your culture and your branding and kind of who your. What your, your world is like and your hospital and how you're cultivating that. But. I wanted to mention it because it's, it's a great benefit. All right. This last point that I have, and I want to share with you. It is overall. If you can show up and have faces from your team appear on social media, it really does give people a glimpse or at least a better idea of who your team is and how your hospital treats and cares for pets. Each practice is different and how they do it. Yes. We provide a lot of the same services. We provide, you know, medicine, medical care to pets, but each hospital has their different flavor. And if you can really capture that and put that on social media. That is going to be huge. That will do a lot of the work for you in the long run. Because if your practice, for example, is fear-free registered, that automatically makes you different from the hospital down the street who isn't fear-free. You know, just for an example. And so a lot of people just kind of going more on that example. A lot of the general public doesn't know what fear free is. And so if they have a fearful pet just in general, they don't, they haven't been to the vet in years. They might be very comforted to know that you're fear-free and what that means further their pets care and that their pet may actually be able to get. Healthcare, you know, and get treated for, you know, X, Y, and Z. You know, that might be a huge. Solution to a problem. This pet owner has been having for so long. So. You never know what your specialty is or what your secret sauce in your hospital is going to really benefit someone else in your community. So, I hope that brought a little bit more light to why it's important for you to know why you're doing social media. And I hope you can also see why knowing. These points that I shared could actually impact and pact the type of posts and content and how you're showing up can really change how you do all loud, social media. So all this to say is don't just do social media because everybody else is doing it. And just use it to its full potential and different opportunities. And watch your veterinary practice thrive after you've implemented some of these changes over time. So. I know that kind of got a little heavy there, but if you're new, to managing social media for a veterinary practice. I hope this didn't scare you away because that is kind of like a, oh my gosh. N a huge task to figure out, or it can be. But if you are looking for some resources to help you along your journey, I've got some free resources for you in particular. If you head to the show notes, the description, I will have a link for you that has a quick start guide to managing social media. And I will also have a social media post toolkit. That has 65. You heard that right? 65 engaging post ideas that come with Canva templates. And these resources were created for you so that you can get straight to know what you need to know. To manage social media and start off with these post ideas and templates and just start off with success. And also the save you a little bit of time, because if you're still working on the floors while managing social media, I know how much of a time constraint it can be trying to do double duty for both. So. I really encourage you to grab those resources today so that you can start off the week or whenever you're listening to this with success with more joy and less stress.. But I hope that this really just enlightened you overall and gave you the footing or the information you need to really figure out what your, why is for your practice. And using social media better. So I overall I think social media is just an effective way to enhance your clients experience and build client loyalty and really just generate business overall. I'm all about generating more business. When it's using marketing and really highlighting everything that I can to make the client's experience so much better. So. With that I will let you go. But if you have any questions, please definitely feel free to email me or hop into my veterinary social media managers, Facebook group. That's what it's called veterinary social media managers. The link to join that will be in the description as well. And before you leave, if you found value in this episode or have enjoyed my other episodes in the past. I would so appreciate it. If you could take a moment to review this podcast, subscribe or follow. Depending on where you're listening at and share with a colleague I'm on a mission to share this podcast with as many veterinary professionals as possible, and really get the word out on how to manage social media. And I would love your support in that. Thank you so much for joining me and I will catch you on the next episode. All right, bye.