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

VSMP 12: Instagram Reels 101: A Beginner's Guide for Veterinary Hospitals

• Cheyanne Flerx • Episode 12

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Today, Cheyanne is breaking down Instagram Reels for veterinary professionals! From understanding the basics to creating content that reaches pet parents, she’s covering everything you need to know to get started with Reels. You’ll learn how to make videos that resonate with pet owners, highlight your team, and keep clients coming back.

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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.

Cheyanne:

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. So today I would like to take time to answer a question that I got in my Facebook group. And if you want to join my Facebook group and submit a question or just ask for support in general you can go visit my Facebook group called the Veterinary Social Media Managers Community. And there are about Close to 3, 000 people in the group, which I'm so excited about, but it's completely free. We'd love to have you. We do lots of brainstorming together and answer questions. And I'm working on answering questions on the podcast now. So if you want me to answer your question live, quote unquote, live on the podcast, definitely join there. The link to join will be in the description of this episode. But the question that I want to answer today is what are Instagram reels and. Everything about Instagram Reels, as much as I can tell you over on a podcast. So let's dive on in and let's start off with answering the basics. So Instagram Reels or Facebook Reels in general, are up to three minutes now at the time of the recording of this episode. And really overall they can be as short as one second, but general about, Three seconds to up to three minutes is pretty successful from what I can see. But like I said, you can show them on Facebook and Instagram. And if you record them and make them outside of the platforms that I just mentioned, you can share those over in TikTok. Of course, you can make them on TikTok too, but we'll talk about how we can make Reels here in a moment. But overall Reels are really great for audiences that are of the younger demographics. So I'm talking about Gen Z around that age, up to older Millennials, and I'm even seeing Gen X getting into them. So, really, I feel like they're a great source of content for veterinary hospitals in particular just to reach a variety of people. demographics in our audience. So definitely get to know your audience. And we talk about that here on the podcast quite often. So if you have questions about that, definitely let me know in the Facebook group. But overall I see reels and short form videos being a great source of content that is really engaging the audience nowadays. So definitely give that a go. And if you're a practice that is just starting up Newer and wanting to attract that type of audience, then I really encourage you to get in front of the camera and get comfortable doing reels. If your team is not quite comfortable in front of the camera, I definitely encourage you to listen to, I think it's episode three or four of the podcast. I'll link it down below. But that. Gives you some tips on how to get your team involved with social media overall. So definitely give that a listen, but I really encourage all practices focus on this. The general practice hospitals seem to do really well with the REELS content, but I've seen VEG which you might be familiar with. It's a Veterinary Emergency Group. I think it's called. I could be completely wrong. But definitely check them out on Instagram. They do a great job with their Instagram. Just kind of off the top of my head. I've seen some specialties hospitals doing a great job with it. So it's really about finding your, your groove with the content and what really will speak to your audience. So. If you struggle with trying to figure out what is going to engage your audience definitely ask me in the Facebook group, but this is something we'll be focusing on in my membership, vet social hub. We'll talk about that in a moment. But let's get down to how they're created. So you can, Really just make it as simple as recording on the clinic phone, your personal phone, whatever you're using to create content. You can use a tablet but those are like the tools I would use to record it. Just simply, you can use a cell phone. That's as simple as you need to make it. And hitting record, you know, just as long as your phone can record them, then you're able to make reels. It's really that simple. Now with editing tools, I recommend Instagram. You can record directly in Instagram. You can record directly in TikTok if you're comfortable with using the TikTok app. To edit them. I really encourage you to work with a Canva or CapCut. Those are the two apps that I'm most familiar with and most comfortable with and feel like they have a pretty good user experience. So if you just want something simple to use, then I definitely encourage you to use those. There's lots of great tutorials that you can look up to see how they were made, or you can check out Vet Social Hub of my membership. But if editing them is not your forte, like video editing in general is not your forte, don't worry, you don't have to be knowledgeable in video editing. I encourage you just to start and approach it with an open mind of knowing that you're going to have to learn a little bit along the way. No, that doesn't mean you have to know how to make all these special edits and add fancy graphics and all this stuff. Seriously, it's all, all you need to do is kind of how, write out a script of what you want your reel to look like. Just kind of map it out like, okay, I want this to be the doctor answering questions, and these are the questions we're going to be answering, and this is how I'd like the doctor to open the video, like start it off, and this is how we're going to wrap it up, and just kind of map it out on how you want to do it. And that's really it. And then if you want to trim down stuff, you can use your phone to do that. On, I know on the iPhones, there's the ability to edit it on there. And I'm sure if you're using an Android, I'm not familiar with Androids, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure there's a way you can edit it down directly within the software that's downloaded on your phone. But even if you aren't comfortable or familiar with that. Look it up on YouTube for sure, or you can just upload it directly to Canva. They have the ability for you to edit videos there, just do simple edits and that's all you have to do, so, you know, if you just trim it down slightly from the beginning and the end and reduce any, what we call dead space. So anything that's just quiet, slow to start. You can just. Cut that off. And keep this in mind in general. This is just kind of a side note. When you're making videos or really social media content in general, you want to keep in mind that you have about three seconds to grab someone's intention before they move on from your post. So if I'm scrolling through Instagram and I see your video and I'm not instantly Captured or interested and what you're talking about within the first three seconds. I'm more likely to scroll on from there. Now, knowing me, I like to stick around for a little bit longer, just kind of give it a chance. But in general, the general user on social media is going to be. Bailing after three seconds. So really focus on the first three seconds and figure out okay How can I capture someone's attention and get them interested immediately? It's kind of like a sample if you smell wonderful waffle cones, for example I don't know why you that came up to mind, but if you smell the waffle cones, you're instantly instantly I don't know about you, but I'm instantly like where's the ice cream? I want a waffle cone, right? So Just kind of see how you can trigger someone to instantly want to continue watching the video, and I mean triggered in a positive way here. Okay, so if you want to get into the fancier cuts, like if you see on Instagram or TikTok, some people will zoom in, zoom out, you can do that in Canva. Where they have these really cool fancy jump zooms and jump shots, whatever there's lots of really cool fancy ways we can go about editing. You can do that on CapCut for sure but I really recommend that if you're just starting out with them, go simple as possible and really focus on what you're putting into the video as far as like recording and figure out how you can capture attention. That is going to be your biggest hurdle, so to speak when you're creating these. Definitely if you're just starting out, I really recommend that you focus on just getting into the practice of recording them, getting your team involved, and figuring out what your rhythm is going to be, because once you get comfortable with it and kind of Understand how you can edit and just, you know learn as you go. Then once you get really comfortable with it and figure out what people like, then you can get into the fancier editing. So I hope that makes sense, but if you want to know more about how to make more engaging content like that, definitely check out these two books and I'll link them in the description as well. So the first one will be Hookpoint by Brandon Cain. I'm currently reading that, and I don't typically like to recommend books that I haven't finished yet, but I am loving it so far, and there's a lot of gold nuggets in it that I feel like you're going to benefit from. So, highly recommend you check that out. And then my ultimate favorite book is Contagious by Jonah Berger. If you are a subscriber, student of my veterinary social media essentials course or foundations course. That is, I talk about his book a lot, so definitely check out those two books about creating content. So I'm going to kind of pump the brakes there and hold off on talking about creating content or creating reels for now, because I feel like that will just give you a good. place to start without feeling overwhelmed. But I want to kind of give you some ideas on what you make your reels about. And for a veterinary practice, I feel like this is a great way for you to really introduce people to your personality as a hospital and share some education. And when I say share education, I want you to really focus about ways that you can provide people with what we call quick wins. In other words, what is something that they can easily apply and do today or within the next five minutes. So something that will impact their lives in a positive way and make them remember or make them think, Oh, that was super helpful. Let me come back to this vet later. Or, Oh, they helped me do this in the last time I saw their page. Maybe they can help fluffy with whatever the vet's going through. Right. So with education if you're going to have like your doctor talk about. I don't know, fleas and ticks. You know, share three, focus on three points that your doctor can share in that video. So if you're talking about three ways to I don't know, let's see. Three signs that your pet might have fleas. You know, itching, biting scratching. Could be one. Or I guess, you know. That could be three, but I hope that you get the point. So that is kind of the general rule of education reels that I'm finding works well, just kind of stick to short list, concise, and make it quick. So you don't have to spend all day creating this reel or an hour trying to record this, you know, just simple, quick tips and tricks is going to be the general rule there. And if people want to learn more information, you can say, Hey, If you see these signs in your pet, then definitely contact us. So we would be able to help you, you know, X, Y, and Z, whatever the subject is, call, tie in that, what we call a call to action telling people what they can do to get more information from you, basically the gist of it. So and then. When we were talking about your personality, this is where you can show the fun behind the scenes stuff or show the events that you're doing as a part of your community. Things that your clients don't generally see when they're working with you and focusing on their pet in the moment at the exam, procedure, whatever they're there for. So there's ideas on my blog, you can definitely check those out for more. But overall, just be sure that you have clear video. So if it's fuzzy at all, people aren't going to want to stay around and look at it. So be sure that your your video is clear, your audio sounds really good. If there's any background noise in the background, make sure that's memnized. Like I know if you're in a hospital, there might be some dogs barking, but try to keep the background noise as quiet as possible. As far as like recording it I should have said this before, but as far as like other topics, I would really focus on, in, on those. And then look at other practices that are doing reels. That would be a great way for you to kind of get some more ideas. If your hospital and your team is very comfortable with this, I would definitely have A little bit more of interview styles as well. So like around Halloween time, I used to ask my team what their favorite Halloween candy was and ask what movies they liked watch, watching when they were growing up and those kinds of things. So, I did interview style stuff with my team to get people to know our team a little bit more and just show the human side of things a bit. So that's another idea to kind of show off your team. So give those a try. And if you do definitely let us know in the Facebook group, cause I would love to see them and hopefully maybe give you some pointers if you want. So that is kind of that with the content focus or the ideas for reels and how to go about making them. So as far as like how we can get engagement from them, Overall, people are going to be engaged with watching it. They might not be more so focused on the commenting, but I'm really just focusing on the video itself. So if you're going to add a call to action, which I highly encourage you do. To the end of the video, I encourage you to get them involved in the conversation of the video, depending on what the topic is. Invite them to comment with what their thoughts are, what would they share or something like that. Either that or, Or if you are calling action to them or asking them to book an appointment with you or visit your website for more be sure that you are directing them appropriately based upon the platform that you're posting this on. So like Instagram. They're testing this out right now. They're giving you the poss there's a possibility that you can add clickable links to your, to your reels. And at the time of those recording, this is just a test. But overall, if you add a link to the description of your post on Instagram, they aren't going to be able to click it. So this is where you could say, Hey, if you want more information, comment the word flea. Just to follow our example from before and people will comment with flea and you either have the choice of following up with them and commenting on them saying, Oh, great, you can give us a call here or here or go to our website to book an appointment. So you could either comment them with that or you can message them directly and then comment saying, Hey, I'm sent you a message with the link to this, to our website to book an appointment, whatever that is for you. Go ahead and check it out, that message. Or you can set up something called Many chat and it, you can set up those automations. Just so that you don't have to worry about that. I love man in chat. It's wonderful. So if you want more information on that, just let me know. I'll also add it to the description. It's a great tool. I love it. I set it up for my clients it's a lifesaver. So there is my suggestions for engagement.

Mic In (Elgato Wave:3):

Now, I know a lot of people like to say, follow us for more. But I don't necessarily want to encourage you to say that only because we have such a short amount of time with the person who's watching the reel that I would rather you focus on getting them to go to your website or. Um, contacting you in some way to get that business transaction, so to speak. Rolling so that you are capturing their attention immediately with Steph. Sure. You could say follow us for more. Um, if you're looking to build up your following, but overall, I want you to encourage people to take action, to do something with your clinic, versus just following you on social media, because people forget easily. We're busy. We might not come back to that page or look at our feed for a bit. So that's mainly my reason why I encourage you to do that.

Cheyanne:

So, on the note of, okay, can we schedule reels? You can MetaBusinessSuite allows you to do this. And I don't really recommend a lot of hospitals use MetaBusinessSuite. First thing is, I have, I don't know why, maybe it's just me, but I've heard others in my Facebook group say this. But Meta likes to eat my posts and not return them or they will just not post them. They'll, they'll delete them, whatever. There's a glitch. And so I'm kind of salty about Meta Business Suite, I guess, because I used to work so hard on creating posts and uploading them into Meta Business Suite and all that hard work would just be gone. And that was, it's frustrating. So the other reason why I don't recommend Meta. Business suite, a lot of the time for scheduling stuff is because now they have a max of you scheduling posts out for 30 days. And for a lot of people that might not be a turnoff, but for me, I like to try to schedule posts out past 30 days, or if there's something for like. Okay, I know that a post for this year at this time for the holidays worked really well. I just want to be able to repeat that for next year and just forget about it. And have that on my calendar for next year. And I can't do that Meta Business Week. So what I recommend is MetraCool, and I'll add a link to them in the description. But their free plan is awesome. Fabulous. And I can manage everything for Facebook, for Instagram, for TikTok. If you're doing TikTok for my Google business, which if your practice is really focusing on that that is a great place to be able just to manage it all in one spot. I can even look at my website analytics on there. So I, there, there's lots of other platforms you can check out and Plug into theirs for you to manage. But it's just a wonderful tool that I'm just loving. And I have, and you can do that all for free. Like they have a free plan, forever plan. There's also pay versions, but I have tested out a lot of tools for scheduling posts in my 10 years of being in social media. And I can tell you, I've tried. Like a good portion of them all, and they've gone also so expensive. So if you want to give Metricool a try and take a break from Meta then I definitely encourage you to check out Metricool and I have an affiliate link that you can check out. Like I said, I'll put that in the description for you. But there's definitely a lot more that I can share about Reels and we can get really detailed But I want to be sure that you're getting what you need to get started if Instagram Reels is something that you are wanting to do for your practice and if you're on the fence I really encourage you to think about it talk with your team and see how you can make it possible because video is is a really powerful tool for not only capturing attention and getting engagement, but overall, it's a really great, great way for you to connect with your, your clients, potential clients, potential employees, and really cuts the time in half and building that trust, because if we can look at people if we can watch people on video, we have a better probability of trusting them a bit more. So keep that in mind. And if you're trying to build more trust with your, your clients or your employees just know that it's a really great way for you to not only build engagement, but build trust. So if you are wanting to learn more about reels in general creating better content or just need help navigating social media as a whole I encourage you to check out my membership. We're going to be welcoming new members here pretty soon.

Audio Only - All Participants-1:

So, VetSocialHub is my membership, my monthly membership, where I am basically giving you all the tools you need to manage your clinic's social media like a professional. And so, each month, what I'm going to be doing is I am going to be giving you access to a live monthly marketing workshop where I am teaching you Everything that I've learned over the last 10 years and things I wish I knew when I was in the practice. And I just want to give you all the knowledge you need to feel confident in your role. Not only that, I'm giving you the tools and resources to cut your management time in half. That is my goal at least. So what that means is that I'm giving you Canva templates. I'm giving you monthly social media posting calendars, what I call playbooks, where I give you basically a jumpstart on things that you can be focusing on, giving you post ideas and giving you a, a blueprint on what you can be posting for the month. Because I know you have short and limited time to get things done for social media. So if you want to learn more about VetSocialHub, definitely head to my website. If you just go to HeyCheyenne. com you'll see the VetSocialHub button right at the top there and join the waitlist. We'll be opening the waitlist here or the membership here very, very soon. And if you're on the waitlist, you may get a little extra Bonus as a thank you for being on the waitlist, but definitely be on the lookout. Because we'll be making some great announcements about VetSocialHub pretty soon. But I'm so excited. I've been doing a lot of hard work on it. This is a new version of VetSocialHub basically. So if you've heard me talk about VetSocialHub before, we're offering some new things in the membership. So

Cheyanne:

the link will be in the description.

Audio Only - All Participants-1:

And if you're in my Facebook group, you'll be seeing some sneak peeks of it here pretty soon. So, oh, and did I mention the the templates, the Canva templates that I'll be including for you. The library of them. It's, it comes out to be like over 1, 400 templates. So we've got you covered. I've got templates for, let's see, for everything for general practice. I know you'll even work for specialties, mixed animal, emergency, like I've got you covered. So if you have questions about that, let me know.

Cheyanne:

All right. So I'll let you go now cause I know you're busy, but thank you so much for tuning in. And I hope to see you inside my membership, Vet Social Hub, and maybe in the Facebook group. So until then, I'll catch you later. Bye.