I Have A Facebook Page For My Veterinary Practice – Now What The Heck Do I Put On It?!

Author: Alison Burden-Blake
Posted: Monday 13th February, 2012. 11:52:49

Rule number 1 – don’t be afraid to be human! Yes it’s a business page, yes you need to mind your language, yes you need to be relatively selective, but – BIG BUT actually – don’t be BORING!!!

People do business with people, not with businesses. You need to show off what wonderful people you have working at your practice AND that you have a sense of humour AND that your clients’ pets matter to you.

So first up you need to get some relaxed staff photos on there, they do not need to be posed, just get someone snapping pics at your clinic when your clients bring in their pets^* and they get a cuddle from a receptionist, nurse or vet. Also any social occasions (providing they’re not too debauched!) can go up.

Funny pics (you know, the ones with the captions), relevant news stories, special offers (I’ll come back to this), links to newsletters, videos, links to blogs, events. I could go on, but you get the idea!

Another great way to get images onto your wall – ask your clients to post them! Did it just snow? Ask to see photos of their dogs, cats, bunnies in the snow! Is it Halloween, did they dress up their pet? How about what Christmas presents they gave their pet?

You can even ask them to add a caption to one of your photos (although be very careful about running any competitions for doing so – there are strict FB rules about competitions which I’ll cover in another blog).

These are just a few ideas for you to take away and use, now how about…..

…How often?

With the ‘New’ Facebook you need to be posting fairly regularly otherwise your posts will be lost. Facebook posts older than roughly 3 hours may not be seen by your audience unless they go a hunting on your page. So don’t be afraid to post new content (or share someone else’s post) around 5 times a day. Yep, Ali just said 5 times a day!

Part of the reason that your veterinary practice is on Facebook is to be able to gently nudge your clients and remind them that you’re still there, that you enjoy interacting with them and that they are part of your community. So as long as you are posting relevant, funny, important and most importantly, human posts your clients and Facebook fans will be happy to see your posts turn up on their home page. On that point a quick note about….

….Special offers

Facebook is a SOCIAL media platform. Constantly selling and pushing your services to clients and fans will quickly turn them off! When you’re posting great content that’s okay and not seen as selling your services, but don’t flood your wall with offers. Obviously if you’re running a special offer that month then you need to let people know about it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, just don’t over do it or your Facebook page will quickly have tumbleweed rolling through it!

Well hopefully that’s given you a head start on Facebook, or at least given you a couple of new ideas if you’re already there!

Til next time!
Ali

^*You will obviously need to ask your clients’ permission to put a photo of their pet up on Facebook – but it’s very rare that they don’t want their pet to have 5 minutes of glory!

We get it. You're busy being a vet. You know that using social media can enhance your practice, but finding time is difficult. We're the UK's only social media specialists for vets, so let us sort it. We're passionate about what you do and big on personal service.

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