Posts in Category: Social Media Marketing

Recently, Beyond Indigo Pets collaborated with MWI Animal Health to present a webinar on optimizing the timing, scheduling, and planning of veterinary social marketing posts. Presented by BI Marketing Analyst Shannon Pecora, this video offers a rare, behind the scenes look at how to post to social networking platforms like a pro.

The term ‘Social Media’ is often confused with ‘Social Marketing’ – and while it may not seem like it, they are two different animals. For your veterinary marketing endeavors to be a success, it’s important that you understand the difference, and make both work for your practice.

Social Media v. Social Marketing  

Social Media is a means for your practice to stay connected with your online community of existing clients and interested pet owners. It is a place to converse and interact with this community by providing your fans with information (value) and keeping them engaged and bonded to your practice; usually in a fun and lighthearted way.

The sun is out, the kids are (almost) on vacation, and people are enjoying the warmer temperatures. Not only are people ready to enjoy summer, but their pets are too. Bring the fun into your business with these summertime marketing ideas for your veterinary practice:

Summertime Marketing Pet-Related Content

Summertime offers a great opportunity for veterinary practices to engage in themed content. Engaging content should be an integral part of your marketing strategies so be sure to treat your content like royalty.

Here are some content examples you can implement:

Summer Pet Infographics: Create an infographic to highlight important information for pet owners that is summer specific and share it to Pinterest. Some ideas include: Top 5 Summer Safety Tips, Dogs In Hot Cars: How You Can Help, How To Keep Your Pet Hydrated, and Summer Pet Travel Tips. Continue reading

With summer just a heartbeat away, you may be looking for ways to rev up your veterinary practice’s revenue and amp up your social (media) status. The traditional summer slump experienced within the industry offers you the opportunity to explore the social media scene and build your online brand.

The summer months offer great opportunities to interact with clients in a fun and meaningful way, ultimately positioning your business to be front-of-mind when spending picks up as the weather cools off. While there are a lot of great approaches to summertime social marketing out there, the tried and true social media contest has long proven to be a winner – both in terms of engagement and client retention.

Wondering where to start? We’ve got you covered with these 5 pet contest ideas. Continue reading

The phrase “going viral” has become a huge part of daily vernacular. With that, it is easy to see how creating viral content is a main goal for many social marketers. What happens when your fifteen minutes of viral fame come to a screeching halt, though? Can your social media ever recover from, gulp, regular results after the high of content that has gone viral?

The short answer is: Of course you can. You just have to be aware of what it really means for something to “go viral” and what to do after that happens. Continue reading

Remember when the Internet told us that ice cubes could be fatal to our dogs? Many pet owners now play it safe and don’t give ice cubes as treats… but recent news proclaims that many dog treats contain pentobarbital, so they can be dangerous, too! So what should we believe?

Given the rapid spread of “evidence” online, which can prove just about anything, how are pet owners supposed to distinguish fact from fiction? It’s so easy to use that search feature that comes preloaded on nearly every smartphone, and in an instant they’ve fallen prey to the veterinarian’s virtual nemesis: “Dr. Google.

Your clients are getting their information from a mixture of sources, including credible news articles, Facebook friends, neighbor recommendations, Pinterest, and of course search engine results. As we’ve seen via other current events, people are likely to believe what their friends say, with or without fact-checking. Those who do fact-check will often head to Google first, and the sheer amount of material online means that their chances of finding reputable answers are just about the same as their chances of finding fake news. Continue reading

Whether you’re energized by the uptick in passionate political discourse, desperately seeking the fun photos and quizzes you were used to, or fed up and ready to sign off altogether, there is no doubt that you have noticed a shift in the content of your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds these past months. And you can bet your clients have noticed a change in what they’re posting, Snapping, and Tweeting, too!

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if you or your clients are happy about this social shift or not. You still have a business to run and need to market your business and services, just as your clients still have pets to care for.

So what to do? The solution is simple: keep posting! Continue reading

In the ever-changing swirl of Social Media, it’s hard to know where to focus. Our Beyond Indigo Social Marketers see 7 social marketing trends that should be important to savvy Veterinary Practices in 2017:

Treat Social Media as a valuable business asset with ROI

Social media for business has come a very long way in the last few years. To be effective, social media marketing should be considered a valuable business asset and part of your practice’s marketing strategy. Have ongoing discussions about goals, ad strategy and budget, target audience, post content and methods for increasing post engagement. If you’ve handed off your online social presence to a social media-loving staffer and thought little more about it–you’re missing a big opportunity and 2017 is the year to change that. Continue reading