Spooky season is here, and it’s a great time of year to encourage pet owners to engage with your various social media accounts. We’ve compiled this list of October holidays and themes for pet owner engagement to help you make the most of your social posts this fall. Keep reading for some seriously spooktacular content ideas:

Featured October Pet Holidays

While much of the month of October revolves around Halloween, there are a few other important pet holidays that should make an appearance on your social media calendar. These include:

• Adopt A Dog Month/Adopt a Shelter Dog Month
• Black Cat Awareness Month
• National Pet Wellness Month
• 1st Full Week: National Walk Your Dog Week
• Oct. 1: National Black Dog Day
• Oct. 4: World Animal Day
• Oct. 4: Kindness to Animals Day
• Oct. 9: CATober 9th (AKA a universal birthday for all cats)
• Oct. 11: National Pet Obesity Awareness Day
• Oct. 16: Global Cat Day
• Oct. 20: National Fetch Day
• Oct. 22: National Make a Dog’s Day
• Oct. 29: National Cat Day
• Oct. 30: National Treat Your Pet Day
• Oct. 31: Halloween

While you might not have the time or space to focus on each holiday, taking the time to create a strategy for the month will help you shed light on the ones that are really important to you. 

Group Together Similar Topics

One great way to focus on as many holiday topics as possible is to group together similar themes. Since the month of October is both Adopt a Dog Month and Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, it might be a great idea to create a series of posts to share throughout the month featuring some of your clients who were adopted from shelters and a story of their happy new lives with their fur-ever families. 

You might also want to create some kind of weight loss challenge in which pet owners can participate to honor National Pet Wellness Month, National Walk Your Dog Week, and National Pet Obesity Awareness Day. Creating these content groupings can give you a clear focal point for a few of your monthly strategies.

Halloween-Related Topics

While we do think it’s important to spread your focus across a few different topics in the month of October, let’s not forget about the star of the show: Halloween. There are few things that get pet owners to engage more with social posts than pictures of cute animals in cute Halloween costumes. To avoid inundating your feeds with nothing but photos, however, try to diversify your Halloween content a little bit. Consider:

• Creating a few educational posts on Halloween safety to let owners know about potential dangers like chocolate or choking hazards on certain costumes.
• Hosting a pumpkin carving contest for your employees and asking your followers to vote on their favorite.  
• Making a video series of the human costumes in your veterinary hospital.
• Offering some incentive (like a free nail trim) for pet owners who schedule an appointment and bring in a pet in costume in October.
• Sharing some recipes for pet-friendly Halloween treats.
• Asking for pet owners to share pictures of their pets. 

October is a great month for creating a variety of social media posts to encourage pet owners to engage with your page. If the thought of attempting any kind of social media strategy has you breaking out in hives, have no fear. Beyond Indigo Pets is here to handle the heavy lifting of digital marketing so you can do what you do best: offer pets the veterinary care and attention they need for a healthy life. To learn more, fill out this form!