By Cheyanne Flerx & Janel Hutton

If you struggle to think of content to create after the holidays, you aren’t alone! January is often focused on starting new habits and breaking old ones. It also provides us with an excellent opportunity to personally reflect on the last year and see what worked well and what didn’t in our marketing. Are you ready to make this year the best year yet? Alright! Let’s get to work!

Title Ideas for the Vet Clinic Blog:

• So You Got a New Pet for Christmas, What Now?
• 4 Ways To Keep Your Pet At a Healthy Weight
• How To Leash Train Your Puppy
• 6 Winter Weather Pet Safety Tips All Pet Owners Must Know

Video Topic Ideas:

• Try hosting a Facebook or Instagram Live and answer your clients’ questions about healthy weight management in pets.
• Do you have a tour of your hospital on video? If not, this is a great time to make one, share it on social, and add it to your website!

Facebook Post Ideas:

• Post Idea #1: Introduce your team with quick, fun facts about each team member or department (if your team is large.) Make it engaging and play two truths and a lie with one team member or department in a post. To play, share two facts and one lie about the staff member or service department (being featured) and ask your audience to guess which statement is the lie.
• Post Idea #2: Celebrate a healthy start to the New Year when a patient starts a wellness plan. Share a patient’s story by saying, “Meet so and so..” or “Say Hi to…” and celebrate the fact your patient is starting the year right with a good wellness plan in place.

• Post Idea #3: Ask your followers, “If your pet had a New Year’s Resolution, what would it be? And would they keep it?” Use a fun graphic or interesting picture of a patient. In your caption, you could say, “Fluffy’s New Year resolution is to stop chasing her tail!” what would your pet’s resolution be?” Make the post even more fun and engaging, offer a prize to your followers. 
• Post Idea #4: Show off a patient’s weight loss before and after picture! Educate the importance of weight loss in pets, even promote your veterinarian recommended weight loss diet that you carry. You create a video post for the weight journey or start a trend and create a series of posts! See if you can feature and document a patient’s weight loss journey. Even if your patient has lost only 2-5 pounds, that can make a big difference! Share how much happier and more energetic the pet is throughout the journey. Your followers will love to keep up on the pet during the next few months to see their progress!
• Post Idea #5: Ask your audience fun, engaging questions like, “Spell your pet’s name using only emojis.”

Instagram Feed Post Ideas

• Post idea #1: Welcome new patients. Highlight the new Christmas puppies and kittens that come in with a special welcome on Instagram!
• Post idea #2: Host an Instagram takeover. Get one of your co-workers to take over Instagram for a day and show off how their day goes at your clinic!
• Post idea #3: Celebrate National Dress Up Your Pet Day on January 14th! This day is a great opportunity for you to ask your clients to tag your practice in pictures of their pet dressed up in sweaters, costumes, etc. You can easily adapt this post to fit Facebook by asking your audience to share photos or videos of their pets in the comments.

Instagram or Facebook Stories Ideas:

• Story Idea #1: In honor of National Technology Day (which is on January 6th), take a moment to show your followers how to download your practice’s app and the cool features it has. Show them how to book an appointment through your app, request refills, etc.
• Story Idea #2: Share tips on keeping pets safe during the winter. Include tips about outdoor safety, staying hydrated, or even parasite prevention.

Cheyanne’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month

Please take a moment to send your clients a survey asking them about their experience with your practice and content on social media. In your survey, ask them questions like:

• What do they enjoy about the content you post on social media, and what do they not?
• What would they like to see more or less of?
• What would social media platforms like to see your clinic on?

This exercise is a chance for you to tailor your digital marketing and invest in what your clients will want to interact and engage with you and your business – thus resulting in more business converting to your practice. Plus, it’ll help manage your ROI! Find more information on where you should spend your time on social media here.

Janel’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month

It’s a new year with new possibilities! This is a great time to get a pulse on how the last year went. Take note of what went well, what needs improvement, and what didn’t work out for you on your social media pages.

Here are a few tips to help you out!

1. Review your insights. Take some time to open up your analytics for Facebook, Instagram, and other social media pages you have. It might feel overwhelming at first, but once you start going through them, it’ll start to come together and give you an idea of how your year went. Play around with changing the timeline of your insights and review each week, month, or the entire year. Find your top-performing posts, ads, and events. Then, study what went well or needs work and apply your findings to your future plans.
2. Talk with your team. Chances are your staff also follows your social pages. Ask them what their favorite posts and moments were. You might be surprised!
3. What can you improve? It always happens; we work on a social post we think will go viral, and we put some extra time into it, and it doesn’t do as well as we hoped. What went wrong?! It might feel like a dagger to the heart, but take it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Look at the insights of that particular post, what time of day, time of the month, how it looked, or the wording in your caption, and try to find ways you can improve on this kind of post.
4. Write down your goals! After taking a pulse on how your year went, make a goal! This could be getting 1,000 new followers, increasing how many posts you do a month, boosting ads, increasing the number of posts you cover on a particular subject, education, etc. Read this article on how to make realistic marketing goals.
5. Write down these goals and revisit them every month. Visualizing your goals will help you reach your goals and measure success on your social media pages. Share your goals in the Veterinary Social Media: The Snout School Community Facebook Group, and we will help you stay accountable and celebrate your victories together! 

Taking these notes of how your year went will help you visualize your goals and make them a reality. So, make the new year your time to achieve your goals. We have faith in you, and always remember, HAVE FUN!

About The Authors