Thinking about getting your veterinary hospital onto Pinterest? Not sure what your veterinary business should be posting on the Pinterest platform? I’ve already answered 5 Pinterest questions in a previous post, but I’m back with more information. Let’s go through some great dos and don’ts for veterinarians and vet techs who want to become Pinterest prodigies.
Read through these Pinterest best practices, then be sure to tell me how it goes.
DO: Be descriptive
From your veterinary hospital’s Pinterest profile to the pins that you post, descriptions dominate. Why is that? Pinterest has aspirations to be a search engine, like Google. Search engines love accurate, descriptive keywords. Be sure you detail your veterinary practice well in your profile. What type of practice are you? Who are your veterinarians? What are your specialities? Answering these questions on your profile description will do a lot more for your practice than a simple, “We’re a vet that loves pets!” Once you begin creating various boards on your profile, be sure to describe each of them well, too!
Azzore Veterinary Specialists does a great job describing themselves on their Pinterest profile.
When you start pinning onto your well-described boards, make sure you describe your pins in detail. Pinterest is a great place for a veterinary practice to showcase patients. If you start pinning the cats, dogs, horses & other four-legged or feathered friends you care for, be descriptive! What’s an easy way to do this? Talk about the pet’s breed and color in the caption.
DO: Make original content
An original veterinary pin created with PicMonkey.com
Re-pinning, what sharing is called on Pinterest, is a great way for your veterinary practice to fill up boards with great content. However, re-pinned content doesn’t work for you; it works for its original pinner! Creating content for Pinterest does involve creating graphics, but don’t let that scare you. Use free photo editing tools, like PicMonkey.com, to overlay text on images. With very little graphic design skills, you’ll have awesome Pinterest images in no time.
Once you have images to pin, you have to have website content to link to. After all, when people click your pin, it will drive them to whatever website you’d like. This traffic-driving capability is one of the best features of Pinterest, so use it to your veterinary hospital’s advantage. Make sure you have valuable content to drive your Pinterest traffic to, like a blog. For example, if your veterinary hospital has created a pin about pet dental health month, like to a blog about periodontal disease.
DO: Source your pins
In order for your veterinary hospital’s website to get traffic from Pinterest, you have to correctly source your pins. This is an extra step you need to take after creating and pinning your pin. Watch this video to see how to do it!
DON’T: Use small images
If you are brave enough to create content for your veterinary practice’s Pinterest, don’t forget that large images rule the Pinterest feed. Make sure your pins are going to stand out by avoiding small images. You want to have images that are taller than they are wide, though the specific dimensions can vary. For example, a post that’s about 700 pixels wide and 1000 tall should be a strong size. However, you could go even taller! There are pins that are several thousand pixels tall, so play around with sizing to see what works.
DON’T: Re-pin from untrusted sites
As mentioned before, re-pinning is a great way to share content from other pinners. Now that you know that all pins have the power to drive traffic to outside websites, beware! You could see a great pet health pin you want to share on your veterinary practice’s boards, but what’s its source? Always click on pins before sharing them to check the source. A lot of the awesome images on Pinterest actually drive traffic back to less-than-reputable pet health information. Even worse? They might drive your clients to online pharmacies to buy items, like heartworm preventative. Most likely, that isn’t something your practice is striving to do!
Play it safe by re-pinning from other veterinary hospitals. Veterinary medicine is a local business, so it’s not going to harm your practice to re-pin quality information from a practice 1000 miles away. There are also other industry leaders, like Petplan Pet Insurance, that are sharing safe, useful information on Pinterest.
DON’T: Forget to think like a client
Good pin for veterinary professionals, but not for clients!
From the pins you share to the boards you create, your veterinary clinic’s Pinterest has to be for your clients. There are many great Pinterest accounts for veterinary professionals, but that’s not what your account is about! Stay away from pinning things that might turn off clients. What does this mean? Nothing too gross, overly technical, or material that should be in a veterinary journal. Also be mindful of how much and how often you post. You don’t want to post a lot of pins at once and totally take over your client’s feed. Spread out your posts, and try to share them at night and on weekends. That’s when your clients are free to spend time looking at their Pinterest feed.
Your clients are on Pinterest to see cute pet photos, get pet treat recipes and to find easy tips to help them master pet ownership. However, they’re also there to see information in their feed that ISN’T pet-related, so don’t inundate them. Think like a client, and your veterinary practice’s Pinterest will take off in no time!
If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. Want more social media tips for your veterinary practice, join my email list! You’ll get my upcoming e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Facebook for Veterinary Hospitals, as a bonus.
RELATED: Check out 5 Pinterest Questions Answered for Veterinary Hospitals post and 3 Steps to Educate Veterinary Clients with Pinterest for more Pinterest tips.