IN my previous two articles about the BlogPaws conference, I described the background to this annual gathering of animal-related online movers and shakers and wrote about some of the happenings at the exhibition. This month it’s time to share some of the lessons I learned at the lectures.
The BlogPaws conference is a three-day event similar to a stream dedicated to “working with the internet and social media” at the BSAVA congress or London Vet Show. Attendees included vets, animal industry representatives, animal welfare groups, rescue centres, dog breed organisations and many others.
As with other veterinary conferences, there were different grades of lecture: beginner, intermediate and professional. I found myself attending all three levels, depending on the topic. There were four broad topics, with lessons to learn in each area.
1. Websites
Nearly all vet clinics now have an online presence in the form of a website, but this can almost always be improved. It’s easy to throw money at a web designer but this doesn’t guarantee that the result is going to achieve your aims. There are two main aims for a well-designed veterinary clinic website, and most of us don’t pay sufficient attention to either of these.
(a) A website should be an online brochure to attract clients to your clinic. Vets find it all-too-easy to use their websites to brag about shiny expensive equipment and hard-earned extra qualifications. But is this what the public like to see on a website?
Vets and the public often have different ideas about the best way to present the public face of a practice. One suggestion from Blogpaws was that local animal-lovers can be recruited to give objective opinions on vet clinic websites; an informal link with a respected local animal rescue group can be a two-way street, with feedback from the rescue group individuals helping to create a public-friendly website, while a “free” mention on the website can boost the profile of the animal rescue group.
The content of the website is important, with photos and videos providing a multimedia component. But do you have permission from owners to use photos of their pets? The suggestion from one expert was that in most cases it should be sufficient to obtain verbal permission from owners, but be sure to write down in the clinical history that you have received this.
While videos can add “real life” to a website, they need to be done well: a poorly made video with a sweating vet, a cluttered background and poor sound quality will not help your practice image. Make sure that the final product is professional.
(b) A website should ensure that your clinic is easily found on internet search engines – an area that most vets like to quietly ignore, or to leave to the web designers, but it’s a topic that most of us can easily learn to understand. Lectures on Google Analytics and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) explained how the system works, and detailed discussions on WordPress (the basis for many vet clinic websites) and other blog platforms explained how easy it is to get this wrong.
It’s easy to check: if you Google “your home town” and “vet”, does your practice come at the top of the list? If not, there are often simple reasons: does your website include the words “your home town” and “vet” on every page plus the names of the various species that you treat?
Pam Foster, a certified SEO copywriter and web consultant for the pet and veterinary industries, was one of the speakers at BlogPaws: her book, titled Wildly Profitable Marketing for the Pet Industry (available online for £11 from www.createspace.com/3855015), provides an easy-to-read strategy that includes finding the right keywords and using them in the right places on a vet practice website.
2. Blogs
A blog – basically a website that’s maintained with regular updates of opinion or facts – can be an easy way to share information with a wide audience. It can also be a time-wasting exercise in vanity.
BlogPaws included lectures that explained how to make the most of blogging, including the idea that you are creating a brand and a business that can have monetary potential. There is a view that bloggers are the celebrities of the future: with potentially hundreds of thousands of readers, some blogs have the marketing/advertising clout of a national newspaper.
Bloggers are working together to find better ways of reaching their target audience, and once a significant following has been generated, developing ethical ways of working with commerce, whether by direct advertising, sponsorship or becoming a brand ambassador.
Most vets are too busy with their daily clinical work to have time to focus on blogging, but there is a niche for veterinary bloggers that some may find appealing.
3. Facebook
As with websites, many vet clinics now have Facebook pages, but often that’s as far as the concept has been taken. There is no doubt that there is tremendous untapped potential in the use of Facebook as a way of marketing vet clinics in local areas.
As an example, my own vet clinic Facebook page has 932 “likes”: over 80% of these are from our immediate locality, with an age range from 13 to over 65, in a bell-shaped curve that peaks in the 25 to 34-year-old age group. Given that the average Facebook user has over 220 “friends”, the “reach” of this Facebook page could exceed 932 x 220, which is over 200,000. With imaginative, creative use of posts, it is easy to reach a wide section of your local community, free.
Examples of useful Facebook posts can include presenting your opinion on subjects in the news (such as in the aftermath of serious attacks by dogs), and discussing new legislation on animals or other campaigns about animal-related issues.
Facebook can also offer you a forum to highlight new information about illnesses and treatments, or to pass on information that you are learning while at a conference (subtly letting your clients know that you are investing in keeping yourself updated).
You can also easily carry out surveys of your “fans” to keep them engaged, e.g. “Should vets engage more with social media?”. Facebook users enjoy interaction, and running competitions like “Pet of the Month” may seem crass, but they can be an excellent way of engaging with your Facebook community.
If there was a single take-home message about Facebook, it was the importance of creating a regular schedule of posts. People like predictability; in the same way as they like to switch on the television to watch the evening news at 9pm, so they like to know when to expect a new Facebook post. As an example, you could create three weekly posts: a Monday post with a product review, a Wednesday post with a “clinical case of the week” and a Friday post of “animal stories in the news”. You can add to these regular posts with topical snippets as you wish.
This type of regular posting involves a significant discipline, and there are Facebook applications that allow preparation of posts as a batch in advance, scheduled to be posted at your designated time.
4. Twitter
Often seen as an abbreviated version of Facebook, Twitter allows clinics to reach out to another type of online audience. It’s easy to use, and systems can be put in place to send your Facebook posts automatically to Twitter, saving time and effort.
BlogPaws included specific focus on Twitter (“Taking Twitter Beyond a Tweet”), demonstrating how 140 characters can be used most effectively to meet your communication goals.
Summary
The advertising/marketing landscape has already moved online (how many people have stopped advertising in the Yellow Pages?) and the trend towards more use of online content is continuing to grow.
As with all new technologies and trends, the sooner vets engage with the subject, the greater the competitive advantage they’ll gain.
BlogPaws is taking place in Las Vegas next spring: this may be based in a city renowned for gambling, but it’s a certainty that if you put lessons from BlogPaws into practice, your online presence will grow, and your veterinary clinic turnover should follow suit.
