Engaging with pet parents over social platforms is critical to building a social media following. Facebook currently has 1.26 billion users and generates 4.5 billion “likes” (or interactions) each day. As the largest social platform, Facebook offers veterinary practices with a huge potential for connecting and engaging with pet parents who can become potential clients.

Running a veterinary Facebook page strategically is not an easy task for most veterinarians. However, here are 3 easy ways to improving your social traffic on your veterinary practice Facebook page.

Create compelling Facebook posts  

Facebook allows you to preface each shared link with a short introduction; use this to your advantage by writing a catch title that is exciting and interesting for your articles and blogs. This is holiday season and many pet parents might have traveling plans. So a title – “5 Tips to get your pet travel ready” might catch the attention of pet parents. In addition to offering advice, ask pet parents to share tips and suggestions on various pet issues that might have worked for them; remember the idea is to engage and keep them coming back for more.

Inspire, entertain, and share

Make your interactions and material comprehensive. Along with ideas and tips and advice, give your fans something different and more – include helpful links to pet resources that pet parents might find interesting; inspirational quotes or truisms about pets are again a great crowd puller; or share funny pet stories and videos or anecdotes. Visual content is excellent for grabbing the attention of social media crowds and has a tendency to quickly go viral.  Cute pet photos and videos are always popular and can help generate the “awww” factor!

Offer “quick bites” of relevant and interesting information

Facebook users don’t have patients with lengthy, over-drawn articles; the key is to entertain and socialize while delivering helpful information which establishes your expertise. Provide quick easy-to-digest “bites” of information such as interesting pet trivia, or short tips on pet health care tips, or the latest news pertaining to your industry which might interest pet parents.

These are just some of the ways in which you can keep your readers engaged on your veterinary practice Facebook page. A simple trick to putting up interesting material is this – ask yourself if you would be willing to take the time out to read it on your own news feed.