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Online platforms judge our content based on relevance, quality, consistency, and the types of content we share. An online presence should be intentional and thoughtful. It is common to jump on social media and start posting content. Brands able to hit all the above factors in their content have looked at the formula and done their homework. Developing this type of strategy is not difficult. It does require a little bit of thought and planning, but once in place, it can be monitored, managed, and tweaked as needed. It is never too late to rethink and relaunch a brand with a consistent, considered strategy.

What is a brand?

The Merriam-Webster.com online dictionary defines a brand as "a public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted."

There are many types of veterinary brands, and more and more are launching every day. House call veterinarians, brick-and-mortar veterinary practices, online veterinary CE educators, keynote and presentation speakers, industry partners, technician relief services, pet sitters, social media personalities, and many more.

A career or professional reputation is a brand cultivated and used when new jobs or opportunities are sought. It is no longer the norm that only veterinary practices are the end-all business entities within the veterinary industry.

Before you can even develop a veterinary brand online, identify what it is you want to do and why. What is your unique offer? What is it you are creating a brand around? Are you a relief technician and want to start your relief service in your local area? Are you a practice manager who wants to moonlight doing social media for veterinary practices? Are you a veterinarian who has invented a new product and wants to launch it in the industry? Maybe you have a skill outside veterinary medicine suitable to serve inside veterinary medicine, and you are looking to develop this into a new business opportunity. Once you identify what you are offering, then you must look at who it is you are offering it to.

Who is your ideal audience? 

Who do you serve? You cannot launch a brand or create content if you do not know who you are talking to. If you sporadically create content without any intended audience, no one will understand you are communicating and speaking to them. They will not know it applies to them, and there will not be clarity as to what it is you are trying to accomplish.

Consider each social media platform you elect to use has a particular purpose and should intentionally speak to a specific audience. Having a clear picture of who the audience is, and where they spend their time online, will help you decide the type of content you need to create to connect with them.

You can begin identifying who your audience is or should be by doing a quick search in your practice management software. Pull the reports showing who has visited in the last three months, six months, or 12 months. What types of owners and pets came in for examinations? If you are a not a veterinary practice, what clients have you worked with in the past three, six, or 12 months? If you are launching a new brand, you have to consider what types of clients you hope to work with.

What is your brand message? 

According to Hubspot, "Brand messaging is the way your brand communicates its unique value proposition and personality through its verbal and nonverbal messaging. Your messaging can inspire and motivate them, making them want to buy your product."

Your brand message has to be unique to you and your audience, connecting with them on the level most meaningful to their needs. When creating your brand message, begin with identifying your audience's biggest pain points or objections to using a service like yours.

What hurdles are you going to face getting clients? When creating a social media management business for veterinary practices, I had firsthand knowledge and a clear understanding that practice owners and managers are too busy to update their social media pages consistently. Clients are not getting the quality information, news, education, communication, or relationship building that could be possible if there were more dedicated time to create content for them thoughtfully.

Cookie cutter or copy-and-paste content communicates you are too busy. Your brand messaging is not only for social media; brand messaging needs to reach across websites successfully, be seen during face-to-face interactions, be heard through our on-hold messaging, and read from our texts and emails with clients.

Your on-hold messaging is a great place to share your brand message and practice news; do not forget about this fantastic communication resource. Do not shorthand text messaging to clients. It is tempting to move quickly and abbreviate our sentences or communication styles in the name of brevity. Clients want to be communicated with, they want to know about their pets, and they do not want to feel like they are an imposition on your time.

Where is your audience? 

Ideal audience and brand messaging are only two components of a successful brand launch. Knowing where your ideal audience spends time online and seeks out their sources of information will help ensure you position content in the places most likely to be seen. Sproutsocial.com shares these interesting statistics as of January 2022:

• There are 3.96 billion total social media users across all platforms.
• The average person bounces between seven different social networks per month.
• The amount of time adults use social media across all platforms is now higher than ever—95 minutes per day.
• One in three adults regularly consume news from Facebook, signaling the popularity of timely (and often controversial) content on the platform.
• Engagement rates on Instagram are approximately more than six times higher than those on Facebook (0.83 percent to 0.13 percent).
• Instagram Stories (83 percent) and grid posts (93 percent) remain the most popular types of content among influencers.
• 16.2 percent of LinkedIn users use the platform daily (versus 48.5 percent that log in monthly).
• Twitter boasts about 436 million monthly active users in total worldwide.
• 52 percent of Twitter users use the platform daily (versus 84 percent that use it weekly).
• Shoppers on Pinterest have 85 percent larger shopping carts than buyers on other platforms (and spend twice as much monthly).
• 62 percent of TikTok users say platform-specific branded content is the best way to connect to customers. This signals the need for unique posts on TikTok, not just repurposed content.
• 39 percent of Gen Z consumers say their purchasing decisions are influenced directly by what they see on TikTok.
• Social media users overwhelmingly trust other users as their "preferred" form of influencer, most likely to buy from them based on a product recommendation (37 percent) versus celebrities (7 percent).

These are just some online platforms people use to find news, community, support, product recommendations, entertainment, connection, and more. Consider your brand and your brand objective and who your ideal audience is, then do a little statistics research on where your audience spends the most time online.

Many platforms offer statistics on the age and gender breakdown of their audiences. This will help you decide which platforms would be the most advantageous for your brand. Do not limit yourself to only the brands with the highest audience numbers for your purposes. Using creativity and getting active on a platform not traditionally used for your type of product or service may help you stand apart. There are more and more veterinary brands showing up on TikTok than ever before. Have you seen deskwench, exotic.pet.vet, tessvetnurse, or dr.adamchristman52 on TikTok? These veterinary brands use their voices and platforms creatively to reach their audiences.

Creating the best content

Once you understand your audience, identified the brand's voice and perfected the tone, you can now begin making content. Where to begin? Going back to your audience, identify their pain points and possible objections to the use of our products or services.

Start there, answer those frequently asked questions, and alleviate those pain points for your audience. If pet owners are concerned about costs, start with the ways your practice offers payment plans, works with third-party billing, and proudly offers competitive prices. Remember, do not neglect including the value of the services provided. Share approved pictures of patients being seen in the practice or resolved cases recently seen. Share news and updates on the services and products offered.

An often-overlooked content treasure for veterinary brands is blogging. It is easy to make blogging complicated, but it doesn't need to be. Writing about the common questions clients are asking is a great way to provide value for your audience. A blog post can be shared on social media to get readers back to your website. Linking to products or webpages mentioned in the blog post will help people find additional value from your blog.

Write a two or three-paragraph blog post, edit it carefully, create a couple of pictures related to it, and post it on the website. Mass-produced or copied and pasted blogs do not truly reflect your brand or brand voice. Blog posts are a great way to share your experience, nuggets of wisdom, or humor with your readers, and they will appreciate the sincerity.

Post your content regularly. Consistency is king. Allow your audience to trust your content will continue to show up in their feed with information that connects with them. The platforms will also learn your content will show up, be relevant, and keep their wider audience population on their platform consuming content.

Responding to your audience

Engaged audiences are what we all hope for. Having people actively participate on your posts instead of scrolling right along is what everyone hopes to achieve. They are interested in your message or your brand in some form.

Making the engagement part of social media a priority is where those relationships are born and nurtured. If someone likes your post, you can thank them for liking your post. If they comment, then respond appropriately. Building relationships is what brand building is all about. We only hope to accomplish our objectives and only if we are really fortunate can we generate a revenue source when we set out to build our brand. Relationship building is the key to success.

 Keep an eye on things

Defining, creating, and launching the brand are three quarters of the gig. The last component of successful brand management is to watch the numbers. Going back to your notes on KPIs, look at the analytics answering those questions for you. Each platform provides various forms of analytics reporting—some really good and some not so informative.

Be wary of vanity metrics, which can be confused with truly engaged audience members on your pages. Vanity metrics refers to the number of subscribers, followers, and page likes on the page. These may be people who never see another piece of your content again. An engaged person who actively participates with your content is far more valuable in the long run. They are the ones who make the appointment, buy your course, sign up for your group, hire you to consult, or offer you a speaking opportunity.

Take a look at the posts on your pages and look at how many people saw them, how many interactions, and how many times it was shared. If you are seeing certain types of your content is doing really well compared to others, then produce more of the successful ones.

 Wrap it up and launch it 

It is time to kick off a great brand (re)launch for next year! You have plenty of time to get it ready with a little bit of thought and planning. Once you know what your brand is going to bring to the world, you can identify how you want the world to view and think about your brand by developing the brand message.

Continue preparing for your success by identifying who you serve with your brand and get a deeper understanding of who they are and what their pain points are. Create relevant content that supports your audience. Consistently schedule your content to publish on the platforms your audience uses the most, then watch the analytics. Adjust content ideas based on what the reporting indicates your audience is more interested in seeing.

Big tip for a 2023 launch

Do not overcomplicate your brand. Being present is much more important than being perfect on social. The biggest detriment to successful brand management is failure to launch. Do not suffer from analysis paralysis. Go get a piece of scratch paper and start figuring out what your brand message is and who is going to be the most positively impacted by it. You have time for this and it is vitally important for the future of your brand. Good luck, and Happy, Prosperous New Year!

Rhonda Bell, CVPM, CCFP, PCM-Digital, CDMP, is founder and co-owner of Dog Days Consulting, a social media and brand management company. She spent 15 years as a practice manager working the day-to-day challenges of the veterinary practice and experienced firsthand the stresses, joys, communication dilemmas, and wonders of working in veterinary medicine. She now dedicates her work and energy to helping practices succeed online and to coaching team members with the skills that will hopefully prolong their careers.

Resources

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/brand-communication-strategy#:~:text=Brand%20messaging%20is%20the%20way,a%20relationship%20with%20your%20brand.

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/