Many industry veterinarians understand the importance of having a solid social media presence to build a personal brand, cultivate professional connections, and grow a career and business. The challenge for busy industry veterinarians, of course, remains the same. Namely, finding the time to develop and manage a social media strategy—and create content—when time is always at a premium. To help with that, here are five free tools to effectively manage a strong social media presence and save time:
Google Alerts
Keeping tabs on your online presence and reviews help you plan effective changes to your social media strategy or amplification of what’s working. Using Google Alerts to automate online mention of your business saves manual search time.
Google Alerts are set up through your Google account. To start, simply indicate the keywords you wish to monitor (e.g., John Smith Veterinary Practice). You’ll then receive an email notice each time the keywords are mentioned online, including social networks.
Scheduled Tweets
Like Buffer, HootSuite, and other social media scheduling tools, Twitter has its own free scheduling tool called Twitter Ads, and don’t get thrown by the name. You won’t be charged for posts unless you choose to sponsor a tweet.
To start, log in to your Twitter account and type ads.twitter.com into the URL bar. Once you’ve signed up, simply follow these instructions on the Twitter Ads Help Center.
To help you gauge the effectiveness of posts, you can reference analytics within your Twitter Ads account to see how many impressions and interactions you receive on tweets.
Scheduled Facebook Posts
Like Twitter, Facebook has its own proprietary tools for scheduling and managing social posts, and analytics for monitoring how posts perform.
To start, log in to the Facebook account that manages your business page. Next, navigate to your Facebook page and look for Publishing Tools in the left column to start scheduling your content. To see how posts are performing, click the Insights tab, also in the left column.
Free-Use Photos
Pictures do far more for businesses than fill up empty space in social posts. Pictures drive higher engagement for posts than text-only posts.
While images taken by you are ideal for personalizing and distinguishing your posts, you may not always have time to take photos, and using random images taken off the internet risks copyright infringement. To save time and avoid potential legal entanglements, there are plenty of online services providing high-resolution, rights-free and CC0 images that you can safely use again and again at zero cost.
A few recommended sources:
Canva
Creating custom posts combining images and text helps personalize your social posts and grab attention within cluttered newsfeeds. Online design applications like Canva allow you to quickly create custom posts without having to master the complexities of Photoshop. With pre-designed, high-impact social media templates that are easily customizable and simple drag-and-drop features, Canva caters to all social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
