Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vets, welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. We're so fortunate today to have Gillian Davidson, social media guru, owner of Green Place Social, also though, a vet nurse, still doing her couple of days in practise, which is so good. And I brought her on the programme today to just talk about all things social media, but also I'm sure we will find a little space.

To talk about Gillian and and my favourite topic, which of course is sustainability and environmental issues. So Gillian, welcome. Thank you, thank you for having me.

Gillian, perhaps before we start, just introduce yourself to to people. I I I've obviously given you a little introduction there, but is there anything else you want everybody to know about you before we we start into the topic proper? Yeah, so I am a social media consultant.

I'm also a veterinary nurse, as you said, I've been in practise for about 15 years now, and I've worked in small practises and mixed practise and corporate and independent practises, and I've always been interested in social media. I remember setting up my training practises Facebook page, it must be about 1413 years ago, and I haven't been a bit unsure about it, but just I was interested in. How you could engage with people and build a relationship with people, and I wasn't really looking at it from a marketing point of view.

Almost more just my fun point of view and it was a new thing. So it's funny now, like 10 years down the line, this is now what I do, but I'm still in practise, as you said, and I'm still doing the social media at the same time. Do you know, before the pandemic hit, and for several years before I was saying that, you know, every business, butcher baker, candlestick maker, veterinary practise, has to be a digital business, and obviously what happened during the pandemic was we to closed practise down, suddenly we were looking at, Digital tools, be they social media or otherwise, to get messages out there and things, and I think we saw, you know, I'd said if you're not a digital business, you won't be around in 10 years, and actually what the pandemic did was really squeeze that time down that we were more and more reliant on things like Zoom.

Obviously social media for getting messages out, apps like PetsApp and VetStoria and so on for helping with booking appointments and all those sort of things. How do you think that whole kind of market of social media, has that really evolved? Do you think that's changed because of the pandemic over the last 2 or 3 years?

Yeah. It certainly forced people to go digital who didn't want to realise that there was no other option at that point. So I think people embraced it more because they were forced to do it.

They realised it wasn't so scary, that it was fun, that it was a way to make contact and realise it was the way we were going pandemic or not. It was, it was inevitable that's we were going. So I think people are much more open to it and people who weren't using it before are using it.

So yeah, it's been a positive change, I think. Brilliant. I mean, perhaps tell us from a veterinary perspective, obviously a lot of vets and nurses, plus others who will be listening to this, what, what should, do you think we should be doing in, in veterinary practise?

What are the channels that you sort of concentrate on in your business, and I know you work with veterinary practises, but also, You know, with people like trainers and dog walkers as well, so that's interesting because of course there are clients. So what are the platforms that they're on because of course that then. Dictates the sort of platforms that we should be speaking from as well, doesn't it?

Yeah, so you don't really want to pick your platform based on what you like and who your business as you want to be where your clients are. So if you are a bit practise and your clients are Maybe the moms, maybe young couples, then are they more likely to be on Instagram? Maybe that's where you should go.

Or maybe your clients are older clients are potentially maybe more on Facebook, or are you at a hospital and you're wanting to reach out to veterinary professionals and get them to be fair to you, possibly you should be on LinkedIn because that's where they might be as well. So you sort of have to know who your audience is and where they are. So it just depends what business you are.

And also even if you're a vet practise, what kind of vet practise you are. We're blessed with content gold of animals and so visually you can get fantastic content from posting photographs of dogs, cats, so Instagram is quite often a key one for most of us to use. I think everybody loves a good pussycat meme, don't they?

Yeah. Yeah. Or just dogs running in slow motion as well and their coats fluttering in the wind.

Yeah, so yeah, we're very blessed to be able to put up pictures and get lots of likes from that. Gillian, you obviously have done this for a long time and I think it's fascinating, you know, it often is, or it has been in the past, you know, the, the veterinary nurse, you know, the young veterinary nurse who knows all about that social media, go on there and you sort it out, which is obviously, you know, how you started your career, but. What, what are the things that you see because you see a lot, you must see a lot of social media, .

You know, Facebook pages, Instagram pages of veterinary practise. What are the maybe 3 or 4 things that you see that you think, oh my goodness, why are they doing that? I mean, my one is always as vets, we want to show the really gory photograph of the operation, to show how clever we are that we've been able to fix this, whereas of course owners on the whole don't want to see those sort of pictures, do they?

No, clients like to see puppies, . The things that may be practised do wrong, simple things will seem simple as even just putting images at the wrong size, so heads are cut off, text is cut off, not using all the different formats on platforms, so just now really with Instagram you should be moving more towards videos, so not maybe using video enough, making your captions too short, making them too long and not using hashtags. There's lots of things you can do wrong.

Do you get involved with your clients with Facebook and Instagram marketing or are you just doing more sort of . Organic. That was the organic.

So as marketing, so the market with social media marketing, you've got organic marketing and you've got your paid ads like your Facebook ads, your Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads. So I don't do that so much. You have special to deal with social media advertising.

So I deal mostly with organic, but it as marketing, you can just sit there and throw loads of different posts out there and but you really need to have a strategy in place. So although you're not paying. Adverts you still want to have a strategy in place and so it's working with practises and practise owners to have them focused on a strategy, know what they're posting, when they're posting, and everything involving strategy with engagements and hashtags and SEOs.

So you're not just spending hours creating meals or posts and putting it out there and nothing happens, which can happen to anyone. You can spend ages making a view and. It bombs, you just can't avoid that, but if you have a strategy in place and you follow that strategy, then it's not just a scatter on of content flying everywhere that's not landing where it should be.

So are you providing for your clients support with their website around blog posts as well, or are you very much just around sort of Facebook and Insta and so on? Just initially I started off just in the social media consultancy and then I got contacted by a couple of people that blogs because they wanted blogs for the website, like someone who was a veterinary professional but also familiar with digital marketing and have the SEO experience as well. So I do that as well, and not with more the blogs rather than.

And mailing lists or products and descriptions, but it does tie together on social media and websites to tie together. You can have your social media to raise awareness of your brand, to reach new people or to drive website traffic as well. Like if you've got a link to your website on your Instagram, and you're pushing your interest in content on your Instagram, and people click on your link and take you to your website, then that's great for the business as well.

So just tie together. Did you like the way I, I sort of very subtly pushed in that sort of insta word then trying to sound trendy? Yeah, I think the social media is also partly.

You know, to, to collect an email address, although I know email is now, it's interesting, you know, do let people look at it and etc. But you can carry on the conversation then on email and, and obviously you can hopefully convert them into a, into a practise client. So I remember when I set up my practise, well, a long time ago, but then obviously we were interested in the internet.

And You know, it, it can very much be a way of increasing your. Your community, your veterinary size as well, can't, you know, your number of clients and patients that you have in, in the practise as well as the ones that you have got, keeping them happy because, Some practises don't do it, and I think they're really missing out if they're not doing Facebook and Insta and so on, aren't they? Yeah, I think it's where you need to do both because it's not that uncommon that Instagram goes down that people get locked out of their accounts.

So if your only way of marketing and reaching clients is through Instagram and you lose your account, you just lost our connection. So definitely having an email list is still hugely important. Definitely.

Obviously we've talked about veterinary practise, but there's also more and more in the world, there's influencers in all sorts of areas, but certainly veterinary influences. I know people like Kat the vet who've been on the podcast have huge numbers of followers. Where do you see that fitting in and how does that differ from what we've just been talking about with general veterinary practise?

Hm. So we thought leaders and experts and influencers, it's about you, isn't it? So you've got to put across who you are, what you stand for.

Usually you've got some sort of niche, whether it's either a cat or a behaviour nurse and you've got to put that across and get your opinions out there. So if you're trying to put yourself out for recruitment, almost it doesn't have to be that I'm going to be this huge influencer with a million followers. It's just putting yourself out there showing your authority on a subject, your professionalism, and just putting yourself out there.

I think that's a really good point, Gillian, I mean, I. I obviously, you know, recruit people and we also have Simply Vets which is for finding locums and permanents and also providing a payroll service. And What I say to a lot of people when I've seen them is.

You know, the LinkedIn profile can be so important because I go onto your LinkedIn profile, I see who you are, I see what your experience is. In some ways, that's much more powerful than a CV because the number of CVs you see and they stop 5 years before the person's coming in for the job. Oh, I didn't put that bit in.

OK. LinkedIn becomes something that you can add articles that you've done, presentations that you've done. And also, you know, importantly recommendations.

So I really like the recommendation piece where often if I was interviewing somebody, if you like them at the end of the process, you say, well, can I have a referee. Whereas if you've got 10 LinkedIn profiles recommending you and they're not all your mates and your mum and your dad and things, then you know, I think this is hugely significant, isn't it, as well. Yeah.

And even thinking back to the other way of using LinkedIn and social media to put yourself out there looking for employment as well, a business like it to be hardest now as we know to. Recruit vets into the practises, but if you've got a wonderful social media platform where you're showing the level of the work you do, what your practise looks like, that your staff are having fun, that they are well trained, that they seem happy, that you're a nice looking practise, then you can attract talent to your practise as well. So it works both ways actually.

Definitely. Do you want to become a part of the largest online veterinary community in the world? The webinar vet's membership is the perfect tool to easily complete your veterinary CPD or CE.

Watch webinars anytime, any place on any connected device. Become a member today and explore our library of over 2000 premium quality webinars. We also care about the environment as well as your CPD or CE.

That's why we plant trees for every one of our members. To find out more, visit the webinar vet.com/m memberships or click on the membership tab on our website.

You, you mentioned a little bit before and I'll pick up on it if I may, about video marketing, about using video rather than static pictures or or text. What are you doing there in that space at the moment, what's, what's interesting you in video marketing and how do you use that? So Instagram have really taken the jump on Facebook who are there are the same thing really to use views and that extending the length of of you can be there as well and they're really pushing.

Real so you'll see more views put up at your feed on your suggested posts, so it's just jumping on trends, which is really important for using views, and so using trending music, using trending, . Transitions as well, philtres, just following that is is where you should be going. And it's trying to stay true to who you are and who your brand is as well, like it might not be appropriate for us in practise to do outfit transition because I think people want to think with professional, but you can certainly.

Trends that you can jump on and it's just been kind of up to date on what is trending and following it. But that's not to say there's no room for car sales and graphic posts as well, like that's still important. And some people do all fields, but there's definitely room to still do the more traditional posts.

You, you haven't mentioned, and I think it's an interesting platform. My wife is a, is a teacher and is completely obsessed by Twitter, because a lot of the the, the education experts are on there. My little concern with Twitter is what you like is what you then see, so it can end up.

You know, you don't, you're not seeing a balanced picture of things, but what are your thoughts on, what are your thoughts on Twitter? I think as a thought leader, then Twitter is a great place to be. And that's where a lot of conversation happens.

A lot of journalists are there, a lot of politicians are there, a lot of professionals are there as well. And Depends on who your clients are, where your clients there for looking at it from a marketing point of view, are your clients on Twitter? Maybe they're not.

If they are, then that's where you should be engaging with them, but I do think a lot of clients are going to be on Facebook and Instagram. So again, it depends who you are, what your marketing, and where your audience is, that's where you go. I think as you said, I think they certainly we do surveys every year on, on, some of these trends, you know, with our, with our community and certainly Facebook is the big bay of.

Obviously Instagram belongs to Facebook and of course they're connected now, so if you, if you post on Facebook, it will often get, Linked up to to to Instagram. But as you were saying, LinkedIn is very much more than for that professional if you're looking for a job or you want to connect with other vets, maybe as a referral vet, that's a really good space to be in as well, isn't it? So they probably are the main three, aren't they?

Mhm. Yeah, I think you can always divide it into the professional side might be Twitter and LinkedIn, and the more client focused side would be Facebook and Instagram. Some people will try and cover all of them.

The other one we've not mentioned is TikTok as well, which is the new one, which again for pets, that's where a lot of clients are. So TikTok, TikTok is all video. That's where the reviews came from Instagram stole TikTok's idea.

So some people will create on either Instagram or TikTok and then just share it on to each platform. And it tells the algorithm doesn't like that, it doesn't like seeing the little watermark, but if it makes it easier for you to try and post on both platforms, then it will still get seen, it will still do OK. And some people will try and be on all the platforms, .

But that's more than the full-time job to create content for all the platforms, to all the engagements, and is it a good way to spend your time and your money on 5 platforms, maybe you should just focus on one or two. No, I agree, and I think you must have been reading my mind because I was about to ask you about TikTok, because actually it's something that we're gonna start doing a little bit of just to, I, I think, you know, this is the other thing if a new platform does come along. There's nothing wrong with having a little experiment and seeing if there is some traction, because if something is really, as you say, following a trend.

Then you probably find out fairly quickly, is it like it's tumbleweed going across the screen or do you pick up followers and things very quickly, so you can test things out before, you know, you've not made a big commitment in money, you can try little things out and experiment and I think that's a big part of of this whole digital world is it's much easier to experiment and and try little things, isn't it? Yeah. You should always test things and then reflect on it and see did it work, you know, if you look at your.

Insights in your analytics of your posting, you see what worked, what didn't work was at the time of the posted was the kind of content I posted. So the testing is a huge part of it and seeing what works for in the post or what platform is working for you so you can focus your time and your effort, but it's going to pay off for you. Cos I think again talking about video, we've obviously got Facebook and Insta and TikTok, the, the big, you know, start of that whole video .

Revolution was of course YouTube. But YouTube is really more for longer term things and it's more for knowledge, whereas a Facebook video will often be quite short or Twitter I think is only 22 seconds. It's, how do you see, does YouTube fit in anywhere?

Is that, are you using that with anyone? It's not strictly social media, although you do have the comment section that people do comment. It's more about putting content out there and letting it sit there rather than engaging.

I think it was well we forget that social media is social, so you're meant to not just put content out and then just walk away and leave it. It's about engaging with your followers, reaching out to other people's content, whereas you's more of a standalone, here's my content, enjoy it and know what you think about it. I think that's a really excellent point because You know, you see a post.

Quite a lot, you'll like it. And then if you really like it, you might leave a little comment, but it was fascinating during the pandemic, I, I spent a lot of time playing my guitar, working on the principle that it was good for my mental health. And if people didn't like it, they didn't have to listen to it.

But actually the number of people who came to me sort of posts and said, I really enjoyed that, you know, you haven't been doing it as much and etc. But perhaps hadn't liked or left a comment, so I wasn't even really aware, but obviously. They, there are also in the world, there are the curtain twitches.

My wife is one of those in Facebook where she looks, but she doesn't really get involved as well, so we shouldn't kind of be too obsessed I suppose by, Likes and comments, should we? Yeah. Vanti metrics, no, van metrics just make you feel good that someone's liked it, but it's not just about liking, it's about whether it landed in someone's feed, whether they saw it that still was worthwhile to you, whether it was there.

So again, if you go into your analytics and your insights, you can look at it and see how many people saw it, how many people liked it, how many people commented on it, and the more people that see it, like and comment on it, will then send it on to other people that algorithm will pick up on that as well, but no. You shouldn't just focus on the balancing metrics, but everyone likes to like, don't they? Everyone likes to like, but it's .

I think it's good. You almost, do, do you think you can talk about a wide range of topics or do you think you should be known for one or two topics? Yeah, you want to be consistent with what you talk about people like consistently, you know, it's like having a friend to, you know, what kind of chat you get from them, you know what kind of clothes they're going to be wearing you just know what you get from them.

You don't want to meet them one day they're talking about this and then the next day at home something completely different doesn't make you feel secure. It's weird, isn't it? So now you want to have your strategy in place where you know what you're talking about.

So it keeps you focused on what you're posting doesn't leave you wandering around thinking what can I post about. And also your audience, your followers, your potential clients feel familiar with you and know what to expect from you and they'll come back for more. So yeah, have you been like 4 or 5 sort of subject areas and then focus on those.

Mm. No, it's a really good point. I think to finish, you know, I'm trying to lead in, in the veterinary profession to help it.

Regenerate to become a more sustainable, environmentally friendly space, and I know you're very passionate about that as well, and I loved your story that you told me before we did the, podcast about the, the recycling point that you put in the practise, so perhaps tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so probably about 4 or 5 years ago, I think I just really decided to change how I was at home and with using plastic bottles to get our milk now gets delivered in the glass bottle. And following on from that, I got the ted cycle set up at my works where people could bring in their pet food pouches and then it'll get taken away and recycled and the plastic was used to make a park benches and things.

So it was really good. And so that was great. I love Doing it.

We don't do anymore, unfortunately, but it was fantastic to see them of clients and non-clients that were wanting to make a difference as well, and they were coming to us to bring it in and it was wonderful. We had charges bringing us cat food pouches as well. So, and it really made you see that if they had to bring it to us, it was just going to landfill.

Yeah, I mean the pouches are a problem and we are talking to. The companies, because I think, you know, we need to have more of an obligation if we're creating the waste, in other words, we're making the food. I think we do need to be looking at where those things go because they used to be in aluminium tins, which is eminently recyclable.

So yeah, it's really interesting and I know some places are are better at that than than others, but . It's interesting that obviously from an environmental perspective it's absolutely the right thing to do, but it's interesting that there were people, you know, within that practise that were perhaps a bit less keen about it. I, I was speaking earlier and depending on when these podcasts get published to a solar panel producer in Canada.

I've, I've had solar panels for 14 years. And I did it because it was just the right thing to do, and I, I don't understand all the science and I've got my, one of my, team, he's actually put solar panels in and he's a bit of a geek and he's been looking at the battery and buying energy at certain times and all these fancy things. But actually, now it's becoming much more the solar panel guy was saying, we're not selling it on it's the right thing to do, it makes sense from a, from a an economic perspective as well.

Which I think is really important and I think we've got to try and encourage people that it's the right thing, it's the right thing to do, but actually economically it makes sense to do some of these things. And with that particular example, you know, that was obviously bringing people into the practise, awareness. They were seeing what lovely facilities you had.

I'm sure that you got some new clients out of that particular project that you did. Yeah, it just created extra footfall as well for us as well and people were just coming in to the baby bear our clients and it's the one down the road that they come in to drop it off with us. So yeah, it was great.

It just the volume we got was incredible. We were filling up wheelie bins like, every week at least, and it was that it was a lot of time and effort to do so that was kind of why. It got stopped, but it was, yeah, it was great for the environment and it was great for bringing people into the practise as well.

It worked in both ways. I think I'll try to bring it back. What I've heard from people is that because terra cycle has been on its own for a long time, it's been quite expensive, whereas I think there's more people come into that space, it probably will become more sensible, but it's definitely one that we should be talking to our pet food suppliers about and saying come on.

Get yourselves together on this because this is important. It didn't cost us anything. The pet food one was sponsored by Mars, I think.

So when I first looked at it, it was buying the box for 200 pounds, but then by time I got around to organising it, it was sponsored by definitely Mars and one of the captive pouches, I think, so it was, it was 11. Yeah. Gillian, it's, it's great to have you on and, and thank you for all that you're doing in that green space, but obviously on the social media, it's such a fascinating area, but it's an area that vets and nurses and and practises that don't put some energy and effort into it and missing out on a real treat, aren't they?

We, we've done. Social media training in the past, and if it's free, you get people on and if you ask them to pay for it and nobody turns up, which I, I've always felt has been a mistake because it's a real opportunity for the practise, it shows the practise is forward thinking, and it's a huge way of engaging not only with your own clients but also with potential people who, Maybe just are looking for a practise or or whatever as well. Although at the moment I suppose practises are very busy, so maybe they don't want more.

That's what it is. Yeah, the people use social media to search the way search Google search, they practise and Instagram and close to them and if you're not on it, your competitors are on it. So they'll go there instead.

That's really interesting, yeah. Gillian, I will let you get back to posting, and I'll look forward to seeing when we get this podcast on how we how we managed to getting around the profession so that they can hear us as well. Brill, thank you very much.

Thanks for chatting to me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Thanks, Gillian. Thanks everyone for listening. It's Anthony Chadwick.

It's the Bechat podcast.