Social media platforms are an easy way to reach local pet owners and spread news about your practice’s great work, while providing healthcare advice and strengthening relationships with your customers.
By planning ahead with your veterinary social media calendar, you can mark important dates and engage meaningfully to help your practice grow.
With 20 years’ experience in the industry, our team have shared their social tips for top dogs – perfect for creating a social media content calendar for veterinary practices.
What to do before you start your social media calendar
Existing content – Look into your practice’s existing social media presence.
Which posts have worked well and generated the most engagement? Which haven’t performed how you hoped?
This gives a general idea of the type of content your followers are interested in and what to avoid.
Plan ahead – It really helps to have an idea of what you want to post, and when.
Look around four weeks ahead so you know what’s coming up – seasons, offers and key dates like those in our vets and pets marketing calendar.
Try to get most posts drafted and scheduled at least two weeks in advance, but keep a bit of space for reactive posts like a lovely patient story, weather‑related tips or anything urgent that pops up.
Frequency – Decide how often your practice will post.
The best schedule is one you can manage – consistency and engaging content is key.
If possible, aim for around three or four solid posts a week instead of burning out trying to post daily. Use Stories a few times a week for quick updates, behind‑the‑scenes moments and reminders.
Types of social media content
Posting the same content regularly is likely to cause your followers to lose interest, so mix it up by adding some of the below to your veterinary social media calendar:
- Regularly discuss with your colleagues about interesting case studies and heartwarming success stories. These perform well with before and after pictures showing the animal’s improvement
- Use pictures of animals at your veterinary practice to talk about specific topics – like a cute puppy at their first appointment on a post discussing the importance of vaccinations
- Try using a mix of video and image content and ask staff who are great at taking pictures or recording footage to help
- To share information or advice – like hot weather tips or dental cleaning guides – try creating infographics or educational videos. Canva is a useful tool to help you get started as it has a range of content templates
- Make sure all content follows your practice and the industry’s health and safety guidelines
Check out some more great veterinary social media content ideas in our guide.
What to post on each platform
Video delivers some of the best content across most on most platforms. On LinkedIn and YouTube, go for longer content about your veterinary practice that provides more detail, whereas this should be kept short and to the point on Instagram and TikTok.
Brilliant for local pet owners and building a little community. Use it for tips, practice news, events, testimonials, shareable pics, short videos and links to your site or blog.
All about visuals. Post great photos, Reels, carousels like ‘5 signs your pet may need a check‑up’, plus Stories for day‑to‑day life in the practice
TikTok
Ideal for short, fun, educational clips. It can work well if you’ve got the time and a younger client base, but it doesn’t have to be top priority for every veterinary practice
YouTube
Best for longer ‘how‑to’ and explanation videos, like how to give medicine to a pet, what happens during a dental appointment, or a walking tour of the practice. You can then embed these on your website and share them elsewhere
More for hiring and professional networking than client education. Use it to shout about your team, share wins and show why your practice is a great place to work
Lose the links
When it comes to posting links, only include these in a post when they are essential and you want people to do something off the platform, like make an appointment or read a blog.
These work well on Facebook and LinkedIn when mixed with posts purely for engagement – like questions and polls.
By not including links every time, it doesn’t feel to the follower like you are constantly trying to sell something, and helps to build trust.
How to adapt your veterinary social media calendar for different platforms
Each platform has a different target audience, therefore the content you publish must be tailored to each one.
Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are generally used by the everyday client without a veterinary background.
When it comes to case studies and medical jargon, it’s important to keep explanations simple and in layman’s terms. Keep images simple too, avoiding complex scans which the everyday user may struggle to understand.
On LinkedIn, you can go into more detail. It’s a platform targeted at professionals, so more in-depth explanations are welcomed along with including MRI or X-ray images which will be of interest.
Work smarter, not harder
You’ve got your veterinary social media calendar prepared and know what content you plan to post. To be more time and cost-effective it might be worth investing in some tools to make designing and posting easier.
Canva is great for professional graphic design, to help edit photos and videos before they are scheduled. There are also platforms to manage your social media account in one place – like HootSuite or Sprout Social, which enable you to schedule posts and monitor your pages.
To make posting across different platforms easier, make time to plan ahead, tailoring each post to the account it will be published on.
Support with your social media
To deliver results without the worry, why not enlist veterinary marketing specialists R&Co to oversee your accounts?
We can create a social media strategy for your practice, draft and schedule posts, along with monitoring pages and keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing.
Our team is one step ahead of the game with what’s trending on social media and quick to respond and deliver results.
For more tips, check these digital marketing ideas for vets, or talk to us about your social media marketing.
