Today's Veterinary Practice provides comprehensive information to keep every small animal practitioner up to date on companion animal medicine and surgery as well as practice building and management.
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| PRACTICE STEP BY STEP 2. Monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Cotweet, allow you to update multiple sites from the same computer, often at the same time. Keep these in mind when you need to update Facebook, Twitter, and your blog collectively. 3. Searches identify when your business name is used in an online conversation. Facebook Search and Openbook do an excellent job in this regard; Tweetbeep will do the same service for Twitter searches. 4. Activity trackers allow you to monitor activity on your websites and social media sites. Google (google.com/analytics) has a suite of tools that peform these functions and the information is essential to determine the traffic, success, and return on your resources online. 5. Overall searches, such as monitorthis.com, allows you to set up searches through the top 26 engines to identify any mention of your business name, personal name, or keywords of interest. Establish a list of key indicators that will identify whether your social media is working for you. A list of common key indicators can be found in Table 3. 6 7 8 66 FACEBOOK If you haven't set up a Facebook page yet, now is the time to do so. Over 80% of Americans ac- cess a social network page and chances are good that they are visiting those pages more often than web- sites.2 Facebook is the num- ber one visited site, with 40% of these individuals accessing their Facebook page through their mobile device. Your busi- ness can't afford to NOT have this exposure.2 If you don't have a presence on Facebook, get one. TWITTER Twitter allows users to send small messages of 140 characters or less, which is called a tweet. This tool provides the ability to connect directly with your clients. Plus, it's a friendly way to keep clients in- formed about changes and can position you as a re- source for valuable information. Many tweets include links to additional information that can source back to your website or those of others. Twitter can also provide feedback, similar to your own focus group. Going to change your hours, offer a new service, or add a new veterinarian? This is a great tool to garner quick responses, and connecting with clients has been cited as one of Twitter's benefits.2 SHOULD YOU ADVERTISE? Google and Facebook advertisements both post ads according to your specific information. Google Adwords posts your ad when the information on the user matches your specifications. r 4FU B CVEHFU UIFO DIPPTF XIP ZPVS BET XJMM UBS- Today's Veterinary Practice July/August 2012 get, such as pet owners within 20 miles of your practice who are looking for pet services. r 8IFO UIFTF QFU PXOFST DMJDL PO ZPVS BE JU MJOLT them to your website, allowing potential clients to learn more about why you are the business of choice. This process has become a very popular and cost effective way to advertise on the Internet. It is simple to set up and easy to monitor because Google and Facebook do it for you. As of 2012, emphasis on small business advertising has led both companies to offer special pricing and, in Facebook's case, free advertis- ing to get you started.3 Set a budget and try this type of advertising for 60 to 90 days. Evaluate your response by tracking new clients, traffic to your website, and return visits. Small businesses have been particularly pleased with the re- sponse in the last 6 months—62% of businesses say they will continue using the service.4 9 VIDEO SETUP Video may have killed the radio star, but it hasn't been too bad for small businesses. As the third most visited site on the Internet, YouTube touts the av- erage user's time on the site exceeds 20 minutes/day.5 Users have a greater tendency to watch videos than to read through long, written discussions. How-to videos, person- al tips, and techniques for quality pet care already exist on the Internet. Share them, Table 3. Key Indicators for Evaluating Marketing Effectiveness ADVERTISING RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Measure the success of your display, search, new media, and offline advertising efforts. CROSS CHANNEL & MULTIMEDIA TRACKING: Compare your site usage metrics with industry averages and track Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications. VISUALIZING DATA: Uncover trends, patterns, and key comparisons with funnel visualization, motion charts, mapping, and more. CUSTOMIZED REPORTING: Create reports, dashboards, and segments that make the most sense for your business. SHARING & COMMUNICATING: Administration controls and email reports allow you to share data across your organization. GOOGLE INTEGRATION & RELIABILITY: Google Analytics complements a suite of related products, all running on the same world renowned infrastructure that powers Google.