Successful Social Media for the Pet Industry
Social media has become a critical tool for modern day business success. If used correctly, social media has the ability to grow a retailer’s current reach exponentially with the amount of users who could become potential customers by influencing their purchasing decisions. According to GlobalWebindex, 54% of social media users use social media to research products, and 71% are more likely to purchase a product based on information from social media. Therefore, having an online presence could set you apart from other retailers in the eyes of the consumer. So the question becomes, how can we best utilize these platforms?
Facebook and Instagram
Both Facebook and Instagram have taken the world by storm. A survey of pet parents found that 67% follow pet accounts on Instagram or Facebook rather than anywhere else. As a best practice, marketing initiatives should focus on these two instead of Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter etc. While these can supplement online presence later, it is important to first have a strong basis with the most popular sites. A major benefit of Facebook and Instagram is that you can make a business account and then link the pages together.
Switching to a Business Account
Navigate to account profile and open settings
Tap “Account” and then tap “Switch to Professional Account”
Pick a category that best describes your business, then select “Business”
Your account is now a business account!
Instagram and Facebook can be linked together
Once linked, you can publish Instagram posts directly to your Facebook page within the Instagram app.
Open Instagram and navigate to your account profile
Tap the three bars in the upper right hand corner and select “Settings”
Tap “Account” and then select “Sharing to Other Apps”
Tap “Facebook” and then log into your Facebook account and confirm that you want to link it to Instagram
When posting, be sure to look under “Post to Other Accounts” and toggle Facebook to on
Once the accounts are linked, you can publish copies of Instagram posts directly to your Facebook page from the Instagram app. This can help make your content appear cohesive as well as share it over a wider audience. If you have a business account, you will be able to see insights on posts and stories. These insights can help you to determine which posts and content types are performing the best and which are not. The mechanics of your pages are only the tip of the iceberg. Your audience will only be truly drawn in by your ability to create persuasive content!
Content Rule of Thumb
Content can come in the form of posts, captions, stories, engagement and promoted ads. Each form has their own different style and usage. Before discussing how to correctly use each one, let us discuss what to post. According to qualitative data from various pet store owners there are certain types of content that spark the biggest customer response. Pet owners enjoy organic posts that feature an animal or other well liked subject while feeling as though they are using the page as a “gathering place for pet lovers”. Topics for “pet-lover” discussion could include:
Funny posts about animals
Pet parents are more likely to follow pages that post a substantial amount of these posts because they know it won’t be strictly ads.
This may include “memes” or pictures of pets doing silly things.
Educational or informational posts about pets
Pet parents enjoy keeping themselves informed about anything that may help or hinder their pet, or reasons behind why their pets may do certain things.
Product Recommendations
Pet parents enjoy occasionally seeing product recommendations (videos, writing, photos) from real people who reviewed it and have an opinion on it.
Ways to manifest this type of content include utilizing social media “influencers” or people with a lot of followers who recommend products
Encouraging shoppers to tag your store in product reviews can help you to build a strong “tagged” page on Instagram. The tagged page is part of your profile and can serve as testimonials for other customers. You can easily remove a tag if preferred.
Interactive posts
These include live-streamed videos, polls, or any of the asking questions tools available on social media posts
Pet parents enjoy occasionally interacting with these but it is important to find a balance between too little and too much.
Contests
Pet parents love seeing real pets on these pages, and will get excited about the opportunity to have their own pet featured. Interact with customers and give them a chance to do this by featuring contests such as holiday or seasonal photo contests. Customers may send in photos of their pets showing their costumes or holiday spirit, and, in turn, your page post the top photos. Another idea for a contest may be asking for product reviews and testimonials in exchange for entry to the contest.
Blogs
The majority of pet parents read some sort of pet-related blog, whether it is constant or only whenever they see an interesting pop up. You can either choose to make your own blog page, or share links to other pet blogs as posts on your social media pages. The majority of brands have shareable blog content on pet health and wellness topics that can be beneficial to your customers.
As a general rule, 80% of posts and stories should be educational, funny, or informative, and 20% should be promotional. How often you post this content is up to you - but consistency is key. Experts recommend posting 4-5 times a week, however if this is unrealistic for you, aim to be as consistent as possible, even if that is posting 1-2 times a week. In this case, consistency means do not skip chunks of time in posting, and try to schedule your posts at the same time of day. Meta (Facebook) business, Canva, Promoboxx, e-tail pet’s ShareIt! and other online programs will allow you to schedule content in advance. Planning and scheduling in advance can help to take some of the pressure out of consistent posting.
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Posts
The most important thing to consider when creating posts on Instagram and Facebook is what value the post will provide to your followers. Try to avoid directly marketing products on posts, keep that to stories. If you want to use a photo posted by another account, always ask for permission to post. If the owner agrees, be sure to tag them and give them credit. The images posted should be high quality without any heavy editing or filters. The caption written can be short and sweet with the main goal of engaging followers. Criteria for engaging captions include, giving context to the photo, asking a question for consumer response, providing value to the brand, and using relevant hashtags. Hashtags that you use will help people find your account, and will help the Instagram algorithm to accurately determine what kind of business you are while showing your account to other relevant accounts. Think of a hashtag as a keyword and don’t be afraid to reuse the same hashtag across posts! Lastly, if customers do comment in response to your engaging caption, make sure to engage with them! Replies can help the customer feel like they are valued and appreciated beyond their purchases.
Stories
Stories are a great tool to drive engagement with your followers and show them what’s going on in “real time”. Stories have many features that you can use to involve and communicate with your followers such as polls, stickers, quizzes, countdowns and a rating meter. To better understand this involvement, let us focus on the questions feature. With this feature, you can ask your followers a question, but rather than give response choices, they are able to type in their own response. You can use this to ask a question for your followers to respond to, or use it as an opportunity for the community to ask you questions. You can reply via DMs, or by reposting it to another story.
Engagement
Engagement can be defined as liking and commenting on the posts of followers or accounts that are similar to you, viewing stories and interacting as well as communicating with followers via direct messages. Engaging on Instagram may be time consuming and tedious, but the key to meaningful engagement is consistency. If you can, follow this 5/15/20 tiered approach to create a consistent presence for your business.
Every Day - Take 5 minutes a day to like and comment on the posts of two pages. Pages could be your own followers or accounts whose followers you would like to attract to your page.
Every 3 Days - Take 15 minutes every three days to go a little bit more in depth. Comments you make could be longer and more valuable. You could ask questions or provide thoughtful insight or even just reply to follower messages.
Every week - Take 20 minutes at the beginning of every week to connect with your followers and the pages you follow. This could include looking through your town or city’s location for posts to comment on or like, or looking at the posts within the hashtags you use.
Promoted Ads
Instagram or Facebook promoted ads can be a great way to reach a larger audience than your current following. Promoted ads means that you are essentially paying Instagram to show your post to others they believe would be interested in seeing it. In order to utilize this feature, it is important to make sure Instagram understands that you are a pet brand. To do this, you can look at your page through another account and look at the accounts it suggests while on the dropdown menu. Instagram will be able to decipher what kind of account you are if it is set up as a business account. Instagram and Facebook are based on algorithms. If your page is registered as a pet page, the algorithm will place your ad on other pet lovers' feeds. If the Instagram algorithm can not determine what the correct audience is, the post will not run on your target market. If used correctly, promoted ads can be a very useful tool that can help you increase brand awareness and bring more traffic to your page.
Top 10 Dos and Don’ts
DO
Use captivating imagery/videos
Post consistently, but don’t over post
Be unique and creative with your posts
Entertain and Inform your audience (80% educational/funny/informative, 20% promotional)
Interact with followers and create relationships
Maintain a brand identity through all social media networks
Mix up caption length for different posts
Share stories on your businesses social channels
Prioritize and focus on networks that are best fits for your business
Give credit and get permission to tag people in posts
DON’T
Don’t ask followers to repost or like your content
Don’t use too many hashtags, keep them simple
Don’t have poor grammar/spelling mistakes in posts
Don’t ignore questions, comments, and messages from followers
Don’t post content in ALL CAPS
Don’t spam and over-share your content
Don’t focus on gaining number of followers, quality is better than quantity
Don’t share sad posts, keep posts fun and entertaining
Don’t believe everything on the internet, cross check information you are considering posting
Check for trends, but don’t feel the need to post for all trends
Download the full Successful Social Media for the Pet Industry Guide: HERE
