Do's and Don'ts of Building an Online Persona

Use these tips from Caitlin DeWilde, DVM, owner of The Social DVM, LLC, to ensure your online persona is both professional and engaging.

“So, the do's and don'ts of building your professional online persona. Number one—as far as the do's— make sure you're using a professional page. So, you're not using a Facebook profile you want a Facebook page. Same thing with Instagram, you want an Instagram business profile. LinkedIn if you're wanting to do that you can use the traditional profile, but the other 2—the Facebook and Instagram—you need to have a page, and the reason for that is you're going to have a lot more access to tools like insights about when to post, when your popular times are, who your clientele and your followers are. You're also going to be able to schedule content if you're a Facebook user, which is nice. So, you can make that process a lot more efficient to sit down and schedule up to 6 months in advance. You're not going to be able to do that if you're running a profile. So, that's my #1 do.

The second, #2 do I guess, would be for you to add value to what you're sharing. So, make sure that the content that you're putting out there is something that your clients it resonates with them, and it means something to them and it adds value in some way. So that's my second tip.

As far as don'ts, the big thing I would caution everyone to not do is to make sure that you're not violating that veterinary-client-patient relationship. So it gets really hard, because it's so accessible and it's so easy, it's right there on our phone, the client sends us a message and oh yeah just do blah blah blah blah blah. Okay well that's fine, how is that getting into the medical record though. So, you need to have a policy and a protocol about doing that if you're going to communicate with owners on social media. If they're a client that's fine, if they're not a client, now we have a problem—we don't have a valid veterinary client patient relationship. So, my big don't there is to make sure you're not violating those terms, you're not giving out specific medical advice, especially to a non-client.”