VMP 282: Arielle Putter Shares How To Succeed With Short Form Content In Your Veterinary Practice

Brandon 00:00:00  Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your veterinary practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. Thank you for taking the time to listen. In today's episode we have a guest. It is Ariel Potter back on the podcast again. Ariel, if you didn't hear the first episode, is an incredibly talented social media and content creator, marketer. And she's really got TikTok and short form video down to a science, and she was able to help grow her and uncle's practice spot on veterinary hospital and, in an amazing way, using TikTok in particular. So in today's episode, we dive into exactly what's working and what's not when it comes to social content, specifically short term short form video content creation. So before we begin today's episode, we have two sponsors. Are you looking to get better SEO ranking for your retirement practice? Probably everyone I know that runs veterinary hospital would be benefited from having better local SEO. And that's why I want to give you some free tools from one of today's sponsor.

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Brandon 00:02:21  Real is a fantastic tool that allows you to measure and see where your conversions are coming from, and which of the calls and call sources are driving clients into your practice call really makes it really simple to not only see where your calls are coming from, but the AI tools that they have that track and record the conversation so that you can assign outcomes to the calls is amazing. I highly suggest all of the clients that I have used Call Rail, and if you've ever wondered where my clients coming from, you can try Call Rail out for two weeks for free if you go to vendor Marketing podcast. Com forward slash call rail. You'll be able to try call rail for yourself and finally know where your clients are coming. Now in today's episode, Ariel is really giving us a lot of great insights. So she does content creation, consulting and marketing consulting for veterinary hospitals now full time, which is really cool. And so she's using her talents to help better practices. So if you're interested at all, be sure to send Ariel an email.

Brandon 00:03:26  we're very thankful that she was so gracious to come on the podcast again, and hopefully we can have her on the podcast again. But I can't tell you how much I think that the stuff that she's talking about is important. Even if you want to do paid advertising or, you know, pretty much any kind of marketing that you want to do, short form is not going anywhere. It's only getting more important. And so I think this episode is full of fantastic insights. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Ariel. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, Ariel. Second time on the podcast. I really appreciated you being on here last time as well. So thanks again for coming back.

Ariel 00:03:59  Thank you for having me.

Brandon 00:04:01  So real quick, for people who didn't listen to last episode, you were here. Can you just real quick describe how you got started in the veterinary industry and and kind of what you do.

Ariel 00:04:10  Yeah, absolutely. So when I first came on, I was working for a spot on veterinary hospital and hotel there in Stamford, Connecticut, and opening another location in Westport.

Ariel 00:04:20  And it was my an uncle that ran the practice. So I started not really knowing what we were going to do. And I ended up taking, the social media really far. I think when I left just around a month ago, all combined, we were at like 300 million views, 50 million likes a really it really took off. And I, I discovered a niche for myself in this veterinary community. And now that I've since left, I'm working with clients individually, both practices and brands to help, you know, consult for their social media and it's it's going it's going great.

Brandon 00:04:56  Perfect. Yeah. I think that's such a unique and valuable skill set that you have. And the stuff that you did with Spot On was amazing. It's ridiculous to think how many views you got them. That's wild.

Ariel 00:05:07  Well, thank you for your help. You really helped inspire me and and motivate me. So I have to attribute some of that to you as well.

Brandon 00:05:16  Well, I appreciate it. I take credit for all of you.

Brandon 00:05:19  So, one thing that I get a question on all the time is how do we actually create a plan or what does that look like? Can you tell me about the process that you do when you go into planning and kind of how do you approach planning when it comes to social content and, and what are the things that you start out with?

Ariel 00:05:38  Yeah, I think that when we're we're talking about, you know, smaller businesses, smaller practices, smaller brands, not these major corporate brands, I find that planning less is more Impactful because I think it allows you to be more authentic. With that being said, of course some planning has to go into it. So typically what I like to do is create a monthly content calendar, and I'll create that two weeks out from from the start date, but I'll leave placeholders for trends or things that might, you know, just come top of mind. you know, as content is flooding in as you're getting content, you know, so you can't plan these things perfectly.

Ariel 00:06:24  but all of that being said, before you can plan, I think you really, really need to identify your goals as a practice, you know? Do you want more appointments or do you want views? And do you want followers? And you know, of course the answer can be a little bit of both, but you really have to identify those goals first. And then from that, who who is your ideal customer? I think that you can get pretty niche with it, within the veterinary community. So identifying those first before before I create these more, you know, just the plans themselves is really important.

Brandon 00:07:00  That's a really interesting answer. I wasn't expecting that at all from you. So when when you say I, I'm thinking about that as you were talking about it, I think that trends are incredibly important and things are changing all the time. So do you suggest people plan just for an activity like, okay, we're going to batch out an hour of work here and here, but we don't know necessarily what we're going to make until we approach it sooner.

Brandon 00:07:23  Or how do you go about thinking about that?

Ariel 00:07:25  Right. So I think it really is practice dependent in terms of what team do you have put in place? You know, I've had to adjust my planning and my strategies based on, you know, am I physically there recording to get content like I was at spot on or, you know, am I having a team of people at multiple different locations within one brand sending me content, or is there not a centralized place to take this content? Are you more? Are you a product and you know you don't have a place where you can record animals? So based on that, you know you really have to adjust the plan from there. But when it comes to trends, what I if I'm not physically doing it and, you know, one of my clients has around ten hospitals. So they get content from a team on each. And so what I like to do is just send them a link directly of, hey, can you recreate this for me, anticipating that it's, you know, it might be a week or two until I get there.

Ariel 00:08:22  They're able to get to it. And so so that's sort of how I like to just send it to directly versus, when I'm just getting an influx of content, that's when I get to, you know, see patterns within it. and then come up with, with more of my own plan stuff versus things on the fly that they're giving us.

Brandon 00:08:46  That totally makes sense when when you're looking at what you should be creating. Do you think that there is a specific platform that is better to create from? Is it based on what you're good at, where your clients are, or where you want to be? Does that make sense? Because I think those are different platforms for sure.

Ariel 00:09:05  In terms of just, you know.

Brandon 00:09:07  So most practices can't do, I don't think that most practices don't have systems or support in place to do, like a really good YouTube short strategy and a good TikTok strategy and a good Instagram strategy. Right? So those are all really different platforms with very different client bases, you know? and I think it's really interesting to see what's active right now.

Brandon 00:09:31  But, you know, what do you think? So if people say to me, like, should I start a TikTok because like, I think I should. And I'm not even sure why they say that, but they think they should because it's it's popular. There's activity, there's organic reach to some extent. but they're doing Instagram and Facebook and I'd say this is the most common type thing. So they're all doing Instagram and Facebook. They're not necessarily doing it very well. their client base is probably more on Instagram. but also secondarily on Facebook. They're just mostly posting from Instagram to Facebook, but they're like, what should we do? So in that context, do you think people should create based on where they get the most engagement currently, where their dream clients are spending time or kind of where attention is moving, which I'd say Tick Tock is just this massive beast that I think is just going to get more and more popular over time.

Ariel 00:10:26  Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a very relevant question.

Ariel 00:10:30  like sort of, you know, we're talking about platform specific strategy here. And while, of course, you know, the answer is if you have a team of 20 people, a giant marketing team, sure do platform specific strategy. But I think, you know, these practices need to be realistic. What team do you have in place? Who is actually going to be able to be posting consistently? And I'm a very, very strong believer in starting off by just creating for the same platform in the beginning. In the beginning, I would create one video that I would repost on Instagram, on TikTok, on on YouTube shorts, and on Facebook. I think that that's the best use of your time. You're you're starting. If you're just starting out as a creator, as a brand and you're trying to find, you know, your flow, and then from there you're really able to discover what these different, you know, these different audiences you've created. From there, you're able to be like, okay, I've noticed that my TikTok audience responds better to these kind of videos than on Instagram.

Ariel 00:11:32  I'm going to not repost these to Instagram, and I'm going to focus more on those and vice versa. And to this day, even up to when I was just leaving spot on and we were at, you know, significant following, I was posting a lot of the time the same things on Instagram and TikTok. It became intuitive, you know, and that just comes with practice and consistency. Once you get consistent, you get more intuitive about about learning who your audiences are and what what videos do perform best on which platform. So yeah, be realistic in what you're able to do, because as long as you're able to be consistent, if you can be consistent and just post the same video across everywhere, that is better to me than posting once every two weeks on YouTube or Facebook or TikTok. So yeah.

Brandon 00:12:24  That totally makes sense. so I think the the question is then in in your opinion right now, what is a better perspective or point of of starting for most practices? You think most practices should start with Reels or TikTok as their primary Focus in general.

Ariel 00:12:45  I think that most practices should start with TikTok and then immediately post them to reels as well. I think the TikTok platform has a better thing, a better editing platform then you can on reels. So start there. Just edit your content. That's where the trending audios are going to be. I know that maybe not some of your clientele is going to be on TikTok, but I'm not saying only do that. Edit there, get those trending audios. I have a trick for how you can then remove your TikTok watermark, from when you post it so that you can then post it on reels. So if anyone would like to know that, shoot me an email. okay.

Brandon 00:13:25  What's your email real quick for.

Ariel 00:13:27  R I e l e j u n e at gmail.com. So Ariel. June. Com. Yeah. So start on TikTok. Edit there, get used to the platform, get understand the hashtags. Understand some of the more important keywords that are working, and then transfer them right on to Instagram and you will find success.

Brandon 00:13:50  That totally makes sense. so when it comes to, I think, developing a content strategy, how how much of it should be audience building versus, kind of direct call to action videos or should there be direct call to action in every single video, in your opinion?

Ariel 00:14:12  I do not think there should be direct call of action in every video because again, we're talking we're talking about the veterinary community here. We're talking about animals. If your audience will find out really fast, if you're just trying to make money, if you're just trying to bring more clients in or trying to sell your product, you know, we're talking about people's babies here. We're talking about real life, real life people and things and animals. Not not, you know, a clothing brand. So being as authentic as possible is super, super important. And there's ways to be authentic and have it be a call to action, you know, showing, doing a Q&A with a really fun like charismatic vet and, you know, having them hold a dog in the video and and cutting to videos of dogs throughout it, that is a call to action in itself.

Ariel 00:15:08  You're building trust with, you know, your audience and that and that veterinarian, or even just doing some behind the scenes videos. You know what? What are people most afraid of when they're when they're dropping their animal off? Well, what do you I don't get to see what goes on. So pulling back the curtain a little and making those videos, these more behind the scenes videos with how you your practice is treating these animals. That is a call to action because it's building trust. So I think that's more important than get your free first exam today. You know, of course there's a time and place for that. But you know, I'm not the paid paid media specialist. That's you. I'm more organic. So when it comes to that organic, yeah, definitely being more authentic.

Brandon 00:15:53  That makes sense. The the question that I have for you as somebody who's in the organic space and I think I have a good idea for this, but like your take. So it seems that the follower count is not as important.

Brandon 00:16:07  And I think like pretty much everybody across all platforms, including YouTube, agrees that subscriber count is not the number that you go for. Really. and TikTok was what I think caused this to happen across all kind of platforms in general, is that content that's engaging to certain segments is going to attract more of those segments, right? So time on, app, time consuming, that video, all of those things are very, very important. So if you're creating content that's capturing attention and really good at getting viral. How do you then pivot to then take that attention and direct it towards a call to action? What are your thoughts on some of that? Because yeah, it seems like if you're creating organic content, it's getting out there, right? But people aren't necessarily following you. I mean, it does come, but it's not the primary thing that happens anymore.

Ariel 00:16:58  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Engagement is the most important thing. and that's that's definitely the, you know, the KPIs that I will, I will focus more on than follower count.

Ariel 00:17:13  I think that a lot of times, the way to bring a call to action from more engagement is just to continue to engage with the community. I love responding to comments. I think that's so important. Respond, respond, respond, respond with more videos. respond with, you know, answering their questions. A lot of times they'll, you know, even if it's just where are you located? Like, you can turn that into, into something that is a direct call to action. Because I also think that when it comes to the veterinary community, what nobody is ever just going to see one video and then go online and book an appointment, that's not a thing. You need to build some more trust either. Then going to maybe they won't follow you, but they're going to scroll through your whole feed. They're going to look on your website, you know. So getting getting that in order is important too. so yeah, I think it's about just engaging back with the community.

Brandon 00:18:14  Yeah, I like that answer a lot.

Brandon 00:18:16  I think that is really good. And, I mean, it's it's true across every point of contact that people have, you know, that's one thing that I've been seeing a lot and listening to calls from the ads that we're running, people will call especially for euthanasia or something, and they'll get all this info about this pet who's kind of getting to the point where it's almost time, right? And then they just say, okay, thanks, bye. Instead of like, would it be okay if I called you in a week just to check and see how things are doing? Like that difference of engagement is so important. And it's gonna, it's it doesn't cost anything but like two minutes, you know, and same thing with videos. And I see that to the most engaged videos specifically on TikTok, they'll respond with videos. And each one of those videos will get, you know, another 5 to 10,000 likes on popular videos. And so it might not be as popular as the first one, but still, I mean, tens of thousands of additional views and more engagement out of that.

Brandon 00:19:09  And I think the the kind of like behavior that people have where they go and then they investigate and see all of your content across all of your platforms is a really good call to action.

Ariel 00:19:19  That's actually reminding me, too, of sort of tying in when I said kind of almost planned less. I think hyper planning is, you know, will be the death of creativity. You know, you can't at some point you have to be creative and you have to work on the fly, and it has to become intuitive. Of course, there's plenty that can go into it, but but with that, I think that something that's really, really important is specifically including things in videos, you know, people are going to respond to. And what I mean by that is I kind of want to poke the bear sometimes. I know that, you know, this specific if I say this thing about this breed, people are going to be in the comments talking about it. And so I will go out of my way to include this part in the video.

Ariel 00:20:07  So it's so the engagement doesn't come naturally sometimes. Sometimes it does. And other times that's on you as a creator to include things in your videos that you know are going to get people talking, and sometimes you just let them talk to each other, sometimes you, you jump in and yeah, I think that's I think that's where you can plan your creativity.

Brandon 00:20:29  I think that's really good too, from the perspective of I think that's more platform specific. And I would say that the lack of planning in terms of having creative freedom and things probably much better on like TikTok and then also reels, whereas like on YouTube, you have like the top trending videos. It's like by no mistake that they're there. They've spent like months or even years making them. But I think that's an important distinction though. So with TikTok, though and and videos, if somebody is starting out, how much time should they be putting into like idea creation, publishing, editing, like all of that stuff? Or should it just be make it and publish as much as possible and then get feedback.

Ariel 00:21:10  That's, I believe, make it and publish. However, I think that you should your number one focus when you're starting out is just source content. Get as much content as you possibly can, and then from there you're able you're able to ideate from there. I'm a I'm a bigger, you know, supporter of get content before, you idiot. Of course, there's times where, like, I want to do a vet Q&A or I want to do this trend and here's my idea. Here's my shot list. Let's go get this. You know, let's let's go get this recorded that there's a time and place for that. And those do very well. But I think mixing it in with getting your organic content where however you're sourcing it and then look for the patterns within those videos and then just post them once you once you get those patterns and you're seeing the videos, oh, there's I can add this trend or, I mean, I can add this audio. that's where I find you find the most success at the beginning.

Brandon 00:22:09  I think that's a good point. And if you look at the content that is getting hundreds of thousands of likes and views, it's not overly produced. It's not tremendously bland. It's like somebody setting their phone down in their kitchen. And then I.

Ariel 00:22:22  Think that's, it's a really important thing to note. And something I feel very strongly about is I don't know if you're going to ask any questions about like upcoming trends and stuff, but this is relevant where I've said the word authentic already, so I won't go down that that route. But what you said these don't overproduce. There's a time and a place for it, but we are seeing a massive D influencing movement happen. People are we're on social media too much and it's too curated. We can tell when someone is trying to sell us something and consumers are sick of it. We're seeing major brands come away from their influencer brand trips and instead are bringing their real customers. You know, people. We're seeing a massive, massive D influencing movement. And so with that, as creators, you need to adapt and be as authentic as possible and show your personality.

Ariel 00:23:18  You know, I said this the first time we met, but it's it's as true as ever now. Less production. Of course, there's time and place for it. but I think a, I think a great example of a time and a place for production is Duolingo account. which I know we it's over talked about at this point, but it's a great example of how sometimes just these quick, easy videos are doing better than they did. I think something must it must have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce some of of the other, more curated content, and it doesn't even do as well.

Brandon 00:23:52  Yeah, they're they're so good at commenting on relevant videos as the first comment with just funny things. And then you are like, oh yeah, I forgot that app exists. And then you go check out their content. But that engagement strategy is is incredibly good. I was trying I saw one recently, I did.

Ariel 00:24:09  That, I started doing that with Spot On and and it was it was really fun because it worked.

Ariel 00:24:15  People. People would then come over to our page from it and and see those are the the perfect examples of, you know, you you can't plan too much about that. That's just where your creativity, comes into play. You know, you can't. We couldn't possibly predict another video that's going to go viral from another brand that you're going to comment on, you know? So that's what I mean about, you know, planning less.

Brandon 00:24:40  Definitely. That totally makes sense. with any of these platforms and specifically I'm starting to see more in terms of, of search. And I'm actually not even I should be making videos on TikTok. Also, I haven't been.

Ariel 00:24:55  But you gotta.

Brandon 00:24:56  Get on. I know for sure. Are there tools on TikTok specifically that help you to figure out, like topically, what you should do? Is there any tools around search that you care about, or is that just not? Second, you know, not important primarily.

Ariel 00:25:12  So I mean, I definitely don't I don't create with like for SEO first, you know, I that's more of a second thought to me.

Ariel 00:25:23  But with that being said, I think people are optimizing their things more than they realize they are, and they just don't realize that it's there's this like fancy term for it. And by that I mean that I definitely include certain keywords in videos. I'm always adding captions to videos. If there's just voice texting, you know, I mean, just someone speaking, I'm adding voice to text. I'm, I'm titling my videos with these keywords. Yeah. I have a client who they don't call their thing daycare. They call it play care. But I always say I don't care. Use daycare. That's a huge doggy daycare. That's a huge keyword. You can hide it deep in your hashtags if you don't want that to be your brand, but get it there somewhere. so I would say that look and look to see when you go to into your search bar in TikTok specifically, what are the top searches? What is TikTok feeding you as like, go look at this because more and more people are starting to use TikTok as like a search engine, as a Google, especially in the younger generation.

Ariel 00:26:30  That's where they're going first. So the more you pay attention to what, what TikTok is suggesting, you look up or or, you know, when you're watching a TikTok video and they give you a suggested search, you know, that's that's SEO, that's a video did so well that enough people were talking about the same term that TikTok then gave you a search to look up, because they know you're going to want to look up what everybody else is asking. Pay attention to those, and eventually you'll it'll do it for you.

Brandon 00:27:03  Definitely. I've seen that they're increasingly putting that into SEO results. And then just behaviorally too, I've noticed that I've gone to TikTok more often then than YouTube, even just because I can find the videos more quickly that I'm looking for. absolutely.

Ariel 00:27:20  And I think there's a huge opportunity in the veterinary community, especially to sort of be these disruptors where you will be the top search when someone's like searching something specific, you know, and that's where being a little bit more creative and coming up with these, your own patterns within these videos and your own trends for other people to follow, you're going to become those top search results for something really hyper specific, because it's already like a niche community in and of itself.

Ariel 00:27:48  So there's for us specifically, there's a huge, huge opportunity here.

Brandon 00:27:52  Absolutely. That totally, totally all makes sense. And, I it's also interesting to I know that YouTube, specifically whatever's in the background of the video. Plus, if you have transcriptions, it helps Google's AI to figure out what the video is about, what's in. So it goes through every single frame and it knows indexed like, okay, this has a car in the background. Like they know specifically what kind of car. And then they're talking about this. And so typically they'll know and I'm sure TikTok's exactly the same, especially with their AI voice tools, their transcription, their text to voice stuff. It's all transcribing, it's all indexing. But, I think to having the subject that you're talking about in the frame of the video would probably help it to index better to just because it knows, like if you search for that's one thing I've been looking at too, is searching for specific types of videos, like I'll see something funny, and then I'll look it up and I'll just describe it and it'll show up in the first result.

Brandon 00:28:47  So it's working really well as a search engine too. And I think that coupled with TikTok shop, which is just giving it so much, buying data from all of these different segments, I mean, it's just collecting so much data and from that's just incredibly valuable because they're going to know pet owner data, people that are buying pet products, what kind of pet products? It's a massive invasion of privacy, I think comparatively to other platforms too. But it's going to be great for ads and things.

Ariel 00:29:15  Yeah, so it's great for that, but not maybe for our personal lives.

Brandon 00:29:19  Exactly. but that's that's one of the hardest things too, is that when when clients come to me from a standpoint of if we're not targeting based on like a client behavior when it comes to ads, it's going to be based on demographic and being able to target people with creative that's going to target the right demographic is, I think, the most important piece of advertising from like, if we want pet owners that own French bulldogs, we need this type of content that they're going to resonate to you versus, you know, and that's going to be if you're on Facebook or Instagram.

Brandon 00:29:52  And so taking this content that is organic and then using it as ad creative is, I think, the best thing to do. There's a Gary Vaynerchuk Book Day trading attention. He talks about this a bunch, and I've been saying this for a long time too. But it's it's exactly what you're talking about, where you take content that works, that gets the right engagement for the right type of pet owners, and then you just put a call to action on it because, yeah, yeah, it's going to be relevant.

Ariel 00:30:18  Absolutely.

Brandon 00:30:20  Definitely. With this, do you think that, Do you think the AI. A lot of people are trying to use AI for all kinds of things? I use it for a bunch of stuff. But what is your take on AI for content creation in general?

Ariel 00:30:37  Yeah, I think that you can utilize it for some of the back end kind of stuff. You know, use it to generate 30 SEO optimized keywords for this video. Sure. Great. Use it for static images to crop something and get, you know, get a random person out of the background.

Ariel 00:30:59  I agree, that saves a lot of time, but when it comes to creative ideation specifically for videos, I just don't think it has a place yet. I'm not saying ever. I mean, it's going to advance in a way that it's going to be hard to ignore, I'm sure, when it comes to videos. But again, it's important to make the distinction here. Like we're talking about practices, small practices, small brands. Sure. Is Bo's TikTok account going to use AI to make some dragons on some TikTok? Hell yeah, that's great. Good for them. But we're we're talking about smaller practices here. You want to stay as authentic as possible. And at this point in time, AI is just not going to do that for you, at least when it comes to creative ideation and execution. I just don't think there's a place for for healthcare, you know, like animal healthcare. I just don't I don't see a place for it yet. But again, use it for if you want to use it for captions, for, for certain things that you just really can't think of a caption for, for, you know, keywords, stuff like that.

Ariel 00:32:05  Yeah. I think there's a place and a time and place for it.

Brandon 00:32:09  I, I would agree with that to you. And I think unless you're doing like niche content, like this podcast, for example, long form podcast content has so many cool AI tools out there, but it just helps to cut down time for editing and things like that. But from the creative side, I think that probably you'd be a lot better served by just being a user of the platforms.

Ariel 00:32:29  Yeah, I'm I'm coming from a point of view of someone who's who's only really worked with small businesses or smaller brands, and, and just creative or organic content. So I know there is a time and place for AI for things, but for specifically what I'm doing, I just don't see I don't see the it fitting.

Brandon 00:32:51  I agree too, and I really think that people like to try to emulate these large brands, but I think most large brands are actually missing it more often than they're, you know, hitting like even, you know, the Disney's, the major corporations of the world.

Brandon 00:33:06  they're not doing great in general with their marketing and their messaging.

Ariel 00:33:10  And I think that's it's all really tying to me. And with this, Just the over planning of it all. When you just have these huge teams in a million hoops to jump through, it just kills the creativity. And and the thing with social media is you got to churn this out fast when there's a trend or you're just a series that's working. I mean, it's a pretty fast turnaround until it becomes irrelevant.

Brandon 00:33:36  So definitely. And so when you find something that's working, how often do you keep going back to that? Because I think people oftentimes will think I need to reinvent the the wheel here and keep coming up with new ideas and new things to talk about, like they've already heard about, that we don't want to do any more of that. How how much do you go and beat the horse until it's dead, so to speak? Yeah, thanks for that question.

Ariel 00:34:01  Pretty often I have I've had series that I've created that have reached part 15, and the series are not something that I can just sit there one day and record.

Ariel 00:34:14  It comes from, you know, weeks and weeks of capturing certain content that fits within a series. You know, just as an example, because it's sort of hard to explain unless there's something in your head. I did a series of the best items, you know, the hotel dogs and cats would bring from home. And so at Spot on, you know, there was a pet hotel. And so every day that I was there, you know, so three times a week I would walk around the hotel and I would just record and slowly over time, it would have enough for a full video of a bunch of fun ones. And those went viral every single time, and I would probably post them a month apart around 15 times. Yeah. So like over a year of that same series. So I think that brings up a good point where a lot of times I think your baseline content should be what's working and where you fill in the gaps. That's where you use your trends. I don't think a trend only content strategy really works because it's already starting to be overdone.

Ariel 00:35:16  These, like my Gen Z intern, runs my account thing. It's already being overdone and it's really transparent. It's obviously a whole marketing team behind this. It's not one Gen Z intern. So I think that sticking to the things that are working in these like bigger, these bigger series and videos and then supplementing with trends is the way to go.

Brandon 00:35:39  Got it. Totally makes sense. And so with that, how much do you think people should be on the platforms at a minimum to see the trends? Right. Because like typically if you see realtors and millennial moms making the trend videos, it's usually too late. Yeah. So what what is the point where how often should you be using these platforms in your opinion?

Ariel 00:36:04  Oh man. Yeah. This this is a really good question because I think it's it's a hard balance to strike between personally being like, I should not be on my phone this much, but then, hey, that's my job. And and I saw someone. Before I answer the question, I saw someone say, once you know, there is a level of being chronically online that you just can't recreate.

Ariel 00:36:29  You know, when you're hiring someone and and you know, someone's creating this content. I mean, I have on my phone a 45 minute TikTok, like time constraint. So, I mean, I guess like 45 minutes to an hour a day. And this doesn't have to be on a personal account either. I, I find it's important for to curate a feed on, you know, whatever brands you're working with. I will go out of my way to scroll on, you know, the feed of the TikTok itself, not a personal account, so that I can stay relevant with trends that might not have reached my my whatever TikTok decides I'm into, you know, might not be what my target audience, you know, at a vet. So yeah, I would, I would say like 30 minutes a day at least.

Brandon 00:37:18  Totally makes sense. That's that's one thing. Darrell Eaves, who's a really good YouTube, expert, talks about in his planning phase, is that when you're going to create a niche content for these different niche audiences, you create a new YouTube account.

Brandon 00:37:31  You basically go down the rabbit holes of each one of these to see where YouTube spits you out with their algorithms, what kind of content this audience is consuming. And so probably having multiple accounts, you know, one for your personal one. Yeah. But then also one for your practice where you're just like, okay, I'm a pet owner and this is what I'm into, and it's going to be hard not to bring your biases in there. But, you know, especially with all the political stuff and, you know, sure, you probably would just get inundated with, you know, all kinds of crazy things. It seems like I think that would be helpful is creating a second account just for consuming and seeing, you know, what's serving, what's working, What are people engaging with? And are these people the kind of clients that I would want to.

Ariel 00:38:12  And I also think a really easy tip is find an account that's really good at it. Find an account that is posting trends 24 hours later and you don't know how they're doing it, and follow that account and and you'll go for there a really politics aside, a really good version of that right now is Kamala HQ.

Ariel 00:38:35  Kamala Harris's I don't know if it's her official platform on TikTok or not, but they are churning out trends. I mean, it's like they're inventing them. They're doing a very good job staying relevant. Again, politics aside, I think that's a good example. And then so I think following one that's good about trends in general that you could stay updated with and then following one that's your, you know, specific to the veterinary community. That's good at it as well. And sort of I think combining the two of those with your own, you know, your own content, your own creativity is a is a really good way to go.

Brandon 00:39:09  Absolutely. I think that's a good, really good plan. so do you think aside from trends, are there any other strategies that you think are going to be important through the next, let's say, 24 months? Because I think it's hard to say. You know, beyond that, what's going to happen in general. But is there anything longer term you see as important or just more of the same? I think we're.

Ariel 00:39:33  Going to see long form coming back a little bit and then leaving again short forms here to stay. Our brains are ruined, our attention spans are ruined. I don't care if you think TikTok's going to be, you know, shut down forever, something else is going to come up. Short form is here to stay. And again, my my expertise is is more on that. But we're seeing a we're seeing long form come back a little bit. Especially with YouTube. TikTok's forcing you to they they want you to be on your platform On the platform longer. They want you. They want you watching as much as possible. So I can see that coming back a little and then leaving again. I think we're now we're still with some of these social media platforms, have not been around long enough for us to really identify cyclical trends yet, but that's how trends work. They are cyclical. So if I had to imagine it's just going to come and go, from things that we've already started to see, of course AI is going to start to influence this.

Ariel 00:40:36  but yeah, specific to the veterinary community, I'm finding a strategy that's working very well is figuring out are you are you more on what I like to call like the vet tech talk, which is, you know, doctor Q&A doctors, vet techs, more people or are you on more of the animal side? Is your facility gorgeous? You know, spot On was so beautiful that what did very well was like more about the dogs having fun there and being there than the people did as much. But some of you know, some of my clients who have a million hospitals, they're doing super well within more of just the people side of it. So I think discovering where your niche is there, is really helpful. And then and then from there just, you know, send your team links, recreate this, you know, help this if you're if you have a lull in content, hey, can you just recreate this? I'll edit it for you. Just just record this. You know, that's a strategy I've, I've found working with my clients really well.

Brandon 00:41:41  Definitely. I think that's really interesting. now that you mention it, the last guest that I had was doctor Mike Walker. He's got a practice called Apollo Vet. it's a beautiful facility. Also, he's got it's just like a cool, dynamic practice. and his strategy specifically on Instagram, he's really invested on reels and things. and he's, he's good at making the content. but he's always. It's always team member focused. Yeah. And, like, the biggest thing is that that's helped him with recruiting more than anything. And it's like, that makes it makes sense because it's all focused on the people and like the culture and things like that. So exactly. That's a really good point. Definitely. I think what you said about long form, I think long form is definitely still viable, but I think you have to be so niche with it. Right? Like you'll you'll sit down and watch, you know, 12 episodes that come out on, like on a niche show that you really invested in.

Brandon 00:42:39  But it has to be super specific. And I think that's the thing that people lack, is they create long form that's just too general. And then kind of boring because it's general. But I do think kind of like looking at where TikTok has opportunities for retaining people. Right? They definitely have. The long form is missing from their formula in general. So like that's kind of only place that they I think can go. right? Right. So long form. Maybe something with podcasting that would be really interesting if they added like podcasting features. And I don't think that they have any desire to do that, but they already have the e-commerce stuff that's really strong, really effective. They're good at short form, and usually platforms don't just stick with what they're good at, they start messing up by adding in stuff that they're not. Yeah, sure.

Ariel 00:43:22  They get a little greedy. Well, speaking of podcasting and TikTok, that was the first thing I thought of when you were like, you need to get on TikTok more.

Ariel 00:43:29  I think that type of long form content does well when you are literally just posting us right now, our face is talking to each other. People will get locked in on that because it's it's a more it's better for attention span where you can watch the people talking and there's like edits and captions versus maybe someone who doesn't want to just sit there and listen to a podcast. So stuff like that, there's there's a big opportunity for.

Brandon 00:43:53  Yeah, I agree too. And I think actually podcasting is a big opportunity from a content perspective. Oh for sure. I mean, Going going deep with your your clients talking about, you know, all the things that you want to really invest in with your clientele and things. So I think that's.

Ariel 00:44:08  Make these vets characters online, make them people that they know their names, and then the opportunities are endless from there. Then they come up with a podcast and you want to listen to Doctor Who ever talk about this because you knew who that is, like curate these their, their personalities make them characters.

Ariel 00:44:28  I love doing that with with the animals too. I, you know, that spot on there is recurring animals that I kind of, you know, they had their personalities that I just was able to highlight more. And people would come back specifically just to watch this one dog that would be on there. Like, you can really create these characters and community amongst people and the animals. Yeah.

Brandon 00:44:52  Definitely. That's really interesting. as you were talking about that, I was thinking about, I couldn't remember how many questions it was, but there was a study that they would put these two people that were strangers together, and then they had these 36 predetermined questions that were like, not just top like top of mind, like, what is your favorite color? But like, tell me a story from your childhood where you were. And it's like ultra specific, right? And anyways, it would be like about an hour and a half conversation, but by the end of the conversation, you would feel like very strong emotions toward this person because you learned all of these really interesting kind of detailed quirks about each other.

Brandon 00:45:29  And so it's they said 30. It was like 36 questions that make you fall in love with the stranger, basically. And I think it's really interesting because there's a threshold of that within psychology. If you tell people enough detail about yourself, about your story, right, they become bonded to you and they're like invested in, in you. And so making them a character, I mean, like think about the things that they like the most. What are they into? Like, are they eating gummy worms every day in the break room. Like, why do they like that? Right? Like those kinds of weird details that help you get to know people without having to be like, you know, every single detail of your life. But those main kind of things, I think that's underused.

Ariel 00:46:12  That ties so well into when we're talking about what what goes into the production process and developing content. This is a perfect example of don't overproduce that because you if you're sitting, if you give a doctor, you know, let's say you want to do a doctor Q&A, if you give them a set of questions before they're going to type out their answers, they're going to have a curated response, and it's going to be so obvious.

Ariel 00:46:39  I loved to just surprise like, this was after I had a relationship with these people. So, you know, don't your first week be like, hi, you're on camera, but, you know, after you, you have a relationship? I would not tell them when I was coming up to talk to them, and sometimes I would if it was something really specific And I needed, you know, hey, do you have any advice? But a lot of times I would not tell them and I would just start recording and I would walk up to them and I would get the most the best content. It would go so viral. It was so authentic. It was hilarious. and and. Yeah. So that's a it's a great point of, of, you know, coming back to when we were talking about how do you produce this content. yeah. When it comes to people, don't overproduce it.

Brandon 00:47:23  Definitely don't overproduce it. Don't overthink it. Yeah. Figure out kind of what everybody's into and and go with it.

Brandon 00:47:29  I think that's really good. so is there any kind of final thoughts that you think that we, we didn't cover, in terms of things that are really, really important right now that practices can do, that they, that you don't see them doing in general. Yeah.

Ariel 00:47:45  I think just as like a general thought. We're talking about animals here. What else is there that people love or. I mean, that is the most universally like, you know, binding thing. Food, animals and like babies, you know, it's it's the best things you can invest your time and money in. And I it breaks my heart when I see people not just to the core of it, just showing their love for animals. you know, in these, in these videos, it's it's so simple sometimes if even if it's just a compilation of all the senior dogs that came for their checkups this week that, you know, that's all it is. The dogs are doing the talking, the senior animals are doing the talking.

Ariel 00:48:31  It's pulling out our heartstrings. The puppies are doing the talking here, you know? yeah. So I would say take a step back from planning too much record and source as much content as you possibly can, and then really start to go through it, see, find the patterns you naturally see from it. You know, that's I just I feel that that is my specialty as well. You know, when I first start working with a client, I asked for his eyes. Give me all your content, and I want to see what I can do with it. And then from there, I'll be like, okay, I see a lot of this. Get me more of that, you know? So, so starting off by just getting as much content as possible, you know, not trying to plan and overproduce too much and focus on the animals. Focus, focus on those, those sweet animals.

Brandon 00:49:19  Absolutely, I love that. So you you mentioned you're doing consulting and things and working with practices.

Brandon 00:49:25  How do people get in contact with you and what kind of clients work best with you? Who you looking for and who likes working with you best?

Ariel 00:49:33  Yeah, yeah. So you can you can get in contact with me with the email I had just said Ariel June at gmail.com or connect with me on, on LinkedIn. and you know, I, I find that all the clients I'm working with right now work best just because a huge part of, of content creation is adapting to the team you have in place. So, you know, if you have a bunch of practices and you feel like it's all being decentralized, I think that's a great client for me. I like I like to bring it all together. We can centralize all of these things or, or if you're a small business that's, you know, where I got where I got my start. So that as well. And I'm starting to work with more of a product now as well. so, you know, if you have, if you have an animal centric product, I find, I find that that's an exciting thing to work with, too.

Brandon 00:50:29  Yeah, absolutely. So I'd say based on the work that I've seen you do, if you're somebody who wants to do better organic content, get more reach instead of like, wasting your time, by just posting junk that doesn't go anywhere, be sure to reach out to to Arielle. She's got, everybody that I know who's worked with her have been really, really happy. So, definitely reach out. I'll be sure to put her email again. It's Ariel June at gmail.com. and then also on LinkedIn. So head on over there and be sure to add me if you're not already connected on LinkedIn. Everybody who's listening to so definitely. Well, I really appreciate all your time, expertise and thank you so much. Don't forget, quick, I'll put this at the very beginning to send Ariel an email if you want her super secret. Oh, yes. Cool. And I'm gonna I'm gonna ask her as soon as we stop recording, because I always wonder how to do that, too.

Ariel 00:51:27  Thank you so much for having me.

Ariel 00:51:29  And thank you.

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