Veterinary Voices — Episode 268

Stuck: We've Tried Social Media and It Didn't Work

Julie South [00:00:05]:

Welcome to Veterinary Voices — culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics.

I'm Julie South, and this is Episode 268.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs, helping forward-thinking vet clinics build recognition so they attract vets and nurses — not just post job ads and pray someone will apply.

We're in the sixth episode of our Where Vet Clinics Get Stuck with Their Recruitment series.

Episodes 263 through 267 are there if you want to go back — and I recommend you do, if you haven't listened to them, because this is a series that builds on itself.

This week's stuck: We've tried social media and it didn't work.

Julie South [00:00:57]:

Now before I go further — what I cover in this series may rub you up the wrong way.

If you feel yourself getting defensive as you listen, I ask you, with a huge amount of respect, to hold that defensiveness in one hand and keep listening anyway.

The clinics I've seen make the biggest breakthroughs are almost always the ones who felt that defensiveness first.

And please stay with me to the end, because I've got a question about what social media was actually being asked to do.

We've tried social media and it didn't work.

It's not that it didn't work that matters — it's the reason why. Because that changes everything, especially what you do next.

Julie South [00:01:57]:

There are four distinct reasons social media keeps disappointing clinics who have posted and waited for applications that never came. Each one is worth looking at separately.

The first is what a vet or nurse really finds when they actively go looking.

When someone sees your job ad and decides to explore your clinic's social media page, they're on a mission. They want to know what it's actually like to work there.

And what do they find? Vaccination reminders, flea treatment specials, a visiting dentist, puppy class graduates, a supplier competition — all client-facing content. Because that's who your social media pages are built for. And rightly so.

Julie South [00:02:48]:

But buried somewhere in that feed, if they scroll far enough, may be a we're hiring post from the last time you had a vacancy.

Nothing that tells them about the team. Nothing that accumulates into a picture of the culture. Just a client-facing page that was never designed to answer the questions they're actually asking.

Hey — I just want to jump in here with a quick thought.

If your clinic's been advertising a role for more than a couple of months, the issue might not be the job ad, or even the professional shortage.

The real problem could be the gap between when a vet or nurse reads your ad and decides whether to apply. We call that the job application decision gap.

To help clinics see whether that might be happening, we've designed a quick eight-question exercise called the Cultural Visibility Stress Test.

Julie South [00:03:54]:

It's completely free, takes about three minutes, and you'll find it at careers.vetclinicjobs.com.

Now let's get back to the show.

We were talking through the four reasons social media keeps disappointing clinics. The first is what vets and nurses actually find when they go looking.

The second is what happens in the feeds of those who are already following you.

Even if a vet or nurse follows your clinic's page, that doesn't mean they see your posts. Organic reach on Facebook has been declining for years.

Julie South [00:04:38]:

The algorithm decides what surfaces in someone's feed, and it prioritises content that gets engagement.

Here's the problem. A vet or nurse who's quietly watching your clinic — interested but not ready to comment or like publicly on a page that isn't their own clinic's — generates no signal for the algorithm.

No engagement means the algorithm progressively stops showing them your content.

The very people you most want to reach are the ones most likely to be filtered out.

The third problem is sound bites versus serials.

Even when posts do get through, each one is a standalone moment — self-contained, unconnected to what came before or after. A post goes up, the topic changes, another post goes up.

Julie South [00:05:43]:

There's no thread to follow, no story developing over time, no reason to keep watching.

Recognition isn't built from sound bites. It's built from serials — from a story people tune into because they're following something that's accumulating, episode by episode, into a picture they trust.

And then the fourth problem. This one surprises most clinics.

The fourth problem is platform.

When most people think social media for recruitment, they think Facebook. But vets and nurses are connected to each other professionally on LinkedIn.

Julie South [00:06:26]:

That's where their networks live — their vet school friends, their former colleagues, the people whose professional judgement they trust.

In VetClinicJobs' own experience, professional reach on LinkedIn outperforms Facebook and Instagram combined by a very significant margin.

Which means some clinics are investing real effort into the wrong platform entirely. Even if they fix the first three problems, they'd still be largely invisible to the professional audience that matters most.

And LinkedIn is about careers and being a professional — so when content shows up there, it lands differently.

Julie South [00:07:34]:

So when a clinic says we've tried social media and it didn't work — yes, they're right. But not for one reason. For four, and more.

Fixing just one of them, or switching platforms without addressing the others, won't move the needle.

It's also worth acknowledging that some of these problems are outside your control. The Facebook algorithm quietly filtering out the very people you most want to reach — you'll never get a notification about that. You won't know it's happening.

That's not a failure on your part. It's just how the platform works. And it's working against you — stealthily, in the background.

What you can control is what exists to be found, and where. That's where the effort is worth putting.

Julie South [00:08:20]:

One question before I go.

Think about a vet or nurse who's connected to someone on your team on LinkedIn. If they went looking for your clinic right now, what would they find? And would what they find tell them anything real about what it's like to work there?

Think about that.

If you'd like to talk about what that looks like for your clinic, email me at julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Next week — the final episode in the Where Vet Clinics Get Stuck with Their Recruitment series: That's not how we do things here. The stuck that's less about budget or time and more about identity — and why it might be the most important one of all.

This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self.

And remember — when vets and nurses can see that you're their kind of people, you stop hiring strangers, because you're welcoming people who already feel like they belong at your kind of clinic.

Until next time.