If you’re in charge of social media for your business, you know how important every single interaction with your post can be. 50 likes on a post? Amazing. 10 shares? Incredible. A bunch of comments that lead to thoughtful interaction with your brand? Priceless.
If getting more likes on a Facebook post really revs your engine, we have a story for you! This is the story of our most viral Facebook post EVER.
We received an email from the veterinary clinic late at night, a few days before it was posted. The video attached featured a cat, shaking uncontrollably after being given the wrong medicine. (Please note: we did work with the clinic to confirm and get all terminology correctly from their original post). “This handsome boy came in today because his mom was concerned about tremors that he had developed a few hours before bringing him in. As it turns out his mom applied a drop of flea and tick prevention to his neck earlier that morning. The flea and tick prevention was for dogs, and it contained an ingredient called permethrin which is toxic to cats. The chemical affects the cat’s nervous system and can be deadly if not treated. His mom had no idea that this could happen and she let us share her sweet kitty’s story to help educate others about the dangers of using chemicals containing pyrethrin on and around cats. We stabilized our feline friend with IV fluids and medications to help with his tremors, and by the end of the night, he was feeling much better!”
Our social media team had a discussion about it the next morning. We felt that this had the potential to go viral because:
1. It was a teachable moment for all pet owners.
2. The adorable cat is heartbreaking to see shaking on video.
3. It would create dialogue (we’re still combing through some of the awful comments and deleting/reporting them)
Next, we dug deep into the analytics of this particular page, we wanted to know the best day and time to post for engagement. Finally, we asked the clinic if they would allow us to spend $50 of their advertising budget to promote this post to a segment that has worked very well for them in the past.
We posted it, promoted it, and went to bed. The next morning, we woke up to over 2,000 notifications in the social management tool we use, and it didn’t slow down for a month. We only spent $50, and that $50 did what it was supposed to do, hit the 25,000 people that we were targeting. What those 25,000 people did with it is what makes this so important.
This post reached 5.8 million people and had 3 million video views, which led to 58k+ engagements, over 92,000 shares, and over 18,000 comments! That, my friends, is super viral.
Of course, this isn’t just about the post itself, it’s about the aftermath for the clinic. The dust has settled and their end of month analytics (provided by Sprout Social) were insane!
In August, the clinic had over 10,000,000 impressions (+9828.3%) on their Facebook page and 390,000 (+19,245.8%) engagements with their posts! This led to 4,126 new fans on their page (+334.7%)!
So what can we learn from this? Personalization of your content matters! Take the time to take photos and videos, give clients a behind-the-scenes look at your hospital, educate, and create a connection. For those of you that have us manage your social media – we would love more personalized content! Please, send away! We’ll help you take it to the next level.
