Meetup.com®

A Community Education Project

As an educator for the veterinary community, I guess this project came naturally for me. I have been teaching RVTs formally for over ten years, but organized client education? Formal educator or not, we all teach clients daily. A well-versed Veterinary Family Practitioner spends most of his or her day educating. “This is what I see on physical exam, these are some of the things it could be, these are the etiologies..etc.” How many times have you and your technician had the flea talk, the new puppy talk? Why not spill the beans to the whole community? People empowered with information make better pet owners and more compliant clients. This idea can be a win-win situation for both you and your community.

The Meetup® community is a type of social media that brings people with the same interests together. I have members that are clients, local groomers, dog trainers, breeders, and just interested pet owners. How difficult is it to set up and run the site? The whole social media thing is second nature to the young members of your staff or you may already have a Facebook® page. It truly doesn’t take that long to manage the project and the appreciation from the attendees make it worth every moment. And if you get stage fright…well it could be your clinic or your local VMA that hosts and organizes the site. You can hire in speakers from your veterinary community or pet professional community.

I have had great success tapping talent from my community. Our local holistic- physical therapy veterinarian gave a fantastic lecture about complementary medicine. I have an A+ applied animal behaviorist in the membership that gave a lecture on feline enrichment and a member of our emergency clinic gave a very enlightening lecture on the life and times of a search and rescue dog. I use a multipronged approach to advertise the lectures. My Meetings are sent by flyer to all members of my local VMA who post the flyer for their clients to see. The flyer goes to all the local grooming shops, and pet stores. We also advertise in the local “what’s happening” newspaper and all my clients are e-mailed the announcement. What better person to be “the go to person” in your community for quality pet care information than you? Visit www.meetup.com for details and visit my site for ideas! Animal Awareness Community.

KaLee Pasek, DVM

Credential in Veterinary Family Practice