Social Media for Animal Control Agencies - Moving Beyond Adoptable Pets
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•257 views
Who is telling your story? Does the public know and appreciate who you are and what you do? Do they understand the challenges you face? You don't need a PR department. Social media is free, and it's easy.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (9)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (11)
Similar to Social Media for Animal Control Agencies - Moving Beyond Adoptable Pets
Similar to Social Media for Animal Control Agencies - Moving Beyond Adoptable Pets (20)
More from Rebecca Poling
More from Rebecca Poling (7)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (17)
Social Media for Animal Control Agencies - Moving Beyond Adoptable Pets
- 1. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ANIMAL CONTROL AGENCIES Moving beyond adoptable pets
- 2. REBECCA POLING SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR DALLAS ANIMAL SERVICES
- 5. Intake Live Release Rate FTE Budget Housing Capacity 25,000-30,000 50% 98 $9 Million 650-700
- 8. Forbes Magazine called WORD OF MOUTH “the most valuable form of advertising” of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012) 92% 80%
- 9. of all internet users are now active on social media. Facebook users. Facebook remains the most popular social network in the United States 72% 1.15 Billion
- 10. Cell phones are EVERYWHERE CARING SHARING TALKING People are About YOU!
- 13. WHO IS TELLING YOUR STORY?
- 14. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
- 16. START TELLING YOUR STORY TODAY!
- 18. THE MEDIA CAN BE YOUR FRIEND
- 19. ENFORCEMENT
- 20. GOOD GRAPHICS
- 21. FIRST RESPONDERS
- 23. BENTLEY’S STORY
- 25. BRAND IDENTITY
- 28. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
- 29. OWN IT
- 30. WE’RE NOT SCARY
- 33. FINAL THOUGHTS
Editor's Notes
- I have been in animal welfare 14 years. I am the Program Manager and co-founder of Dallas Companion Animal Project. I actually coordinated the Texas Unites conference from 2010-2013, and am still part of the organizing committee that puts it on. I have done some disaster reponse, I’ve been on the boards of rescue groups and coalitions, I was New Orleans after Katrina, But most importantly, I am Social Media Coordinator for Dallas Animal Services.
- In this presentation we’re going to talk about how you can use social media to “tell your story”, and why that's important. I'm going to show you how we’ve used social media to change Dallas Animal Services’ image, and promote our professionalism, and suggest ways you can do the same. We're going to talk about working with media, using social media to support your enforcement and education efforts, and touch briefly on crisis communication. We are not going to talk about “how to use Facebook” or “how to start a Twitter account” – you can Google that. We’re talking about using social media for more than just adoptable pets – but to carefully change the public’s perception of your organization.
- Tell you a bit about us. - Dallas Animal Services is the municipal animal control for the City of Dallas. We are a division of Code Compliance. READ
- -We operate an open admission shelter that currently takes in - Take in 25,000-30,000 animals each year with a Live Release Rate of about 50% We have ?? FTEs and a $ 9 million budget. - Two locations: - Main Adoption Center is 52,000 square feet and holds 600-650 pets PetSmart Everday Adoption Center is 2,000 square foot and holds 46 pets. Total capacity about 650-700
- We started our Facebook page in October 2007 with one person with a large variety of other offline responsibilities. She was only able to post once or twice a week. But by 2012, we were desperate to find a way to get our message out, so we moved to one part time person who dedicated 20 hours a week to social media and posting as many as 4-5 times/day. We had 1,852 fans at that time. By December of 2014, we had more than 28,000. We are now over 31,000, and reach as many as ¾ of a million people in a week.
- 2010. A terrible, awful year. In the heat of the summer. Two animal control officers arrested by the Dallas Police Department on felony animal cruelty charges in two separate incidents, and then the shelter manager was indicted on cruelty charges by a federal grand jury. We didn’t have an active social media presence at the time, so the public saw only the nightly news and what ended up in the paper. .
- Forbes Magazine called Word Of Mouth “the most valuable form of advertising”. Nielsen says 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. 80% of social network users in the US prefer to connect to the brands they love through Facebook. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012) .
- 72% of all internet users are now active on social media. There are now over 1.15 billion Facebook users, and remains the most popular social network in the United States. If you want a positive image – and don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising, then you need word of Mouth
- Don’t forget – cell phones. They are everywhere and people are sharing, caring and talking about you.
- So how many of you noticed that the Ford Explorer launch on Facebook generated more traffic than a super bowl ad? Any idea how much a super bowl ad would have cost? A 30-second advertisement during th3 2015 game costed $4.5 million.
- Think about that for a minute. Social Media is here to stay. Social media IS word of mouth. And it’s FREE.
- How many of you already have a Facebook page for your organization? A Twitter account? They’re free and they’re easy to use. How many of you post only adoptable pets? If you’re doing animal control, there’s more to your story. But who is telling it?
- There was an incident recently, In a public meeting, and someone in the audience stood up to comment. She clearly felt like our management didn’t know what they were doing and she did. Anyone else ever have folks like that? She went on and on for several minutes and then when she starting in on our ASOs, and she called them “dog catchers”. I can proudly say that I did not end up in jail that day for assault, but I can’t say I didn’t consider it. And it made me think. Why is it that the world knows about progressive adoption programs, no kill, the great work rescue groups do, and yet they still refer to Animal Control Agencies as “kill shelters” and Officers as dogcatchers? Because we’re not out there telling our story. What they know about animal control is when you end up on the evening news with a cat on a catch pole,. Right? Let’s fix that.
- So why aren’t you out there, on social media, telling your story? How many of you have a marketing department that works for your shelter? How many of you have a PR agency on contract? Full time business development office to solicit support? Social media can do all this for you, and it's free. Start small and carefully and you'll be surprised at how quickly your support will swell. We all know how fast bad things go viral, right? The good things will, too.
- Does this look exciting to you? Or like your boring, dirty, every day job right? Why would you post these photos on social media? Anyone?
- Telling your story can also help with your enforcement efforts.
- Half the battle with enforcement is making sure people know the laws - and the consequences. So we took this photo a step further and created a single graphic reminder which we post periodically. These graphics are very easy to do, and I’ll have some resources to help you at the end of the presentation. Good graphics get shared a lot – so your message goes further.
- Let’s talk a minute about your role as a First Responder.
- This is not the guy people are going to look to for help in an emergency, is it? But this isn’t you! You’re the expert. You’re the authority. Let’s let people know that.
- If its on the news and you’re involved, you better be talking about it. I can guarantee the media will be, and the public will be – Do you want the public to see the hyped up sensationalism from the media with their live shots from helicopters, remotes on the street, reporters interviewing the “witnesses”? We decided early in on in the Ebola Crisis we were going to write Bentley’s story, not the media.
- When we started to turn things around at DAS, we had a lot of people cheering us on, but many of them still didn’t totally understand who we are and what we did.
- How many of you have ever heard about “building your brand” or “brand identity”. It you’re taxpayer funded, that can be tough. As you can see, we have a bit of an identity problem at Dallas Animal Services - are we Code Compliance? Animal Services? It depends on what vans are running on any given day. Confusing? Yep, and for the public as well. So we posted this graphic to let the public know what to look for when they need us, and to encourage them to stop us if they see us in their neighborhood.
- Promote your professionalism
- Yes, we’re back to this. So again, this is not how we as Animal Control want to be portrayed. So don’t just tell the world what you do, tell who you are.
- When things to wrong, social media can be your best defense. Don’t ignore what happened. Don’t deny it. DO NOT lie about it. If you did it, Admit it. And then explain what happened and what steps are being taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again! Calm, professional reasoning takes the wind out of a blow-hards sails. Don’t stop telling your story when something bad happens.
- The animal sheltering industry as whole is working to improve the public’s perceptions of shelters. Battling public perception by taking the mystery out of it all is a great use of social media.
- We’re not scary. Are you scary?
- Read slide. Why? Because they’re unsure what they will see, and people are afraid of what they are unsure of. The “fear of the unknown. Its Often much more scary than the reality but they don’t know that – unless you show them.
- Ok, now for
- Questions?