Filed under: animal rescue, Guest Posts | Tags: animal rescue, cats, companion animals, dogs, homeless animals, HSUS, shady, shadytales, TGTB, this good that bad
Our last post was a cry for help. A plea to end the 8 second cycle. It started like this:
“HSUS estimates that a cat or dog is put down in a shelter in the U.S. every 8 seconds. Do you think it is mere coincidence that marketing experts like SilverPop and Wikipedia alike report that the average continuous attention span for literate humans is also 8 seconds? (read entire post here)”
In the middle was a bunch of stuff about how we don’t want over 10,000 animals a day to die. And it ended sorta like this:
“…forget the animals for a moment and think like a business owner whose business is failing. You have a surplus and you need to move inventory or else your business is going to die.
What is the best (tried or untried) idea or advice you have to find more buyers?”
450 an hour. 10,000 a day.
Want to know what we came up with? We’ll tell you but not all at once, because that was idea #1.
Keep is Short, Socially. Social media is a boon to animal rescue. It makes sharing and spreading news fast and updates easy. Be sure to speak to your crowd there even when you do not have news though. They come to their PC for entertainment too, and it doesn’t take much. That is an ideal way to attract more people to your network.
Give them something to remind them about you and your cause very often and in small, entertaining doses. Questions of the day, cute status updates, caption this photo exercises, or trivia can work if not overdone. Talk more often, but not always at full length. Talk to them like it is person to person, not always just organization to large group.
End with a question whenever you can to give them a reason to interact and check back. “Has your dog ever done anything like this.” or “Who is braving the weather for a dog walk today?” Every post does not need a photo or a link. Let them know you enjoy their company and conversation, and schedule it regularly. Stockpile the cool, pithy filler stuff so you don’t lapse.
When it comes to blogging, shorter is always better. Break things into a series of several posts, always ending with a teaser of what is to come. Tighten sentences and paragraphs and drop unnecessary adjectives to make text look less time-consuming to a reader. We have been trying this here, even if it does not look it to you sometimes this is one where we really are trying…
Idea #2 gets down to the business of the MORE buyers thing, but still focuses on social media.
Make finding more followers/fans/friends to read your cool new pithy marketing stuff more of a priority. In the online world, followers in the 4 and 5 digit range is a lot smaller than it sounds. People come and go and their attention wanders.
Remember to ASK people often to share your page, retweet your tweet, share your post etc. Even your staunchest advocates may not think of this or remember it often enough. Somewhere in THEIR friend list is your next buyer…umm I mean adopter. Ask and you shall receive.
Ask them collectively every day, several times a day even, to do at least one thing. It may feel like overkill but most of us only check in once in a while so we only see it now and then. Flatter them, thank them and then ask them very specifically to help you recruit and tell them how (Please hit the “suggest to friends” button, please retweet, please forward this email to at least 5 people and so on)
If you are lucky enough to a person dedicated to your online presence, get a second person JUST to build the audience. These are 2 separate missions. Have them find similar Facebook Twitter accounts pages (or whatever you are doing online). Compose and send personal messages inviting people following them to follow you too. Learn the ins and outs of Facebook online events, Follow Fridays, PawPawties and hashtags and all the silliness that is out there to participate in.
This can be tough; you have to do this slowly so FB and Twitter won’t think you are a spam bot! Make the message personal enough so the reader knows you are not spamming either…”Hey I love the photo you posted on XYZ. Maybe you’d like to post to over with us too?”
Contests (with even the smallest prizes or other incentives like “we will name your pet dog of the day”), trivia questions, teasers and so on go a long way with a lot of people and will increase your visibility. Direct a few around building numbers: person who refers the most people to our site wins, person with the most followers to retweet our tweet gets naming rights on the newest batch of shelter kitties. People will do more than you think for very little incentive.
To sum up these two ideas I think it goes like this: for actual content, less will get you more. In terms of frequency more is what you need to get! That’s all for the social media ideas. So as not to violate these principles, we will save the rest of the ideas for another post next week. The rest of them are a little more “step away from the computer and get out there” types.
So please check back with us then. And if you know anyone shaking things up in the animal rescue world, ask them their secret and share it with us. If you don’t, help us find someone like that by hitting one of the share keys to share this post.
WOW- this less and more thing is delicate balance isn’t it? How do you think we did?
Note from Shady: This is a guest post by my people Mom. Mom already has a few ideas to share on this topic. Marketing is her “day job.” She would never pose questions like these without being willing to answer them herself and she will do just that as well as sharing the ideas you have sent. No suggestion is too run of the mill or too outlandish for this excercise…please send us your opinions.
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The pet lovers community is a kind and caring community. It is so important to let people know what’s going on. If you post it, they will share. One thing that is so important is to make it easy to share. Make sure to have was of sharing the information with one click. It’s also important to put “share” and “like” buttons where they are easy to find. The more clicks, the more cumbersome it becomes, the more people that you’ll lose on the way. We can all make a difference!
Comment by Rena June 10, 2011 @ 10:04 amExcellent point! It is why having one person just focused on that stuff, and another writing up the content can work really well. It is hard to do it all optimally.
Comment by Shady June 10, 2011 @ 10:08 am