Social media is a powerful tool for rescue organisations, and used effectively it can make a real difference to cats and dogs in need. Facebook and Twitter posts allow shelters to share photos and news of adoptable pets and reach a worldwide audience.
There are numerous stories of cats and dogs that are successfully rescued and are lucky enough to find foster homes, or be adopted by a wonderful family. In some instances though, social media posts can create online chaos or have a negative effect.
Dramatic posts can turn people away
We’ve all seen the photo of the sad looking cat or dog accompanied by a dramatic headline with words like ‘at risk’, ‘urgent’ ‘will be killed’ ‘due to be euthanised tomorrow’ followed by many exclamation marks. It’s confronting and rightly so. These are tragic situations and are designed to get your attention.
However, whilst these types of posts will have the desired effect of encouraging some people to share the post and advocate on behalf of the ‘at risk’ cat or dog, sometimes they can have the opposite effect.
For some people, constantly seeing these posts in their newsfeed can be confronting and overwhelming and may contribute to a feeling of hopelessness. More often than not, these people will respond by clicking the ‘unfollow’ or ‘unfriend’ button or by hiding your updates.
If you work or volunteer for an animal shelter, please consider the impact of what you post as well as what you are hoping to achieve. For the benefit of all the animals out there, we’d like to suggest that you create a balanced social media feed. By all means continue to advocate for ‘at risk’ animals but balance this by posting some of your positive news stories too.
Be smart when sharing social media posts
If you advocate on behalf of animals in need, you’re probably active on social media and share posts from rescue organisations on a regular basis. This is fantastic and can be a real help, but be smart in your approach.
- Always include the original post so that your followers can quickly find the information source. This should include relevant details such as such as the location and postcode of the cat or dog in need, the animal’s identification number, and the best way to get in touch with the shelter.
- Understand your audience location and share appropriately for maximum impact. If 95% of your social media following is based in your local neighbourhood; focus on sharing the posts of animal shelters nearby. If your following is more widespread across the United States, then you can share posts from a broader geography.
Sometimes the best way to help is to keep quiet
Social media posts with dramatic headlines are designed to tug at your heart-strings – that’s the whole point. The flipside is that sometimes these posts lead to public outcry and shelters are overwhelmed by calls from people who are concerned about the cat or dog on ‘death row’, even though they aren’t in a position to offer practical help.
Animal shelters are typically under-staffed and run on a limited budget. When you phone them about a cat or dog at risk, there are probably 50 more people doing the exact same thing. If shelter employees are busy answering a constantly ringing phone, they’re not looking after the animals in their care. Despite your best intentions, you may in fact be creating more work for the shelter and preventing people who actually can help from getting though on the phone.
When you see a dramatic social media post about an animal in need do you comment? If you do, is it because you are in a position to rescue, foster or adopt? Maybe you can offer transport somewhere? Or are you just commenting for the sake of having a voice . . .
How many times have you seen comments such as: “I wish I could help BUT. . . I already have three dogs, OR I live too far away OR my boyfriend is allergic to cats.” It’s nice that you care (it really is), but if you can’t help, all you are doing is cluttering up a social media feed with your comments and making it harder for shelter employees to identify those people who can actually help rescue this particular cat or dog.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is to keep quiet and refrain from saying anything. Instead, please share the post and ask your friends to do the same.
How you can help pets in need
If you’re not in a position to rescue, foster or adopt, there are many other ways you can help your local shelter, such as volunteering your time or making a donation.
This blog post is part of the quarterly campaign for Be the Change for Animals – advocating to make the world a better place for all animals.
A terrific post guys, thanks so much fur sharing! We share as many posts as possible on all our social media to help pets in need, but as mew rightly said, those ‘high-kill/desperate’ posts are very upsetting, it really does affect us in a negative way as we do our best to help, but we can imagine that most of the desperate animals we share end up murdered fur want of a better wurd. Sadly the wurld is far from purrfect and there will always be unwanted pets, thrown away aftur the novelty has worn off and that’s because today we live in a throw away society where nothing is precious fur the long term anymore, it’s just easier to go get a newer ‘model’ – sad but true.
Thank you so much for this important and well-written post. Those dramatic, urgent type posts upset me so much that I have trouble sleeping. So I tend to unfollow people who post them.
Great post! When I joined the blogosphere, I was quickly overwhelmed with all the appeals … it literally broke my heart each time. But I couldn’t really tear myself away either … because the dramatic appeals are real for the cat. By ignoring it for my own comfort, I felt guilty because the cat can’t do the same. And I think to some extent, we become de-sensitized at a certain point and that certainly can’t be good either … the alternative is crying and being upset with each appeal and the feeling of helplessness from miles and states away. I don’t have the answer … it’s something I still struggle with. People need to be aware of the reality of the outrageous number of animals euthanized every single day because there’s not enough room … but I have no idea the best way to make that happen.
What a great topic. We have also blogged on this and it is so important. A big turn off for so many folks is to see the desperate pleas late at night. I know that many people ignore them or unfollow. So these tips are spot on. Tweeting now, too.
Great food for thought as I was sharing quite a few things that caught my attention and maybe not all my shares helped. I will be a little more thoughtful going forward I think. I do our series “Rescues Rock” and feature successful rescue dogs and their stories to inspire people to consider adopting (and a few cats and other animals). I adopted Kilo, my business partner Nina adopted Rocky and Aria who films and edits adopted Beau so I think it is working. I also donate to a few local rescues and feature their organizations and promote their fundraisers. I occasionally do anti-puppy mill or anti dog meat trade stories but try to show what we can do to help and successful survivors. I do think it is amazing the difference great photos and social media can make for a dog or cat waiting to be adopted. Seth Casteel and Sadie/Sarah and many others have really helped a lot of pets.
I tend to unfollow posts that share these photos. I know there is a need, but I don’t need to see this information. I’m seriously thinking about volunteering after I retire in a few months.
Those photos make our Mom cry. And the TV commercials are even worse. When Mom comments she offers to donate for the animals rescue and care.
We never look at those aweful” photos and even remove those who post them. That being said, we’ve had lots of success in sharing and posting about pets in need.
Good ideas here but I would content that sharing cats on the NYC ACC kill list does get them adopted. I have pledged and saved over a dozen cats. I work with Place for Cats and they use the NYC lists to sort out cat to pull. What I REALLY really hate that one site PetHero or something (?). It that reports contentious and emotional issues for animals and gives NO information AT ALL about relevant fundraisers, rescue web sites or people who originally reported them. It is purely for hits with no way for people to help the animals at all. None. I kept seeing their posts and began to tell people not to share them as it was gratuitous emotionally damaging reportage of the worst kind. People stopped sharing their content.
Great tips. It can be overwhelming when you are in the pet business and people are always tagging you to share and help. Thanks for these ideas.
I also avoid sharing or reading posts with super disturbing graphic images – I do work for a local animal organization and we share positive stories and success stories. You make great points in your post and I hope a lot of shelters read this – I’ll Tweet. I want to feel hopeful and want others to feel this way about the animals we have for adoption.
It really hurts me to see the dramatic “kill list” postings. I know that people are trying to help, but it does lead to a hopeless feeling. There is only so much you can do responsibly. Sometimes those listings make me feel like these animals are going to die because I’m not capable of doing more. I live in apartment complex that caps the number of pets I can have and I barely live paycheck to paycheck. I know that isn’t terribly rational and I shouldn’t blame myself, but that is the impact the kill list posts have on me. I am far more likely to share an image or a message that makes me feel hopeful. I love the well-composed images of happy pets that are playing. These make me feel more like I’m not burdening other people with the same guilt ridden feelings that I have (in regards to kill list postings) when sharing them.
Great post and that is why on my page I never post the graphic posts on my page, I feel sharing should be done yes as it is a great way of saving animals, but the graphic hysterical posts put pressure on people who cannot help
I’m sharing this post! I love your phrase “commenting for the sake of having a voice.” I guess that if you comment on FB, your friends can see that you commented, and perhaps one of them will do something that helps the animal.
What a great post! I agree – one can only take so much of those urgent posts. And sharing locally makes so much sense to get the post in front of the right set of eyes.
I share local pets occasionally but most of my audience isn’t local so I don’t know if it does much good. I try to help by donating goods or volunteering time.
You are SO right!! I do not respond to those URGENT, or TO BE PUT TO DEATH posts. They are a personal affront and I don’t trust them at all. Most of the general public isn’t even privy to that detailed information from shelters. I have unfollowed Twitter accounts that constantly post those messages, I feel like it’s true purpose is to incite anger and public outcry against shelters, which helps No One, not even the animals. It turns people away from those shelters, which turns them away from the animals who need help the most. I am always happy to share thoughtful posts about adoptable animals in need of a loving home, and I encourage my readers to do the same. Great point about not bombarding shelters with phone calls or cluttering up their social media feeds!
This is incredibly valuable information. I completely agree about the negative images and why it’s important not to bog down the phone lines.
There are a couple of rescues who are extremely clever in what type of videos they post. I don’t really blame people for not wanting to keep seeing all the poor suffering animals all the time. It’s very upsetting and it can just be too much. Choosing positive way is much more likely to be watched and shared.
Great advice. It’s always hard to see those Facebook posts of the cats or dogs that are on the kill list. I really enjoyed an adoption promo video I saw online recently that a rescue made to encourage adoption – it was light-hearted and hilarious. Much more positive than those ASPCA videos. THAT’S the kind of posts I want to see and share.
I share pets in need but avoid any shocking or upsetting posts. Great tips.
These are such great points. I am not in a position to adopt a second dog at the moment (but how I wish I were!), so I donate my time and money when I can. The point that calling the shelter about a pet on the kill list is a GREAT point — you don’t want to clog up their phone lines and block a potential adopt from getting the information he or she needs.
I can so relate, I see these posts on my feed every day but I’m currently in no position to help. I always want to say, “Oh, I wish I could, but…” but I know that doesn’t help! I can see why dramatic posts don’t help, people even may wonder what’s wrong with an animal so much that they’re about to be put down – or the issue may seem to grave to even try to help.
So much of this is common sense… but when animals need help, sometimes common sense goes out the window (just when it’s needed most).
Excellent post. Those posts make me so sad. I usually avoid Facebook at night because I know there will be a lot of them for NYC’s Animal Control and I can’t help. The one time I did offer to donate , not enough funds were raised so the poor kitty didn’t make it.
I had to stop following that page because I would cry every night. I’m so grateful Lola got out of there! Our city’s shelter system needs so much reform it’s not funny.