Animal Welfare Professionals

What are some creative ways your shelter, rescue or organization gets the word out about adoptable pets to your local community?

Live videos on Facebook! We've been seeing a ton of success with them lately. We spotlight dogs playing with other dogs, cats playing with toys while wearing silly costumes, and even animals just cuddling with staff and volunteers. Interacting with followers who are commenting or asking questions during the live video increases engagement and makes it that much better. We recently spotlighted a group of 3 (very different) dogs playing together, and all 3 were adopted within just a few days!

Such a great idea! A local cat rescue was looking for suggestions on how to promote their long-time cat fosters who don't show well at adoption events, I am sharing your Facebook Live video idea with them. Thank you!

Maybe a silly question--are there technical specs one needs before doing live videos on Facebook? I know how to do it (I think) but the camera on my phone is not very high quality, so I am worried about us looking unprofessional for that reason.  We do have a group iPad that I could use at adoption events to highlight the kitties there, which might be nice.  

I guess I could do a test run on my personal page and see what the quality is like.

Hi! Great idea to livestream pets from adoption events! Were you able to do a test run?  Here are specs about live streaming on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/help/1534561009906955?helpref=faq_content

People are very forgiving of video quality these days. As long as they can see and hear it, people will look beyond image quality. Animals have an uncanny ability for making us ignore smeary images!  

We ask our volunteers to take the dogs out on informal events such as a walk at a popular lake where people take their dogs, dog parks, stores that let dogs in, a walk around small town squares, pet friendly events.  The dogs wear shirts or bandanas saying "Adopt Me".  It has really helped get our larger and senior dogs adopted.

We also get our dogs entered in small town parades so they will be seen by the public.

We network with other rescues to get the word out.  We also created a # for Instagram.  For example all of our adoptable dogs are #PCSName (#PCSGilligan, #PCSRuby, #PCSHero), etc.  This allows people to follow individual stories.  We do live videos.  We offer our adopted and foster dogs a weekly playgroup.  This allows us to socialize our dogs and since we hold it at the local Pet Food Express, we are advocating for the bully breeds by letting them show how kind, silly, and amazing they are in large group settings. 

We have a screen on the green movie night one saturday a month. We have hot dogs sno cones chips and popcorn and show an outdoor family oriented pet movie  and you can bring your pet and enjoy a movie on the 10' movie screen if you dont have a dog you can get one out of the shelter and spend the evening with them