Animal Welfare Professionals

What is your organization's policy about responding on social media?

Do you attempt to reply to all tags on posts? Do you reply to all messages or do you let the autoreply suffice? 

We have done our best to reply to all tags and messages, but as our social channels grow, we worry it is becoming unsustainable and a poor use of time. 

#MarketingandSocialMedia

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Shelby- RPM
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We do try to respond during business hours as best we can.  As consumers grow more accustomed to interacting with businesses in this manner to solve their problems or answer questions, we feel it's a brand imperative to respond. We try to communicate in as fast, efficient, and productive manner as possible, but it isn't always instantaneous since we don't have someone dedicated to social media as their only task.

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Gina Hays
Chief Development Officer
Humane Society of Indianapolis (dba IndyHumane)
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We're small, but we try to make sure and respond to any activity or interaction on social media. It may only be a like for the comment or tag, it doesn't have to be an actual message of "thanks", but we try to at least acknowledge it so that people know that we are aware. Any actual DM's sent our way we personally handle even after an automatic message has been sent first.  While it may seem a poor use of time, it only takes one disgruntled person to ruin all of the hard work you have created and one person liking your organization to take it to a different level. I don't think you want your customers, clients, or anyone to feel like you don't appreciate them spreading your word. That's why we use social media, to spread our word.  If you are feeling over taxed, you may think of only looking over social media once or twice a day, don't check it all day long,  and let people understand it may take you some time to reply. Although we have only one person mainly looking at what is going on on our social media outlets, we have several attached and able to answer dm's and comments if that one person is unavailable. Hope this helps. 

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Nicole McGeeney
Office Assistant
Pet Care Coalition
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As Nicole said, we try to set aside 3x a day (beginning-middle-end) to check social media. We try to reply to DM's as quickly as possible, and folks do appreciate the quick reply. More often than not, we're redirecting folks to reach out to our pet adoption center or equine center for the best assistance and our auto-reply provides an answer to most questions or contact info during off hours. We see it as an investment and try to segment our days to set aside time to grow our following by responding accordingly and maintaining our relationships with followers/interacting with other accounts.

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bonnie hiliadis
Development & Communications Coordinator
North Country Animal League
Morrisville VT
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