Nemo has come into my life. He’s a black lab mix with a white chest and he’s super smart. We’ve been thinking about getting a dog since Ad 2 Orlando worked with Pet Rescue By Judy last year for our public service campaign. We visited her facilities and came up with a new ad campaign for them. While we were able to do bigger things for her, like billboards, TV ads, and posters, not all rescues have the funds to spread the word. This is where social media can come in.
Best Friend’s Animal Society used different social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Meetup, and will be working with FourSquare for their Invisible Dog campaign. Their call to action is to get people to pledge anything (money or time) in order to help the public shelters around the country.
Nemo came from A New Beginning Pet Care & Rescue, Inc. They’ve become a part of the community by having dedicated spaces in local Pet Smarts. Their web site is a splash page that drives to the Petfinder site, which is a great place to have the dog and cats catalogued. But my recommendation would to also have a Facebook page dedicated to the rescue where they could build a community of people who have adopted and are fostering with them in order to push events or needs to that community through their newsfeeds. If you look at PRBJ’s wall, they posted recently that their phone system broke and they needed a new one. The community was quick to help.
Not all social outlets are necessary in order to do well socially. Start out small, with just one that will help you with communication and slowly work others into the mix as you figure out how they’ll help you with your goals. As with paid advertising, don’t use all media outlets just because they’re there. Use the ones that help target your audience and communicate your message efficiently and effectively.
Patti is still learning 
This is great to know that we can actually use social media like this and not just for people to explain their life stories. I feel like so many people use Facebook and Twitter just to stay connected and stay with people, which don’t get me wrong is great. I do feel, however, that if we can start to use social media for other things then it will just benefit us that much more. Being able to find a family pet through Facebook or Twitter is awesome and I think if you could prevent certain issues then so many more people would do this. I feel that there could be issues with this, however, because just like everything you are using the internet. This may mean that it is not the most trustworthy source and you may not be able to completely trust the family pet that you want to get. Just like you have explained, these companies can start off slow and get some quick purchases and then move on from there. After taking this social media class and learning all the inside outs about it I can defintely say that this will be something that will start to get more users in the next few years. Social media tools are going to continue to expand we just have to give them time to do so.
Thanks for taking the time to add to my thoughts. I noticed you were a student. What kind of things do you learn in a social media class? I look at resumes all of the time and students are starting to put “Experience with Facebook, Twitter,” ect. and I interpret that they just have a page. Mentioning that it was from a class might give them more brownie points with me.