5 Social Media Tips to Promote Animals for Shelters or Rescues

Many shelters and rescues consider social media invaluable for finding homes for the animals in their care. These tips will help you develop a strategic social media plan for campaigns like National Adoption Weekend, Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, Adopt a Horse Month—and any time of the year.

1. Use Videos

Videos continue to make excellent content for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, so grab your phones and start filming! What better way to show a dog’s personality than by featuring videos of them in a variety of environments outside of the shelter? Consider taking videos of dogs trying a new treat or toy for the first time, cats learning to ring a bell, or horses working with a trainer. Whatever you choose, have fun and get creative!

Consult this easy guide for tips on recording and gathering compelling content using phones and tablets.

2. Engage with Instagram Stories

Keep your audience engaged through fun and compelling Instagram stories promoting adoptable animals, upcoming events, and other compelling visual updates from your shelter or rescue. You can also take your stories to the next level by using any of the various sticker options below:

• Add a hashtag to increase visibility
• Add a donate sticker to your stories to raise donations
• Add a location or create a countdown for an upcoming adoption event
• Create a poll to engage with your followers
• Animate a photo or video with a GIF
• Share your Instagram stories to Facebook for added visibility
• Use the questions feature to allow people to inquire about specific adoptables

Want to get even more animals adopted? Host a virtual adoption event using Instagram Stories!

3. Maximize Facebook Tools

Facebook has many features, so make sure you’re taking advantage of them!

Hosting a special adoption promotion or in-person event? Consider creating a Facebook event to help drive traffic straight to your shelter or rescue. With a Facebook event, people can RSVP or express interest in attending, and they’ll receive reminders, so they won’t forget. You can also see metrics by looking at your Facebook Insights and clicking in “Events.”

Once the event is created, you can increase your reach by creating a Facebook ad campaign using the event itself and setting the objective as “event response.”

You can try putting a small advertising budget behind this campaign and target pet lovers in your community. Check out this free recorded webinar for more tips on creating paid social media ads, led by advertising experts at Facebook.

4. Try TikTok

There has been a lot of buzz around TikTok, and now is your chance to try it! Use the platform to create short, captivating videos to raise awareness, speak to your fans, and reach a new untapped audience. Here are our top tips for using TikTok:

• Most TikTok videos are made to music, and you can leverage snippets of popular songs to showcase your animals
• Record vertical videos of adorable animals up to 15 seconds in length and then find a relevant song and add it to the video
• Humor is a major draw on TikTok, especially when what’s happening in the video correlates with the song
• Don’t forget to use relevant hashtags to increase visibility

Here are more reasons to join TikTok.

5. Employ Hashtags

Use popular hashtags on Instagram and Twitter like #DogsOfInstagram, #TongueOutTuesday, #ShelterDog, #PitbullsofInstagram, #FosterDog and #DogOfTheDay to increase your reach.