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Adolfo Carrillo

9/28/17

WRIT 3315

Professor French

Increasing the Public Exposure of the League City Animal Shelter

The League City Animal Shelter is local animal shelter taking up the task of giving as

many abandoned and stray dogs and cats a new and hopefully permanent home. Of course, a

person must hear of the adoption shelter before they are able to even decide if they would like to

bring an animal home with them. Because of this, public visibility and promotion is very

important to the League City Animal Shelter and its mission statement. Though the shelter has

some advertisement, it could be significantly enhanced through a multitude of ways such as, but

not limited to, a greater social media presence.

The League City Animal Shelter is a non-profit organization, obviously, located in

League City, Texas and has been rescuing animals as well as housing and caring for them since

1998 (League City Pets Alive, 2017).

The shelter already maintains a facebook page that displays essential information and

special events, but it could be improved upon as well as benefit from supplemental social media

connections. The page frequently advertises specials like Tabby Tuesday, that offer visitors

significant discounts on adoption fees on specific animals/ breeds. Events like these give a clear

incentive for people who already follow the facebook page to come in and possibly adopt an
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animal, be it their first time adopting or not. While reduced pricing may push an undecided or

aspiring pet owner over the fence and give a push to actually adopt, said potential owner must

already be aware of the shelters facebook page. This is a problematic notion in the sense of

public outreach and visibility.

Public visibility could be increased by the creation of additional social media pages on

different social media platforms.Though neither instagram nor twitter matches the giant user

base of facebook, the platforms could do a lot for the League City Animal Shelters exposure.

Instagram is a photo sharing based social media platform that has a plethora of animal photo

based pages with massive followings, some pages with as many as 370,000 followers (Famous

Animal, 2017). As the shelter has no shortage of photogenic animals, it is reasonable to assume it

could gather a healthy following instagram. Though the hypothetical League City Animal Shelter

instagram account probably would not break the record for followers, a modest local following

could expose a different demographic to the shelter.

Twitter does not have the same audience when it comes to animal photos, but is

useful in a different manner. As a social media platform based around short text postings and

hashtags, twitter excels in public account to account interaction. These twitter interactions

between the shelter and visitor/ new pet owner are shown on the post feed of anyone following

the shelter already, as well as those who just follow the person interacting with the shelter, which

could lead to said follower to discover the League City Animal shelter and maybe even adopt or

volunteer. In fact, it is agreed among social media marketing experts that this interaction with the

public is critical in maximizing visibility via social media, especially for small businesses

(Newswire, 2015).
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Social media is a great way to gain exposure for the shelter, but it is not the only way.

Word of mouth is a tried and true mode of public exposure. When studying the effectiveness of

social media marketing pertaining to banking, one researcher found that word of mouth was

more effective than both social media advertisements as well as traditional advertising methods

(Vejacka, 2017). Though the animal shelter is clearly not a bank, it can be assumed that word of

mouth is still a considerably effective way to get people to hear about the League City Animal

Shelter. For this reason, the addition of a sort of referral based special could be great way to

bring new people into the shelter. For example, there could be a special that reduced the price of

an adoption of animal if the visitor is referred by a friend who has already adopted from the

League City Animal Shelter. Whether or not the special is taken advantage of, it is likely that

someone adopting from the shelter would mention it to his/her friends and associates, who then

might even go on to relay the message to others, bouncing the word around town.

The League City Animal Shelter is saving stray and homeless animals from being put

down by finding those animals homes. This noble task is largely limited by the the adoption rate,

which is helped by public visibility and advertisement. Though the shelter already has a level of

social media outreach, it could, and should, be greatly improved upon by expanding across other

social media platforms in order to reach out to a greater demographic of people, thereby

increasing the amount of adopted pets, and consequently reducing the number of homeless and

stray pets on the streets.

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References

Famous Animals (and an Animal Lover!) of Instagram. (2017). People, 87(27), 85.

League City Pets Alive. (2017, September 27) About.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/leaguecityanimalshelter/about/?ref=page_internal

PR, Newswire. (2015, May 13). Three Ways Small Businesses Can Engage in Twitter Marketing

More Effectively. PR Newswire US.

Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. R., & Fowdar, S. (2013). The Implications of Facebook Marketing for

Organizations. Contemporary Management Research, 9(1), 73-83. doi:10.7903/cmr.9710

Vejaka, M. (2017). SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN COMPARISON WITH OTHER

FORMS OF MARKETING IN THE SLOVAK BANKING SECTOR. Trziste / Market,

29(1), 23-38. doi:10.22598/mt/2017.29.1.23