71% of people check their smartphones within 10 minutes of waking up. Whether it is just to check the time, critical emails or messages received, or catch up on news and other important information, social media has become an integral part of people’s lives. Knowing this allows public service agencies to leverage its power to reach the communities they serve that would otherwise be unaware or completely disconnected from the work that they do. This webinar zeroes in on online reputation management (ORM), particularly for animal care and control organizations.

This session’s instructor is Angelina Martin. She is the owner of Online Media Solutions, a media agency that helps provide social media solutions and education for animal shelters. Angelina previously worked with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and other animal welfare agencies.

Specifics of the webinar include:

• Why ORM is crucial in terms of enhancing the community’s and stakeholder’s support to an agency and protecting the shelter’s reputation.
• A glimpse into the world’s use of social media which highlights the importance of leveraging this channel to reach and engage with the community.
• The full-time responsibility that is required in social media management.
• The concept of social media marketing psychology and neuromarketing where social media listening is utilized to better engage with your community, predict how they may respond, and gain insight into their motivation.
• How neuromarketing leverages a holistic approach to create reciprocity, social proof, and emotional value with your audience/community.
• The idea of social listening which emphasizes the two-way street in communication where you don’t just post content but join existing online conversations.
• The value of social listening when planning your content and scheduling posts to ensure that you elicit the expected positive response from your community and not arouse negative ones due to “bad timing”.
• The importance of posting consistently and the recipe that transforms consistency into familiarity, which then leads to confidence, and ultimately, creates trust.
• The benefit of branding in creating consistency, familiarity, confidence, and trust with the people who consume your content.
• Integrating branding into shareable graphics and how this can increase engagement.
• How comments and responding to comments is an influential aspect of online reputation management.
• Guidelines to safeguard that your words won’t be used against you and that your communication is efficient and clear.
• How Ensuring consistency in communication through standardizing language and responses and providing solutions limits liability.
• The importance of responding promptly to comments and when it is best not to respond at all.
• Ways to improve your page’s comments section by posting with a purpose and utilizing frequently asked questions as content prompts.
• The value in establishing a crisis communication plan that incorporates marketing psychology, takes a de-escalation approach, uses standard language, and ensures timeliness.
• Examples were provided to demonstrate:
  • The value of a dedicated social media person in achieving the organization’s goals and purpose and the tasks involved in the role.
  • How neuromarketing and social media marketing psychology created improved outcomes for shelters in terms of adoptions and return to owner rates.
  • How big companies sabotaged their sales and lost their customers’ trust by rebranding.
  • The different tools/platforms to utilize for social media scheduling and graphics creation.
  • How agencies handled comments in their social media and ways to improve this.
  • Activating crisis communication in incidents that attract public attention and how to manage these successfully.

Questions from the webinar participants are about:

• Managing disinformation in your agency’s social media page.
• Whether to jump into the conversation or just let supporters and advocates defend your agency.
• Adopting black cats during Halloween.
• Rebuilding lost trust within your agency.
• Reframing the conversation and pointing people to resources that they’re interested in.
• The best social media platforms to utilize in at the moment.

Other Webinars with this Speaker:

• Jan18: Intro to Social Media Marketing for Animal Shelters
• April 7:  Social Media & Disaster-Related Events for Animal Shelters 
• Aug 11: Social Listening for Social Content for Animal Shelters 
• Nov 1: Online Reputation Management for Animal Shelters (this webinar)
• Feb 7: Social Media Marketing Strategies for Animal Shelters

Click here to view and register for other upcoming Animal Welfare webinars on the JCH Platform or

Here to view and register for other upcoming PIO, Social Media and Communications webinars.

Resources and Handouts

• Handout: Online Reputation Management Worksheet
• Link: Canva for Non-Profits

Audience Comments

• “This was an amazing webinar!!” — Alison
• “Focusing posts more on storytelling to spread education instead of simply sharing facts and stats. I also enjoyed learning how to properly respond to comments, especially in crisis situations.” — Delaney
• “I was happy to have my suspicion confirmed that personal stories like adoption follow-ups and RTOs receive more engagement than statistics. I have lots of ideas on how we can build more trust with our community by sharing these stories more often.” — Haley
• “Angelina was great!” — Juli
• “All of it was very helpful!” — Marissa
• “Excellent information.” — Robert
• “Crisis Communication is the best thing for our shelter that was covered today. We are in the midst of new(ish) management that has started paying attention to what the employees are doing and this caused some problem-employees to leave. Now they want to spread lies and half-truths and try to make the shelter look bad. Having the information shared today gives me the tools to address this without causing a war or having to point fingers and lay blame on someone else. I believe that only hurts the animals.” — Shari

The National Animal Care & Control Association (NACA) was formed in 1978 for the express purpose of assisting its members to perform their duties in a professional manner. We believe only carefully selected and properly trained animal control personnel can correct community problems resulting from irresponsible animal ownership. NACA’s purpose is to preserve the Human/Animal Bond by insisting on responsible animal ownership.