Social media can be a powerful tool to promote your animal shelter’s or rescue group’s adoptable pets, attract volunteers for your organization, and connect with your community. You already know that it’s essential to feature scroll-stopping images in your posts. But once you’ve got your followers’ attention, you’ll want them to actually read your posts and take the desired action – such as visiting your shelter, applying to adopt a pet from your rescue, or donating to your organization. How can you achieve this? By writing compelling copy. Let’s get started with some simple tips and ideas.

Keep Your Copy Short

There’s so much content out there competing for people’s attention. And attention spans are short. So, if you’re lucky enough to have created a post that got someone to stop scrolling, you’ll want to keep their attention on that post with concise copy that piques their interest right away.

If you do write a long post, keep in mind that the copy beyond a certain character count may be truncated and that people will need to click on a link, such as “read more” or “see more,” to reveal the whole post.  This means you need to make the first part of your post – the part that shows up before being truncated – interesting enough for people to want to click on the link to read more.

Make Your Writing Skimmable

No one likes reading long blocks of text.

So, your social media posts should be easy to skim, allowing people to quickly identify what your posts are about and find important information.

Think about how you’re reading this blog post. Did you skim the headings to determine if this post has the information you’re looking for or to determine which section may be most helpful to you? Did you read this post from top to bottom? Or did you start with the section that interested you the most?

Here are a few techniques to make your posts easily skimmable:

• Create bulleted or numbered lists
• Break content up into short paragraphs or sentences
• Insert emojis or symbols to draw attention to keywords or important details
• Use white space to separate paragraphs or highlight key phrases
• Write selected words in all capital letters for emphasis

Although it is generally discouraged to write in all capital letters, I find it OK to use this technique – sparingly – as a way to emphasize a few selected words in a text.

Keep Your Posts Simple

Your posts should be easily digestible and easy to understand for your followers. Don’t stuff your posts with too much information and don’t create overly complex content. Focus on one topic instead and write about it in plain, concise language.

Include a Call-to-Action

What are you hoping to achieve with your social media post? Do you want people to comment on your post? To click on a link? To fill out a form? To submit an adoption application? To subscribe to your organization’s newsletter? To browse adoptable pets? To become a foster care provider for your rescue? To donate toward your shelter’s campaign? Tell them!

Tell your readers what action you want them to take by including a call-to-action in your posts, and then make it easy for them to do what you’re asking. If you want them to fill out a form or application, include a link that takes them directly to that form or application. If you want them to look at adoptable pets, link to the page that showcases those pets. Don’t omit the link or just link to your website’s homepage – people likely won’t want to spend time looking for information.

From fairly basic to highly creative, there are so many possibilities for a call-to-action.

Here are some general, easily customizable call-to-action ideas to inspire you:

• Adopt now
• Browse our adoptable pets
• Donate today
• Apply now
• Visit our adoptable dogs and cats
• Check out our website
• Read the article
• Foster now
• Share your adoption stories with us
• Check out our available dogs
• View all cats
• Subscribe now
• Come say hi at our adoption event
• Volunteer now
• Tell us what you think
• Take the survey
• Donate now
• Learn more
• Send us a message
• Download now
• Make an appointment
• Comment below
• Join our rescue group
• Post your dogs’ photos in the comments
• Become a volunteer
• Fill out the form
• Sign up now
• Contact us
• Join our volunteer team
• Come by the shelter
• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Check out our wish list
• Watch the video
• Get involved
• Donate items from our wish list
• Read our blog post
• Send us an email
• Call today
• Join us
• Message us

Encourage Conversation by Asking Questions

Including questions in your social media posts can help start a conversation with your followers and, in the process, boost engagement (yay!).

The kind of questions you may want to ask will depend on the nature of your posts.

For a just-for-fun post, for example, you could ask your followers if they are “Team Cat or Team Dog” or if they are “Team Floppy Ears or Team Pointy Ears.”

For more serious posts, you could ask your followers for their feedback about a recent event or for their input regarding an idea you have for your next fundraising campaign. You could also ask followers if their dogs are on heartworm prevention, if their pets are microchipped, or what, if any, challenges they faced when bringing home a new dog or cat. Your followers’ answers can help you identify topics for new social media posts and shape ideas for new educational campaigns.

Make Your Content Discoverable

Your social media content should be easy to find within each social media platform you’re using.

One way to achieve this is to use hashtags in your social media posts – either naturally within the text or after the text separated by a bit of white space. Don’t overuse them though – just use a few relevant hashtags that adequately describe what your posts are about. Also research your hashtags before including them in your posts to ensure they truly make sense for your topic and audience.

Another way to boost your content’s visibility within a particular social media platform is to optimize your posts with relevant keywords. The idea behind this is to get your posts to show up when people search for certain keywords on a given social media network.

Which other tips or ideas would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Content Creation Copywriting Marketing Social Media