Maddie's Insights: Exploring Factors That Influence Public Engagement of Adoptable Pets on Social Media - OnDemand

Course overview

The use of social media platforms to advertise adoptable animals has increased throughout the years. The content of these posts (e.g., photos, videos, text) may increase post engagement (eg., likes and shares) and ultimately animal adoptions. Few studies have examined which characteristics of post content successfully increase engagement. This talk will give background information regarding the online promotion of adoptable animals and will focus on the results of our recent study that analyzed the Facebook posts of several rural animal shelters to determine whether certain types of content (e.g., style/features of photos and videos, subject/tone of text, type/sex of animal, etc.) influenced engagement. We also had the opportunity to compare differences between posts in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (post-pandemic). The results of this study suggest that the type of animal and the environment in which the animals were depicted can influence likes and shares of posts. It was also discovered that posts in 2019 received more likes, while posts in 2020 received more shares. Although the findings of this study support the use of social media to increase the engagement of posts depicting adoptable animals, more research is needed to determine how the content of posts directly influence adoption rates.