K Street Cafe

By Carie Lewis

Here at HSUS, our email file is largely skewed to older women. We’ve been in the social media space for 2+ years now, trying to broaden our audience. But we haven’t done much integration of our email file and website to our social media presence because of the fear that the demographic of the two don’t match.

So, when it was time for our annual Spay Day Online Pet Photo Contest, and there was the question of whether or not to invest money in an accompanying Facebook application, there were some skeptics.

Being the social media person at the organization, I was all for it. I knew that as long as the application took advantage of Facebook’s viral features, it would take off. In my mind, this meant:

1 – all functions had to stay within the Facebook platform (instead of taking you to the external site)

2 – the Facebook app had to be a mirror of the external site and not a separate entity

3 – there had to be some function to post a “box” to your profile to show off your pet

4 – there had to be some function to post a “story” to your newsfeed, both when you installed the app and when you entered your pet

Of course, that’s overly-simplified. It took a long time to get it to where it is now. But the time and money were both worth it, as it essentially paid for itself. (more…)