CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders.

Hello Commissioners--

I write to you today about the new county level policy that instructs all Alachua County government social media to turn off the comment function. As someone who helps to manage the Alachua County Animal Services Facebook and Instagram pages, I urge you all to reconsider as this is a short-sighted and detrimental policy that will negatively impact adoption rates, customer service, and volunteer and staff morale.

First, comments are one very integral part of the Facebook "reach" algorithm<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/__;!!LGX2LR-tWgttPq0!TD_YnS1Nu0NmtgKpSHqiiEqoewL2zzfMRS-erisVS5QhcGFpOYC9YmQNf5aqltp-8zA$>. We often get various comments on posts--people tag their friends, comment questions about the adoptable pet in question, and volunteers add pictures, videos, or other good information about the pet.

In this blog post from Tinuiti<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tinuiti.com/blog/paid-social/facebook-algorithm/__;!!LGX2LR-tWgttPq0!TD_YnS1Nu0NmtgKpSHqiiEqoewL2zzfMRS-erisVS5QhcGFpOYC9YmQNf5aq_VaPlDc$>, they quote Mark Zuckerberg when explaining how the algorithm of reach works: "“The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. " Thus, with this new policy change that essentially limits interactions with posts by disabling comments, we can expect our ACAS posts to get less of a push on social media just simply by having fewer interactions/"meaningful engagements".

In this article<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://4legalleads.com/blog/pros-cons-of-disabling-social-media-comments/__;!!LGX2LR-tWgttPq0!TD_YnS1Nu0NmtgKpSHqiiEqoewL2zzfMRS-erisVS5QhcGFpOYC9YmQNf5aqMtTs4_c$> about the pros and cons of turning off comments, the negatives clearly outweigh the positive--ACAS social media does not post about controversial topics and our comments hold great value to our community--in essence, our volunteers and supporters enjoy being able to comment about our adoptable pets and share information and well-wishes. With this change, we will not be able to hear what our community wants to say about our adoptable pets--their encouragement or their joy when a pet gets adopted.

To help you understand what type of comments we get on posts,  I'm attaching screenshots from one of our most successful posts this week---Sam's Doggy Day Out. These comments are positive and encouraging, and Sam got adopted the very next day.

Other types of comments are customer service comments. As you all know, ACAS is understaffed and busy. Community members will often comment asking if the pet posted is still available or other information. By being able to answer these questions online, we decrease the phone calls and emails coming into ACAS and ultimately improve the customer service experience of community members by being able to answer their questions right away.

Volunteers play an important role in any organization, and at ACAS volunteers are key to gathering more information about the adoptable pets and relaying that information to the public. Volunteers routinely add more information--pics, comments, videos to comments and foster parents often are a key to answering questions when their foster pet is posted. Turning off comments will make these interactions impossible and ultimately cause more work for employees as they will be receiving more emails, phone calls, and then may have to communicate with fosters to get answers to the emails/phone calls. Also, there is some<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://blog.hootsuite.com/organic-reach-declining/__;!!LGX2LR-tWgttPq0!TD_YnS1Nu0NmtgKpSHqiiEqoewL2zzfMRS-erisVS5QhcGFpOYC9YmQNf5aqIg8Z65A$> research that suggests that consumers on Facebook find that comments from employees and volunteers are highly valued and trusted.

ACAS social media pages consistently show high interaction and are a medium where positive interactions and engagements are the norm. Another instance of this is our Happy Tails post--adopters will often post updates about their adopted pets and fosters, volunteers, staff, and community members deeply appreciate this. Without comments, adopters will have to email updates and that  rarely happens--especially as there's often a limit on how large picture attachments can be to the ACAS emails. We will miss out on updates from  adopters---and these updates boost morale among staff and volunteers.

Lastly, the inability to boost posts will have a vastly negative effect on the reach of our Facebook posts. Summer Lovin' is our largest adoption event of the year, in conjunction with UF vet students. This year, they had a Facebook ad budget and used our social media to promote and boost ads. I've attached one ad outcome, where paying only $50, the post reached over 9,000 additional people. We rely on these boosted posts and ads to help reach people on our social media platform to promote our events in a cost-effective way.

In sum, almost every article written by major social media marketing brands and strategists stress engagement. Without comments, there will be low engagement. With low engagement, our adoptable pets are being seen by fewer and fewer community members, negatively impacting their ability to get adopted.

I urge you to reconsider this new policy. I know of no other animal shelter that has turned off social media comments--in fact, in all animal welfare conferences there are usually at least 2 sessions that talk about the importance of social media for adoptions and advocacy.  I'd be happy to talk about this at greater length. A one-size fits all social media policy is not the right policy for the pets and community of Alachua County. We have worked hard to develop a community of animal lovers who regularly interact with our social media content and to end this now will be to the determinant of both the animals and community members of Alachua County.

Sincerely,
Amber Emanuel







########################################################################

Access the ANNA-PRIZZIA Home Page and Archives:
http://listserv.alachuacounty.us/scripts/wa.exe?A0=ANNA-PRIZZIA

Unsubscribe from the ANNA-PRIZZIA List:
http://listserv.alachuacounty.us/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=ANNA-PRIZZIA

########################################################################