Social Media Update

Well we’ve crept through two months of 2021 already and while COVID still stalks our plans we are faring just about better than anyone on the planet – even the weather has been relatively kind with the promises of many days in the mid to high thirties yet to appear. Going Places Seven months ago Dogs Queensland appointed a Social Media Officer to work part-time on a small stipend to manage our social media platforms.

This was done because of the increasing importance of social media as a communication and branding tool.

Organisations who chose to ignore it would do so at their peril.

Often it’s the worst side of social media that attracts attention be it the trolls and or the fake news or baseless conspiracy theories. Some people seem to lose their manners in the relative anonymity of the post.

But as a medium of communication and connection it is unsurpassed and its tsunami of popularity means it can’t be ignored but must be engaged enthusiastically and professionally. To underline the latter, we have employed the same social media protocols governing content that the state government uses.

After a round of interviews we selected Marylu Lloyd to take care of business. An enthusiastic dog lover and media professional with the Queensland Government’s Office of Industrial Relations and before that with the Queensland department of Justice. When she started at the end of June 2020 our Facebook and Instagram presence was dead, moribund.

Now we have over 8000 followers and our Instagram followers has doubled.

In all the key measurements there have been large increases, ‘impressions’ – the number of times that our content was displayed to social media users saw an increase of 33.6%, while ‘engagements’ – the amount of times that users engaged with our posts during the reporting period rose by 38.4% and ‘post link clicks’ – the number of times the posts were clicked on during the reporting period we up by 45.6%!

Achieving this takes work and involves creating and designing content, preparing the post, sourcing ideas, topics, video’s, sharing other organisations posts to DQ’s followers, monitoring posts, responses and other sites, promoting Dog World via social media to increase readership and responding to Dogs Queensland public page comments.

It also takes the enthusiastic assistance of our membership and Barbara Cumming our Publications Coordinator and Ian Rasmussen our Show and Trials Coordinator for advice, directions and contributions to our social media outreach.

Looking forward into 2021 we will be doing more to promote the Dogs Queensland website, our Dog Sports and COVID safe public participation in all our major dog shows across Queensland to grow both our positive brand and membership.

We have a number of video stories about some of our wonderful members that will soon be uploaded on our website and social media platforms.

All our members have to do to help us make our brand great is press that ‘like’ button and share our posts and contents, so go and communicate our story.

– David Margan, Communications Consultant