Today, August
17, 2010, I met a National Library Board officer at
the Toa Payoh Public Library. She does not like
cats personally. However she spoke to me about her
friend who pays money to caregivers to feed the
stray cats and had adopted 4 strays. "She is a
stray cat militant!" the single lady in her late
30s who loves to read Newsweek and Times magazine
told me.
"Actually, she is a stray cat activist
who cares very much about the welfare and
treatment of the stray cats in Singapore" I said.
I asked whether this friend is using social
networking to help find homes for stray cats. She
would find out.
How does social networking help rescue cats?
According to the writer Janiss Garza, these are
the ways:
1. Facebook, Blogs, Twitter and You-tube reach
more people than an ordinary website to raise
awareness, do fundraising for medical treatment
and food etc and find homes for the rescued cats.
2. Must update content and give follow-up of what
has happened to the cats.
3. facebook.com. Use "fan" pages and groups as an
additional help to the main website. It has many
applications to enhance experience of current and
potential supporters and volunteers. E.g. of a
facebook group is
http://co.siameserescue.org.
E.g
www.greatlakesbengalrescue.com received donations
and one adoption because one of the volunteers has
a blog and twitter account
4.1. Your blog to be a part of a sub domain of your own
website e.g.
www.blog.blackcatrescue.com instead of
using blogger.com or wordpress. Search engines
love blogs and blogs may drive more traffic to
your website
4.2 Connect with blogs for other rescues and
interact.
4.3 "Create a page" link in facebook to set up a
page on Facebook for your breed rescue that has no
website.
4.4 Facebook fan
pages are better than groups as they
inspire dialogue between the rescue and its fans.
The page's status updates will appear on the
Facebook newsfeed of any befriender.
4.5 Integrate all together the blog posts, twitter
blasts into your facebook page. For your blog, do a
search on facebook for "Blog RSS Feed Reader" to
find the application to enable this for your blog
and either the "Twitter" application or "selective
Twitter" application to add Tweets to your rescue
page. Add YouTube account for videos. Photos on
Flickr.com.
Use a flip video camera. cheap and easy to use.
5. All these aim to get more cats adopted.
Terms
1. In facebook.com, "The wall": Known as "newsfeed". Where updates
are posted.
3. Status update: Known as "What's on your mind".
4. Fan page: A regular facebook profile set up by
you.
5. Twitter: micro-blog
6. Tweet: a twitter post
7. Application or app: software to add to your facebook profile or page to make it more
interactive.
8. RSS feed: automatic syndication posting to you
blog or twitter, facebook or facebook fan page.
9. URL shorteners for long URL or link. e.g. it.ly
and tinyurl.
Article: Breed Rescue 2.0 by Janiss Garza
Cats USA 2101 Annual Volume 17
TOA
PAYOH VETS
