Pet food communication tools: Social media management

Messaging across all social media networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, needs to be consistent.

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photo by Stokkete, Bigstock.com
photo by Stokkete, Bigstock.com

Especially during a recall or other crisis, managing multiple social media platforms can challenge pet food companies. Pet food and treat companies often have various public social media accounts, such as Twitter or Facebook, that may reach distinct groups of digitally connected pet owners. Yet messaging across all these social media networks needs to be consistent.

Marketing communications firm Woodruff offered advice on how pet food companies can juggle all their social media accounts while maintaining a uniform message.

Social media management tools for pet food companies

Social media management tools allow a pet food company to oversee all their accounts in one place. Woodruff recommends Sprout Social, Hootsuite or Sendible as tools for handling social media content and messaging.

“One of the biggest advantages of social media management tools is that they streamline all of your messages into one area where you can evaluate and prioritize,” said Brittany VanMaele, Woodruff’s social media manager, “Rather than trying to go natively into each platform, these tools pull it all into one feed. You can triage your responses.”

Having social media organized into one place allows pet food companies to note when one person is retweeting a company’s announcement of a recall, while viewing another pet owners’ related responses to a photo of the recalled product posted on Instagram, for example.

“From a public relations perspective, after Brittany [VanMaele] assesses a social media message, we can sit down and decide is this an isolated issue or if this is something that is more widespread and then watch if these messages increase,” said Janine Smiley, senior public relations strategist for Woodruff. "For a pet food company we may be working for, that means deciding if this is something that is going to be a systemic issue, or just a one-off.”

Pet food company crisis management series

When a recall, lawsuit or other crisis strikes, pet food companies can benefit from tools that help them organize, prioritize and evaluate the situation. Marketing communications firm Woodruff identified specific tools that a pet food company can use to help weather the storm, or even better, get an umbrella ready when clouds are on the horizon.

“These tools help a pet food company get on the path to recovery," said Smiley. “Having effective tools helps a company deal with a problem and quickly get back to business as usual.”

This article is the first in a series on communications tools that pet food companies can use for crisis management, as well as for maintaining an active social media presence.

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