Congratulations to Muttville Senior Dog Rescue for their overwhelming victories in BayWoof’s “Beast of the Bay 2011″ Awards! Voted Best Rescue Group and Best Canine Cause, Muttville has the special honor of winning both these awards two years in a row. This year, they won both categories by a whopping 46% and 40%, while 2nd place winners trailed at around 28%.
Social media and networking amongst their passionate volunteers surely played a significant role. Muttville does not necessarily stand out in their statistics for followers in comparison to Bad Rap, Wonder Dog Rescue, or Grateful Dog Rescue. Bad Rap has over 44,000 “Likes” for their Facebook page in comparison to Muttville’s 2200 “Likes”. Where Muttville does relevantly stand out in the world of online marketing is the quality and consistency in their messages.
On the surface, it might have appeared to be a challenge to implement a social media strategy system that would be executed solely by volunteers. In these last two years that Switchblade has been overseeing Muttville’s marketing strategy, it actually has made it easier. While volunteer staff may revolve and donated hours can be sporadic, having a consistent system in place with schedules and categorized messaging for blogs, posts, and tweets keeps activity flowing, where volunteers can contribute to a grid of opportunities.
We recently reported Muttville’s achievements in surpassing 1000 Twitter followers, 2000 Facebook followers and quickly approaching a remarkable 1000 dogs rescued. Muttville also averages over 2000 unique visitors to their website per week with over 10,000 weekly page views. The actual numbers aren’t a big deal, but the statistics in achieving these numbers is what makes a difference. Muttville is by far the youngest organization amongst their fellow nominees. Founded in 2007, Muttville has barely reached four years old this past February. Bad Rap and Grateful Dog have been rescuing dogs for over 10 years and 20 years respectively. Where youth may have played an interesting role in Muttville’s fast-growing achievements is in the foresight of Founder and Executive Director Sherri Franklin to realize the importance of embracing online marketing and educate herself in social media practices by attending seminars and contributing to the marketing activities.
Aside from all the social media and marketing statistics, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue holds a unique niche in the dog rescue community: Saving senior dogs! This worthy cause has become popular and recognized in the Bay Area substantiated by their “Best Canine Cause” Award. “I heard that we are the trendy and cool group to join,” said Muttville volunteer and publicist Patty Stanton. “We’re proud to share our good fortunes, like when we won a car on the ‘Oprah Winfrey’ show or when Gogol Bordello donated a show to us at Slim’s.”
At the heart of it all is, in fact, heart. Switchblade included, supporters and volunteers all do their part for Muttville because of passion, dedication, and just plain ol’ love for the old dogs. Thanks Muttville. And congrats!!
