Not all promotion happens before an adoption event. Some of your most effective publicity will happen during it — if your shelter or rescue group is doing it right, that is!

Here are five tips to keep you out of trouble, and the pets in luck!

1. Designate a single person to do live social coverage. The person in charge of live-posting the event to social media needs to be doing nothing else. He or she can’t also be counseling adopters, managing volunteers, walking dogs or scooping litter boxes. This is a full time task, and one that starts a few days ahead of time with some buzz-building on your social channels.

2. Photos and video are more important than words. One of the most important things that a dedicated social media person will be doing is taking photos and shooting video to share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other channels. These don’t have to be works of art; cell phone quality is fine. And remember, the Internet runs on pet photos, so take lots of good, clear close-ups of the faces of the pets looking for homes that day!

3. Respond to questions. Someone wants to know if that cute kitty gets along with other cats, or if that adorable dog is still available? Your dedicated social media person needs to check every social channel she or he is posting to, and answer all questions, including giving clear directions on how to get to the event and any documentation they may need to bring with them. If you’re not answering questions in real-time, it’s better not to post during the event at all, as it just creates bad feelings among your potential adopters and supporters.

4. Do your groundwork. Live-posting on social media can be a lot of work, so get as much of it done ahead of time as possible. Schedule photos of available pets and info on how to come meet them on your social channels that have scheduling capability, like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Others, like Instagram, will need to be done in real time, but having everything pre-written and a schedule in mind can make the whole process much easier.

5. Don’t over-share. It can be tempting to flood your Facebook page and Twitter account with endless posts that day, but you risk annoying your followers and triggering limitations on how many people see your posts on Facebook. Keep one hour between Tweets (responses to people don’t count), and at least 1 hour or more between Facebook posts.

Also of interest:

How animal organizations can do better at social media

How social media hashtags can get pets adopted

Is Twitter worth the time for animal shelters and rescue groups?