Project Background

Dog Food Advisor was originally founded by dentist, Mike Sagman, who tragically lost his dog after the US melamine pet food scandal. Honourably, Mike vowed not to let the same happen to anyone else's dog. 

As such, he set up Dog Food Advisor as a free website & email service.

The website gets 350k+ monthly visitors. It gives impartial dog food star ratings based on the ingredients, and contains exclusive offers for some of the best dog foods on the market. The email service, which alerts pet parents to dangerous dog food recalls, has over 1 million subscribers. 

But the brand's social media presence was lagging behind.

In Nov 2024, reach & engagement on Facebook were at an all-time low, and while follower figures stood at 151k, these were dropping fast at -400 per month... Meanwhile, a 1 year old Instagram account had just 50 followers & zero engagement. 

Looking at the accounts it was easy to see why...

Instagram (Before)

As you can see, the Instagram feed was little more than a collection of stock images. Each caption mentioned a canine nutrition subject & directed people to read more on the website. B.O.R.I.N.G. Because it was on Instagram, the links weren't even clickable (yikes).

Facebook (Before)

Performance on Facebook was slightly better (above images show average posts)... But still generating only a tiny amount of engagement for a page with 151k fans. Again, posts featured stock images & links to take people to articles. At least they were clickable this time (!). 

On both accounts, the major selling points of Dog Food Advisor were not obvious. 

Action

When I was asked to improve Dog Food Advisor's social presence, I knew immediately that they needed to change tack.

Generally, social feeds should be used as an end in themselves - delivering value on platform -rather than as a means to divert people to your website. They should also be used to give your audience what they want to hear, rather than telling them what you want to say. And, if you want to amplify your voice, this all needs to be done by partnering with other related accounts. 

So much was clear. But we also needed to figure out what sort of content really got the audience's juices flowing! So, I took the following actions: 

1. Competitor analysis - I looked at successful social media accounts handling canine nutrition for content ideas & formats that would grow & engage the audience. 
2. Newsletter deep dive - I reviewed Dog Food Advisor's Aweber stats to see which topics generated the most opens & click throughs from the newsletter audience.
3. Website assessment - I used SEMrush to determine what questions & topics were bringing people to the website, as well as which articles were getting the most traffic.  

These analyses told me that Dog Food advisor fans tend to be well-educated, independent thinkers who care about scientifically-backed canine nutrition advice. It also told me that they are, what I affectionately call, a bad news crowd. 

With all this in mind, I devised a new social media strategy to deliver clever content through bad news spectacles, with a sprinkling of delicious dog food partnerships thrown in. 

Results

After just 6 months, Dog Food Advisor's Instagram presence had gone from a standing start to over 1.5k followers - that's a 3000% increase on the 50 followers they'd gleaned in the space of their 1st year. 

At the time of writing, the account gets over 20k views per month with a 15% engagement rate... and both figures are going up. Below is how the account looks now...

Instagram (After)

As you can see, these images are content-rich and full of variety. They feature intelligent, well-researched content displayed on the images themselves. There are partnership posts with vets & giveaways with highly rated dog foods, amplifying the account's reach. 

Facebook (After)

While my approach on Facebook is similar, platform differences mean there's more focus on intelligent, long-form captions, with an illustrative image.   

Facebook is now gaining 280 followers per month - instead of losing 400. Monthly reach is 220k+ per month (785% increase) while content views are over 465k per month (4600% increase). 

In fact, most posts get 10s of 1000s of views, and several hundred interactions. 

Both accounts now make the benefits of Dog Food Advisor obvious: expert dog nutrition advice, dog food ratings, recall alerts, and great dog food offers & giveaways.  

If you'd like to see similar results for your brand, drop me a line at [email protected].