Animal Allies Drawing Attention to Shelter Through Tik Tok

Animal Allies partners with 'The Hockey Guys' for Tik Tok to promote donations and adoptions at the shelter.

DULUTH, Minn. — Animal Allies is using their social media platforms as well as new partnerships to encourage more donations for animals after the pandemic.

Donations were one of the many areas impacted heavily by covid, and at the start of 2020, Nicole Facciotto, the Humane Education Manager and Communications Director at the shelter decided to start a Tik Tok account to bring eyes to the animals, even though the doors were closed to visitors.

“Being closed to the public, we wanted a new way to kind of engage with our community,” Facciotto said.

Now with nearly 60,000 followers on Tik Tok, Animal Allies in Duluth has made it on the map, for others to follow along.

“It’s been a really cool way to kind of get in contact with new humane society’s across the country, and new partnerships, and its just been a really awesome way to share our stories and bring in new community members to donate,” Facciotto added.

A few local celebrities, the UWS men’s hockey team, better known as ‘The Hockey Guys’ on Tik Tok with 1.2 million followers, went in to the shelter on Sunday to help encourage those watching to adopt and donate.

“It means a lot to us, we get excited to come out to these things, meet new people, see new places and just bring awareness to places such as an animal shelter,” Will Blake, Senior at UWS, and Member of ‘The Hockey Guys’, said.

These viral videos are definitely making an impact as the shelter reports that the rate of adoptions have gone since the accounts creation.

Facciotto said, “It has been huge for our animals and increasing the amount of donations and adoptions that we see throughout the year, the fun way that you can feature an animal, and really show their personality through social media has really helped adopt out some of our long term animals which has been really cool”.

The Hockey Guys also enjoyed every minute spent with these animals, and hope it inspires others to stop by as well.

“I think we could definitely get people to start donating, start showing up, adopting, checking out these animals, even spending time or volunteering their time with them, we’ve been here for less than an hour and its already been an absolute blast,” Blake said.

The shelter is currently doing a promotion through Valentine’s Day where any adoption fee for a cat or dog over the age of one, is 14% off.