In this continuing series on effectively harnessing social media to positively impact animals, it’s time to discuss content. What do you post and how do you go about posting it?

Recall the importance I’ve placed on growing your audience. This will increase the reach of your posts, as well as the engagement you get on each post.

The primary method of growing your Facebook and Instagram profiles is by getting others to share your posts. On Facebook, these are simply called “shares;” on Twitter, they’re “retweets.” When people share your post, it goes directly into the newsfeeds of those who follow them, potentially leading to an exponential increase in your reach. The beautiful part is that these shares lead to your content being seen by many people who don’t currently follow you, which means your voice is amplified and that you are reaching people who may not already subscribe to your beliefs. For that reason, be share-focused when...

Gaining followers and getting engagement on your posts is crucial if you plan to make progress for animals. Understanding who your audience is, who you want them to be, and how to appeal to and grow that audience is essential.

‍Much of this multi-part mini series focusing on increasing followers and engagement is tailored to those who want to influence the outside world. If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself “I don’t really care how many followers I have,” however, that’s cool too. You may want to only influence your family and friends IRL. While some of what I say here may not apply to you, implementing elements of these tactics in your own personal social media game will still undoubtedly help you connect with and influence your audience, no matter who they are.

‍First, discover where your skills can best overlap with your interests. Since this series is focused on animal advocacy through social media, consider some of the different...

Social movements succeed when they’ve attracted enough support from the broader population to tip the scales of power. Creating vegan allies, who support veganism but aren’t fully vegan themselves, is one of the most impactful things we can do for the vegan movement.

This is the last episode in a series of 10. Watch the full series here!

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Produced by Beyond Carnism & Vexquisit Studio. Presented by Dr Melanie Joy & Tobias Leenaert.

Please take this short survey about this vegan series

Find out more about Beyond Carnism or CEVA

If it’s relatively easy for vegans to be vegan today, this is largely thanks to the meat reducers who helped increase the demand for vegan products. All of these reducers help make becoming vegan easier for everyone.

Watch the next video in the Effective Advocacy series here.

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Produced by Beyond Carnism & Vexquisit Studio. Presented by Dr Melanie Joy & Tobias Leenaert.

Please take this short survey about this vegan series

Find out more about Beyond Carnism or CEVA

Quorn used to be the food of choice for vegetarians but now, with its new and expansive vegan range, there are lots of amazing vegan meals you can prepare with Quorn.

The Quorn vegan range includes chicken style pieces, fillets, chicken nuggets, fishless fingers, sandwich fillers, fajita strips and sausages.

You can use these ingredients to make all sorts of delicious meals, such as fajitas, burgers, vegan chicken-style skewers and pies.

Quorn

Quorn is a healthy, low-fat meat substitute originally developed for vegetarians. It was invented in the UK but is now sold across Europe and across Asia and North America.

Quorn is made of mycoprotein and is a high source of protein and fibre. It is low in saturated fat and is marketed as a healthy alternative to meat.

Quorn comes in a variety of forms, but is not a completely vegan range. You can find vegan Quorn in the form of chicken pieces, burgers, nuggets, fillets and sandwich slices.

In 2014, Olympic gold medal winner Mo Farrah...

Vegan cheese is cheese that is created without the use of animal products or the exploitation of sentient beings. Largely, this means that the cheese is created without the use of milk, which is used in the manufacture of traditional cheese.

Vegans cannot consume milk because extracting it from cows involves their exploitation and veganism, by definition, rejects the idea that animals are there for humans to exploit. In order to produce milk, cows must be pregnant or have recently given birth. Calves are removed from their mothers shortly after birth so that we can take the milk of the mother cow and farmers can sell it for profit. Vegans are staunchly against actions like this and therefore do not consume milk.

This means that vegans can't eat traditionally produced cheese. Luckily, there are lot of vegan cheeses available in supermarkets, online and through specialist sellers.

What is vegan cheese made from?

Depending on the brand and the type of cheese, vegan cheese can be made...

What if we didn’t have to choose between being true to our ethics and being effective? What if we simply advocated that others be as vegan as possible?  

Watch the next video in the Effective Advocacy series here.

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Produced by Beyond Carnism & Vexquisit Studio. Presented by Dr Melanie Joy & Tobias Leenaert.

Please take this short survey about this vegan series

Find out more about Beyond Carnism or CEVA

You can't make a difference for animals while screaming at a wall. In today's interconnected world, with billions of social media users at your fingertips from every corner of the globe, you need to have an audience if you want your message to be heard. Beyond just having an audience, you need that audience to engage with you. If not, you're just a person talking to themselves in a very, very crowded room.

The next several parts of my continuing series on effectively harnessing the power of social media to advocate for animals will be focused on just these issues. How to get people to follow you on social and how to get these individuals to engage with what you’re posting.

First, let’s get some definitions out of the way. 'Engagement' is essentially any way that people are interacting with your posts. Likes (or on Facebook, they're called 'reactions'), comments, and shares are the metrics most commonly associated with engagement.

'Reach' refers to the amount of times a...

People who are vegan avoid eating and exploiting animals in all parts of their lives. This means that they not only avoid eating meat, dairy, honey and eggs, but they do not participate in horse riding or other activities that exploit animals for human gain, even when that gain does not result in the death of an animal.

The Vegan Society defines veganism as:

"A way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."

That means that vegans avoid wearing wool or leather, eating eggs, consuming milk or meat, eating fish, and using animals and other sentient beings as part for work or entertainment.

What is a vegan diet?

A vegan diet is a diet that excludes all products that involve the killing or exploitation of sentient beings. That means that people who eat a vegan diet only eat foods made by plants. They do not consume meat, dairy products, honey, eggs or...

There are two types of celebrity vegan; those who are famous for being vegan and those who are famous for something else, but happen to follow a vegan lifestyle.

Celebrity vegans are important to our movement, because they tend to have a lot of followers and can encourage people into researching the effects of animal agriculture on the environment, the animals and worldwide health.

Recently, Lewis Hamilton, Miley Cyrus, Natalie Portman and Woody Harrelson have all spoken about their vegan lifestyle in a way that encourages others to look into the lifestyle.

Famous vegans in history

Lots of very famous historical figures avoided animal products and the exploitation of sentient beings as part of their lifestyle, including Albert Einstein, Buddha, HG Wells, Leo Tolstoy, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mark Twain, Sir Isaac Newton and Voltaire.

For a full list and some lovely quotes, have a look at this page by Viva!. Here's our celebrity vegan list.

Famous Vegan People

There are lots of...