Something that has been increasingly bugging me for a while now, is the presence of UK zoos on social media. Obviously things like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to engage with visitors and potential supporters, but do you think that zoos do a good job of this or not? I tend to think they could do better... Some collections - Yorkshire Wildlife Park being perhaps the worst example - seem to target their Twitter content at children, its so ridiculously dumbed-down and whilst I do follow them in the hope of getting any interesting news first, most of what they post is daft games and polls with inevitable results ("Do you want to see a photo of a polar bear impersonating an Edwardian washerwoman?"). The other thing that annoys me is the way some zoos deal with questions they get asked on social media. The standard response seems to be to completely ignore anything remotely challenging or potentially negative, which I find quite insulting. For example on a post yesterday Chester Zoo were questioned by several people about the wisdom of feeding grapes to their tortoises, which was ignored - yet someone was clearly viewing the posts as one person's question (which was actually answered in the initial post had the person been bothered to read it all) did actually get a response from the zoo. Fair enough it must be challenging to respond to everything but it annoys me when silly questions are acknowledged yet I get the impression people who are really enthusiastic and keen to learn seem to be treated as a nuisance. Anyway, rant over, for now! Am I alone in thinking this?
I only use facebook and am doing so less and less, with zoo news being about the only subject I use it for. I think if you really want to ask a genuine question, then message them rather than post it publicly ... it's worked many times for me.
