After adopting Bruiser, her Labrador Retriever, in 2019, Maddi Brady started the Facebook group Illawarra Dog Owners to bring together dog lovers and owners across the Illawarra region.
“I started the group because I wanted a page specifically for the Illawarra, where its members could ask for support and guidance, from locals, with knowledge about resources available to them, within an acceptable distance,” Maddi said.
“Often, when you join groups, they're for such a large area, that suggestions can be out of reach.”
Illawarra Dog Owners now has more than 2100 members and is a voluntary service run with another admin.
Since becoming a mum and working, Maddi spends about two to three hours a week on the group and is still committed to running it as one of the original founders.
“It was my group, so I need to ensure I keep up with the running of it.
“The members are very welcoming and helpful to each other.”
Born and raised in Wollongong, in her spare time Maddi loves horse riding, 4x4ing and camping, which Kendall, her other Labrador, really enjoys too.
Maddi, an assistant online manager at Woolworths, draws on her professional communications skills to help run the group.
“My [Woolworths] role mostly requires me to be able to communicate regularly with my team in order to get the trucks dispatched,” she said.
“It also helps with communication in the [Illawarra Dog Owners] group between my other admin and I to make sure the group runs smoothly and with members on group rules and help with enquiries.”
Some of the challenges Maddi faces in the administration of the group are members forgetting or disregarding the rules.
“People sometimes don't agree to the rules. They get upset if we enforce them. I don't enjoy confrontation, so enforcing the rules does put me outside my comfort zone.”
To ensure content sticks to the rules, Maddi uses the Facebook admins assist features.
“We have post approval turned on, as well as the Facebook AI admin assist. It monitors for certain words that are set out by us. It then sends us a notification if it thinks there is a rule violation."
At first Maddi wanted the group's focus to be primarily social and informative, but she now allows occasional business-related posts.
“I didn't want the page to be flooded with advertising, causing the support questions to get lost, but we since agreed to allow businesses to advertise both on the monthly advertising thread as well as periodically on the main feed,” Maddi said.
Members are also encouraged to tag businesses in relevant posts.
“We ensure all of the businesses in our group are Illawarra locals in order to keep the information local.”
For more information, join Illawarra Dog Owners on Facebook.
