2023 Turtles Kingston Annual Report — Turtles Kingston

Turtles Kingston started primarily as a Facebook community that quickly grew to ~4000 people. Today we have a Facebook and Instagram community of 5,352 (403 new followers) and 790 (176 new followers) respectively. Our educational reach via social media goes beyond our followers and this year we were able to reach 1,438,161 people via Facebook, 2,573 via Instagram, and 8,600 via our website (turtleskingston.com). Our massive reach via Facebook was in large part to a viral post about straddling turtles at the end of June. Overall, thanks to our Education Coordinators Aly and Pamela, we had 498 educational posts on Facebook and 271 posts on Instagram (plus 155 stories).

Our viral Facebook post reached a total of 1,138 people, received 12,252 reactions, 1,140 comments, and 11,964 shares. Unfortunately, as with most viral posts, there were positive and negative comments. We attempted to address and respond to some of the negative comments to further raise awareness and try to counter the negative image snapping turtles have.

Website: Our website had a total of 10,000 visits, primarily in May through July, with 57% of those visits from search results, 13% from socials, and 29% directly. Although we are a Kingston, Ontario our website reach is wider with 34% of visits from the USA as well as some visitors from India, Australia, UK, Germany, Philippines, Mexico, and others. 55% of visits were from Canada with the majority from Ontario (81%).

Answering questions: Over 2023, we helped answer questions from the community about turtles. In total we answered 155 inquires (112 from social media messages and 43 from emails)

Finally, our Turtles Kingston Membership grew from 125 to 173 members. These members receive monthly emails about turtles and opportunities to volunteer.