Racehorse Rescue Centre

The Racehorse Rescue Centre, based at Westlinton near Carlisle, has been shortlisted in the 2016 E-Dressage Equine Awards Company Social Media of the Year category.

The centre, which is a shelter and re-homing centre for ex racehorses, help sufferers of depression, self-harming, bullying and many other forms of mental illness and disabilities overcome their anxieties through equine therapy programmes.

Nigel Wood, who founded the centre in 2013, realised from the outset that social media would play a large part in the publicity of their cause.

Mr Wood does most of the social media work and often finds himself plugging away into the early hours of the morning - something he says is not always a bad thing as it reaches people in different time zones.

Thanks in part to his tireless efforts, the centre has followers who live as far away as America and Australia who have been moved to make donations.

Social media has also helped put Mr Wood in touch with the former New Zealand jockey of one of their rescue horses Peak, which ran in the Grand National.

"Social media opens it up everywhere really. It's brilliant for the charity. It gets so many stories out there," said Mr Wood, who is selective about what he decides to share online.

One of the latest things he posted on Facebook was a video of an Arabian foal which had almost 50,000 shares and was viewed by more than two million people.

"It's a video we decided to show to bring attention to the charity. It's working out what people are interested in and what brings them back to us.

"It's like fishing, getting the nets out and catching as many people as you can," explained Mr Wood.

The idea behind their social media activity is that once they have the followers, they will continue to see what is posted.

The charity, which has seven horses on site, costs £18,000 a year to run. It has more than 124,000 likes on its Facebook page and 3,709 Twitter followers.

Mr Wood uses the statistics for both sites to find out how well posts are being received.

"It's a good way of promoting the charity but it's getting the right stuff out there," he continued.

"You could put a post up saying 'please donate, we're struggling and need some funds for a certain cause', and it will go out to maybe 200 who 'like' it.

"If you put a picture up of the foal you get 100,000 likes. It's picking what you can put out there that which catch people's eyes," he said.

"You could put up pictures of horses that are suffering and things like that, but people start blocking the feed. It's not what they want to see.

"You do need to get it out there but we can put that on our website."

Mr Wood said the award nomination itself was good recognition for the work the charity has done.

"We've put a lot of hard work into it to get where we are and it's all voluntary," he said.

Roseanna Sunley, director and founder of E-Dressage Ltd, which is due to host the Equine Awards at Carden Park, Chesire, on Saturday, October 22, said: "The entrants certainly gave the judging panel a difficult job. They have risen to the challenge, though, and their final selections represent the very best in every sector of the equine world.

"For the Racehorse Rescue Centre to have been named as a finalist for 2016 is an achievement of which they should be very proud."

Volunteers are always needed at the Racehorse Rescue Centre, including help with social media.

Anyone interested can contact Mr Wood on 01228 672886.