As is noted on our Home page we use Facebook pages to promote our foster dogs. The idea is to build interest in adopting these deserving animals before they leave us.

Until recently the process was that we get them healed and work on any behavioral and training issues, then send them off via Rolling Rescue to a rescue or shelter or foster home in an area where adoption is more likely and they work on finding the dogs permanent homes. We follow along on those web sites and hope our furbabies find homes soon. Sometimes it takes a while.

The first two that we created Facebook pages for were adopted while still in our care, so when we took them to ride The Bus we were not sending them off on an uncertain venture, but directly to their forever home. This made for a much happier end to our involvement in their lives!

Facebook First Step

Anyone who uses social media knows that getting a new account off the ground takes time and effort…and that it’s much easier if you have help. Building a web site, Facebook page, Twitter account, or what have you, does nothing: you need a sizable audience to pander to. The “friends” list for my personal Facebook profile page is quite small (on purpose) and is only a little help in promoting the dogs pages; but it is a starting point. If I share a post from a dog’s page and a few of my friends share it with their friends, and a few of their friends share it…it all snowballs nicely and ends up reaching a sizable number of people. Getting the snowball rolling sometimes takes something special. Kingsley’s page was not getting the attention I had hoped for; we needed an event to help draw attention.

I posted a message on Kingsley’s page saying that when he reached 30 page likes (which activates added features of his page) he would get a special chew bone treat. I Shared that on my page. He then spent a couple of days encouraging his current friends to help him out. And it paid off. Below is the award ceremony where Kingsley received is Facebook Friend Award.

The Facebook Factor

How much did this help? His posts prior to this “contest” were gathering views numbering in single digits. Basically just my friends. During the contest views went up into the 60-90 views range. The first post after the contest was over and the above video was posted (on Sunday afternoon) has, in less than two days (Tuesday morning), gathered 535 views and is climbing. His Page Likes are up by 27% as well. I’d call that a significant improvement! As more and more people take an interest in following along with his adventure in foster care, the odds that one of them will say, “I’d like to adopt that dog” go up as well: and that is what this is all about.