9 Reasons To Put Your Dog Breeding Business On Facebook

A dog breeder once said: a breeder should either be showing his dogs, feeding his dogs, playing with his dogs, or selling his dogs. Well, this might be true to a certain extent and Facebook can help you better your overall success as a responsible dog breeder.

Good Breeders Must Get Online & Offline Visibility

Dog breeders often forget the importance of promoting their dogs and all the efforts put into breeding them. People don’t find a good breeder by mistake, or by accident. Those who think great dog breeders don’t need to advertise their litters are completely mistaken.

These breeders do promote their litters, perhaps not through the regular classified ads, but they spend a lot of time and money on dog shows, events, and competitions. It most of the time costs them much more than writing ads, so why are they spending so much? To get visibility and build a great reputation. This consequently will increase their profits and show to the industry how good their breeding skills are.

There is an easier way to put your breeder’s work out there, and it can definitely complement any other promotion you currently run.

1. Facebook’s reach is boundless and borderless

You probably are on Facebook, I am on Facebook and pretty much the whole World is on Facebook or at least, going to be. It is a wonderful place to like, to share and now, as a dog breeder, it is the best place to be seen. Having people from all around the world, but also from a city next door, appreciating your breeding skills is powerful. You cannot not be having your own Facebook Page to showcase your dogs, litters, and dog sports.

2. Connect with a targeted group of people with Facebook Groups

One of the main reasons to join Facebook Groups is the visibility and networking they consistently offer. Facebook Groups are communities of people gathered around a shared interest, and on any given days, the members will post statuses, articles, for-sale ads, photos, etc, to which other members can reply and like. It is the Facebook version of the good old message board.

Most groups are closed, which means you will need to join the group before seeing all activities going on in this group. Before you decide to join a group, make sure it measures well against a few key criteria: active members, good description, and low spam. You can leave a group at any time, so just try with a few and leave the ones you are unpleased with.

There are groups for dog lovers but also for precise breeds and even for specific breeds from a particular location, such as: “German Shepherd Dog Owners & Breeders from Texas.“

3. Your best updates go viral very quickly

Everybody who is on Facebook saw short videos, photos, or articles that appeared on the newsfeed boasting thousands of likes, shares, and comments. Trust me, it can happen to anybody, as long as you offer Facebook-friendly content!

People like, comment, and share with engaging updates so see what works with your own friend list and in groups, you are active in and replicate the recipe with your own dogs. Cute dog and puppy pictures are always a hit, and short videos of unusual tricks or particular situations always work wonders!

4. Facebook is now allowing classified ads

Acknowledging that many members use groups to sell and trade items locally, Facebook rolled out a new feature to active selling groups: the Sell something post type — completes the already popular poll, photo, and video types.

This makes Facebook a great marketplace for dog breeders who want to trade their dogs but even their used equipment. As per any classified ads website, you must be careful if you are a buyer as Facebook does not run any check on the sellers and the items being sold, whether they are dogs or objects.

Some people see it as a new lucky opening for puppy farmers, but I see it as an opportunity for responsible breeders to showcase and find great buyers.

5. Facebook tells you everything about your audience

We heard a lot about Facebook being intrusive but as dog breeders and business owners, we can know our audience like never before. The insights provided by Facebook on your followers, fans, and likers is a bottomless resource. Age, sex, location, interests, like sources, frequency of the visits, post reach, reach per type of post, engaged users, external referrers, organic and paid reach, and dozens more.

By knowing who is liking, reading, and engaging with you, you can offer a better-tailored content that will be relevant to your particular audience or segment of the audience.

6. Facebook Dark Posts are your secret weapon

Social media have opened up many more doors than we could have ever imagined, many of which provide dog breeders and other business owners with unlimited possibilities and opportunities.

Facebook dark posts or unpublished posts are very simple to understand. Like the name says, they are simple Facebook posts, just like the status updates you share online every day, and these ones have a link in them, along with a picture. You get to write your update, choose the link and the picture, it is very simple.

However, unlike a regular update, a dark or unpublished post will not show on your Facebook Page, instead, it will show up on the news feeds of a very targeted group of people, as a suggested post. You can target people using dozens of criteria, including what pages they liked (hint hint, your competitors) and narrow it down to what interests they have, such as puppies or even more precise, labrador AND puppies.

7. Give your followers a way to stay in touch with you

The same way a website allows you to update your visitors on your litters and other dog breeding news, a Facebook page will let you update instantly and intuitively all your fans.

And you and I know how many times people go on their Facebook, so you better feed them with some good pictures of your dogs sleeping, eating, playing, dancing, moaning, barking, etc. Anything will do, because these people liked your page, they are asking for updates!

8. Facebook is mobile-friendly

An increasing number of Facebook users go on Facebook using their mobile devices only, the trend started in 2012 and grows at each quarter. In the same way, people using their desktop only to enjoy Facebook is on the decline.

What does that mean for you? Well, it means you are with your audience wherever they are! Facebook Pages used to receive their audience’s attention once a day after work, they now receive attention every hour, at lunch break, and during the commute. If you adapt your Facebook content to a short timespan, you will receive a limitless engagement from your followers.

9. The Friends of Your Friends Are Your Friends

Any post you make that is liked or commented on by another person will appear on his friends’ news feeds. It is the modern word of mouth, it is powerful! The more you post, the more the people who enjoy your updates like them, the more their own friends get to know about you and like you, and it keeps going on. The snowball effect is assured.

Most dog breeders start with very few likes on their Facebook fan page. If yours looks like a ghost town too, you’re not alone. Sysomos did release a superb study where they looked at over 600,000 Facebook fan pages and they showed that only 4% of these fan pages had 10,000 or more fans—and only 0.76% have 100,000 or more. You see, you really are not alone.

Also, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. We are into the dog breeding business and industry, not the football business. We should not, yes, should not have hundreds of thousands of likes on our Page, it would tell everybody we are liked by the wrong audience. For example, Breeding Business’ Facebook Page has a little audience but they are hardcore breeders. It’s our choice to have fewer people who love us rather than many more people who don’t even care about dogs and just want cute puppy pictures to share.

Ready to start exploiting social media?

Our popular Dog Breeder’s Handbook has a whole section on Social media, including Facebook but not only. We help you understand how to own your online and digital presence and how to become the number 1 on your favorite platform.

Don’t be the typical entrepreneur that discovers and learns about a new revolution a tad too late.