The Most Amazing Thing That Only Facebook Can Do

What do you use Facebook for? Whether you’re there for personal or business reasons, one of the many benefits of Facebook is the ability to create a community and cultivate a tribe.

“We humans prefer to organize in tribes, into groups of people who share a leader or a culture or a definition of normal.” ~Seth Godin

Facebook and other social media have enabled and amplified those tribes.

A business or salesperson that cultivates a tribe around their brand keeps their pipeline full of passionate customers.

If you know me, you know I am an animal lover and advocate. I spend my spare time being a voice for voiceless animals, mainly horses, who are on the receiving end of neglect, abuse, misguided government policies and special interests’ overreach.

I’m also a social media strategist. I volunteer my time for Hanaeleh Horse Rescue in Orange County, CA. We are a proper 501c non-profit and completely volunteer-run. We have no budget for marketing so I am leveraging my knowledge (and spare time) to manage the Facebook page and enlist more like-minded horse lovers to our tribe.

With some hard work, a tiny budget, great stories and passionate volunteers, we’ve developed our own community on Facebook. At first, we focused on building our tribe within our local area but soon our page grew to over 20,000 members from all over the U.S. Those who interact with our page share our passion for equine causes.

Awesome content is the root of a successful Facebook tribe.

Our Facebook tribe enjoys seeing pictures and video of our rescued horses. We’ve adopted out two horses in the last few months and everyone is just so happy to see their favorite horse get a forever home.

Now, I readily admit that a horse rescue is easier to grow a Facebook tribe around than say a small business. However, I’ve worked at and managed companies that had very passionate customers and the fundamentals to grow a passionate, engaged Facebook tribe around your cause or business are the basically the same:

• Great stories
• Testimonials
• Important Information
• Compelling Images and Video
• Calls to Action to Further Your Cause (Goals)

It’s your job to investigate and define what “awesome content” means for your particular tribe. What can you do to get people interested enough to become loyal tribe members?

An example of the amazing thing that only Facebook can do.

Two nights ago, a fan from the Hanaeleh page sent us this urgent message:

“I am emailing regarding a 5-yr-old horse named Ryder that is set to go to a slaughter hold tank or sale this week if we cannot find a rescue to take him. I am reaching out to the rescues on behalf of the owner who is at her last resort and is desperate to move him this week by Wednesday. I am the daycare provider for the horse and I am urgently trying to place him. Due to his limp he is not rideable unless with a light rider and walking, so she cannot sell him or find a rescue to take him.”

I received this message at about 7:30 pm. I quickly contacted our founder who makes all decisions on next moves. Like most rescues, we are full and couldn’t take him. Our founder has a huge network and she quickly created a blog post. Minutes later, I shared that post on Facebook.

Our tribe immediately went into action. We were getting comments and likes and shares like crazy! From my couch, happily, I was answering page messages until after midnight.

The passion displayed to help an animal (and person) in distress was overwhelming to me. We’ve posted similar stories/situations like this before but this one was clearly one for the record books!

Incidentally, I thought about spending to promote the post but since it was so late at night, I held off. I assumed it would take at until at least the next morning to get any traction. Boy, was I wrong!

I went to sleep that night dreaming that someone somewhere would agree to take Ryder and give him a forever home.

The next morning, I woke up and grabbed my iPad to see what had transpired over night. I am proud to say that not only did Ryder have a new home to go to, but there were at least 5 other people who “raised their hand” to give him a home.

Result of the amazing thing that only Facebook can do.

In less than twelve hours (including sleeping time), Ryder was safe.

From the first minute of posting, to the comments, shares, likes, and messages, Facebook gave us the tools to save a life. We (the tribe) leveraged those tools to bring goodness to the world.

Here are the resulting numbers from Ryder’s post (all organic, no paid reach). The results speak to the power of our tribe:

My question again to you is, what do you use Facebook for? If your end goal is to develop a passionate tribe around yourself, your business or your cause, what stories are you sharing that will launch your tribe into action?