PetFlow started up during the year of 2010 selling pet products online.

It beat Wal-mart in Facebook engagement. Not bad for a start-up.

So what was their strategy in attracting all this attention? Cats photos. The internet has an overwhelming number of these.

Essentially PetFlow saw an opportunity to attract traffic to their Facebook page through a similar model www.lolcats.com uses. Users of the site bring with them endless adorable and hilarious photos of their pets with various captions to share. Seeing that so many pet lovers felt drawn to such images, PetFlow put out Facebook advertisements consisting of animal photos along with captions like: “Do you like cats? Share your photo here!” As someone that loves cats, I would be browsing their Facebook page despite not owning one I can see why pet owners will find browsing PetFlow’s page difficult to pass!

PetFlow’s Facebook page encourages their customers to keep coming back whether or not they need more products for their pets. Not only does their Facebook page consist of pet owners sharing photos of their pets but also sales and limited offers that can only be found on the page. The idea is simple but it keeps their customers loyal. So why not surf through some cute pet photos while checking out the latest PetFlow deals?

Where did PetFlow venture after having such great customer engagement on Facebook? None other than another popular social media platform: Twitter. Although the strong start had them focused on responding to customers individually on their Facebook page, they now see the value in other media platforms -not their original plan of posting lots on Facebook.

Source 1: https://www.facebook.com/petflow

Source 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2012/07/02/how-one-startup-beat-walmart-n-facebook/