laura

A recent question on our Facebook forum group (which, if you are not a part of and are a client of ours, search for PetSittingOlogy Training Center and submit a request to join) was asked by Maria Connochie, owner of The Pet Butler in Apex, NC:

“I am only coming up on search on one town and I do service other areas.  Is there anything we can do about this?  Thanks”

There is definitely something you can do to help your business come up in local searches.

CREATE RELEVANT CONTENT AROUND THOSE LOCAL AREAS.

It’s that simple.

If you service more than one town, you want to write about topics specific to each town that you service.

Heather Agostini, owner of I've Gone Mutts Pet Sitting and Dog Walking in Kennewick, WA posed a great question to the PSO group on Facebook: "I'm wanting to come up on different Google pages under pet care, vacation pet care,…

There are a lot of pieces that go into writing a blog.

I feel the most important one – above the writing of it, above worrying about word count – is your topic.

A lot of bloggers get stuck on “but I don’t know what to write about!”.

We’re going to help you with that today!

Blogging is all about answering questions.

The first step is identifying questions that your target audience is seeking the answers for.

We are going to use the specific example of cats today.  Pretend (and maybe you don’t have to pretend), that you are actively looking for new cat clients.

Do you know where, in the process of purchasing your services, a potential client is?

Do they know about pet sitting?  Or are they already sold on a pet sitter and they are looking for the right fit?

The way each of the above people find your site is completely different

If you are not getting the traction you want/expect out of your blogs, maybe you need to look at the 3 different buying stages your visitors are in. You’ll want to write articles focusing on each stage.

Stage 1
They have no idea that pet sitting and dog walking exists.

Blogging is all about being helpful to your audience. I look at blogging topics as an Idea Tree – picture a Family Tree and then just switch out your great grandparents and put IDEAS at the top of your tree.…

Networking is intimidating.

Especially if you are not comfortable around strangers and you’d rather stay at home with your own pets and read a book, watch a movie, clean the closets – anything to avoid going to a networking event.

The good thing is though, YOU’RE NOT ALONE!

Seriously. I’ll bet that the majority of people in the room have some level of “I know I just got here but can I leave yet?”  You can use this can be your ice breaker:

“Hi, I’m Laura, and I’m really uncomfortable at networking events”.  If you say this to anyone in the room you are going to have 1 of 2 reactions

1. OMG ME TOO!  (fellow introvert)
2. I understand and there is nothing to be worried about.  Let me introduce you around.  (extrovert)

There was a recent thread in the PetSittingOlogy group on Facebook where Josh asked the question:

“How would you answer a friend who asks “What does PetSittingOlogy do?”

When I summarized the more than a dozen responses, do you know what the core theme was?

NETWORKING.

Google defines networking as a verb.  “To interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one’s career”.

Networking opportunities within PSO that you should be taking advantage of and being active in:

Like it or not, networking is an important part of growing your business and building your brand within your community.

We talked last week about the HOW of networking, but now WHERE do you start?

As a pet sitters of course you want to talk to and get to know other pet professionals in town such as vets, groomers, trainers etc; but they are only one piece of the puzzle.  You want to be involved with other business professionals who can help network you to their clients as well!

Where do you find networking opportunities?

1) MeetUp.com 

You may have used MeetUp.com to look for social events.  Have you ever thought to put “business” or “professional” into the search box?