Tips for Making Your Pet Sitting Blog Stand Out

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips | March 8, 2010

It’s not enough to simply have a blog, your blog needs to have some sort of impact – you want to stand out – so you attract readers, subscribers and ultimately profits.

Here are a few tips to make sure your blog is the best it can be:

Tip #1 – Be personable. Each blog post is a unique opportunity to connect with your audience. Make them laugh, make them cry, inspire them and motivate your readers. In addition to your blog content, your blog design also impacts the connection you make. Include photos of yourself, audio and video blog posts and even the colors, layout and images you choose will help create a personality.

Tip #2 Make your blog easy to read by adopting user friendly formatting, fonts and type size. Images, short paragraphs and subheadings also make your content much easier to read.

Tip #3 Provide superior content. While your blog posts can be entertaining they must also provide value, educate, and inform.

Tip #4 Mix it up. Use audio, video and print content to keep your blog active and interesting.

Tip #5 Take advantage of useful widgets and plug-ins. For example, if you participate on Twitter or Facebook you can include a widget that prompts blog readers to follow you or one that posts your Twitter conversations on the side bar of your blog.

Tip #6 Market your blog. Use blog directories, social networking, search engine optimization and other marketing tactics to drive traffic to your blog and build readership.

Tip #7 Encourage comments. Active blogs are well read blogs. To encourage participation and comments, ask questions, acknowledge comments and encourage discussion.

Finally, blog consistently. This is paramount to a successful blog. Utilize PLR, guest bloggers and your own content to keep the posts consistent and up to date.

Join me on March 16th when I interview Therese Kopiwoda from PetSitUSA to find out how she keeps her blog fresh and unique. Sign up for your membership of the Circle of Pet Sitting Excellence to join us on the call!

Free Special Report - How to Setup Your Pet Sitting Blog

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips, Pet Sitting Excellence | March 6, 2010

It’s Freebie Friday so I’ve put together a short special report giving you tips on starting and writing your own pet sitting business blog.

The report tells you :

Why You Need A Pet Sitting Business Blog

How to Set-Up Up Your Blog and

How to Use Your Blog to Attract and Build Relationships with Customers

Here is the info that you’ll find inside:

What Is A Blog And How Do I Use It?

Does Your Business Need a Blog?

7 Great Reasons to Set Up Your Own Pet Sitting Blog Today

How to Start a Blog

Why Owning Your Own Blog Is Important

Why WordPress Is a Great Blogging Option

How to Choose and Register Your Blog Domain Name

How to Get Hosting For Your Blog

How to Install WordPress

How to Easily Create Blog Content

How to Get More Tips to Improve Your New Blog

To download free special report click here:

How to Setup Your Pet Sitting Blog

During the remainder of this month I will be posting a series of new articles here at WorkingwithPets.com that explain how to:

Market your blog
Get traffic to you blog
Encourage your readers to post blog comments
Make your blog stand out
Automate your blog
Create an RSS feed
Build a loyal following of readers
Find ideas for blog content
Make money with your blog
Find guest bloggers

Our Circle of Excellence topic for March is “How to Setup Your Pet Sitting Blog”. Become a member for just $9.95 per month to join me on our live call on March 16^th 2010 to discuss how to setup and get your blog started. At the end of our call you will have the opportunity to get all of you questions about setting up and writing your blog answered. If you can’t make it live to the call – all members will receive the recording and transcript of the call.

Find out the other benefits of membership (including over 12 months of call recordings, articles and special business building reports) at http://www.petbusinesssuccesscircle.com

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Quick Tips To Improve the Value of Your Pet Sitting Client Newsletter

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips | March 4, 2010

If you use a client email or print newsletter to keep in touch with customers and prospective clients today I have some great tips to improve the value of your newsletters from Karyn Greenstreet Passion for Business:

Above all use, offer value. When you write an article for your newsletter (or your blog, or your Facebook Notes area), make sure you’re giving good information. (Read your past five newsletters…did you serve your audience well?)

Sixty-day rule. Remember that your subscribers are most responsive in the first 60 days of signing up for your list. Stay in contact with those folks more often than your once-a-month newsletter

Loyalty counts. Reward long-time subscribers with special freebies or discounts.

One of many tools. Ask yourself, “What are ALL the different ways I can communicate with my audience and share my articles, advice, offers, and news?”

One of many lists. Think of your email list as just one list of many. Your Facebook friends are a list, your Twitter followers are a list, and your blog subscribers are a list.

Combine with human contact. Don’t just have an email list and think that’s enough for people to get to know you and trust you. Offer free teleclasses. Be available via Facebook or Twitter for ongoing conversations. Give live speeches both locally and nationally. Get out there and be seen – everywhere.

If you are not yet collecting client contacts and building an email list which you use to follow up by sending a regular newsletter read my post fo find out why you should be and how to get started :

10 Reasons Pet Sitters Must Grow A List

Let me know what questions you have about setting up your email list and sending out a newsletter - I’ll make sure I answer all of your questions that you post here in the comments!

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How to Document Your Pet Sitting Systems with Process Flowcharts

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips, Pet Sitting Excellence | February 27, 2010

Pet owners want to hire a pet sitter who will give quality, caring and consistent care for their pets while they are vacationing or at work, but just as importantly pet owners are also looking for convenience, which means that your pet sitting service needs to make it easy for them to:

find you
trust you
understand how the service works
hire you and schedule services
make payments

You can provide this ease by ensuring that you do a great job at marketing your business and have carefully planned operational business systems that are managed by a strong support team.

Great marketing makes sure that:

potential clients can easily find your service
you build immediate trust by identifying your experience and credentials and by providing super customer testimonials

Good operational systems make certain that:

your policies and pricing are obvious
communication with clients on your website, over the phone, or in person is consistent and clear
your business makes every effort to protect the health and safety of the pets in your car

To successfully grow a pet sitting business that creates an experience of pet sitting excellence the business must also be easy for you to run and manage. The more smoothly your day to day business runs, the more clients you will be able to connect with and provide excellent service, and the more pleasure and profits you will gain from your business. Operational systems make running your business more efficient and allow you to hand off tasks to a support team as your business grows.

If you have been pet sitting for a while then you have probably slipped into routines of how you perform different tasks. How you answer the phone, conduct a client interview, perform a visit, and follow-up with clients. Do you have these routines written down or are they all in your head?

To create a system you must put your routines down on paper in an organized format. A system lays out the steps it takes to accomplish any task – whether that task is accepting a customer booking, completing an initial client interview, or performing an in home overnight visit. The best way to document your systems is to create flowcharts that show the steps involved in each task and how they link together.

Getting routines written down on paper can help you to see opportunities to improve the way you do things and make regularly performed tasks more efficient. When you start growing and need to get help from assistants or sitters having a written set of steps will save you time when you assign them tasks and make sure they perform the tasks the way that you want them done.

Another way to look at a system is to describe it as a step by step path to achieving a desired outcome. The completion of each of the tasks that you listed as part of your daily logs will result in an outcome for your business.

A simple method for creating systems is to ask yourself two questions:

Where are we going? What is the desired outcome upon completion of each of these tasks?
How do we get there? What are the steps that have to happen to reach the desired outcome?

Let’s look at an example -

Task - Answering a new phone client enquiry

Outcome - The first desired outcome is that the client schedules an initial interview and makes a booking for future pet sitting visits. A second outcome is collecting the client’s contact details - phone number and email address - so that you can keep in touch with them and follow up. This means that even if they call and cancel (the neighbor has decided they can watch the pets this time!) that you will have their contact details and can send them coupons or flyers to entice them to use your service in the future. A third outcome of the call may be to find out where they heard about you so that you can track the effectiveness of your marketing.

System - The steps that you have to go through to get them to book will vary depending on the client but you will always have to:

Greet the client.
Ask them about their needs and their pets and when they will need your services
Explain the features and benefits of your service and your pricing
Ask them when they would like to schedule their initial interview or consultation
Ask them for their address, phone number and an email address (so that you can send them welcome information)
Ask them how they found your service

This is a simplified step by step process for the initial call - in reality on a system flowchart the next step on the call would depend on their response you have received from the previous step. However, I hope this example has illustrated how the steps in your process flow from your desired outcome for the task.

One of the simplest ways to document your step by step processes is on a flow chart. You can open an example flow chart for our initial call system by clicking on the link below:

Click to Open Pet Sitting Process Flow Chart

If you have an existing pet sitting business the first step you should take is to document your as-is processes so that you can delegate some of your daily tasks to your support team and analyze your processes to see where there is room for improvement.

If you are just starting your business you can document your processes as you would like them to be. This will help you purposefully create your new business and help you think and plan out how your services will be delivered and managed.

To help you document your business processes all Gold members of the new Association of Pet Sitting Excellence will receive a process flow chart template and new mini-process flowchart every month that you can add to your systems library. For details about membership and pre-launch give aways become a fan of the APSE at http://www.facebook.com/PetSittingExcellence

Win Free Organic Dog Biscuit Cookbook and Cookie Cutters

Filed Under Pet Business Marketing | February 26, 2010

This week I used my birthday gift voucher at Amazon.com to order a new Dog Biscuit cookbook and set of dog cookie cutters. When the box arrived in the mail today - there were two of the books in the box! Ooops - I must have put it in my cart twice and not realized Ever done that? It’s not the first time for me unfortunately…

So - rather than send it back, I want to gift it (with a couple of cute bone shaped cutters) to one of my readers.

Here is the Amazon product info:

“When it comes to dog biscuits, there’s a lot out there, but not one as concerned with your pet’s health and happiness as ours! While most of the competition goes for novelty, the Organic Dog Biscuit Cookbook stands alone in featuring tail-waggingly tasty 100% organic ingredients. Written by an expert who runs the Bubba Rose Biscuit Company, it contains more than 100 all-natural recipes—double what most other dog cookbooks have. That’s sure to appeal to owners eager to feed their dog homemade after the recent commercial pet food scare. The wholesome doggie dishes (all tried, true and taste tested) include a “Luck of the Irish Wolfhound” dog treat with such ingredients as oat flour and spinach leaves, and a beef-based “Grillin’ and Chillin” hot dog!”"

View Cover of Book

All you need to do to win the book and cutters is to post a great tip, on this blog post or on my Facebook wall, that tells me about how you have used dog biscuits as a promotional tool for your pet business. I’ll put the names of everyone who submits a tip into a hat (or bowl!) and draw a winner next Monday.

Go ahead and tell me your tip!

P.S. If you haven’t used doggie biscuits to promote your business yet - you can also tell me your ideas for using them in the future!

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