Episode 136: How Does Blogging Help Me Get Pet Sitting Clients?

Today, we're answering a question I get all the time - how does blogging help me get pet sitting clients? Although we've talked about how important blogging is, we've never really dived into the strategy behind how it actually works! Biggest Takeaway You Don’t Want To Miss In this day and age it isn’t about creating more and more content but using the content you do have and spreading it as far as you can. Blogs are super for repurposing, or what my friend Brian Fanzo calls “upcycling”. And at the end of the day, your customers will always have the same questions. They will get their answers, one way or another. If your blog keeps coming up to answer their questions it will subconsciously show them that you are a trusted local expert. That you care enough to make your marketing shine, that must be a great indication of your work ethic. The very thing they are hiring you for! Show Highlights What’s the premise behind blogging to get clients? [5:00] What is upcycling? [8:00] How do I schedule my upcycled content? [9:30] How do I share my content on different channels? [13:00] Links Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale Blog Post: jumpconsulting.net/get-pet-sitting-clients/ Agora Pulse: jumpconsulting.net/agora-pulse Share The Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 136 of Bella in Your Business. Before we get started with today's episode, I want to know are you burnt out trying to hire employees or maybe you want to hire employees, but you're just terrified of that boogeyman that does not exist in the closet. Well, this episode is sponsored by my free three-part webinar series, Jump and Scale Your Business, and I would love to see you there. It's a must-have to attend if you want staff, you want to grow, you feel like you're held hostage, or you have high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net/scale. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella's got your chute. Let's jump. Hi everyone, good morning. Bella Vasta with Jump Consulting. If this is your first time on this podcast or seeing me, I am a pet business consultant, an author, a podcast host, and a Facebook strategist. I want to get into a question today, and that's something that I've actually gotten a lot, and I really want to break it down. So it's basically, how does blogging help me get clients? We've talked numerous times about the types of blogs you could write, why you should blog, what you should blog about, and how you should promote it. We talked about all this stuff, but never once have we really talked into the strategy of how it actually gets you clients. Because a lot of people are out there right now blogging and they're blogging just to blog. They've got someone they pay five or ten bucks to write a blog or write whatever they want. But there's no real strategy behind it, and what that's like is it's like you're a lightweight and you're going into the heavyweight boxing ring trying to win the champion — and it's just not going to work. So what you need to do is that lightweight arena is your local area. A lot of times I see people making the biggest mistakes where they start blogging, but they don't actually include their local area anywhere in their blog and they don't promote their blog. So what they actually did was just write an international blog that is competing against all of the world. So let's get into it. I've helped so many people do this. I've done it for my own pet sitting company. I've done it for my coaching company, Jump Consulting. It's why you can use us as the Google for the pet industry. We've got over 350 blogs, over 130 podcasts, and like over 200 videos. I basically dedicated my life to answering all of your questions. All you gotta do is use the search feature. I want you to think about your business the same way. Educational marketing is something that's really big these days. So let me tell you a story. When I first started coaching about this blogging thing, I had this friend, Mark Seibel, with Doggy Steps Dog Training. He’d been going on and on, but he wasn’t really getting enough business that he wanted. So we actually sat down together and I taught him this blogging strategy. The results were he raised his rates. Why? Because he needed to stop the flow of people coming into his business. That's how successful it was. It was so successful because he used this strategy and he got more clients. He had the decision to make — either raise his rates to stop the flow or hire people so he could keep all these people coming in. I've also brought you the story on my YouTube channel of this cool guy who was about to go bankrupt and didn’t even have money to pay his employees. He turned that around into an international, worldwide-known company that now doesn’t just service his local area — it’s around the whole country. It's called River Pools and Spas, and it's my good friend Marcus Sheridan. Marcus taught this thing called The Big Five. It’s something you need to look up, but it works. It’s helped me in both my businesses and everyone else’s. Another example is Kate McQuillan from Pet Sitters Ireland. She’s incredible. She’s one of my good friends. She also teaches blogging, and her and I really got around Marcus about the same time. Kate teaches people how to do that too — using The Big Five and creating awesome, relevant content. I've also told you about Mike Alton — another really good resource. He’s the Blogan Brute, and he’s fantastic. He has so many guides and step-by-step instructions that I use to create SOPs. All of these different thought leaders in the blog sphere are people you really need to understand because their techniques can help you get pet sitting and dog walking clients. Now, here's the premise behind it: we Google everything. If you're wondering what the school schedule is, or what the bump is on your arm that's purple and blue, you're going to Google it. Or even better, people are voice-texting — “Hey Google, tell me where the nearest Joanne’s is. Hey Google, tell me where the nearest dentist is.” So we are either typing or voicing into Google for everything. And don’t fool yourself — people are doing that for pet sitters, dog walkers, kennels, boarders, trainers. Now maybe you say, “Bella, I'm a dog walker or pet sitter, I'm not a boarding facility.” You still need to be typing and writing about that boarding facility because if I voice-text and the first thing that comes up is a pet sitting company talking about boarding — you got me. You got my curiosity. I'm going to Google to get the information, and I got news for you — nobody else is doing this. The way it helps you get clients is that it builds credibility. It builds educational marketing. People start knowing you, liking you, trusting you, and seeing you as a local thought leader — someone they can turn to as a resource. Maybe your services aren’t exactly right for them, but they still know they can go to you, and that knowledge is power. The things that we’re going to blog about are things like: how much does it cost? “How much does pet sitting cost in Scottsdale?” If I was Googling for pet sitting in Scottsdale and that article came up, I’m going to click on it. Let me tell you another story. Sarah El-Sharbini up in Toronto went nuts with her website. She put a blog about “How much does pet sitting cost in Toronto?” and it's her number one blog. How about comparisons — “What’s the difference between kenneling my dog and having a pet sitter?” Or, “Why should I not trust pet sitters in Scottsdale?” I actually wrote a blog on that way back when — it was because Yelp was hiding reviews. I knew Yelp would come up for “reviews of Scottsdale pet sitters,” so I said, “Well, I want to come up too.” So I blogged strategically for it. When you give people more things to see, and when we do a search and see sites like Rover or Wag or Sitter City, and then we see a local business, we give it more attention. So what is your business saying? Is it saying anything at all? Or are you just sitting there complaining that Rover and Wag are taking all your clients? Don’t do that. When people are grateful to a brand, it leads to more revenue because people feel indebted to you. They feel excited that you’re actually there to help them. Remember that. Now, another reason blogging gets people to you — I know every business owner is overwhelmed. Who here is sitting around saying, “Hey Bella, I got all this extra time”? You’re probably listening right now knowing you’re supposed to be doing something else. So here’s the thing — I want to give you more stuff to do. If you were to just write two blogs a month and upcycle them, you’d be far ahead of the game. What’s upcycling? Listen to my friend Brian Fanzo from iSocialFans — he’s got a great diagram I linked in a blog. It shows how you create one piece of content and repurpose it. I’ll use myself as an example. I’m here explaining something, and I’ll rip this audio and put it on my podcast. I’ll make a one-minute video for Instagram, a ten-minute excerpt for LinkedIn, a 20-second video for Twitter, and upload the full video to YouTube. Then I’ll go through the comments, answer questions, and make this a blog post with show notes. That’s seven pieces of content from one idea. Then the recycle part — I’ll schedule all this in my Agorapulse tool because Agorapulse is like the best thing since sliced bread. It’s about $500 a year, but it’s worth it because I can post across all social channels,