The biggest thing that stopped me from blogging for my business was that I had no idea what to blog about. Owning a Pet Sitting and Dog Walking business I thought that there was no need to blog about the services we offered because wasn’t it obvious what we did and how we did it – I thought so.
I also didn’t really feel like an expert about anything to do with pets. I had pets of my own, but I didn’t have any qualifications around pets. For example, I wasn’t a dog trainer, a vet or a qualified groomer.
This is primarily what stopped me from blogging for the few years of owning my own business.
What Should You Blog About?
I have tried more recently to start categorising my blogs so that I have a balance of the type of blog posts. This hopefully will allow me to attract more people at all stages of the buyer’s journey.
I now group my titles I am going to write in the following broad groups.
- Awareness Posts
- Educational Posts
- ‘Selling’ Services
What is Included in Each Blog Group?
#1. Awareness Posts
These are what I like to call my ‘fluffy’ posts that are perhaps more likely to get a higher number of shares on social because they are quite topical at that time.
For example:
- Newsworthy events
- 10 Reasons Your Dog Loves You
- The 5 Funniest Cat Videos You Will Cry Laughing At
These are all articles that really are not going to rank well on Google and give you Evergreen traffic, but they will get you in front of lots of people who will potentially see your brand and click to look at your article.
Note – if you are doing FB ads this can be a great strategy for retargeting.
#2. Educational Posts
These are posts which will get ranked on Google because they are things that people are searching for on Google and wants answers to.
For example:
- Why Does My Dog Eat Their Own Poo?
- How Much Does a Pet Sitter Cost?
- Where Are the Best Places to Walk My Dog in X Town?
It’s important to grow your organic Google traffic because 1) It’s free and 2) You’ll build your online presence.
#3. Selling Services
We all need to get new customers and so there is no point just writing fluffy content all the time. We need to get down to talking about what we do and how we do it.
For Example:
- What Does a Pet Sitter Do?
- How Can I Book a Pet Sitter?
- Who Are the Best Pet Sitters in X Town?
Some of these will get found in Google search as they are things that people are searching for. There are other things though you need to write about that won’t really get found in search but are still valuable educational articles for your website.
For example:
- Why We Don’t Visits You Cat Every Other Day?
- What Happens at A Meet and Greet?
- Where Do You Keep My Keys?
How Often Should You Write Your Blog Posts?
I have always blogged 3 times a week and I now have a Podcast as well. This is an ideal recommendation if you really want to ramp up your online presence.
I do agree this isn’t always possible due to time commitments, however there are lots of ways to create content quickly and we usually have a few more minutes in the day than we think.
You can hire someone to write for you, but I would strongly recommend that you get someone who understands how to construct a good blog post rather than someone who is just a writer.
