The PetsitUSA Blog

Posted: 02 May 2010 08:04 AM PDT

Facebook Fan Page promotion for pet sitting businesses Facebook has moved ahead of Google to become the most popular website. It’s also, by far, the most popular social networking website. In fact, Facebook has over 400 million active users, with about half of them logging in each day. What that means is many of your potential clients and competitors are already there! Why would you not want to take advantage of that?

The bottom line . . . if Facebook isn’t part of the marketing strategy for your pet sitting business, it’s probably time you changed that.

To get the most out of the most popular website on the planet, you’ll want to set up a page for your business – not a profile. To find out what the difference is see Facebook Fan Page vs. Personal Profile. I highly suggest setting up a personal profile in your own name, and then setting up your business page through your personal profile.

Once you get your business page set up, that’s just the beginning. Rather than just letting it sit there and hoping people find it, you’ll need to promote it. Here are a few ways to get started:

Inlcude a link to your fan page on your:

emails
website
newsletters
business cards
print or online ads
brochures
other online profiles

Send an announcement: Email your current pet sitting clients to let them know your business has a Fan Page. Chances are, many of them are already on Facebook, and will be more than happy to find you there as well.

Keep people on your page: Part of a successful Fan Page is keeping people interested. You can do this by by:

posting links to relevant articles and posts by others
posting original information that’s both helpful and interesting centering around the topic of your page
asking questions and responding – get a conversation going!
inviting people to post pictures of their pets
posting pictures of your own pets and your pet sitting clients’ pets (with their permission, of course)

Keep it active: Post content regularly to your Fan Page. This will keep people interested, and since your posts will show up in their stream (in most cases) they will be reminded of you periodically. If what you have to say is interesting enough, they might also choose to share your posts with their friends.

Share the good stuff: Periodically share exceptionally good posts from your Facebook Page to your personal profile. To do this, go to the post you want to share and click the “share this” link under the post you’d like to draw attention to.

Design an eye catching note cards: Give clients a nicely designed card or flyer letting them know about your Facebook Page. Leave it on your last pet sitting visit along with your ‘welcome home’ note.

Social Ads: With social ads, you can target people very specifically. For example, if you’re an Austin pet sitter, you can target people who mention in their profile that they have pets, live in Austin, and are in a certain age group. To get started, click the Advertise link at the bottom right corner of any page on Facebook.

Cross Promotion: Promote your page through your accounts on other social networking websites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and others. Don’t overdo it though – you don’t want to spam your friends and followrs.

Events: Use the events feature to post events that you sponsor.

Specials: Announce pet sitting or dog walking specials on your Fan Page.

You’ll find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/petsitusa