Basic site info some pet businesses miss to help them fully market their products and services.

Many pet business websites, blogs, social media sites, emails and and other marketing tools I've seen over the years are missing some very basic, yet highly important, info for their potential and current customers, partners, distributors, and wholesalers.

Hopefully the following info doesn't apply to your pet business sites, but it's always good to do a quick review of some basics, right? So here I go:

#1 - Believe it or not the number one item I see missing from pet business sites is their location. If you have a website, social media site, blog or send out email newsletters, be sure and add in all your contact info to the site or newsletter, so interested prospects and customers can easily contact you, or at least know if you are in an area that can serve them.

I also believe it's important to have your phone number and email address available to them as well, not just a form on your site. Make it easy for those interested in your products and/or services to contact you if they need. If they have trouble figuring out how to contact you, how will they trust you to provide great products and services?

#2 - The second item I see very frequently is pet business website urls missing from the front page of their Facebook page. Why not make it easy for those that 'like' and are thinking of 'liking' your Facebook page to check out your site and review what you offer?

There is a perfect location on every Facebook business page, just under the page's main image, that allows you to add your url (example: www.yourpetbusiness.com), so that it is clickable and readily available to anyone who would be interested in visiting your site and learning more about your products and services.

You can alter this information in the edit section of your FB page. Same rules apply for Twitter too. Make sure you have a nice description of your business and a link to your url on your Twitter page/profile.

#3 - And the third item I see pet business missing is a clear and simple statement of what they provide (either products or services) featured very prominently on the front page of their website. When prospects and customers visit your website, make it easy for them to fully understand what your business does and provides.

#4 - My number four 'pet peeve' is not having contact information in regular emails that you send out to communicate with your prospects, customers, distributors, wholesalers and partners. Again, make it super simple for interested parties to contact you and learn more about your sites, products and services. Be sure and add in your name, website address, FB and Twitter urls, phone number, email address, city and state in the signature of your email. And add a nice logo graphic for punch too, keep that branding going.

Remember, all these 'marketing tools' can and will help you build your business, you just need to utilize them properly and to their maximum effectiveness. Now go check your sites!

How to get notifications for your pet business Facebook page.

Having a Facebook business page for your pet business is a great marketing tool! I have three of them for all three of my brands.

Checking the page throughout the day can be time consuming, but it's important not to miss any messages or comments that your 'likers' have left, to keep in close contact with your prospects and customers.

One of the features that Facebook hasn't implemented yet is notifications when someone posts or comments on your Facebook page. Some call it 'the feature Facebook forgot.'

The other day I came across a third-party application that does provide notifications to your email inbox when someone posts to your page or comment. It's called Hyper Alerts.

I tested it out the other day. Went to the website, created an account, added in my three Facebook page urls, sat back and waited for notifications to come to my email box. Quickly I found that it wasn't working.

After a bit of research I found out why. I made the changes and now I'm getting those valuable notifications. What was the glitch? I used my vanity url when imputing into their system, when I needed to input the original url.

If you have a vanity url, how do you find your original url? Well, it wasn't easy, but here are the instructions to make it easy for you:

1. Type out the following: http://facebook.com/pages/(insert name of your page here)/

2. Then hover over the image of your facebook page, right click and paste the url it into notepad or some similar program. Copy and paste the id number (just the number) from that url and paste it in at the end of the url that you just typed.

It should look something like this (only with the name of your page and your id number):

http://www.facebook.com/pages/PawsibleMarketing/96800537129

3. Open another tab and insert your url and make sure it directs to your page. If it does, you are ready to go.

I went back into the Hyper Alerts system and changed the url's of all my Facebook pages and now I'm happy to say I am getting notices when someone posts or comments on my Facebook business pages!

Motivation!

Owning your own business brings lots of challenges.

The grass isn't always greener, but the rewards from building something on my own (and with a little help from friends:), are very great. I'm grateful for being able to work day in and day out with other folks that share my passion for pets and animals.

I'm human, though. And sometimes motivation plays a big factor in my daily life, especially since I work from home; live in a cabin in the mountains, that are constantly calling me for a hike; and share my life with two dogs and two cats, who don't always think that watching 'Mom' sit at a computer all day is fun.

So, I was very interested when I came across this video (via TheRSA.org), that explains (contrary to popular belief) that motivation doesn't alway come from where you think. Sit back for a bit and take a look, it's an eye opener.

Luckily, building a small to medium sized business on your own is ideally suited for the motivation they speak of....all helping us be more successful in our work and our life.

Photo courtesy of: Golden Fever

Basic Facebook tagging etiquette for pet businesses.

Yesterday I came across a terrific article on Facebook tagging by Mari Smith, the guru on social media.

Some of you may be asking...what is Facebook tagging? Facebook said it best...

"We hope that tagging your status updates and others posts from the Publisher will enable you to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, and connect with even more people."

I use tagging a lot on my Facebook pages, including my Facebook page for Pawsible Marketing. It's a great way to share links to information I've found on the Internet with my clients and prospective clients to keep them informed of the pet industry, and marketing in general.

Here are the basics of how it works:

If you have personally liked a page or friended someone on Facebook, and they have a great article that you believe will be interesting to visitors and readers of your Facebook business page, you can @ tag them in the Facebook message.

You do this by first inserting the link, then the message box pops up for you to type your message. Type your message and type an @ symbol. Then begin typing the name of the person or name of the company, or organization you would like to attribute the article or link to (with no space in between the @ and the name). After a split second wait, you should see the name of the person or company populate for you, then you can select them and they will automatically be populated, linked and tagged in your message.

I use tagging to provide credit and attribution back to the person, company or organization from which I found the link as a way of saying thank you; and as a way to provide credit and thanks to those I work with and want to promote.

When you tag, the message that you post on your wall will also show on the wall of the person, company or organization that you tagged, so they will see it.

Mari has a fantastic and comprehensive tutorial on Facebook tagging. Go take a look!

The basics of SEO for your pet business online presence.

I've had a lot of discussions this week and last about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with my clients.

Contrary to popular belief, SEO isn't rocket science. You can do it yourself, and you can be very effective in managing your own SEO.

Back in 2007 when I was redesigning JohannTheDog.com, I wanted to make it as search engine friendly as possible, just like any other business. So I started searching for information, advice, help and tips to make my site as search engine friendly as possible.

I immediately found information provided by Matt Cutts. Matt is a Google software engineer and currently the head of Google’s Webspam team, where he specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) issues. Matt is very open about sharing information to help small, medium and large businesses with their SEO. I also sought out direction from Google's Webmaster Page, which has a wealth of information on how to make your site search engine friendly, including this get started guide.

Combining the advice I garnered from reading articles and watching videos of Matt from Google's Webmaster YouTube page, I undertook my own search engine optimization when re-building my site.

The results were very effective, not only for JohannTheDog.com, but for other sites that I have built over the years. Just check my ranking for 'pet business marketing' on Google; chances are I'm on the front page. (As I type this, I'm currently #1 on Google for those terms; terms that potential clients of Pawsible Marketing would most likely search in looking for my services).

Again, SEO isn't rocket science and it isn't a big secret methodology that only SEO companies know. It's basic rules you follow to help people find your website, consequently finding your products and services.

Combining the SEO techniques I learned, along with creating great content that my potential customer base can relate to, and networking through social media has brought me all the backlinks, referrals, traffic, and notice that I need for my sites and businesses to be successful.

You can too.

How to keep your pet business social media friends, fans and followers.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites are great to help you market and promote your pet business. And you work hard to build your fans, followers and friends on these social media sites.

But the two big questions are:

- How can I keep my fans and followers?

- How do I actively engage with them, so that when they are ready to buy, they think of my pet business?

There is no doubt that connecting with social media fans and followers can build your business. But you need to engage and remain top of mind with them to fully reap the advantages that these great communication tools can have for your pet business.

There is a fine line to walk to keep fans and followers happy, engaged and interacting. To give you some help in this area, here are the top five reasons people unfollow on Facebook and Twitter according to SmartBrief:

They asked the question: "What causes you to unfollow an individual or a business on social networks?" And here are the answers.

• Their over-communication gets overwhelming — 44.81%
• The don’t add value to my day with their irrelevant postings — 36.79%
• They only talk about themselves or act irresponsibly toward their audience — 9.91%
• They are not open to feedback, two-way dialogue or user-generated content — 5.19%
• They under-communicate or may not be active for weeks/months at a time — 3.30%

You can see that it takes a balance to engage and keep connected with your fans and followers.

I have a rule that I share with my clients. It's an 80-20 rule:

• 80% of the time bring value to your fans and followers - share fun, entertaining, engaging and thought provoking content related to your pet business to add to their daily life.
• 20% of the time promote your product or service in an engaging way.

By creating a balance of sharing information, tweets, videos, photos, links to articles, and other pet related content; along with product/service promotion with your fan/follower base you can learn a lot about what your customers and potential customers like and dislike over time.

The key then is to find the perfect balance between valuable content and product promotion to create an engaging atmosphere and become a trusted and respected resource for your customers and potential customers. This keeps your business top of mind, and when those fans and followers are ready to buy, they will remember your pet business!

Happy networking!