A couple of weeks ago Danielle Chonody from The Circle of Pet Sitting Excellence interviewed me to discuss fresh new tips that pet sitters can use to get new clients using social media.  Here is what she said about our interview…

Last week I interviewed Joan Fernandez from PetBusinessVA.com and learned a lot of fresh new tips for using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote a pet sitting business.

It’s funny because I think I originally connected with Joan on Twitter and we have kept in touch on Facebook.

It’s amazing how much social media is growing!  Facebook now has 300 million users - and the fastest growing segment on Facebook is women aged 55-65. So it’s not just for the teens anymore. More than 1.5 million pieces of information including web links, news stories, videos, photos, blog posts, and notes, are shared on Facebook every day.  You can find some other great social media tidbits in this video on Joans blog :

http://www.petbusinessva.com/social-media-revolution/

Some big advantages of using social media marketing include:

1. It’s FREE

2. You can use it to network with peers

3. You can use it to build relationships

4. You can connect with people that you otherwise wouldn’t

Social media can also help you to build closer relationships with existing clients, build credibility, and increase your website traffic.

One of the highlights of the call for me were Joans tips on using Twitter to connect with people looking for pet sitters in your local area.  Joan uses keywords such as pet sitter and her city name to do twitter searches using Tweetdeck,Twellow, and LocalTweeps.com to find tweets from people in her area of Washington DC who are looking for pet sitter recommendations.  A trick I’d never thought of trying before! Joan also introduced us to twitter email alerts using tweetbeep.com using these types of keywords.

At the end of the call Joan also showed us how to save time with social media by using Ping to send updates to you Twitter, Facebook and Linked In profiles. We also discussed cell phone applications that you can use on the go to post pictures of clients pets and new updates.

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