Do You Love Your Pet?

Love your Pet Day was this week (Feb 20) and it’s a great day to share your love for your pet or a love of animals on your social media streams or in a blog like this. If your pet is unusual in any way it could even make a media release.

There are a myriad of awareness days or weeks where you can weave stories of your pets into your content and outreach – especially if it’s highly relevant to your business or organisation. Another is May, National Walking Month for example.

The truth is some people will think it’s irrelevant however if a pet is relevant to you and part of your personality then it could be relevant to your business. You might allow people to bring their dogs to work or you might bring your dog to work. You may have working dogs or cats in your business eg. Farm.

Or you may have a business where animals or pets are really relevant such as a vet’s practice; dog grooming; cattery; animal park or sanctuary…the list goes on. Just because it may not be relevant to everyone it’s often relevant to some.

Also loving animals can speak to your character and people do chime with like-minded people so you may be cementing a bond with a client or customer without even knowing it – just by talking about your dog, rabbit, cat, or snake!

We have a wonderful dog, Jess who is a saved pet. She is a Saluki Lurcher cross, who is a very pretty dog; much larger than we had originally planned for, but she is very gentle though very aloof. She’s got her favourite humans and she isn’t bothered by any other humans!

On our first meeting at Bath Cats & Dogs Home she was incredibly nervous, and had in the past refused to go for a walk with any other people. She walked with us, although without any interaction between us. Today she rules the home and has such a lovely life with us. She’s a member of our family.

She has been with us for six years and I take her for walks each day, and that has a huge impact on not only Jess, but also on my own health. Even though on some of the very dark, cold mornings in winter, I still trudge out with her, I feel better for it afterwards. It’s a gentle, quiet start to my frenetic days.

I regularly post images from our walks on my social media, and often events have happened during the walk that have prompted me to write about something. I started sharing posts about her during lockdown when walking her was about all we could do. It has become the most successful thing I’ve ever done on social media and I regularly get asked about it.

Also, walking with Jess each day give me time to clear my head, consider any problems and look at things in a new light.

I can see some of you asking, what has loving a pet got to do with business?

 7 ideas for stories around pets for social media posts.

1 Firstly, and importantly, if your business is animal focused, then you should definitely be talking about anything pet related and how your business or service helps them.

Some examples: share tips that are relevant to your business offering – talk about why a particular product is good, what properties it has that are good for pets – how your reiki service works on pets too.

2 If you haven’t got a pet… Well, you know how often I say ‘people are interested in you as a person and they buy from and work with people they like, find interesting’ – well, if someone sees that you have a pet, and they also have pet, they are going to be drawn to you more than they may otherwise have been. You may not have shared a lot of posts about yourself, but if you are a mad cat or dog person, why not share some pictures and stories about you and your pet?

3 Newspapers are always interested in stories about weather events, so if you have images and a story about your pet out in the snow, or coping with floods, that could be something for your social media, and or local news. You might share important tips for helping owners to cope with their pets during very hot weather too. If your pet is unusual (but legal) that could be a media story.

4 If you have a passion which is based around a pet and is something you do in your down time, share stories about them. For example, you might go horse riding, or take part in certain events; you might have trained your dog to do agility shows where they have to run and possibly jump over obstacles; you might rear pedigree kittens – whatever, people are often drawn to animal stories.

5 Do you have an ‘office’ dog, who regularly shares your office space?  You probably have some interesting stories about how they cope with the coming and going of any visitors. Or for a bit of fun you could post a story written in the voice of your office dog.

6 As we’re in the month of ‘love’ – do you have a story where you met your other half while out walking the dog? Or maybe you have struck up a long-lasting friendship after meeting another dog walker.

7 Share a testimonial that someone has written about your ‘animal’ based business, or give another business a shout-out when they have helped you and your pet.