My client, a pro­fes­sional dog walker/runner (watch the video on her home page if you have a sec — so adorable) and I devised a multi-pronged online strat­egy for her busi­ness mar­ket­ing includ­ing: a web­site, blog, refer­ral site (Angie’s List), & Insta­gram. On her own, she started using Craig’s List, and between that and word-of-mouth, her busi­ness is nearly full.

“Do I have to keep writ­ing my blog posts?” she asked. “Can you take my blog down because I’m not get­ting any busi­ness from my blog.”

Writ­ing doesn’t come eas­ily for her and, and she was feel­ing the time-crunch. I said, “No, you can choose whichever mar­ket­ing chan­nels that work for you. The impor­tant thing is to just keep mar­ket­ing some­where.” But I waited a bit and didn’t take action. I was going to see her in per­son, and I wanted to give her one more blog-writing strat­egy to try to make it eas­ier for her.

Two days later she got a new client who found her on the refer­ral site where, believe me, there’s lots of com­pe­ti­tion. He said that he chose her among the many because of her most recent blog post! The post was about one of her middle-aged dog clients who has a fatal ill­ness. In it, Jen­nifer revealed her patience, true self-less nature, and her uncon­di­tional love for dogs. When other web­sites just have a cute name, logo, and prices, you can imag­ine how hers stood out.

“Ugh,” she said. “I think I’m going to have to con­tinue writ­ing my blog!” I agreed and sug­gested that she pro­file each of her dog clients and write about their adorable per­son­al­i­ties and how much fun she has play­ing, walk­ing and run­ning together. Just a pic­ture, which she is already tak­ing for her Insta­gram stream on her web­site, and a para­graph with a touch of Jennifer’s per­son­al­ity is all that’s needed; there’s no need to write a manifesto.