Facebook and Instagram for dog walkers

Where the work actually happens

Most social media advice tells a small business to grow a following. That is the wrong goal for a walker. You do not need ten thousand followers. You need to be the name that comes up when one person in one neighborhood group asks who walks dogs around here.

So the order is: a tidy Page so you look real, a tidy Instagram so you look alive, and then almost all of your effort inside local groups where the question is already being asked.

Set up the accounts once

Facebook Page.Facebook's help says Pages are for businesses, brands, organizations and public figures to share updates and connect with people, and that anyone with a Facebook account can create one or help manage it. Use a Page rather than running the business from your personal profile. It keeps client photos out of your family feed, and it gives a neighbor something to check before they recommend you.

Instagram professional account.Instagram's help describes switching a personal account to a professional one, in business or creator form, with the business type aimed at local businesses and service providers. It gives you a professional dashboard with insights and ad tools. Switching is free and reversible.

Nextdoor Business Page. Nextdoor tells businesses to claim a Business Page and to share its link with customers along with a personal note. Nextdoor is already sorted by neighborhood, which is exactly how a walker sells, so it is worth more than its size suggests.

Put the same three things on all three: the neighborhoods you cover, one clear service, and one way to book.

Local groups, and the rule that catches people out

Group admins set their own rules. Facebook's help says an admin may have up to 10 rules, and can pin them to the top of the group and tag a rule in a comment to remind members. Read them before your first post, every time, in every group.

The pattern that catches walkers out is this. Plenty of neighborhood groups do not allow a business to post an advertisement at all, but do allow a business to answer when a member asks for a recommendation. In those groups the winning move is not a post. It is a good reply, at the right moment, to somebody who is already looking.

One good reply a week in a group you actually belong to beats forty posts across groups that will ban you. Being removed from the neighborhood group you are trying to work in is an expensive mistake to undo.

A reply you can copy

Short, human, no sales voice, no wall of links. The thing that wins the message is the free meet and greet, because it removes the risk. The Meet and Greet checklist is what makes that meeting worth attending.

What to post, and how often

Two posts a week. That is it. Take them on the route with the phone in your pocket, because a post you have to make time for is a post that stops happening in month two.

• A dog, mid walk, with permission. One sentence about the walk. This is the post that works and it is the one people share.
• Something useful for local owners. Hot pavement this week. Ice melt on paws. The trail that is closed.
• An opening. Two midday slots free on the north side this month.
• You, occasionally. People hire a person. Let them see the person.

Tie the caption to the neighborhood, not to the industry. A neighbor recognises a street corner. Nobody outside the trade cares about a hashtag about dog walking.

Permission, before the first photo

You are posting other people's dogs, taken in and around other people's homes. Treat that as a policy, not as manners.

Ask at the Meet and Greet, get the answer in writing along with the rest of the paperwork, and record it with the client so you are not relying on memory two years later.

Then keep to it. A single owner asking you to take something down is a small problem. A client discovering a photo she never agreed to is a lost client and a lost street.

What never goes online

This part is security, not marketing. Your posts quietly describe when specific homes are empty, and you are the person holding the key.

• No addresses. Not in a caption, not in a location tag, not visible as a house number in the frame.
• No house exteriors, doors or gates that a person could match to a street.
• No keys, lockboxes, key codes or alarm panels. Ever, even blurred.
• No client schedules. Saying you walk a specific dog at 1pm on Tuesdays tells the wrong reader when that house is empty.
• No live posting from inside a home. Post later, from your own street.
• No client names, complaints or medical details, however anonymous you think you made it. Your other clients can usually work out who it is.

A useful test before posting: could a stranger use this to find a house, get into it, or work out when nobody is home? If the answer is maybe, it does not go up.

Where this fits

Social is the slowest of the three local channels and the easiest one to overdo. Paper puts you on a street this week. Your Google Business Profile catches people who are already looking. Reviews and referrals turn one client into three. Groups keep you present in between.

Give it the ten minute slot in the weekly marketing routine and no more, until it is provably bringing you bookings.

Read next

• How to get your first 10 dog walking clients ranks every channel against the one thing that matters, which is whether your clients form a route.
• The Meet and Greet checklist is where the photo permission above gets agreed.