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By Beth Stultz-Hairston, PSI President | August 2023

Note: This content of this blog post is from the article "AI Unleashed: Easy Ways Pet Sitters Can Use AI Tools to Promote Their Businesses," which is included in the upcoming Oct-Dec '23 issue of Pet Sitter's World magazine.

As the demand for professional pet-sitting and dog-walking services continues to rise, the industry is constantly seeking innovative ways to streamline operations, improve service quality, and enhance customer satisfaction. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool that can revolutionize these businesses, providing numerous benefits such as improved marketing, efficient scheduling, and enhanced communication with clients. In this article, we will explore several exciting ideas on how pet-sitting and dog-walking businesses can leverage AI to promote their services. Fun fact: This paragraph was generated by AI!

It’s quite likely that when you started your pet-sitting or dog-walking business, artificial intelligence was never a tool you planned to have in your business arsenal. Perhaps even now, it all sounds a bit too high-tech for you to think it has practical applications for you as a business owner. But with easy-to-use AI tools now readily available, there are some simple ways you can take advantage of AI to help you and your pet-sitting business.

A Good AI Tool to Try First

While there are more and more AI tools becoming available, for this article I want to focus on a tool that I have found easy to use and think could be a good starting point for PSI members interested in testing out AI: ChatGPT (chat.openai.com).

First things first…what is Chat GPT? ChatGPT is a chatbot developed and made available by OpenAI. In short, you type in a question or a prompt, and ChatGPT will generate a response. At the time of this writing, you can still use it for free (you will need to register for a free OpenAI account), but there is an option for a paid membership (currently $20/mo.). For each of the examples I use in this article, I am only using the free version.

Next, while I think the following examples show exciting ways you can use ChatGPT in your business, I want to caution that these generative AI tools are not perfect—so never consider the response/output the platform provides to one of your prompts at the “final work.” You should always review the information ChatGPT provides to check it for accuracy—but to also ensure that the tone and voice of what is written matches your company’s brand and personality. ChatGPT is a great starting point and can save you a ton of time—but you still have to do some work!

Ways You Can Use ChatGPT for Your Business

As I’ve explained, ChatGPT allows you to enter a question or prompt, and then it provides a response—but how can you use this to promote your pet-sitting or dog-walking business?

Check out these simple ideas:

Blog Posts

I often talk to members who want to start a blog for their business (or keep their current blog more up to date) but simply can’t find the time. Blogging is a great way to establish your status as a pet-care expert and build a reputation for your business as a leader in your local community, but one blog post every six months won’t help you reap the benefits you desire.  I talk to many pet sitters who say they have ideas for blog posts that they know would be beneficial to their audience but find it difficult to carve out time to research and write. This is where ChatGPT comes in!

The screenshot below shows the prompt I entered into ChatGPT: Please write a 600-word blog post that highlights pet safety tips to keep in mind during the winter. Please include the sources with links.

You’ll notice I specifically asked that sources with links be included in the post. Including this in your prompt makes it much easier to quickly check the information that is generated by ChatGPT.

While it’s tempting to publish the generated blog post as is, I recommend against that (even if you feel the blog post sounds great!). Because the open availability of AI is still so relatively new, there is a not a real consensus yet on how you should attribute credit to platforms like ChatGPT (and you should certainly never submit a generated post like this for a classroom assignment or for a writing award submission without full disclosure!).

But more than that, you want content your business puts out to be unique to your business. So, use the ChatGPT post as a starting point. For example, in the excerpt in the screenshot above, you see “Limit Outdoor Time” is the first tip. You can customize this section by adding information about your company’s policies for pet sitting in inclement weather, explaining how a quick potty time combined with indoor enrichment takes the place of a full-length outdoor walk when temperatures are dangerously cold.

Brainstorming Content Ideas

Maybe it’s not the actual writing you’re worried about—it may be that you simply just don’t know where to start! I’ve found one of the most useful features of platforms like ChatGPT is their brainstorming capabilities.

Sometimes I just need inspiration—an idea to get me started…and AI can deliver!

Let’s say you are planning out your company’s content strategy—whether you want more posts on your company blog, articles to include in your client newsletter, or maybe you even want to pitch article ideas you’d like to write for Pet Sitter’s World magazine or other pet-related publications.

You’ll see in the screenshot below, in the hypothetical situation I used as my prompt, I asked for article ideas but also included information on the pet sitter’s credentials and areas of expertise. The more specific you are in the prompt you provide, the more applicable the ideas provided by ChatGPT will be.

You can use the generated ideas to begin to fill in spots in your content calendar—and remember, if you need help getting a “first draft” of any of these article ideas written, you can use ChatGPT for that as well.

Another way ChatGPT can be helpful for brainstorming as it relates to articles or blog posts is in helping generate article titles. As a writer, I typically write my entire article and then save the blog title for last (mainly because it’s usually a difficult decision for me to make!). ChatGPT can help with this as well!

In the screenshot below, you’ll see I simply provided the general topic of my article and asked ChatGPT to provide me with title ideas. You’ll note that I also indicated I wanted the title to be SEO friendly—because keywords are important when you are promoting your online articles and posts!

Social Media Posts

Once you’ve written a blog post and selected the perfect title, your next step is promoting it to drive traffic to your company website—and typically you’ll rely on social-media posts.

ChatGPT can provide inspiration for those posts as well. Using the same blog post idea from the example above, I asked ChatGPT to generate some possible Facebook posts to promote the blog. Notice I specifically asked ChatGPT to brainstorm posts in different styles to give me a variety of options to choose from. But, if you already know the specific tone you want to use—a humorous, relatable post, for example—you could specifically mention that in your prompt as well.

Other Ideas

The examples above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using AI—or even ChatGPT specifically—for your pet-sitting business. Some pet sitters are already using platforms like ChatGPT to help them draft business procedures and standard operating procedures. ChatGPT can also be helpful for assisting you with client communications—whether you need help sending an email to clients about a recent policy change, or if you need some ideas for her to professional respond to a rude client with a complaint.

AI can also be a powerful tool for creating images for your business—whether you are using an app like Remini to create AI-generated headshots for yourself or are using Canva’s AI-powered tools to create custom images to use in your company’s articles and posts.

Are you already using AI in your business? I’d love to hear from you! Email PSI at info@petsit.com with subject line: AI. We look forward to sharing more examples PSI members utilizing these technologies to help their businesses.