Instafamous Dog Account in 2021? Pro Tips to Make Instagram-Worthy Content| #DingleDaysPodcast 010
- You're listening to episode 10 of the dogs for people to podcast presented by Dingle days, I'm your host Geryah Dingle and I believe that anything can be learned. If you believe that's true as well to keep listening because it's the number one show that dives here you're learning and bring you business tips, strategies and technologies for pet parents. Today, on the show we're being joined by Tory Mistick, she is an influencer, educator and podcasters, and founder of the award-winning dog lifestyle brand Wear Wag Repeat Her permission is to help women live their best life with their dogs. And today we're talking about how to create Instagram worthy content in 2021 with your dogs, enjoy the show. Tori, welcome to the show, how are you today? - I'm doing really good, although it is freezing here where I am today, but other than that, doing good.
- Yeah, I've seen the news and there was like a sweeping snow storms going across the country and just ridiculous temperatures that aren't normal, so I just appreciate you taking the time to come on the show but for our audience who may not be as familiar with you, I know we met on clubhouse, which is an excellent audio only chat, that's why I need to reach out to a lot of folks in the dog industry business, but could you just tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and your background? - Yeah, sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on here, I'm really excited to chat. So my name, like you said, it's Tori Mistick, I am a dog mom to two chocolate labs, Burt and Lucy, they have a lot of followers on the internet I guess we all do together, it's a team effort, but I've been a dog mom blogger for about eight years on my blog wearwagrepeat.com. And I blog about all different kinds of things that I think will help you create the best life possible with your dog.
And I've been doing that for so long, people started to ask me how did you build your Instagram following? How did you build your blog traffic? All this stuff, so I started to offer some educational resources for pet preneurs, and pet influencers as well. So now I have online courses, and an online membership program for people who want to work with their dogs. - And that's what amazing. When I saw that, I was like wow, I have to have her on the show, I need to talk more.
And I just think it would be such great value added to our audience. Obviously we have mom and dad dog parents, but just your expertise and experience, I mean, just being featured in so many different places in the social media and marketing space formerly, right? And dipping your foot into that, and that's just so great. Well today, the main topic of the show is Insta famous in 2021. How to create Instagram worthy content today from a dog parents perspective, there's been a lot of changes, there's been a lot of shifts. I'm personally thinking about dipping my feet a little bit into the Instagram space. I'm a big believer in focusing on a single platform and kind of getting that going, as the YouTube channel is growing, we're starting to reach out more and more, and I personally love and I know Instagram is moving a little bit more towards, I won't say it's video centric, but it's definitely a lot more video focused than it has been in the past particularly with the of Tik Tok, and now we have Reels that are taking up so much time now to be competitive in this space, and the different types of content that you can produce with regard to that.
And I know you have some courses that are geared towards that, but just with that ever increasing fight for attention, we know they're trying to keep folks on the platform, there's advertising money behind this, what's your perspective with regard to, what can parents do in the Instagram space, as far as Instagram worthy content keeping people on the platform from your perspective? - Yeah I mean, you touched on so many great things just now I mean, video is huge, if you're not doing any kind of video, just get out of your comfort zone and do it. (laughing) Your already, I know everyone watching this has videos of their dog on their phone, so it's just a matter of kind of thinking about how you can utilize those on Instagram and on other platforms. 'Cause kind of like the neat thing about Tik Tok kind of exploding and growth in the last year, is that these like Tik Tok celebrities have emerged, and they are unpolished. They are just people at home, oftentimes there is like little to no editing done in their videos.
Some people do like elaborate videos and they're amazing, but then there's like this whole other slow people who just like off the cuff record stuff, and it's not perfect at all, and they let their personalities shine, and whether it's them or their dogs, and they let their imperfections show, and they have a mass millions of followers, and millions of views and likes and all that kind of stuff. So that kind of seems to be like, if I were looking at this in a critical way, that seems to be like the trend. I think if you wanted to kinda like get ahead of the trend or get on it while it's going, is to just be like really authentic, honest, show your imperfections, show people the real side of you, I think that those picture perfect Instagram posts, that are these, like photo-shopped amazing images. - upstanding on the ledge in the middle of nowhere. - Yeah, I think those are kinda like, I don't know they're not cool anymore.
You know, people don't wanna see that, they don't wanna see this elaborate production, they wanna see like what you're actually doing. And you know, I was just watching them video last night, that made me laugh so hard on Tik TOK, a woman was trying to show how she mixes like her protein powder into water, and she had one of those like handheld froth or mixer [Indistinct], as she was pouring the protein powder and it went like everywhere, and then she couldn't get the button to work on the froth, and then she stuck it in and then she pulled it out, and then you know it turned on, and the stuff went flying everywhere. And then she put it in the bottle or in the cup, and let go and it was like rattling around.
And it was like, most people would have deleted that, they would have been like, Oh my God, this is horrible, I need to clean up, I need to redo it, but she hit publish and it was so funny. (laughing) So, you know, if you can just let yourself go, and share those mess ups, I think that that's kind of like the way of the future for social media. - I mean, that sounds so real, right? I mean, going to get the dog food, and this food flies all over the place, or however you do it, you know if you do solids or a fresh dog food, but like yeah, keeping those real moments just for a second.
I am gonna backtrack a little bit, because I'm making the assumption that everybody's kind of familiar with the platform. So let's assume everybody knows what generally speaking Instagram is, but let's break down a little bit the types of engagement, I guess you could say from maybe the most generic to probably what Instagram will, puts little bit more emphasis on. So I think everybody's kind of familiar, generally speaking with like, with a comment, and then maybe something more extreme, like a share, right? Because that might take a little bit more honest on the individual. Can you talk about those maybe, and how that might influence how your content is being pushed on the platform? - Yeah, sure.
So Instagram knows everything that we're doing. So even if you don't take an action, and you just stop and look at something, for an extended period of time, it knows that you did that. So just be aware of that. Not that it's gonna like get you in trouble or anything, but even if you're not getting a ton of likes, or comments on your posts, it doesn't mean that people aren't seeing it. Instagram knows when peoples pause, and read something or pause and look at a video.
And I think that's why videos are taking over so much because you can't just swipe and swipe and swipe, you need to pause for a second to see what the video is about. So it does keep people on your content a little bit longer when you're doing videos, but of course people can like anything on Instagram, people can comment on anything on Instagram. And then if you hit the little paper airplane, icon in the bottom right corner of almost everything, you can share it. And that share either means you DM it to someone, to a friend to be like hey, you have to see this, this is amazing.
Or maybe you share it to your own stories, where that would be sharing it with all of your friends to tell all of your friends, hey you gotta see this, this is amazing. So as a content creator, I want people to share my content to their stories, because then not only will my followers see it, but if you share it to your story, as eager followers will see it, and you know, it just magnifies, from there, the more people who share it. You know, there's another element called saves, which people don't talk about as often, I use saves a lot to keep track of like accounts that I love, or artists that I love, or something like that.
But I just saw a content creator with dogs the other day, she was like, if it's less than 65 degrees where you are save this post. So she was trying to encourage people to hit that save button because in Instagram's eyes, the more saves you get on a post, Instagram's like, wow this person is providing amazing value, people are like dying to get this. So getting more saves and more shares, they're just like Instagram just thinks people love you more.
(laughing) - Yeah, I mean, 'cause that takes a little bit of extra effort, right? And that's kind of telling the algorithm if you would and it's amazing how much we speak in this language now algorithms, everybody's familiar with the algorithm. That's like, hey I wanna, - Algorithm, algorithm. (laughing) My mom, literally, it seems like, you're always talking about these algorithms.
It's like, I know, I know it's like these days, but yeah that saying, hey, I'm trying to keep up with this. This is something I want to keep track of, before we kinda dive into like maybe the different types of video and the different types of content you can put up a little bit more, maybe just a little bit about your approach. 'Cause I I'm gonna balance this with the social media aspects and then like, how this applies to like our pet lovers, right? Our dog families here. So knowing what we know and being as authentic as we can be, what seems to be working like, is it like if you want to use your dog to be Insta famous, if that's like your goal, right? You're not just like the casual user, you're trying to grow a following. What seems to be resonating you see in the pet space? - Yeah, so a ton of pet accounts that I keep track of and chat with, like on the side, everyone's been doing a lot of Reels. So again, you know bringing it back to the video, but you know I've been working , I was a social media consultant for like 12 years, before I started doing where wag repeat full-time two years ago.
So I've been working in social media for like almost 15 years, which is just crazy. But what I've seen over that time, is whenever you kind of adapt and try the new feature, the apps reward you. So, you know like Facebook right now, they're really pushing groups and the community aspect.
So they're gonna always be recommending groups to other people in other groups. And like, they're trying to get everyone to join groups. So, but if you go on Instagram, they're really pushing Reels.
If you think about it, they've invested millions of dollars in developing Reels. So if you use it, they're like oh yes yeah, our thing is working, people are liking it, like let's boost them up. So the more that you use kind of like the new features, I think that there's a better chance of you like going viral. And so I I've just heard from a lot of people with dog accounts and pet accounts, like pet fluencers if you will, that, you know a lot of them have unexpectedly gotten 10,000 views, or a million views on a Reel, whereas on a regular post like we're never gonna get a million likes on a regular post. So that's what I'm hearing from people who were just like straight pet accounts, is that doing the Reels has been really successful, and if you're kinda wondering like, well, what should I post on Reels? The ones that tend to kind of like go viral, usually are participating in some kind of a trend. So there's usually like some kind of audio, that everyone's reusing.
That's like funny in some way, or some other kind of visual trend or something like that. There was one that I thought was really funny that I know a couple of dogs went viral with, but it was like a dog looking down the phone, and it was like the FaceTime ringtone, and it was like I'm calling grandma to tell her that mom's not giving me enough treats, something like that. And a lot of dogs got a lot of views using that trend. - I mean, that makes so much sense, right? And it's really funny because all these platforms they're seemingly trying to replicate what works on Tik TOK. Yeah I know a lot of folks will even just start with what went viral on Tik TOK, and I'm not saying replicate it one for one, but at least in my space, like I said I'm probably gonna go ahead and jump into Instagram.
But I think I kinda got my routines down with YouTube, but the thing you kind of pointed out was like, hey, when you're an early adopter for some of these things, a lot of times after that and we'll algorithm, it favors that. So on YouTube for instance, we just started jumping in the shorts a couple of weeks ago. And like the first video we did have like and then like for my channel, right? It had like 2300 views, but that was like in the first couple of days. And it was like, was there anything particularly special about it? I mean, we were answering like one specific question, you know when it could be like entertainment, or it could be like a hey, here's how to people are looking for something for us. It was something to do with like cleaning up contamination.
I work a lot in the canine scent workspace, for some of the things we touched on the channel. But from the Instagram perspective, they're short form content if you would right now, is they're trying to have everybody lean pretty heavily, like you said based on that investment in Reels. But when we compare the different types of content, maybe just briefly just maybe like some of your perspectives on in feed posts versus stories versus IGTV, which somebody please tell me the purpose of IGTV. And obviously we touched a little bit on Reels already. Just maybe comparing those a little bit. - Yeah, well it's funny you say that about IGTV, 'cause I think that Instagram, I think that sometimes these apps, they don't really know what the point of some of it is either and they always kind of change it, like they make changes to things all the time.
So recently they've made a lot of changes to the length of videos that you can do on IGTV, and when you do an IG live, you can now upload it directly as an IG TV like that second you can't save your IG lives for 24, like used to be able to keep them up, like they were stories. But now if you wanna anyone to see your IG live after it's been live, you have to post it as IGTV. So it seems like Instagram was kind of trying to streamline and figure out where everything belonged themselves. Those are those two things, but the things that people do more often I think that IGTV and IG live are things that content creators do, but if you're just a regular pet parent, posting about your dog, you're probably gonna live more in your feed and your stories and Reels.
And those are kind of the things I would think about more if I Reel. So in your feed, you can post photos, you can also post videos up to one minute, you can also do a carousel post, it's like a little photo album, and then of course you can do your stories. And kind of the best analogy that I've ever heard that I keep repeating about stories, is that you have to think of it like an actual story, like a fairy tale almost with like a beginning, a middle and an end. So I all, whenever I post a stories, I almost never post just one slide to my story that almost always do at least three at in a batch. Because it's like a little story arc, you know, if I want people to watch and be engaged, I have to do that. And kind of the cool thing about stories that makes it different than a fairy tale, is that we can ask our viewers to participate, so you can do polls and quizzes and questions, and you can put like a DMV button, you can put a reaction slider, you can put a countdown clock, you can put all these interactive stickers that make it really, really cool.
And you can have fun, You can be serious with it, or you can have a lot of fun with it. You could be like, what you know, what should I put in our con this week? Should we do pumpkin puree or applesauce? And let your followers choose. And you know, you could just have fun with it. - I love that.
And the different perspectives you touch real briefly, let's bite a little bit into that carousel posts, right? Because those have been getting a lot of engagement lately. It takes a little bit more time to create, but once you have it all together, I find that a lot of folks are spending a little bit more time stopping on those. - Yeah, for sure.
And like I mentioned earlier about like with videos, it makes people have to stay on your post, for like a couple more seconds. And in the eyes of the algorithm, Instagram is like, Oh people are pausing here, she's got something good to say. So with a carousel it's the same thing, that they have to stop, and they don't have to, but if you wanna see what's next, you have to stop and you have to slide through to the next one. You can do up to 10 photos in a carousel posts.
I usually just do like a couple, I don't usually use all 10 but like maybe, maybe up to five is what I would recommend, and you can kind of scroll through, and it's a great way. You know, if you have a new dog, you could every month do one of these, where you show how much bigger they're getting each month, lighting through the carousel. If you also just have like a lot of photos, from one photo shoot and you can't narrow it down, you could share a bunch of them, I also love it for sharing loopers and derby faces. (laughing) So I'll put like hey, the best one first, and then like the total fail photo as the next one, and people do enjoy, I think, swiping through that.
And another way that you can make it more interactive, and like think of interaction as a synonym for engagement. So I think people talk about engagement all the time, but don't always like understand what it is, so engagement means interaction. So if you wanna make your posts a little more interactive, on your carousel posts, again you could ask people to choose, like do you like photo one, two or three better? And get them to comment below. So you can be kind of strategic with it. - That makes so much sense. And for a lot of our well listeners or folks catching on the replay on YouTube, you might be thinking this sounds like a lot of work, (laughing) for the curation process.
Now, as someone who's been in the social media space and on multiple platforms, I don't know what's your perspective on that? When you hear somebody say, this sounds like a lot of work. - Well, I would say yeah, you're right. It does a lot of work. (laughing) I know that's probably not the answer that you wanted to hear 'cause you wanted me to like wave a magic wand. I have so many fairytales references today. - I love that.
(laughing) - Yeah, I think that it is a lot of work. And so I always recommend to people to be really clear on what it is that you wanna get out of this. If you just want your dog to get a lot of likes, that's totally, totally fine. But just be clear with that, you know, if you want to eventually work with a brand, and get some free stuff to review, or maybe get paid to post about something, then you know just be clear with yourself about that.
Because the amount of time and effort that you put into this, is just gonna be different depending on what your goal is for it. You know, if you just want it to be a fun place, then don't spend hours and hours and hours strategizing about it, 'cause it won't be fun anymore. You want it to grow into a business, then get smart, and get strategic about it. And again, like try to keep it fun, it's supposed to be fun. You know, you just have to know what it is that you're getting into, but there are ways that you can save time, for example, I would recommend staging a little photo shoot with your pet, where you can like maybe, since we're all a little bit quarantined right now, maybe you go in different rooms of your house, or different areas of your neighborhood, and take different photos, that they look a little bit different, but you just take them all, you set aside like an hour and do this. Then you've got enough photos to use for maybe a few weeks, and you can also make your captions, I know that writing captions is like a big pain point for a lot of people they're like, Oh my God, I never know what to write, they get like, writer's block as soon as they cut their phone, it's like, Oh now what do I say? You know, there's planning apps that you can use, but if you don't want to mess with that, you can just use the notes app on your phone, and just keep track of like funny little things that come to mind or caption ideas, or movie quotes that you like.
And again, when you're scrolling around on Instagram, and you see a caption that you like, you can hit the save button, and you could save all of those to a folder of captions I like and go there to look for inspiration too. - Oh that makes so much sense. And I'm gonna draw on what I know, right? YouTube, I brought you on as one of our Instagram experts but a lot of stuff really does overlap.
You know, if you're in the writing space, the last thing you want to see is a blank page. A lot of times I'll use the bear apps to take a quick note. If I'm just thinking about something or I'll see something and I'll be like, that'd be a really cool idea.
So I never wanna sit in front of this camera and be like, well, what are we gonna make a video about today? Its me like, you know, and if we do, I'll just film whatever it is we're doing. And that kind of goes back in full circle with regards to just keeping it authentic. Sometimes I won't even intend to be shooting a video, it'll just be something for me. And I'll be like, Oh, well that was kind of interesting, we'll post that or whatever. It was something that we're just trying to learn, those are some other really, I hate the word hacks, but yeah kinda hacks or tools to kinda like help accelerate your progress a little bit, so yeah, I just bust out my phone anytime I'm thinking about something or see something, or maybe I was reading a blog, or maybe you ran across something, like you said, tapping into the trends just write it down for later. Sometimes I've written entire bullet points or things I want to touch on because you get on a roll, just when you have the idea, I think just go ahead and write it down, so later boom.
- You're probably not gonna remember it later, so write it down. Even if you think you will, you will not, or you won't be able to get the phrasing like just right, 'cause you had it perfect when it was in your head. And I use another little hack that I like to use is using the dictation tool on my phone. So whatever app you're in, I think everything can do speech to text now.
And if my hand starts to hurt, like I'm not a super fast typer. (laughing) I don't know, I feel like I'm so old, but I like to use the dictation tool a time So when I get like an idea, I'll just start rambling on my ideas and that I can go back and edit it later. So that helps a lot.
- That makes so much sense. Let's dive into some of the rewards might be for this. Like we said, let's start at the basic level, right? Like your goal may just be to have fun with your dog and that's perfectly okay.
You know, share those pictures, share those videos, share those moments, but like the world or your family even, right? But if you want it to take it to the next level, you know you talked to mentioned briefly about potentially working with brands or something like that. Like realistically, if somebody were seeking that, right? That's their goal. Can you speak to that a little bit, and what that might look like for them? - Yeah sure.
So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna backtrack just a little bit, because there's also like another option, which I don't think gets discussed a lot, but I know it's important to a lot of pet people, is supporting rescue and, you know animal welfare things. So, you know, maybe the goal of your account is to just be more about awareness, of you know, different pet and dog related things, or maybe you have a rescue that you got your dog from, and all you want to do is use your page to do fundraising for them. That's great, one of my friends, her account is called the sunshine dogs, and that's her goal is to do fundraising for the animal shelter that she works with. So not every post is about that, most of the posts are just cute photos of her dog, or her training dogs, or you know, they got some like baby chicks on the farm and her dogs with those, so like every post is not about the shelter, but she posts about it frequently enough that, you know people go and donate or they buy swag, and things like that to support the shelter. So that's also kind of like in the middle, I would say of like this.
- It sound like being an ambassador if you would potentially for like a cause, or something that you care deeply about something like that. - Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a really great reason to get into this, but then from there if you wanna work with brands, you know, and this is all great. I think every level of this is wonderful, if that's what you wanna do and it makes you happy.
If you wanna work with brands, you know you don't have to have thousands of followers, I think that some people are concerned that they can't really reach out to a brand until they have, I don't know, 5,000 or 10,000 or 40,000 like whatever. The numbers don't necessarily mean a whole lot brands oftentimes might want to work with you, because you take great photos or, you know they're interested because your dog is really unique, has a really unique challenge or something like that. You know, if you have like a three legged dog, maybe this brand is like a they make products for three legged dogs, and they could be like the perfect fit for you even if you have 500 followers. So it's all about finding a brand that aligns really well with you and your dog and your values , and everything like that. You know, I've been doing influencer work for years, and over the years I've taken so many different opportunities, but now I've seen, and I've learned, that it's really important to only work with brands who share my values.
You know, so right now I'm only gonna work with brands who have some kind of sustainability practices, who value diversity in their company, who are interested in dog safety and health. There's a lot of companies out there that are pet brands that don't make healthy products. And so I'm not gonna work with them, I'm not gonna call them out, I'm just not gonna work with them. So, you know, it's just, it's important to just find those brands that really align with you, and that's probably the hardest part is doing that research and finding them.
And once you find them, it's just about building relationships. So, you know, liking their posts, commenting on their posts kind of getting on a first name basis with them, and then from there, once you have a relationship started you can ask them, hey, do you have an ambassador program, or an influencer program or I'd love to work with you in some way. And if they're a larger brand, they might already have an established system for that, so you just kinda ask. - That makes so much sense. And I like talking about the different levels, right? 'Cause I want everybody to feel welcome, this is a safe space, right? Like it's totally okay to just be about your dogs because I mean, for us and I'm sure for you, it's it started off that way, right? And then we all have our different goals or ambitions or whatever, but it just started off with just Disney and I in the backyard, and I was like I want him to be the best German shepherd possible, you know, you see all the shepherds on television and I'm sure you have a little chocolate lab bias, but I was like, you know what, let's see what we can do, and it's great to see. It was really like about, for us communication.
We we've always had dogs and everything else, and I was like, I wanna get a German shepherd, and we have Disney in our home from a puppy, and it's just been an enjoyable experience for us, so that's totally okay. But I definitely wanted to touch on that for some folks who are in the space, and wanna go further. And we're gonna move to our rapid fire questions if you don't mind.
So I said at the beginning of the show that I believe anything can be learned, but I don't believe that you can educate, motivate, inspire others without doing the same for yourself. So if you don't mind and help me put some knowledge to the people, I'd like to ask you a few questions, and there's no rules with this, it's kind of like just the first thing that comes to mind, and hopefully it's a little bit fun for you, and if nothing comes to mind, feel free to pass. Name something you're trying to learn this year, and something that you want to teach? They can be one the same or something different. - Okay, so I have a lot of hobbies and I love to sew, and one of my dreams is to make a quilt, which I know is like such a Suzy homemaker thing answer to say, but I wanted to make a quote for years, and it just seems like so intimidating to me. So I want to do that. And of course I was looking up, there's a lot of patterns actually out there, that you could like incorporate dogs kind of into, and so maybe it'll be like a dog inspired quilt, something that I would like to teach, I don't know that's a good question.
I mean, I guess I could have a lot of answers, I just, like I mentioned earlier I just launched a monthly membership program this year, so every month I actually have already planned out like a topic that I'm gonna teach every month, so this month I've been teaching SEO coming up soon. I'm gonna be teaching storytelling through video, though that I think ties in really well to the conversation we just had, so, you know, I love communicating on video, and so I guess something I'd like to teach is how to help other people be more comfortable talking on video. - Yeah, actually that was one of my 2021 goals is to become a better storyteller. So we're gonna talk a little bit about your membership here in just a moment as well, because I think that's an excellent resource for those seeking some of those things that you were talking about. And I did look at the monthly schedule, and it has some pretty good things that I'm really interested in diving deeper into.
Next question, name a favorite pet parent online resource, YouTube or otherwise, that you could recommend to the audience? - Okay, so one of my favorite YouTube accounts is relatively new and it's called Huskies in the Hatch. And it is one of my dear friends from Instagram, from back in the day, like when I first started growing my account, we had a little group DM of people, who were like in the same stage, and now most of us our accounts have like tens of thousands, or even over a 100,000 some of them followers, but this woman Sonia, was one of the people in that group. And at the time she and her partner were traveling from coast to coast, across Canada with their three Huskies in the back of their hatchback.
And so they took tons of video and photos and all kinds of stuff. Then but this was years ago and I lost track of her, and then last year she popped back up into my life, and I realized they were taking all that content, and just now editing it into a video series for YouTube. So they've put so much work into it, and it's like watching a TV show. It's like so good, and just hearing the story of what their dogs mean to them and their life, and just, you know, just if you're a dog lover, you'll love it. - Excellent, hey we'll link that in the description below for those on YouTube or in the podcast description, any dog product you would recommend? - Any Kind of enrichment puzzle of any kind, I was just this morning looking at like really cool dog enrichment puzzles, like you've probably seen the ones where you put the treat and then there's like a door, and the dog has to like swipe it open, like these puzzles. There's one in my cart on Amazon right now, so I would recommend that.
- Awesome, all right, two more. One thing people should consider before welcoming chocolate labs into their homes? - Well, a few things you have to be okay with waking up early. You have to be okay with having dog hair on like everything. (laughing) And I think you should probably also work on your upper body strength because walking them takes a little bit of strength. (laughing) - Love it, love it, love it.
Last one, what advice would you give your younger former self, just starting off in the pet industry? - Well, you know, I kind of stumbled upon this industry, I didn't set out to be in the pet space, I ended up here. I took like a wrong turn, but it turned out to the right turn. So I would have told my younger self to get here sooner, 'cause I think I spent so many years trying to work in like the social media world, and before that I wanted to be in fashion, and before that I don't even know what I wanted to do, but I would've told myself to start doing this sooner.
- Just start sooner, start now, right? Like just do it. Like, you got it, so right, they got it so right. I do want to talk briefly, thank you so much for that. I do want to talk briefly about your membership program but place a link of course in the description, but can you tell the audience a little bit, we touched briefly on it with regard to some of the subjects you're honing in on from month to month but just a little bit about your program. - Yeah, so thank you so much.
The Wear Wag Repeat society is the name of my monthly membership program. And I created it because I wanted something that was affordable, that also created a sense of community, and accountability and encouraged everyone to kind of level up their pet businesses together, in a really inclusive, diverse space. I didn't see anything really, exactly like that out there, the people in my membership are all over the place. Some of them make dog accessories like bandanas and collars, some are dog trainers and walkers, some are bloggers and some are groomers, I mean, like all over the place of people in the pet space and including some influencers too.
But the way that I designed the membership is that each month we focus on a certain topic. So this month it was all about SEO, then we're gonna have video storytelling through video, and have you know, a whole month theme drought batching out your social media captions for the next three months or something like that. So I designed everything to kind of reflect one, like what I thought would be good to prioritize each month based on like the flow of the year and what's going on.
But also things that if you do all these things in this order and really focus on them for a month, a year from now, your business is gonna be in a whole different place. And you're going to have put these building blocks together in such a way that your business is stronger, it's more successful and you're happier doing it, and you don't feel like frazzled and out of control. So that's kind of what the membership's all about. We have about 70 women, it's all women, men are allowed, but it's just all women. And we have accountability calls, we have coworking sessions, Q &A, calls with me, and then I do a video and like a little PDF download every month about like whatever the theme is , and the lesson for that month. So I think it's really cool, it's just started, though I can't wait to see where it goes.
- Excellent, and I'll leave all the links in the description below. If that sounds like that's something for you, you mentioned the word accountability, and how important and critical is that, right? Like when you have any type of goal whether it be a dog training goal, or something that you're trying to do on the individual personal, even professional level to have someone there to say, hey did you make that post today? Or, Hey, are you going and walking in the right direction with regard to what you're trying to accomplish today? And then going through the steps with regard to some of those skillsets that some folks may need a little bit of help on, search engine optimization is a huge thing. We go back to that buzz of different algorithms and working with the search engines, and just touching on the topic in a very specific way to really reach the audience that you're trying to reach.
So I really appreciate you putting that out into the universe if you would, and offering that membership. - I love how you mentioned, you know, business and dog training, because kind of the inspiration for this membership group was also my podcast. So I have a podcast called Wear Wag Repeat where I interview women in the pet industry, and that show like the tagline for it is we're talking business and dogs. You know, and I think it's really fun to talk business with dog people because we just have a different perspective on it than other people, people who aren't dog lovers, maybe like don't really get what you're trying to do. So it's nice just have that community of like-minded people.
- Oh, for sure, I love it so much. And with that and community, where are you hanging out these days? We'll link everything, but wanna plug your online presence well should I say communities and maybe your, where we can find you. - Yeah, absolutely. So if you're watching this come find me on Instagram that is where I hang out a lot. You can either find me at Wear Wag Repeat, or at T Mistic, T Mistic like Tori Mistic.
So you can find me on Instagram there, and then of course on Facebook Wear Wag Repeat, I'm on clubhouse too, that's where we met. I'm like, not really good about popping in there but if you're on clubhouse, you might see me just pop in some day. (laughing) - No, totally, totally. Yeah, I've had to wean myself off of clubhouse. I mean, I love it, but it can take up a lot of your time.
So if you wanna get after some of the other things that we talked about, please rash, or your time on glove clubhouse. (laughing) - People are spending hours, and I could see how you could do that. 'Cause I went in the other day while I was having lunch, and then I was like 4:00 PM and I was late. What happened to the day I've been in clubhouse all day.
- I just wanna really just thank you for taking the time out of your day, right? To sit down with us with the Dingle days channel if you would, and happenstance encounter on clubhouse, and now on our podcast just sharing some really great knowledge about Instagram worthy content, but not only that, something really far and beyond that, right? Just reaching into that relationship with our dogs, and then some of the things that folks might wanna do professionally really with an accountability partner in a program and a membership that really targets to them. So I really appreciate that Tori. - Well, I really appreciate you having me on here. It was so fun to talk to you and hopefully, what we discuss will help somebody.
And you know, like you said, it's really goes beyond social media, it's about creating that relationship with your pet, and then I think what you can use with your social media is use it to inspire others to create a deeper bond with their pets. So that's kind of the moral of the story. - You've just listened to an episode on the dogs for people to podcast presented by Dingle days. If you like this episode, make sure to leave me a review on iTunes, and share this episode with your friends on social media. Just don't forget to tag me at Dingle days. If you want even more good stuff, make sure to go over to www.dingledays photography.com
to find the show notes in our blog and head over to our Dingle days community on YouTube so that you can connect with other followers about training methods there. I can't wait to see you there and thanks again for listening in, and until next time continue to get after it and share your best life with your furry friend.
2021-04-02 11:39
