Happy Birthday to Swangirl & Tips to Turn Your Pet Into a Celebrity
In honor of Jessica (SwanGirl) on her birthday today, I wanted to do an animal related post. Jessica is a SuperGirl and great cat mommy. Happy Birthday Jessica!
So, I am going to share a few tips that I read from a funny yet educational book called, "How to Make Your Cat An Internet Celebrity" by Patricial Carlin.
How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity
Here is a picture of the book cover:
For starters, you need to own a cat and a computer. If you don't know about websites, it is best you join Wealthy Affiliate. The book will not teach you about websites or how to actually monetizing the website or YouTube channel. WA teaches that.
The author of this fun book really understands the cat lover target market. If you are not in the mood to laugh, do not read this book.
You can make your cat into an internet celebrity if
- Your video is short and entertaining
- People can FIND your cat's videos.
Traffic and views are VERY important
The book will help:
Identify your cat's true talent. Your cat's bad characteristics can be the "ticket to widely disproportionate success."
If your cat's name is boring, you may need to choose a stage name for your cat. The book says that cats with ambition to be a celebrity needs every advantage they can get. Lots of ideas are given. For example, Snowball might be a good name for a white cat. Ghostface Killah might be better.
Tips for photo shoots. These tips are mostly theory. No specific camera instruction
Cat video tips from planning to execution.
The book shares 27 ideas of things that you can get your cat to do something entertaining in the videos. These ideas range from boxes, to bathtubs, to rolls of toilet paper to ping pong and babies.
The book has lots of pictures demonstrating Enter your own correction... points. In one chapter that talk about preparing the "stage." Basically, you want to remove distractions.
As a horse lover, here is an excerpt from my favorite page in the book.
You want to make sure the cat can be seen in the pictures.
The Importance of YouTube Traffic
On page 88 it says, " So, YouTube is this premier online video-sharing website.... The right video - yours, if you didn't screw it up somehow --can quickly gain millions of viewers and become a worldwide favorite. Perhaps I should have mentioned this sooner, but this is the premise that your entire attempt at becoming incredibly wealthy kinda depends on."
To Get Traffic, Think About What Keywords You Will Be Using.
If you want your pet to be a celebrity, keywords are critical. Keywords in your title are critical.
Keywords can help inspire your picture or video. Never, ever forget your readers and viewers are seeking to be entertained.
Even more importantly, keywords will help drive traffic to your website and/or video.
Use Google Trends for Keywords
The book recommends checking Google trends to find popular phrases for inspiration.
For example, a couple months ago - Super Bowl was a trending topic. So, you could take a picture of your cat with in a bowl. Your article or video could be about, "Grumpy Super Bowl Cat"
The book does not really tell you how to use a tool like Jaaxy, to check the amount of competition that a keyword has. Yet, if you follow the tips, you will end up with some long tail keywords.
After all, it would be very hard to rank for Super Bowl.
Apparently Grumpy Cat is a famous cat. So, it might be hard to rank for that.
However, if you combine the words you could have Grumpy Super Bowl Cat. It will be easier show up on the Google and YouTube search results.
Watch what is trending on social media
The book recommends that your cat has a Twitter account.
Watch for trends. Then have your cat tweet some variation. Lately there has been a lot of talk about the Black Hole. On YouTube, I found "Sonya the black cat absorbs light like the black hole." Apparently Enter your own correction... are black hole kitty boxes as well.
Dominate:
If you want your cat to truly be an internet celebrity, you need to dominate the internet. The books author says that your cat needs a blog, a Facebook page with about 200 friends, a Twitter account, and whatever else is popular.
So, that would probably be Pintrest & Instagram. The cat should be engaging with others. Once your cat is known, it should also support some charitable causes.
Consistency
If you want your cat to be a celebrity, the book says you should be posting "religiously about everything he does, every day."
How will you cat get paid?
This book is focused on turning your cat into a celebrity so that:
- People will want to purchase merchandise with your cat's picture on it.
- People will pay to have your cat make an appearance at live events, on television.
- Maybe you cat will get lucky and land some product endorsements.
Just think if you have a website that is in the cat niche. Let you cat be the star. Let your cat help you drive traffic to your website or blog.
The same could apply to your dog.
If your website is not in a pet niche, you could still use your pet's celebrity status to drive traffic to your website.
Disclaimer:
I just read the book, "How To Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity" last night. The book does not promise to make you rich overnight. It says that it requires a lot of work to make your cat a celebrity. So, I have even chosen my cat's talent yet.
I did look up what was trending on Google Trends last night. Black Hole was trending. Then I added cat to that. When I searched the YouTube videos, I did see video's about black cats and the black holes. So people really must be applying the principles in the book.
I hope you all have a great weekend.
Happy Birthday Jessica (Swangirl)
Recent Comments
48
Funny and educational. Good job Sondra. Going to bed after reading with a smile on my face.
Mark
Thank you Mark.
The book is even funnier but I was scared of getting in trouble of taking too many pictures and sharing them.
I hope your hand is doing better.
100% better. No doc needed. Just did what my old baseball coach said. "Rub some dirt on it". Kept my streak going. 38 years without having to see a doctor. I will definitely get the book. I had a 47.5 inch Maine Coon cat that was the longest cat in the world. That was 20 years ago. The new longest is just an inch longer. Will see if I can find a pic, but he was as long as a golf driver easily. Have a great weekend.
Mark
Wow! My Norwegian Forest Cat boy is very long so I can kind of imagine! That is so neat! If you scroll down here you can see a picture of him (his head). It doesn't show his size very well.
Yes. I understand. I used to want a Maine Coon but now I am smitten with Norwegians. They are so interesting, large, loving, gentle (my boy is the largest of my cats but by far the most gentle. He is so careful to never get me with his claws) and they have such an interesting history. I saw a video of a woman ski-jouring with one!! I am not kidding. The cat was hooked up in a harness like a dog. Ours is very dog like in some ways. He is extremely loyal and follows me around. They were Viking cats. Our most recent adoption a year ago is a very spunky now 15 year old calico polydactile. She is only 8 pounds which is normal for a cat but she seems tiny and so delicate to us by comparison!
Terrific! My son and girlfriend have a really nice cat who thinks and acts like a dog. I think I will buy this book for them since I am sure they have many videos already. Fun! I am sure Jessica will enjoy. :)
The favorite cat I ever had acted like a dog.
I hope you can find the book. It is a really funny. It also has some good tips.
Maybe you can help your son with the website side of making their cat a celebrity, should they choose to go down that path.
That is why we call Pooch, Pooch. He is the white and orange one in the picture. He follows me everywhere.
I love cats and dogs but where I live I cannot have animals. I really the companionship and sometimes the crazy things that they are capable of doing. Especially cats they can be characters and funny as hell. I liked your post and put a smile on my face. Please like my comments and I thank you for the smile on my face, thanks Sruffey.
I'm sorry that you can't have pets where you live. I agree with you, they can be so funny with the crazy things they do.
I hope you have a great weekend.
Fun post. Was trying to figure out how I could make my old man cat an internet star...and I, too, will wish Jessica a happy birfhday...for the second time.
I wish I could share more of the book online. I didn't want to copy too much of it.
For an old man cat, would he fit into "lazy bum" type? "Utterly bland?" Heart throb? Clinically insane? Total badass?
She's got Attitude all right. We got her as a young street cat in Mexico when we lived there, and she has always bossed our dogs around. The Rottweiler we got around the same time would circle around her own bed when the cat took it over.
Thanks for sharing that!! I am currently caring for 11 cats, maybe one has what it takes to be famous :)
Happy birthday, Swangirl!
No joke. 3 are barn cats I'm feeding that I inherited when I got to my newish job. Two are my cats. That's 5. One is a feral I moved here during a bad hoarder situation, so again outside kitty. Four fosters I'm looking to find a home for. One kitten who has a home, soon, eventually. So yeah, busy!! Especially with the rash of URIs after 4 of them got fixed. Eye drops, antibiotics, mysterious kitten diarrhea with no signs of parasites on the fecal test. It's been NUTS.
Wow.. 11 cats? Do they get along most of the time or do you have to separate them?
The book would think that is great. One cat gets to be a celebrity. But internet celebrities tend to be a bit like fads. They come and go. So, the book suggests having another cat or pet in training to be the next rising star.
It also suggest that if one celebrity cat is enough, consider a goat or a people child star.
Lol, right? 11 is crazy town. Though 4 are outside kitties I've inherited. One of whom got hit by a car and after I rescued here she moved into our barn.
You know, I don't have to separate them and I never have. My two cats (the two barn cats I adopted and talked into coming inside SOME of the time anyway) are used to my rescues. They'll follow me from the apartment to the barns and back every morning. They mostly ignore the fosters. The 5 temporary ones are mostly young. But I try to socialize and re-home outside kittens after getting them fixed so they can have a good life inside instead of barn kitty life.
Anyway, I don't even need acclimation periods for kitty introduction. There's only one that gets grumpy about other cats right now. She's slightly older at 1.5 years old and was dumped on me with her daughter by the 'owner', both unfixed but she had only one litter because she was kept inside. But she spent so long going into heat over and over again, I think she's a little cracked. Either way, she just hisses and swats if a cat gets too close.
The rest, when first introduced, are curious, will hiss until boundaries and crap are set, but not once have I had a cat fight i needed to intervene on. I don't know how I do it, but I mostly just watch them at first but let them work it out. :)
Thank you so much Sondra! This concept could be used for dogs, horses or anything else! Very good advice mixed into the humor. Thank you for thinking of me and my niche and giving us some good tips! Here a few more pics I haven't posted yet of my boys.
How sweet!
Pooch is gorgeous. Tigger is a lover. The funny thing is I have a horse named Tigger. Her baby was Pooh. I had to see him.
If I had to do the post over again, I would have tried to have figured out how to have gotten some pictures from you so I could have used pictures of your cats.
The picture from last night with the baby was my favorite. According to the book, babies and cats make a great combination.
Yet, all your pictures are great. I guess that is why people love cats on the internet.
Happy Birthday Jessica!!!
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Hi Sondra & Jessica
Jessica - hope you had a lovely day and wish you only the very best! LOVE the photo of you and Pooch - oh my goodness, you're being kissed on the forehead - so sweet! (If anybody reading this don't know what I'm referring to, just scroll down in the comments to the photos that Jessica attached to one of her comments.)
Sondra - it is such a kind thing that you have done to write this post in honor of Jessica and her love for cats - well done!
Wishing you both much success!
Sharlee (Chocolate IceCream)
Sharlee, I too loved Jessica's photo with Pooch. Yet, ever picture that I've seen of her kitties show they all have celebrity potential.
It was fun being able to do this for Jessica. She is such a sweet heart and she truly loves her cats.
Hi Sondra
I'm an animal lover, so if you ask me, I think ALL animals have celebrity potential! ;-) LOL!
Wishing you an awesome day, Sondra!
Sharlee (Chocolate IceCream)