Why are you writing a blog, anyways?
Why?
We’ve got to start somewhere. Answering the question of why we are even bothering to write a blog seems like as good of place as any to get us going, and if we think hard enough about it now, it might even give us some direction.
In fact, I’m writing this as much for me as for anyone. Understanding the “why” of things has been one of the most prominent guiding principles of my life. If knowing the “what” is enough to give you the answer to the specific question at hand, understanding the “why” is what gives you the answers to the questions that have never come your way or have never been answered for you. If we are going to invest hours of our lives into writing content here, it should be with purpose and direction, it should be informed, but we should learn from it in the process. I could ramble on things like “why”, “just winging it”, “one door opens another” and other ideas important to me that have helped me find success in my 30 years, and probably will, but let’s get back to how this relates to the cat cafe.
One Door Opens Another
Oops. That didn’t take long. Right after I swore to get off my philosophical rant and start talking cats, I realized just how applicable “one door opens another” is to this. It’s hard to say where one path will lead. This may be a dead end. A few dozen hours down the drain and a page full of irrelevant articles to show for it. Or maybe any number of positive, unanticipated benefits may present themselves without our current knowledge of even their existence. Life is funny like that sometimes. In many ways, this cat cafe only exists in the first place because of this philosophy. Do you think we just woke up one day in our 20s and thought “let’s just devote our lives to building a cat cafe”? Having the thought, the ability, and the possibility of doing something this complex only comes through a long series of experiences. The more experiences you expose yourself to, the more you equip yourself to be prepared for something unknown. Who knows what door this could open for us.
Let’s Talk
Pretty much everything we put out there boils down to a real simple reason - we just like talking with you. Whether it is the customers that walk through our door, the hundreds of dedicated social media followers that we recognize by name, our rescue partners, animal welfare colleagues and experts, adopters who follow up to tell their story of how the cat has impacted their lives, or whoever else, the discussions that we have and facilitate are an enriching part of our lives. It’s seriously just good to know you. Through this long-form content, we can share more stories than we can through social media alone. I think it’s lost sometimes that it’s just me (btw Adam is writing this one) and Michaela behind it all. We go by Don’t Stress Meowt - Cat Cafe, but we’re really just your neighbors.
SEO (Social Engine Optimization)
I can already feel these sections getting more complicated from here on. Maybe let’s just start by saying that running a small business is hard. Running a business successfully is even harder. Only 1 out of 2 small businesses survive longer than 5 years, and the success rate only continues to drop from there. But what can we do about that? Try. We can try our best. We can try to be smarter. More creative. More adaptive. We don’t know everything about Social Engine Optimization (SEO), but we know enough to know a blog can help.
Consider this — what results show up when you do an online search for the word “cat” or “coffee”? If you don’t see a link for “Don’t Stress Meowt - Cat Cafe” on the first page, then we’ve still got work to do. We want make sure Google gives you us instead of Starbucks next time you search “Best Coffee Near Me”. By improving our SEO, we can improve our online visibility and help potential customers discover our business.
Strengthen The Brand
We’re not saying that we are definitely expanding beyond OKC and Tulsa, but we’re definitely not saying that we won’t. If we can carve out another small piece of the internet and further establish ourselves as a trusted authority on all things cats, that’s a little victory for a small business like us. How many out there still don’t even know we exist? More today than tomorrow. This is just one small step in being recognizable.
Monetization
Class, raise your hand if you know what an influencer is. Something once unknown, is now mainstream and is even a career aspiration for many of today’s kids. That’s not us, but we’re not SEO experts either and here we are. I mean, I can’t even tell you the last time I read a fictional book from front to back (Michaela reads enough for the two of us), yet here I sit…writing. Back to the thing about small business being hard and needing to be adaptable, this is one area that demands we dedicate some effort to in order to not be a part of that large percentage of failing small businesses I talked about above. You will see some ads on this page. With any luck, that might earn us enough to pay next month’s food bill (hey, Purina, where you at?). By providing more long-format content, we can attract premium advertisers to pay for ad space on this page (i.e. Purina - seriously y’all, get us in your marketing budget). One of the things that makes our business special is being able to contribute significantly to animal welfare efforts without taking from the tax dollars and donations that other organizations rely on to exist, then having enough left over to donate back into those other organizations. With any luck, this can earn a few extra bucks to help us continue our mission.
Mailing List
We’re told that building a mailing list to stay in touch with customers is important. Honestly, we don’t really see it, but “one door opens another”. We’ll see if one day this becomes useful, but in the immediate future, we would love to share with you next time we post a blog article. I swear, we’ll cover much more fun topics in the future! We’re too busy to spam you with more than maybe an email each month, but if you wouldn’t mind you can sign up for our mailing list at the button below.