Thanks for joining our social media course.
As a massage therapist you likely have some Very specific goals. You want to:
- Get new clients
- Make more $
- Build your practice
- Build a fan base
I think you do all 4 of those by focusing on the #4. 🙂
It seems counterintuitive to hands on workers to build a #digital business in an #organic industry. After all we work on people. When I teach classes I often watch students at lunch time. After they’ve eaten 15 or so students all pick up their phones. 🙂
They all laugh, comment on facebook posts and enjoy whatever is in their feeds. They consume it not as producers. They consume it not understanding that all that content was made and distributed to keep them coming back mining personal data and pitching them goods and services via an ad platform. When the content is good? They laugh and share with friends.
You must learn to produce. Stop being just a consumer.
Read this again carefully. You have global reach to a worldwide audience of what can be a potentially rabid audience. Someone in Dubai might not get a session immediately but they can like share comment and chat with you wherever you are. Create that and you’ve opened up a world of opportunity to be found in your small town likely in America.
Let’s get to work.
Social media is some of The most promising marketing you can imagine. In gone by eras you had to be listed at AAA massage in the yellow pages and were given very little space to express your identity in a paper ad. A person could contact you via phone or come to your physical location.
Now potential clients or customers can connect with you and your story very deeply by literally seeing what you do how you do it and what sort of style is associated with your offerings. Social media as a concept has evolved and it’s very important to remember that it is media. It’s like having a new report daily from your business on your #instagram stories. Instead of something formal though you can talk to clients while you fold laundry. You’re taking down time where you might not have been doing much and now you’ve got a public service announcement.
Than phone in your pocket and this is the point that I think many many online marketers social media savvy people degrade to is they start looking at people like numbers. It’s %s it’s lead magnets and jargon that removes the humanity out of just squeezing $ our of an audience. What’s our acquisition rate? What’s our ROI? I always always sit back and go, “how do I get more fans and how do I connect with them?” That puts me at odds with millennials who think they can beat an algorithm. Marketing is and always be about how people feel not just what they need. <3
Social media is social. You’re hanging out with people. There are people behind those ads. People behind those messages and videos. You can use that phone to connect with people and connect deeply. Massage therapists have very intimate jobs but for the life of me I’ve not understood why they won’t also connect deeply in the digital realm. I suspect it’s because they Want in person and they Want physical connections while also being tech averse. Fortunately for you if you understand and use this digital landscape on top of your already organic one you’ve got a really solid lead and can make far more money and connect with far more people.
Social media much like your website keeps working while you sleep.
An A/V waiver is a simple legal document that allows clients to give consent for photo and video production. I recommend as you create content that you get willing clients to sign these as you make content for your platforms. No worries if clients don’t want to be filmed or photographed. Work with the Very Willing and happy to promote you clients for photo and video.
Below is an A/V waiver you can use with clients. Feel free to search Google for others should you need something different.
Instagram grew out of a very simple photo editing sharing software and was scaled to a large number of users rapidly. When facebook purchased instagram facebook gained all of their data then started making a slightly different and varied platform from the less user friendly facebook. Instagram originally did a few things and did them very well. Facebook has changed the platform and now I see instagram as essentially 3 platforms in one that’s easy to use with your phone.
1 Main feed allows videos up to a minute long, photos and combinations of media.
2 Stories is more private and allows people to see your day to day story and life.
3 Instagram TV or IGTV is a longer form videos up to 15 minutes long. They’ll show up in your main feed but you can click to watch the full video.
I lied. Let’s add instagram live. lol
Notice that each platform keeps adding? They’re all competing with each other for your attention. If IGTV didn’t exist then people would leave to go to youtube or facebook to post longer form videos.
Instagram is now a behemoth and heavily integrated with facebook. Don’t expect to go viral here and organic reach is slowing down to the concern of many. Instead of thinking about global access from a million views viral video I want you to think of all social media as reaching out to fans engaging with them hanging out with them and letting them follow your story of business building. Make friends. Keep fostering those connections. Social media is social.
Hashtags are one of the things that people regularly ask about and it’s a good example of social media platforms cannibalizing each other. Hashtags started on twitter and it was famous for this early on. Once facebook purchased instagram they did all they could to gain attention and turned instagram into this snapchat twitter facebook hybrid platform.
Hashtags primarily function as a search tool. If you search for hashtags like #yogaATL you can find the instances of instagram users using those hashtags if those are people you want to like share and follow. Instagram used to allow you to search multiple hashtags which amazingly allowed you to narrow searches but they’ve since rescinded that feature to my knowledge. You’ll have to google that and find other software that’s collating some of instagrams publically available data to search for multiple hashtags.
To make things easy I tend to do search periodically and change hashtags that I suspect people would use and would want to find me under. I use a notepad app on my phone to keep lists of hashtags. Since instagram allows 30 I can save a notepad with 30 hashtags related to #thaimassagejam
I can easily leave instagram where it saves my draft then open the notepad and cut and paste all 30 hashtags underneath the post. This way I save time and avoid having to write out 30 hashtags each time I post. If you’re like me and #organicgardening or #epicmeals are an interest you can save other lists of hashtags in the notepad app of your choice to cut/paste when you’re posting about those specific topics.
Don’t fixate. Play with the app and don’t feel like this is perfect. This is just a snapshot of your businesses journey online.
Youtube started in the early 2000’s. It wasn’t available when I was in massage school and I don’t even remember knowing much about it until I started my own channel due to my then wife’s insistence. I made some horrible videos with a flip camera and we were off. If I knew then what I know now I would have hired a videographer and made a video a day for the last 8 years.
It’s harder to build large reach on youtube since much like other platforms it’s become saturated. A videographer friend told me it’s where video goes to die. His message was that you can’t engage new large audiences but youtube is owned by google. Notice the theme of platforms cannibalizing each other? 🙂 Youtube is Heavily integrated with google’s SEO or Search Engine Optimization. One of the things I noticed making youtube videos and blogging was that I was drawing clients for Thai massage because I was the only one in central Texas making videos about it and therefore the few tailored specific searches for Thai massage showed me on the first page. 🙂 I win.
Youtube is also great as a storehouse of sorts for your social media videos. It’s easily searchable archived and people can find you if you make videos for specific things they’re searching for. You might not show up for massage. You may show up for massage for tibilias anterior induced ankle pain. See how specific it was? Smaller search but far more specific.
Youtube’s interface continues to evolve but there’s in house editing inside your dashboard. If you made a 30 minute long video and wanted to make variants of it say for instagram you can use the in house dashboard to edit a video clip it and produce a new video that’s a minute long selected clip out of that 30 minute long video. Other effects like end credits or graphics/music can be added as well.
You can use a series of links under your videos and I recommend you list your other social media platforms so youtube users can find you on tiktok or twitter in addition to links to your website. These are backlinks.
Backlinks are Very important for SEO Search Engine Optimization.
Having more videos and backlinks to your website increases your SEO and the potential that people would find you organically via google searches. It also creates you as an authority on whatever subject your business is putting out.
Email has fallen out of favor slowly but one thing about email is the data collection aspect that can be used across platforms and the Direct access you have to subscribers. Unless an email goes into a spam folder you have Direct access to people, something that no other platform provides.
You think people see everything you post on facebook? You think because people have liked your biz page on facebook they See all those posts? The only way they do is if they actively engage with your profile regularly.
We don’t own facebook youtube instagram or twitter. When you have an email you now Own that data. You can take it with you and you can use it across platforms. For this reason I recommend you use email and consider that email is falling out of favor because people just Sell Sell Sell. Would you want to get an email that just incessantly asked you to buy stuff?
No one does. Everyone hates spam particularly unsolicited spam.
Email is how you give Value. Every email I send out does have links to things for sale but each is visually dense with photos and links to video education podcasts and a host of other material that’s usually Free. I use email to connect and allow people to follow me wherever else they are on social media.
Remember value first. Ask for the sale later.
I show inside mailchimp how you can create html code inside that you embed on your website whether it be wix or wordpress or another platform. It is absolutely essential that you collect this information from potential customers. Many can hit your website but how many purchase after the first visit? I suspect this number is very low.
Sight unseen what I really want is to allow the person to get information find out about me and my services and then likely if they wanted up to date information they may look at whatever social media they use. Collecting an email for a free give away is a great investment in your practice to build an initial connection. People won’t usually Want to give you an email because they think Spam. A free give away? Oh that sounds nice as everyone likes free stuff.
This in my opinion is the main thing your website should do..Collect Data. That initial connection could lead to thousands of dollars in sales but without it they’ll just skip off to another website and wind up talking to someone else.
After email I’m seriously looking at text messaging and SMS messages. I may include that in another more involved course down the road.
Facebook has changed it’s dashboard so many times I can’t keep track. As facebook has grown it’s got a common flaw I see in many companies. They try to do it all and be everything to everyone. Craigslist? Let’s eat that. Instagram app? Let’s eat that. Dating sites? Let’s eat that. While I think facebook can continue to excel I think it’s very challenging to do many things to perfection. It’s much easier to focus on a few specific things and do those exceptionally well just as instagram did while it was a private company.
Facebook biz pages are different than personal profiles. One of the differences is that more than 5k friends or fans can like or follow your business page and you can run ads from a business page with analytics that give you insight into who is using your facebook biz page. Just like other platforms you can upload videos photos or have a facebook live video from your phone.
Facebook’s algorithm is the one I’m most familiar with and have seen change the most over time. Years ago it seemed to favor groups then video then events but as with all things we don’t own facebook and they will continue to alter this.
Engagement is the key on all platforms.
Engagement.
Do you make things people want to comment on share like and talk about? You’ll do well on social media. Even posting says you care enough about your business to promote it to the public and sets a sort of social status.
Facebooks keeps growing and adding features to the point where I feel like the platform is slipping but they also make billions of dollars from advertisers so my perspective is skewed. I do feel that for ads (we may cover paid ads in a later addition to this course, Advanced Social Media Marketing maybe?) Facebook is the easiest and least expensive way to reach out to your local target audience to get them into your life into your practice and into your funnel.
See all that marketing language? Do you not like it? <3 🙂
Remember that the services and products we sell help people. Do you wish everyone in your area could have your work product service or offer? That’s what a funnel is. We’re getting them in and letting them get as involved as they wish in our services and businesses.
Over time I’ve seen facebook’s algorithm favor video groups live events and shift in ways that annoy people who are putting out information to get it to people. It’s Such and easy to use platform that even though people are annoyed with it we frankly just don’t have a better alternative. Remember that people must engage with the content on your page to get it seen by more people. This will likely always been the case. You’ll want to use the platform to collect customer data like an email or phone number so that we can maintain contact with people and assist them as our practices and businesses grow.
I post daily on my business page and frankly educational video is so so. A few people engage but most are on facebook to be entertained. When I’m pushing the edges I post stuff like this:
Remember how I mentioned that some posts die and others get tons of engagement? I’ve learned over time to polarize the audience. What is polarization? Do people like Donald Trump or dislike him? Do people like Kanye West or dislike him? Usually people have a strong attraction or aversion to either. I fan those flames carefully and cautiously on my social media.
I could post the above meme about regulation and if it’s just text? Boring.
If I post it with a photo? Oh boy here we go. The original post has a little info on top then there’s a long form post below. Usually in my experience people are responding to the photo and text and few actually read the information below where I go into more detail. Why do I do this?
This post had 100’s of comments and shares because it’s controversial. I don’t post this daily because people would get angry frankly and I sort of educate educate educate then I’m convroversial then go right back to education. I want people to engage in solid educational videos but do they? Do they really? No! They’re sharing Mr. Pure Relief and complaning. Social media particularly on facebook is social. What are people commenting on or sharing? What they love or hate. Everything in the middle dies on the vine.
Social media is just media. If this were 1920 you’d be figuring out magazine and newspaper ads. Those people in 1920 would have Died if they’d had the digital access that we do to promote their products and services.
Mutli-platforming has to have to realize that it’s not about facebook. It’s not about twitter. It’s about the technology behind all of it. The wiring under the board. In your pocket you have a small personal computer with more processing power than what got men to the moon and back. You have a global distribution electronic device in the palm of your hand.
Platforms will come and go. The technology will continue to evolve.
We must evolve with it.
Modern business requires the use of all available mediums and why wouldn’t you want to put out information on various channels to engage your audience? This means $$$. For now it may seem odd that making videos on various platforms could lead to revenue but I really want to see the feedback loop happen for all of you when you realize, “I put out information and people are eventually giving me business because of it.” That stage is very important because then you’re getting positive reinforcement for what you’re doing encouraging you to continue building and growing.
Years ago I Hated social media mostly. I was a luddie. I eschewed technology. I spent most of my time organic gardening composting and reading forums on vermicomposting. I was broke and collected vegetable scraps from restaurants to make compost instead of buying it. I finally over time came to realize, “hey, I learned all this organic gardening over internet forums.” It wasn’t passed down from generation to generation as the tech environment in farming had shifted pretty radically in the last 100 years. I was using 21st century technology to learn about worms and growing radishes.
What could the internet offer my business?
Mutli-platforming has to have you consider the tech underneath social media. We can video communicate with anyone on earth! If you sell an in person service like a massage or yoga class then only the people in that room can participate. If you start making photos and film anyone on earth can. 🙂
I recently went to twitter and I follow Ice-T. He’s been a hero of sorts since my childhood and his music and art evolved until he hit Hollywood and being on film. His twitter feed is very raw, you can tell it’s actually Ice talking to people and he posted the following:
I laughed at the photo on twitter and it was Straight Gangster. #OG stuff
I screenshotted it in my phone gallery and then clipped it. I liked it so much I thought my instagram fans would like it. I posted it on instagram with the text, “When people ask me where I go to for inspiration. #guru #OG “
In a flash I thought, “do I follow Ice-T on instagram?” I tagged Ice-T in the photo and posted and moved on with life. 10 minutes later Ice-T liked my post on instagram! I squeed like a fan girl for ten minutes. I hadn’t really posted assuming he would like the post but in the age of social media why wouldn’t he like that I was Sharing and Promoting Him through my 2k instagram followers?
It’s a small thing for him to press like on a photo but what if I went to a dinner party in LA and Ice was there? See how social media brings that dinner party into my house 24 hours a day? That multi platforming is what I want you to consider. It’s not about twitter. It’s about global connections networking and business building.
I’m working on a second part to this course and will release it in due time. I’ll be covering:
- Snapchat
- Tiktok
- Canva for Graphic Design
- Cameras & Phones
- Microphones and lavalier mics
- Additional software
- Starting your own podcast
Stay tuned and thanks for going through the course. 🙂
Make sure to turn your settings inside teachable to Opt **IN** to email. I’ll email you when part 2 of this course is avaiable. 🙂