Podcast

In Episode 66: How to Always Have Content for Your Social Media, Allissa laid out a plan to post to her massage practice’s social media every day. In this episode, she tells us how it went and shares some ideas for the coming year.

Here’s the book Allissa used for 2017.

This episode is sponsored by:

• ABMP
• The Jojoba Company

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by ABMP, Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. Supporting the largest community in massage and bodywork, ABMP goes above and beyond great liability insurance to make it easier for you to succeed at what you love. ABMP membership combines the insurance you need, the free CE you want, and the advocacy and personal customer service you deserve. Join the ABMP family and learn why more massage therapists and bodyworkers choose ABMP membership than any other association. Expect more at abmp.com.

Michael Reynolds Hey everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we discuss the business side of massage therapy. I’m Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines And I am Allissa Haines.

MR And we are your hosts. Allissa, how are you?

AH I’m good. I’m good. I feel energized. It’s still, well, it just hit noon, and frankly I am impressed that we’re recording at exactly the start time of our meeting.

MR We really are.

AH So good job, us.

MR Yeah, I think we even hit the button one minute early, which is bizarre for us.

AH It’s crazy.

MR Usually, we’re just coming back from lunch, and I’m still snacking, and we’re getting our notes together and just a hot mess. So today, hey, we’re on track so —

AH Michael, tell the people what you had for lunch.

MR — don’t get used to it. What’d I have for lunch today? I had three tacos. But I wasn’t satisfied to stop there; I had an entire container of queso from Chipotle as well. And two root beers.

AH Two — holy moly. Two root beers?

MR Well, I’m on my second root beer right now.

AH Dang, girl. That’s intense.

MR Yeah. I’ve really been too hooked on root beer lately; I need to stop.

AH It’s just a replacement for the Fanta. I don’t know why you think that’s any better.

MR You know what? I don’t drink Fanta anymore. I got —

AH This is what I’m saying.

MR — sick of it. I know. Fanta just got too sickeningly sweet. Ugh. So I don’t drink Fanta anymore. But now I drink root beer. I’m migrating my way slowly back toward water. I’m going to go through all of these horrible sodas first and tell myself I’m migrating back toward water. So it’s going to start with root beer next. I’m —

AH All right. Well I’m glad we had this —

MR [indiscernible] that I’m pretending to follow.

AH — lunch and liquid update from Michael.

MR Indeed. So —

AH I haven’t had lunch yet; so I cannot tell you all what I’m having for lunch. I’ll decide that later.

MR Let’s hurry this up then; let’s get this moving.

AH Let’s do it.

MR So Allissa can have lunch; we’re going to jump to our topic. Today’s topic is a follow-up on how Allissa’s one-post-a-day social media plan turned out. So do tell.

AH All right. So last year around this time, Episode 66 of our podcast was How to Always Have Content for Your Social Media, and I’ll link to this in the podcast notes, and you can go back and listen to it. It is all of a 7-minute podcast episode; so it’s quick and easy. And, in a nutshell, what we covered was getting a page-a-day calendar and using that page-a-day calendar as one post a day for your social media.

MR Oh yeah! I remember that.

AH Yeah! Right? And I was totally inspired because one of our premium members, Alexander, had been doing this with a Life Hacks calendar, and it was awesome. I was like “I’m going to pirate this idea and make it mine,” and I told all of you about it so you could do it too. I started January first of 2017, and here’s how it went.

I started by posting both to Facebook and Instagram. So I would sit down — and what I got — I got a daily fortune-without-a-cookie book. It was this little, tiny, mini book, like a stocking stuffer kind of book, and it had a whole bunch — it wasn’t really a daily calendar, but I, again, improvised. I was looking at daily calendars, and I found this, and I loved it. It has a tear out fortune as if from a fortune cookie for each day, and each one was dated. So I bought that little book for, I don’t know, $8.95 or something — and I’ll put the link to that in the show notes as well — and used each day — I took a picture of each day’s fortune, and I usually did one month at a time; so each month has the same background. So for, whatever, 28-31 days, every day’s different fortune has the same background, which is cool because it made it super visible; it made it obvious and visible every month. Every day I posted a picture of that day’s fortune, and it was — these daily fortunes are kind of sardonic with a hint of being a little bit dark, and I thought that that kind of fit my personality well, and they’re all often very funny and silly and a little dark. That is a good vibe for my massage practice.

MR I love seeing them on Instagram.

AH Right? I started by posting every day to Facebook and Instagram. I ended up dropping Facebook, and I’m almost regretful of that now but not entirely. I almost felt like it was too much. The visual — the way the image looks, it’s just a big picture. And I felt like when I saw it in my own Facebook feed, it was too big and obnoxious; so I ended up dropping Facebook, and I only posted on Instagram. I don’t know if that was good or bad; I didn’t post consistently on Facebook for the first month, and then I was like “I feel like it’s too…” I don’t think that daily posting is bad; I just think that the way the image looked was a little too abrasive. When I saw it in my own news feed, I was like, “Ugh! I feel like that’s obnoxious.” So I stopped posting on Facebook, but I kept up with the Instagram. And I do have a decent local following — geographically local following on my Instagram account, and I use it to promote my massage practice and mostly to really pump up my relationship with other referral partners in my area. Because a handful of younger-owned businesses in my area — and I say this as someone who’s 42; so I don’t think I’m 25 and running this cool, hip indie business — but I found that on Instagram, the businesses that are on there locally are people who are under 50, which is awesome. So anyhoo, I was consistent with Instagram, and it worked pretty well. And again, I had kind of like a daily fortune kind of thing, which was funny and kind of dark. And there were a few racy ones that mentioned sex and stuff, which I wouldn’t want attached to my massage practice, but on the opposite side of the fortune was lucky numbers just like on the fortune from a fortune cookie. So if there was a couple of fortunes that were a little too racy, I felt like, I just flipped it and just used the lucky numbers for the day and that was totally fine. That’s what I did.

And here’s how I failed in it: I didn’t use consistent hashtags, and I didn’t make sure that my business card or logo was in every image. So while I realize it was a great thing that went well and people liked it, it didn’t do a ton to promote my actual massage business, except in general pumping up my Instagram. So that was — it’s fine. So that’s how I failed: I didn’t use consistent hashtags with my town names and stuff, and I didn’t make sure my actual logo and name and stuff was in every post. Whatevs.

But people on Instagram loved it. There was — because I lost the book before I got caught up — took all the pictures with my phone, when I got back to it, people were like “Oh my gosh. I missed that.” So that kind of tells me that people really liked it enough that they remembered it, and it stood out. So that’s how it went well. So, Michael, we’re going to break for our halftime sponsor before I talk about how I’m going to move forward with the same idea next year. Who’s our halftime sponsor?

MR Oh, thanks for letting me announce it. It is jojoba.

AH Yay!

Sponsor message So let’s talk about jojoba — The Jojoba Company. What I love about The Jojoba Company jojoba is that it does not oxidize or turn rancid and has an indefinite shelf life; so heat doesn’t affect it and cold doesn’t affect it. So I chose to talk about this because I have one home visit that I do once a month, and it’s on a Sunday evening. When I leave my office on Saturday, I grab the couple of things I need for the home visit, which she has a table and linens there; so all I have to bring is my oil, my holster, an extra little pillow, a couple hand towels. And I throw them all in my car, and then Sunday night when I was heading out to my home visit, I realized that the jojoba was solid because it’s been very, very cold here, and I was like, “Oh, man. It’s solid.” I warmed it up just by running it under the hot water when I got to the client’s house and was washing my hands. I ran it under hot water for a few minutes, and it was fine. Then I packed up from my home visit and went home and got back to the office on Monday and pulled the stuff out of my car and again it was solid, and I threw it into my hot towel cabbie, and in 10 minutes it was liquified again. And the beautiful thing about jojoba is that it can stand up to being cold and then heated and reheated without it degrading the quality of the jojoba. So you can go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, J-O-J-O-B-A, and get yourself some. And that’s my story about jojoba and how I love that it can stand up to repeated cold and reheating.

AH So let me pop back to my notes here.

MR I did not know that about the heating and cooling thing.

AH Really? I’ve said that before —

MR No.

AH — we’ve talked about how it’s great for really warm climates.

MR I must have missed that.

AH Yeah. See? For all your love of jojoba, you don’t pay attention to me.

MR Hey. [laughs] You’re probably right. I probably spaced out during that part.

AH Who’s thinking about his queso?

MR Now I know.

AH Now you know, my friend.

How I’m moving forward with my posting every day. I’m going to get a health or wellness or life hack related page a day calendar, and I’m going to use it for — because I’m running multiple businesses, I’m going to use that for my wellness collaborative. I’m going to definitely post that to Instagram every day because I want to build up our Instagram following for the overall wellness center, which promotes everyone who rents from me doing massage, acupuncture, craniosacral, yoga, movement, that kind of stuff. And I’m going to get a — I’m going to set up a set of hashtags specifically for that that lists our town name and all of the local geographic hashtag stuff and also each of the services that we provide here. And then I’m going to do the same thing for my massage practice, but I’ll probably get another silly, funny one like the fortune-a-day, maybe not a page-a-day calendar, but something daily like that. I got to go shopping next week; I’m waiting for the after-Christmas sales. Again, I’m going to have a set of hashtags just for that that includes all of the geographically relevant ones and also probably #massage #massagetherapy. And a little side note, and I’ll put this in the podcast notes, we actually did a blog post about how to make it easier to be using Instagram hashtags and stuff by making a little quick-pick code in your phone; so with just typing in a few things — a few letters, you can bring up the whole list of hashtags; so you don’t have to type in every hashtag every darn time you make a post; so I will link to that in the podcast notes as well. I’m going to make sure that each picture has somehow my business name or logo in it; so I’m going to make sure it’s a little more branded this time. I haven’t figured out exactly how. Literally, probably just going to place a business card with my logo next to the image of the page-a-day thing or overlapping it slightly or something to make it a little more branded; so people are recognizing my name and stuff as they see the posts every day next year 2018.

And I’m going to use Hootsuite to get all of these things scheduled for Instagram. It’s not a true scheduling automation, but what happens is when you use Hootsuite, H-O-O-T-S-U-I-T-E — and yes, they have free account levels, then you can — it’ll send you a little alert on your mobile device every day at the scheduled time to post and remind you and make it super easy to post on Instagram versus having to do it individually every single darn day.

And, Michael, I’m done.

MR I’ve noticed you’ve been killing it on Instagram, not only with our Massage Business Blueprint Instagram account but your own. You just have a lot of fun there, and I don’t use Instagram quite as much. My Instagram account is 100% just of pictures of my family like Eli and his crazy shenanigans. That’s really all I use it for; so it’s really kind of personal for me. But from a business sense, I noticed you’ve been really doing some cool stuff. And the funny thing about Instagram is — I think one reason I don’t use it as much is because I’m really obsessed with the tracking and the calls to action and the click-throughs and stuff, and you got to let go of that, I think, with Instagram because you don’t always have the same — you can certainly track some of that, but it’s a little more storytelling to me. Do you agree?

AH Well, fun fact: When you set it up as a business account, or when you move — you can actually make your personal Instagram, you can turn it into a business account that has all of the same tracking as Facebook.

MR Yeah. I’ve done that with running ad campaigns — you can run them through Instagram as well so that does — yeah, I’ve done that before. But I’m talking about just everyday posting. You don’t have to be obsessed — maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m thinking about this wrong, but I don’t feel like I have to be as obsessed with a link in every post or a call to action everywhere. Sometimes it’s just “Hey. Here’s a cool image or a story I’m telling, and it’s about making a connection to the person looking at your —

AH Exactly. It goes back to that primal root of all things networking, which is — and marketing, which is it’s all about relationships. It’s a little more fun. I’m loving the image-based stuff. I feel tired with all of the text content that I consume every day, and I feel like an obnoxious hipster that I just said that. [funny voice] “I’m really overwhelmed with all the text content that I’m consuming every day.

MR Well, here’s my tiny violin playing for you. [laughs]

AH I know. But, I am. So to go to Instagram and have it be fun is really nice. And people are using the video stories really, really well. I haven’t used Stories as much; I’m a little bit lazier there. I like it; so that’s my tip.

MR Yeah. I like it. All right. Well I will wrap up with taking the opportunity to remind you that we are on Instagram as Massage Business Blueprint; so if you’re listening, which obviously you are if you are hearing this; so that was kind of meta. But if you’re listening, and you would like to find us on Instagram, we are there. Like I said, Allissa is doing an awesome job; there’s some fun stuff there. So follow us there as well.

If you have a question and you want to email it to us in the good-old-fashioned text format, email it to us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. We love your topic ideas, your questions, your feedback. Anything you want to send us, we love it. We also appreciate iTunes reviews. And our website is massagebusinessblueprint.com; so check us out there. There’s a ton of stuff there for everybody. Thanks again for listening; we appreciate it.

We’re coming up on the end of the year. Just a reminder that our premium content is going to change a little bit — the content we’ve been delivering is going to change in format and delivery a little bit in that it’s going to be premium only. So just a reminder that the last free content was this month in December; so all future content is a premium benefit. So now’s a great time to check out the premium membership; it’s $9 a month. It is barely any money at all; it’s a steal for what you get including all the content, and it’s going to be even better. Anything you’d add to that, Allissa? I know I always miss something.

AH I’m just going to remind everyone that the last 40-or-so months of free content that, from when I started creating it 40-ish months ago, will still be available at the free stuff page of the website for infinity; so you can still access all of that older content too including a blog post for every single month that we’ve done it. So if you’re just getting started blogging, checking out our archives of blog posts that you can edit and customize for your own website is totally worth your time, and once you fall in love with those, you’re totally going to want to become a premium member and get a new, fresh, professionally written by a professional writer — currently our friend Kat Mayerovitch — amazing blog posts to use on your own site.

MR Right on. Okay. Awesome. Let’s wrap it up there. Thanks again for joining us. Have an awesome day, and we will see you next time.

AH Bye.