Podcast

A listener asks, “How do I get motivated and find content to make Facebook and Instagram stories?”

Submit your questions at: https://www.massagebusinessblueprint.com/talk

Sponsored by Yomassage and Pure Pro Massage Products Peppermint Pedango

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by Yomassage. Registration for the first Yomassage virtual training is now open with classes beginning in November. The Yomassage therapist training is an intensive 25-hour certification program. Over three weeks, you will be immersed in the Yomassage philosophy; learn about the nervous system; the mind-body connection; facial systems; mindfulness; benefits of touch; trauma informed bodywork; learn how to structure classes; understand body mechanics; how to encourage self-massage techniques; and utilize Yomassage positions and incorporate modifications, adjustments, and contraindications. You will build community with the other therapists going through the training. You’ll have assignments due each week, weekly discussion points, live Q&As, quizzes, and lots of one-to-one feedback from your instructor. Our listeners can go to yomassage.com and get $50 off the virtual training registration using the code BLUEPRINTONLINE, one word BLUEPRINTONLINE. Go to yomassage.com to learn more and register.

Michael Reynolds Hey, everyone. Welcome to a Q&A episode of the Massage Business Blueprint podcast. I’m Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines I’m Allissa Haines.

MR We’re your hosts. Thanks for joining us today. I’m loving these Q&A episodes. We’re getting some amazing questions, so I appreciate — thank you, thank you to everyone who’s sending us questions. We got a great one today, so.

AH We really do. And I — here’s what’s hilarious about these Q&A episodes is that I tend to over prep for everything, and Michael’s like, you don’t have to over prep for these; it’s just like live consulting. And I’m sitting here with roughly 20 bullet points for — no, I’m kidding.

MR [Laughing].

AH Like, six bullet points for this next episode, for this question. But I was so excited about it, and it led me to do some stuff on my own.

So why don’t you play our question, Michael?

MR All right. Here we go.

Listener question Hi, this is Meg from northern Virginia. My question is how do I find the passion to post on Facebook stories and Instagram stories? And what are some of the uber easy ways that you have found to create impactful content for those two platforms that is different from the information you would normally put out on your Facebook feed and Instagram feeds? I know that — or I should say, I don’t know, I understand that more and more people are looking at their stories first. So I would love to put something out there, but I really don’t want to take additional time from what I’m already doing to create additional content. Thanks.

MR Awesome. Thanks and hello again, Meg. Thank you for this question. Again, we appreciate that. And I want to say first before we get to our sponsor and then the discussion is I think this question probably touches probably every one of our listeners. [Laughing]. Because I’ve heard this so many times over and over like, how do I find the passion and the time to do this extra stuff? So I love it. Thank you, Meg.

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AH So let’s get back to our question, Meg. I’m going to start with the first portion, which is how to get motivated and find that passion. Well, here’s some real talk. That’s kind of on you. Like, do you want more clients? Awesome. This is a thing you can do to increase your visibility. Using stories on Facebook and Insta is a thing you can do to increase your visibility, so do it. If you don’t want to do it, that’s okay. You can keep spending time on the other things that you do. No one is mandating you — that you use these tools any more than someone’s going to make me used LinkedIn, which I’m just not going to do, people. I will not do it. But it’s okay. If you don’t want to do this, here is your permission slip. Don’t freaking do it. Do something else that brings you clients. And that’s okay.

But if you do want to do it, if you’re like, okay, now listen, I really do want to push myself a little out of my comfort zone or suck it up and try it, here’s some ideas. First, you can watch other brand’s — other people’s — other brand’s inspiration videos — stories to get you all fired up and get some ideas, which is what I have been doing for the last week or so just to prepare for this recording. I’ve been like, okay, here’s how people are using it; here’s how — here’s what looks good to me; here’s what doesn’t look good to me. It is a little inspiring. The research phase was kind of fun. It made me a little less afraid to be wacky and use fun filters and little animations. And we’ll talk about that in a minute.

The second portion is how do you find the content that’s different from the other stuff you post? Well, once again, I do not accept the premise of that. You can use some of the same content. It doesn’t need to be entirely different. You can use some of your static photos. You can use some of your other videos. You can use the same idea and post it differently as a static picture and a video versus in your story. It doesn’t have to be entirely separate. People are probably not going to watch all your stories and read in detail all of your posts. So there might be some overlap, some people might here things a couple times. That’s okay. But your content doesn’t need to be entirely different in both of those mediums. It’s fine.

Here’s an example. We did a couple months ago this massage room challenge where every day some people posted a static picture, maybe even a video, of something in their massage room and why it’s relevant. So like a picture of my Bose wireless speaker and — with a little bit of a monolog about how I choose my massage music, how happy I was to get a really good sound system in there, and how people can bring in their own music and hook it up via the auxiliary cable or via the Bluetooth. And it was just a whole little thing about my massage music based on my picture of my speaker.

Meg and everyone else, you can take those same whatever, 20-some posts, from the massage room and turn them into a couple of stories. You could mix it up and be a little different. You could have a picture of — I just did this when I was practicing and messing around with stories a little bit more — I took a picture of the new pillow that I have that — it’s warm — that goes under people’s head, and I took a picture of me on the pillow, and I did a little story with some fun little filters about how excited I was to get this new pillow and how you’re going to feel it — my clients are going to feel it, but they’re never actually going to see this fun pillowcase because it’s always covered in a towel and under their head and their eyes are always closed. But it was really fun to do, and it wasn’t anything startlingly new.

But you can take a lot of your old content and recycle it in a whole bunch of different ways. You can add some video talking about the elements of your massage room. You could take all of your massage room pictures or all of your stock photo images and add a little bit of voice-over to them for — to make some video for your Instagram story or mix some video talking about some elements of your massage room with some of those still pictures. You can add all kinds of animations and all kinds of text. You can do a little location tag so people can click on that location tag and then see all the other pictures taken at your site. So use some of your old stuff.

New stuff — and I kind of have targeted this — these ideas specifically to Meg’s business. I know her business a little bit. She works with a lot of weekend warrior kind of athletes, local runners. You can demo some techniques and special things you do and use the story to create a poll. So you could do like a video in your story — you could have two videos that are two different versions of working on hamstrings, and you could have your clients or your followers and your readers vote. You can do a little poll, and you can have them vote on the one that looks the most awesome. You could do — use some video and some still pictures of common running paths, use the location tagging for that. You can have people vote on their favorite path to run. You could do screenshots of the weather forecast and also some running paths and do like a whole, are you going out this weekend? What are you going to do this weekend for your exercise? Or whatever. This is obviously not my niche, so I’m winging it a little bit here.

You can use kind of the stuff you already have to make some new stories. And I promise you, just like with blogging or with your podcasting, Meg, once you start doing it, you see ideas everywhere. Everywhere. So just use what you have already to make some stories, to start doing it. Commit to adding one bit to your story every day, or two bits to a story every day for a week, and then give yourself a week off, and I guarantee you you’re going to start seeing ideas and inspiration for Instagram stories everywhere.

And before I let Michael talk, I also just want to let you know that while I was doing this research to get a little more familiar with these stories, Hootsuite — and I’ll put this in the podcast notes — has a really good How to Use Instagram Stories post that gave me a whole bunch of ideas to mess around with on my own, and it helped me learn the capabilities of stories. I’ll put a link to that. It’s a really great how-to, better than one I could build, so I’m not building one.

But I hope this has been a little reassuring. Like the best way to do this is just to start doing this, and then it’s going to grow and evolve. And if you are struggling that hard to get motivated to do it, then don’t. Period. Okay. I’m done.

MR So here’s a fun fact. I don’t think I have ever posted a story on Facebook or Instagram.

AH Okay.

MR [Laughing]. So I just want to say — and I owned a digital marketing agency up until six months ago. So just a reminder that you don’t have to do what Allissa does or what I do or what your friends do. Or you can ignore everybody and do what you want to do, so. Yeah. I think it’s perfectly okay. They’re — and by the way, I’m on LinkedIn a lot more lately, and Allissa hates LinkedIn. So you know what? There’s a thousand platforms out there. Pick the ones you like, and that’s the ones that are going to give you energy.

AH Yeah. And also, you know what I forgot to mention? And this is, again, Meg specific. You could take short little audio clips from some of your podcasts and make a whole Instagram story just with those. That would be really funny and — like really interesting. And — I was thinking of outtakes, which would — that could be funny.

MR Oh, yeah. That would be fun actually. [Laughing].

AH But you could publish a story with a couple of still shots of you and your guests or your cohost, your podcast logo, a clip of audio. Like you could use all of those things and do a story about each podcast every time you publish a podcast.

MR I love that idea.

AH So here’s a story idea.

MR I heart that idea —

AH Like this is —

MR — with the intensity of a thousand suns. That is amazing.

AH Yeah.

MR [Laughing].

AH Yeah. So like, you don’t —

MR That’s the best idea ever.

AH It’s hard because we think that every new medium is going to require so much more work, but it probably isn’t when you start thinking about how to elegantly recycle stuff that you’re already doing anyway. Like you can probably — once you get good at it, it’s only going to take you an extra ten minutes to put together another Instagram story about something you just blogged or podcasted or posted still shots about. You know?

MR I like it.

AH Don’t over think it. And also, just practice. I’m done.

MR Thanks, Meg. Great, great discussion.

All right. Well, thanks for joining us today for another Q&A episode. So you might ask, how do I get featured on your Q&A episode? Well, you’re in luck. It’s easy. You go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/talk, again that’s massagebusinessblueprint.com/talk, T-A-L-K. And you click a button, and you record you question. You may have to click a little button to authorize your microphone to use from your phone or your computer, but once you do that, you speak your question just like Meg did. And keep it super casual. Keep it just really — don’t try to make it too formal or rehearse it. Just basically ask — give us a stream of consciousness. Give us your rambling thoughts because we want this to feel like a personal consulting session. So if it takes you 45 seconds to 90 seconds to kind of ramble through your thoughts and ask your questions, go for it. Give us what you really think and what you’re — what’s really on your mind. We want to hear that. So we appreciate that, so send your questions our way.

And anything else you want to add?

AH That’s it.

MR All right. We look forward to your questions next time around. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next time.