MA Business Success 92: Content

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Graham: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Martial Arts Business Success Podcast. We're at episode number 92. Graham McDonnell, and I've got Phil Britten here.
Phil: As always, we're rocking and rolling.
Graham: Ready to go. So what are we gonna talk about today, mate?
Phil: Well we're talking about content and how your martial arts business, it doesn't matter what business you're in, martial artists in particular need to be putting content out there so that they can be seen as an authority, as an expert, as the go-to person within their community.
Graham: So where do you start? I know this is something that is always a challenge for people. We even sometimes find it a challenge. When you look at episode 92, what great content is [inaudible 00:00:47]? Where do you start?
Phil: Well, first thing to know is that it doesn't happen overnight. You can't just do like 10 podcasts or 10 videos and think it's gonna be done. What happens is people do start it, they don't get the results or see results straight away, then they stop. It's definitely a long term strategy first. First and foremost, long-term strategy.
So you wanna make it part of your every day or part of your weekly, sort of, ongoings within your business as well. But you know, if you just think about it the way it used to be. If you were looking at an expert, in anything, for that matter. An expert in, let's just say martial arts. Where would you see this person?

You'd see them on TV, maybe on the movies, maybe you'd hear about them or whatever it may be. Maybe you'd see them in the paper. And you can see that that person is someone who is worldly and world class and you would probably listen to that person. So the way that's done now is that people spend less time with their face in the paper.

People spend less time with their eyes glued to the TV with the ads and stuff like that. I mean movies are still there as well, but I just think that where people are is where the content needs to be which is on your phones and on the website. Social media, YouTube, all those sort of places. I'm not gonna go into detail with where you should be doing it. It's more like what should you be doing.
Graham: I couldn't agree more. And if you think about it, guys, what people do nowadays even they're at home, they tend to fast forward through the adverts because they've pre-recorded their stuff whether it's on Netflix or Foxtel, whatever else. So again, you've got to be where the attention is. And dare I say it, it's the phone where it's at nowadays.
So it's important to make sure that you're not only producing content on a regular basis. It's got to be quality content. Otherwise, people would just find it spammy or they'll switch off. They won't engage. So you know, its frequency is one thing, but quality is another. But how do you make sure you're ticking those boxes and how do you not just run dry and stop rambling on rubbish?
Phil: Cool, so great question and just recently we had a Team of Masterminds. So for those that don't know, people who pay the $99 a month to be part of our team paid online course. They actually get access to our Team of Masterminds as well. And within there it's the live Q&A. You actually get to see Graham run his manager's meeting weekly.
So you really get a behind the curtain look at the ongoings as a manager level and also get to ask us direct questions about where you're at what we can help you with. And what we did just before you can go is what we did is I threw it out to them and asked them you know, if they had been doing content, video blogging, or anything like that.

And they were like, "No, don't know where to start." So what I did in the Mastermind is I downloaded and uploaded to that group there, is a 52-week content workbook. Which means it's a workbook that they can use with their team to go through and create 52 topics. That's a year's worth of topics once a week. Then they can just tick through as the weeks go rolling on.

There's nothing worse than you know getting to do a video and having to figure out what you're trying to do. It's hard and it's a bit of a strain on yourself. So if you can have a moment in time when you do the brain training with your staff and go through. These are 52 things we think our community wanna know and learn about us. It's what we're specialized in.

And then you've got your topics and then really what it takes is consistency. Each week, day in, day out doing that video blog and getting it out there. Now there's a strategy behind that and maybe we'll talk about that.
Graham: Guys, one other tip that I found which is quite great for some of our staff members who've put together blogs and are not quite sure, or content they're delivering they are not quite sure on themselves is look at other worldly stories. Again, look at some experience that I've gone on and reference it. And sometimes comment on your own opinion.
So I know that there may be some issues going on in the world at the moment, so what you can do is talk about a particular self-defense technique or skill that may happen to or help in that situation. So you're keeping things quite relevant but also too, you've got to make sure that you don't put specific dates on it because sometimes that will also date the content as well.
So you got to be really mindful of that. Sometimes the content you have is simply to be consumed and then gone or other content is created for continual reuse over time. So just keep that in mind, guys, when you are starting to think about what you're producing.
Phil: So I think at the bare minimum if you're not doing anything, what you should be doing is some sort of 5 to 10 minute educational, value-driven video. Just like what we're doing here to camera to educate not just your current students but also people within the community who don't know you. Because at the end of the day that's what we're trying to do.
We create these two levels of content. Content for your students and content for people who don't know you. Just like events. You run events for referrals for your students and student retention and also run marketing for getting people in. The content creation is more about marketing. It's about getting your information out there. Getting it shared. Getting comments.
Getting some traction and lots of stuff. And you can use it later on for posting and doing ads on Facebook as well. But if you just look at what we do for example. So we shoot this video here then we send that video off to our team and they obviously edit the video so we get it looking fantastic. Then they strip the words that we say from it so they create the text from behind and then have transcriptions.

Then that goes on our website, very good for SEO. Now that's big now rather than paying a website person to do SEO and lots of stuff. All you need to do is your transcriptions. Put that on your website. And then also we strip the audio and that's how maybe you're listening to this as the podcast. That's all. We're doing a video. So you can watch this three ways.

You can either read it, you can watch it, or you can listen to it. All right? So they're the three things that you've got to be doing on a bare minimum.
Graham: Yeah, for sure. Look I guess, guys, it's just starting one foot in front of the other and again, it's just sometimes it's a live cross on your Facebook Live about how classes are going, just to get that interaction, build that audience. It may be that you've got content in class going on and the excitement, that's a starting point.

But then, as Phil pointed out at the start of this, we wanna make sure that you become an expert in your area, your go-to school. And to do that you need to continue to be front of mind. So there's nothing better than having a really great topic that is discussed that parents of your school feel free to share that with other parents.

Or even better, it becomes almost semi-viral to a point where someone picks up an article, has some great real merits to it and they pass that on as well too.
Phil: Absolutely, I said it before but content equals credibility. As I said, the experts that used to be, you'd see them online or see them on TV or the newspaper and because they're being seen and heard, they have some authority. Well, now we can do that a lot easier using YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and get that stuff shared.
So like if I do a video and send it on my page, Graham likes it, he shares with his friend. And people are starting to see you more and more within your community and as the stat is here in Australia, takes on average, 16 to 20 times just someone to see your brand or see you before they make a buying decision. So why wouldn't you have, yes, your traditional type marketing, but also your new age stuff which is your content creating because content is king.
Graham: Guys, if anything that we're saying to you right now is of interest and sparks some interest and you're wondering how do I get started, look, drop us a line, guys. As I said, with our inner workings of the mastermind group, we had a few little activities we gave them. And gave them some resources to get them started.
We'd love to share with you some of the things that we're doing too within the team or organization to create and help people create some good content. We've got resources there that will allow for that to occur. So if you wanna find out more, drop us a line, guys, [email protected]. We'll get back to you. We'll let you know all the ins and outs. Where to start. Get you on the right track and then you'll be dominating your area.
Phil: Yeah, just to finish that with, as I said, the bare minimum was those three and then the next level is the promotional because if you're shooting a 10-minute video or 5-minute video, people don't have that attention on social media. You just ask yourself, you flip through stuff. So it has to be eye-catching. It has to be attention-grabbing.

So how you do that is from your video blogging, then basically, you create your promotional pieces. Now if you've followed anyone, maybe myself or Gary Vaynerchuk or Karen Ray or any of these guys, these big guys in social media, you'll notice the different types of videos that they have which is organic for that particular platform.

So what we've done is we've created a service that is really directed specifically for martial arts clients because I bet you're time poor just like what we are. And if you all wanna be on the floor teaching or if you wanna be men at running your school, you don't wanna be spending time editing videos after video after video. It's just time wasting for you.

I've done it. You pull your hair out of you. You're lucky I've still got hair. But at the end of the day, we've created this service. So if you're interested, you could send us a video, we could send that to our team and we could bring back basically in it's simplest form. You give us one video, we'll give you back 15 pieces of promotional content that you can then distribute on your social media channels.
So it really is really cool. We're offering it at a really cheap level just as a foundation level. So if you're interested, please shoot us an email [email protected], guys. And if you wanna be part of the Mastermind, get to our website, tima.com.au and just join us.
Graham: Great, look we're gonna wrap it up there, team. We are rocking and roll. We'd love to see you guys. I wanna be at live events. We've got one coming up in November, team. November the 19th, this year, which is 2017. It will be in Sydney. We'll have lots of details, costing, pricing and what we'll do there coming up very shortly. But again, you get to meet us, have some great stuff and finish the year with an absolute bang.
Phil: Now, guys, you have a fantastic week and we'll see you on the flip side.