Maximizing Your Content Impact: From Research to Data-Driven Decisions

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 372. Maximizing your content impact from research to data driven decisions. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris and I will be guest hosting this solo episode for you today. So some of the things that I want to go over are actually some commonly asked questions asked by people in the accelerator program and beyond, people in my community, people in Beverly's community. And I just want to provide a value packed episode that kind of goes over these questions, plus some insights from my experience and some strategies that you can use going into 2025. So as I go through this episode, I have some keynotes that I'm going to be following, but there are also some things that will just be experiential. So based on things that I have actually done in my own business or in the businesses that I've worked with. So first and foremost, some of the things that are coming up for a lot of people during this time of year, the time of recording this episode, we are in December 2024. It's actually December 5th right now. I'm recording this for a Tuesday release next week. But a lot of people are talking about losing momentum and just like they, they're just finding a way to rekindle their excitement. So whether it's excitement for a podcast, I know a lot of podcasts have taken a pause, like a six month pause in some instances, or whether it's just you feel like all of your effort is going towards nothing, this is going to be one of those things that I'm going to address in that episode. So first and foremost, what I would ask of you, if you're listening to this, what are the signs that you've lost excitement for your work? And how can you rediscover your passion for creating impactful content? And from my point of view, it is definitely easier to make content when it's something that resonates with you. Not necessarily making content based on what you think you need to make content on, but more so making content on things that are driven by your experience, such as how I did this or how I helped my client do this, or the answer that I gave to this client's question on this thing. So personal anecdotes and client stories can make a big difference with this. But also some of the things I'm going to dive into within this episode is how powerful tracking your data and doing your audience research can be when it comes to lighting that spark. Again, I have seen YouTube channels grow substantially in a shorter amount of time. We're talking three years in comparison to 10 years simply because they did some audience research, they did some keyword research, and they just looked at the facts, they took the emotions out of it and they looked at the data. So the other things that I wanted to bring up in this episode are the facts that we know to be true are if you are leveraging a meta platform, that is Facebook or Instagram, your cost for advertising is going to go up, but also for organic content, you are just simply not going to get the same amount of reach that you would have been allocated before. Because essentially what is happening is there is an influx of people wanting to advertise on those platforms during this time of year. And in order for meta to deliver on those promises, they have to allocate a certain amount of space within the platform for those ads to be delivered. Because if somebody pays for an ad and not enough people see it, then meta is not delivering on the promise that they have delivered, basically pitched to their clients. And being that organic content is unpaid, they don't necessarily owe anything to you, but they do value your content. And so if you want to stand out during that time, it is helpful to get a lot more clear on your messaging, get a lot more clear on who you're speaking to and how you're telling those stories. Those are some of the things that we're going to dive in with that. But with that said, if you want to get creative and you're gathering your data, you could potentially look at other platforms. Now, this is very case specific because some people just outright are not going to find success within this platform, but some people will. The platform that I'm talking about is LinkedIn. When I talk about LinkedIn, I do want to play the devil's advocate to ensure that you know where I'm coming from. I'm not giving a blanket recommendation to put everything that you got on LinkedIn, but I am getting you to consider that LinkedIn might give you more reach during the month of December. In a year when it is very difficult or very challenging to get eyes on your offer during the month, especially if you have constraints on your budget or constraints on your time. I would acknowledge that LinkedIn might not be the place where you reach your target people, but if you are already connected to some of the people who you're also connected on Instagram, the likelihood that they'll see your organic content on LinkedIn versus Instagram during December is probably higher. And the way that you'll know this is by collecting the data on how much reach your organic content has, also tracking how much you're posting, even going as far as to take a closer look at the time of day that you're posting. Perhaps it just works better to post at 8am for your audience than it does for 12:12pm that is, with regards to that, the time to post is going to be largely facilitated by the time that you typically post, because that's the data, the data that Meta and all the other platforms have to work off of. They're not going to have data based on when you post at midnight, if you've never posted at midnight. Just to be clear, your data is more powerful than somebody else's. And so if you're tracking it in a spreadsheet to see what was your reach week to week, which posts performed the best, which ones got the highest reach, which ones got the most likes, which ones got the most shares, what style of content was it? What was the subject matter, what was the thumbnail, what was the most visible thing, like the hook or perhaps the text in the thumbnail or the first two seconds of the video, what happened that drew them in, whether it was like a dog in the frame or whether it was just something that you said or the way that you said it, or maybe a glass smashed before you got into talking about what you're going to talk about. We see all kinds of styles of content that work and we have to break down why it worked. So all this to say LinkedIn could be an opportunity to utilize that platform. TikTok too, depending where you are listening to this from, because everybody has mixed feelings about that platform. But if it's working for you and you're cool with it, there's a chance that you could A get a different unique reach or B potentially spend less on ads. There are different prefaces within like ad rules, so keep that in mind. Some of your messaging may have to change from platform to platform. I know for Facebook, for example, there are certain things that you can promote and certain things that you cannot promote within a Facebook ad. These are all the things that our accelerators get to do a deep dive in. So keep that in mind as you're wanting to go deeper into this marketing stuff. So the next thing that I want to talk about is the power of content research for organic reach. Sometimes we'll make posts about hey everybody, what do you want me to post about? And we think that's going to work. But in most cases the people that we're posting for don't really know what we should post for them because they don't know what they don't know. And so sometimes you have to go to the places where people are already asking questions. Sometimes we have to look at broader ways to do content research. Polls and Q and A features can be a broader way because it's a longer game. They're not necessarily going to give you a straightforward answer as to specifically what should be the topic of your next podcast, but they might tell you what they like hearing about versus what they don't like hearing about, or what they're interested in versus what they're not interested in. Additionally to that, there's services such as Answer the Public and Google Trends, which I think is very wise to utilize where you're able to see what literally people are searching for. What is trending? It could be everything from the Spotify wrapped to maybe a local sports team or international sports team has been making waves and you want to correlate your content with the performance of that team. You could be talking about the top 10 warm ups for a football fan when you're getting ready for the weekend of watching the game. For myself, I'm a hockey guy, so you could talk about the warmup that'll make you feel like McDavid and leverage off of the trends and the momentum that Connor, McDavid, Emmett and Euler would have within SEO, within people, searching for things within YouTube reach, stuff like that. One of the other tactics that you can use is essentially if you use a plugin called Vidiq and this isn't a sponsored post, this isn't a specific endorsement, but that's one of the tools that works. You can look at your home screen, your Explore page of your YouTube account and pay attention to the keywords used in the titles of outlier videos, even if it's videos that are separate from your industry. And I have to give credit where credit is due. One of my friends actually gave me insight on this. It was Coach Mara. So Coach Matteo Mara, he gave me some clarity on doing content research on YouTube, where you're just simply looking for different statements that stand out like maybe the top ten styles of cheese. But you're in the fitness industry so you could be like the top 10 lower body leg exercises. It's just, it gives you a starting point to build your content from. It might not have the exact same reach, but it's a lot easier. And being like about me, about your coach, because nobody's searching for about the coach, but they are probably searching for leg exercises on YouTube. The other thing is how do you turn your research into content that engages and converts? That's where you can start to look at what kind of hooks that you're using where the body of content can stay relatively the same, but maybe the beginning of that content changes. So you can look at, here's why most people quit their programs and how you can avoid it. That's a hook. Or you can align things with maybe the promise of your offer. So if the promise of your offer is increased strength over a 12 week period, then you can build your content around how they can make progress toward that. Perhaps get them a quick win by helping them to track their workouts for a week based on the workout that they're currently doing. And if they want to expedite the process, these are the steps to jump into your program where they'll be able to get more results in less time because you take the guesswork out of it. Little things like that can help you steer your audience towards your revenue goals without feeling sleazy because you're offering them something that you can guarantee should they follow through with all of the steps of your program and have nothing go terribly wrong throughout their life. Because obviously if somebody signs up for a program and they get sick for a few weeks, they're not going to have the same outcome as somebody signing up for your program, hitting all their workouts, staying on track with their nutrition, and keeping up with all of their check ins so that you have the data to support them best. Just you need the data to support your content best. Next piece here. This one is a deep rabbit hole and the reason I say that is because it includes the topic of brain rot. Brain rot is the kind of content that makes me want to hide in a cave and disappear from social media altogether. But where we can think about it differently is if that is the way that content works for some people, find ways to leverage it, whether it be contrasting with it or finding little pieces of it that works in order to grow your audience. One thing that is clear, because if you're looking at the data of your videos and you're Able to see, like YouTube, for example, will show you where you have the most engagement in your videos. And so your goal to grow and gain traction with YouTube will be to keep that attention throughout as much of your video as possible. So that's where you'll see people doing transitions, where it zooms in. That's where you'll see lots of cuts. Where it could be like a three minute video, but it has 30 cuts in it where the scene changes or the frame changes or the proximity to the subject changes or. Or perhaps there is stuff happening in the background, whether it is a dog walking through the frame, but very carefully timed, or whether it is the emojis that pop up or the B roll that shows up, or anything that keeps people engaged and gives them a reason to continue to pay attention. Because if you contrast just a standing and talking video with something that gives a person a reason that they don't have time to go to the bathroom, that is like my favorite analogy. If you want to captivate somebody's attention, make it difficult for them to leave the video without missing something. Make it almost so that they have to wait until the video is over until they feel that they can safely go to the bathroom. That would be an engagement strategy where you can test it on yourself, you can test it on your colleagues, and you can be like, are you able to look away from the screen when you watch this video? Because if you can, then it's not engaging and if you can't, then it is engaging and sometimes it's very challenging. And that's where you get creative. So brain rot would be defined as the effect of low value, overly repetitive content that doesn't serve the audience. So the way that you can leverage it is flip it by delivering high value, fresh perspectives that solve real problems. So an example could be instead of five tips for weight loss, post five tips to lose weight without sacrificing your weekends, or five tips to lose weight during a holiday. Little things that add a little bit more depth and a little bit more quality to the message can help you stand out. But the next step that I want to talk about is tracking your data across platforms. So data tracking is critical for podcast growth, organic reach, and paid ads. It's also extremely valuable for growing your business, which is a bit a big part of the purpose of the PT profit formula. And the accelerators are all needing to track their business in order to reach their revenue goals. So some of the things that I like to emphasize, because this is my wheelhouse, is looking at podcast metrics things like downloads, retention, engagement spikes by episode topic, and making sure that you're only looking at your data versus your data. Don't get distracted by your data versus the data of another podcast because it doesn't serve you at all. It doesn't give you anything to work off of. It just becomes this big comparison game and a competition and you can't win when you have nothing to base your next decision off of. So if I was going to review the data on a podcast that I'm helping produce, I'd be looking at the high performing episodes for opportunities to either do a best of episode or perhaps focus more on that subject matter or frame a future conversation around subject matter, whether that was going to be the bulk of the content or not. Some of the things that work well are trending topics within the fitness industry. I know that when people talk about cold exposure or saunas or GLP1 or or any kind of thing that's popular mainstream, then it usually gets an engagement spike because people are already searching for those things. They don't necessarily need to be a subscriber of yours to stumble across that subject matter. So if you can leverage that at all, it's a great idea. And that's where correlating your education with things that are commonly happening in society, such as the super bowl or the World cup or holidays, et cetera, can help you break through the noise and get some new audience. Other things to keep in mind are social metrics such as impressions, which count. If you're not getting likes but you're getting impressions, that is still something to celebrate. Also saves shares and just the cost per piece of content. Some people will make organic content, but perhaps they're paying an editor, or perhaps they are spending a lot of their own time, which if they have an evaluation for how much their time is worth, they're finding that it's costing the business too much. And they could generate more business by simply setting up sales calls or leading webinars. These are the reasons to track all of that data. And it can feel monotonous, it can feel like dry material, but it could be the difference between you reaching your goals in 2025 and missing your goals once again. And that is not something that we want. We actually want everybody to succeed so that more people can thrive in this industry, so that more people can live a better, healthier lifestyle because they'll have the support of coaches like yourself. So some of the other things that we can look at in addition to the data and analytics within a platform Like Instagram. You can also look at how pieces of content on Instagram versus on YouTube shorts or on Instagram versus TikTok. And you might find, you probably will find that different platforms tend to favor different styles of content. Some platforms don't do anything for different styles of content. I know that sometimes I'll use AI tools to share a message and sometimes it gets no traction on TikTok, mediocre traction on Instagram and more traction on YouTube, or sometimes everything flips around and is totally inverted. But then I know if I do a similar piece to the piece that performed well on a platform and I do that on that platform again, chances are I might be able to repeat portions of that success. And if I can find like the formula for each specific platform, then I can start to make platform specific content instead of just throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing which sticks. Which is an expression that I've heard a lot of people are passionately opposed to because they like to make analytical decisions, as you should. All of this to say when you're paying attention to the data, you have a lot more control over your business revenue. When you see what's converting, when you see what is the outcome of certain styles of content. How many calls did you book with a certain style of content? Or how many people came to your webinar with a certain style of content? Or how many people are DMing you out of nowhere with a certain style of content? And I always like to say, if you are expecting people to just wake up one morning and just DM you for no reason, it's a little bit naive. You do have to make a case for a conversation. So whether it is being grateful for the fact that they support your content. My good friend Andrew Coates always sends people voice memos whenever they share his content. If he's got a new follower, he'll often reach out with a voice memo. So if that's not something you're doing, that's a great opportunity that you can take advantage of. A lot of people, if they make a post and a lot of people are engaged, they'll take the time to actually connect with each person that engaged because if they liked it, then they'd probably like to talk more about it. Especially if there was some kind of a call to action or something relatable that sort of spoke to them. If it's a picture of a random cat, maybe not so much. But if it's a picture of somebody's day of training and how they made it happen despite being a busy dad with five jobs and the person resonated with that. It's probably because they are a busy dad or they have three jobs or they train or they just like lifting. There's probably something that spoke to them, probably a conversation piece worth diving deeper into. So that's just something important to take into consideration. If you're not getting the conversations that you hope that you're getting, it's worthwhile to step back and ask yourself how many times you are creating an opportunity for people to talk to you. Because the truth is, a lot of us with our fitness account, we're maybe a little bit intimidating. Even if we're a super kind, super teddy bear like gentle person. It's not always easy to just be like hey, I had a question for you. I've never talked to you before, but this is my question. No matter how many call to actions of DM me, if you have questions, sometimes it's just a lot easier if you break the ice first and if somebody doesn't want to talk to you, they have all the freedom to leave you unread. The next thing that I want to bring up is how important it is to align your content with your business goals. So I'm just going to give you an example. If you are someone who is trying to get people into your coaching program and 60% of your content is eating out at restaurants and your promo code for bath salts, you're probably going to struggle to sell your coaching program because most people feel like you might be an ambassador for bath salts. And this isn't to sound rude, but sometimes certain brand Personas, styles of posting things that you're talking about do not make it clear that you really have anything that people can work with you on. Because if you haven't mentioned that you have a 12 week program or that you have a strength membership or a nutrition coaching cohort, whatever service you may be offering, if it's never even been brought up through a testimonial or educational content or a quick win or anything relating to it, it's really hard to guess and assume that because it said it in your bio that you're open for business. And sometimes it takes hearing things a few times for people to really understand. So it's not that every post that you make has to be an ad. Whereas yeah, my program is four weeks and you get virtual check ins and I text you every day and you get your custom program. That's not the style of content that you have to make. More so it could be three things that I do for my clients that have helped them progress in their hamstring exercises, because then they're going to understand that you help people with strength. It correlates with your offer, it aligns with what you do. And if there are three things that actually help people and somebody actually did them and helped them too, it provides them with that quick win. The practical framework is look at how your content aligns with your business model and then look at what has performed best within your content that aligns and how can you double down on that content style, that messaging, to be able to capitalize on what's given you the best return. Now finally, it is very normal to have ups and downs within this industry, especially within the entrepreneurial space. So whether you declare yourself as self employed, sole proprietor, CEO, business owner, whatever it is, there's gonna be ups and downs. And I correlate this to investing a lot. Because when you look at a stock, progress isn't linear. It might go up, but it's gonna go up and down day to day. Even the most popular stocks, they're not a direct line up. It's up, down, up, down, up, down. So you have to both manage your expectations and manage your emotions. When you manage your expectations, you're looking at your data from the year prior, or if you don't have a prior year, if you're a little newer to this, look at your data from the month prior, you can look at your revenue. And if you feel that your revenue isn't where it needs to be, that's where you can start to reflect on how much content have you been putting out? And based on the content that you're putting out, is it performing well or not? And if it's not performing, was it just stuff that you posted just to post or have you been doing your due diligence with your content research? Are you posting around things that are pertinent to your people? Are you looking at platforms such as Quora or Reddit to look for the really commonly asked questions? Are you pulling anecdotes from things that your clients are saying? If you are an in person trainer and you're on the training floor, chances are your train or your client is asking you a question that could probably help a lot of your people. Are you making content on that? Is that content engaging? Does it have a hook? Can you talk about it and make it impossible for people to go to the bathroom while you're talking about it? Because I'll admittedly say I'm a long winded rambly guy. If I speak how I would speak conversationally, a person could probably walk away, come back, and I'd still be going. But if I want to create engaging content, I'm going to make that impossible for them. I'm going to remove some of the gaps, I'm going to remove some of the filler speech. I'm going to remove anything that is not exciting. I'm going to speak with expression. I'm going to leave them on a cliffhanger so that they have to stay until I'm finished telling them the story or teaching them the lesson. These are all things that are within your control. As frustrating as it may be to realize that, you have to pull up your socks and dig a bit deeper. When you understand that you have control over things, even when the economy challenges you, even when the season of the year impacts your reach, you have way more control. And as far as making organic content, you can maintain the same consistency, knowing that your reach might be lower with the understanding that your body of work over time will pay off for you. And it can be repurposed in a multitude of ways. If you find that your audience is dropping for your podcast during the winter months or during, let's say, October to February, keep putting out podcast episodes, because somebody's going to be looking for that volume of you to understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them six months from now. And when you have that much value to offer, they're more likely to seek out more because this happened the other day. I get about 15 emails a day from SEO experts, and they tell me how they can improve my YouTube reach. And the first thing that I do when they contact me is I will look for their website to see what services they offer. And in most cases, these people sending the unsolicited emails do not have a website. So I'll look for their channel, their YouTube channel. They might have three videos, and if they have more than three, let's say they have a hundred videos, their SEO isn't good. Their reach is less than my reach. And so if somebody is shopping around and they saw one piece of your content and then they're looking for more, and you haven't been consistent during the tough, more challenging times, they're gonna notice. And that's going to weigh into their decision. So if you have been plugging away at creating consistent content, you've been doing your content research, you've been aligning your content with the revenue stream of your business so that it doesn't look like you're selling bath salts. If that is not in fact, what you're doing, it's gonna help. So I hope that this episode gives you some key takeaways, gives you something to work on as we head into the holiday season. A time when you can either get some much needed rest and relaxation, or it could be a time when you double down and get yourself ready for what some people call one of the busiest months in the fitness industry. It's all up to you. It's all in your control. Make sure to keep a positive attitude. Measure the data so you have something to work off of. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Don't worry about other people's analytics or their reach or their information unless it is inspiring. Your next topic when it comes to doing content research with outlier content on YouTube. Aside from that, stay focused on your mission and of course, reach out if you have any questions. Definitely support this show by rating 5 stars on Apple Podcasts Rate 5 stars on Spotify. You can actually also leave reviews that we can see on the back end on Spotify or public reviews on Apple Podcasts. It goes a long way if you've tuned in this far. Screenshot the episode Tag Beverly at B Simpson Fitness. Tag me at Christian Liddle. That's L I D L E and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to the PT Profit Podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends on your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team@info simpson fitness.com and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you and you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.