Why Your Business is Failing... (Here's How Content Can Save It)

And if your business is trickling down, getting lower and lower in sales, and you're like, oh my goodness, I have to change something, this is your ticket out. I'm telling you right now, this is your ticket out. In today's world, in 2024, the amount of video that you consume and that these people consume is insane, okay? There's almost 5 billion people daily who log on to social media at some some point, and majority of that is video. Okay, there's all different types of content. There's photos, you got videos, you can do carousels, stories, reels, TikToks, long form, Facebook Live, all types of different content. And if you're not utilizing it in 2024, you are significantly behind the curve. Um, one of the biggest examples that I like to use is my own business. So Howdy Media started in 2022. I started in my college apartment, right? And I had a couple roommates. I was like, y'all, I have this crazy idea, but I think it might work. So I started off in real estate back in 2020, so it's almost been 4 years now, and I had my first listing. Um, and this is kind of an intro to how I got started and where I started to see the success and the fruit come from posting on social media was— so I was like, okay, I have this listing, right? Um, and there were only a handful of people in town who you could reach out to to take pictures, to take videos of your listings, to market it. And I was like, why are people not doing this on their own? It can't be that hard. So what did I do? I I went into debt of about $4,000 as a college student making about $400 a month and bought my first camera. Okay, so this was my introduction to the whole media world, to the whole starting my own business thing. And I always had been interested, I always kind of wanted to start, but with it being 2022 at the time, this was fresh off of COVID okay? TikTok was on the rise in 2020, and I was like, why or how would I get clients other than social media? And me being the Gen Z person I am, I'm like, that must be the fastest and only way to do it because there's so many people on it. And I was like, why, why can't I be the one to capture their attention and become the creator instead of the consumer? And so once my mindset switched on that, once I realized I could take advantage of that and become the creator to where people are seeing me on their phones, people are seeing me on their TVs, watching my content, trusting me, developing a relationship with me— and that's why I'm so big on personal brand, and all that's in my book, you can check it out in the description below. Um, but it's just huge. Video in general is huge. Uh, there was a time where blogs with a B, not a V, was very popular. Okay, I think this is because people love the authenticity. TikTok came around, absolutely ruined the authenticity. People were wanting to be entertained. That's when this whole separation of like social media stuff came about. It's like now you have education, now you have entertainment. They live in their own two worlds, okay? And I had to pick. Well, I'm running a business, so I'd rather be educational, do also entertaining stuff within that content to make it interesting to watch, but also teach the people, serve the people, show them why they should trust me. To help them in their business type of thing. So back to 2022, got my first camera. The first thing I started doing was making Instagram posts, okay? This is how I got multiple of my first leads, okay? I did a lot of free work. I didn't do too much because I was like, you know, I'm not too bad at this, I might as well make a little bit of money while I'm, I'm learning. But did a few free jobs, leveraged the mess out of it, blasted it out to all the emails that I had. Okay, so a mixture of that and posting on social media, posting on Facebook groups— don't, don't sleep on Facebook groups. This is what kickstarted my business. And if you're here watching this today, you're probably struggling with convincing yourself that you should go all in on content creation and social media. And so I hope this is a little bit of an encouragement, a little bit of motivation to get going on this, because the power of this is massive. If you didn't hear me, I already said there's 5 billion people online every single day, and that includes like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, all of the above. If you're not on these platforms right now, I'm sorry to say it, but you are wasting your time. And you might be a little bit stupid. Just gonna say it, okay? If you're not utilizing this, if you're not trying to learn how to use this, how to do this stuff, then your business is probably gonna fail at some point, okay? Now, I'm just saying this from what I've seen in my clients' businesses, in my own business. All the businesses that went out of business that weren't due to like natural disasters or anything, majority of the time it wasn't a business problem, it was an awareness problem. And so they weren't making the community aware, they weren't showing people what they had to offer. And so this is where business owners often get stuck. And so the reason you should go all in is because once you start investing in this stuff, right, once you start investing in it, the ROI that you get from creating content is completely different than to say if you're running an ad, okay? So you're gonna have to reframe your mindset to think about it differently because it's not running an ad. This is people you're reaching most of the time organically. So how can you create your content in a way that first of all gets people's attention, is extremely valuable to them? Because if they find that your content is valuable, they will more than likely hit that subscribe button, hit the follow button, comment saying thank you, whatever it is. Than they would if they found no value. Okay, so you need to go all in, yes, but you need to also make sure you know what the heck you're doing and being very strategic with the way you use it, because there's tons of ways to make money and monetize off of this stuff, but you have to know how to do it. One of the things that I tell our clients Every video that you make needs to be funneling people somewhere. You need to make an offer somewhere in the video, and it doesn't have to be quick. It could be a 10-second, 15-second little offer in the middle or at the end, because if they watch to the end of the video, then they're probably interested and they trust you a little bit more to go and hit that link. So all these views that you're curating online are people that are interested in something that you have to offer. They're interested in something that you're talking about. So if your business collides and coincides with— coincides, I don't even know if that's a word. If your business and your content match up in some sort, if they're even some sort of relevant to each other, okay? The odds of converting those views into clients is out the roof. So whenever you're making content, whenever you're making a video, you need to have somewhere they can land, whether it's a website there where they're going to be buying something, whether they can sign up for a certain product, a certain group, a newsletter, whatever it is. Every single video that you post, it needs to be in there somewhere. And that's just one of the many things that people don't do. They don't put any links in their description, okay? They don't put any suggestions on like what to buy or links to products or anything of that nature, okay? So you can curate your own audience. You can find the people that genuinely are interested in what you have. To offer, what your business is about, whatever you're talking about. Okay, so if you're— if you talk about boxing, for example, you can have a YouTube channel talking about boxing. At the end of every episode, you need to have on the back end a business that these viewers are able to interact with, that you can funnel them to. So have your own custom boxing gloves or a custom t-shirt. Something. Because if you're getting a million people to view a video on YouTube, which is an art in itself, you are dumb to not have something at the end to have them buy. Everything is an offer, okay? Every single piece of content you put up is an offer of some sort, whether it's an exchange for money and it's an exchange for time and it's an exchange for a follow, whatever it is. Hey y'all, I wanted to hop on here really quick and remind you guys about about our 24-hour podcast setup services. So if you have a space in your office, in your church, at your house that you want to transform into something similar like this, we've perfected the technique. We've got the whole list of everything you need. We'll personally look at your space, we'll do some interior design work, set up all the cables, make a trip out to your location and set it all up for you and train you how to use it. So if you're interested, I'm leaving a link in the description for you to check out. Hope to work with you guys soon. Okay, um, the content that you make has to be— it has to be interesting. And so this is where a lot of business owners get intimidated, and they're like, how can I pump out enough stuff to be interesting and also do it in an efficient way to where I don't get burnt out? Okay, so in this case, I would say continue to try your best. While you're doing that, make sure to learn, and whatever topic that you're talking about, whatever business thing you're, you're going through, make sure and know it like the back of your hand. Because then again, this helps you promote yourself as the authority in the industry, whatever it is. It could be printing, it could be um, apparel. It could be a mechanic. Like, you can start a podcast about funny stories that you've heard in the shop if you're a mechanic. These are just many examples, and a lot of companies just don't see the value in it. And I'm wanting to change the culture, especially in Texas where I'm living. There's a lot of catching up we have to do. So a lot of times, especially now, this could be the one reason that your business is not doing the best that it possibly could. So get a strategy together. Make sure if you want to go all in, get a plan. If you need help with the plan, we have consulting services you can use. Okay. Social media has been the only way that my business has survived. Um, the first year we 20x'd— let me take that back. The first year we made a few thousand dollars, and that was like hardly anything. I ended up in debt. I was about negative $6,000 our first year of being open. Come the next year we're about 20x above what we did the previous year. Come the next year, we're going to be 4xing what we did the previous year. And 90% of these leads came from social media alone, came from us putting out content daily, came from us. And we're still getting, getting leads. Like, for example, on Facebook, we have people who find us who we've never met before Because we've posted constantly in the Facebook groups, on Facebook in general, tagging Abilene. And in the post that we put up, we specifically say videography or videographer in Abilene, Texas, or media company in Abilene, Texas, social media management in Abilene, Texas. What does this do? Obviously, the people who see your post know what exactly what you do. So you right then and there become a resource that they know of. Second of all, it ups your SEO, your search engine optimization. So whenever somebody's searching on Facebook or on the internet, they search up videographers in Abilene, Texas, your post is going to be one of the top, top ones to come up. Because you've, you've used the SEO techniques, you've, you've put keywords in there, okay? So whenever you combine SEO, you combine good thumbnails, good, good titles, good content ideas, which we go over in our consulting and in our programs. You have to research this stuff first of all. Make sure it's going to be worth your time making. Make sure it's something people already resonate with. Now implement it and, and put it in your own situation, your own scenario. Have good SEO, put a lot of keywords in there, tag your location, put good titles, put captions, put words on the screen, use trending audios, use hashtags. There's all of these things that whenever you combine them together, it can change your life. It can change your business. And if your business is trickling down, getting lower and lower in sales, and you're like, oh my goodness, I have to change something, this is your ticket out. I'm telling you right now, this is your ticket out. This will revive your dying business. Okay? And so this isn't thing— this isn't something to take lightly. Um, and I, I only say that because the success I've seen firsthand with it This is why I'm going all in on YouTube this year. The last year and a half, I've been going all in on Instagram, all in on Facebook and TikTok. Now I'm going all in on YouTube. Here's why. YouTube offers 50% of every single ad that's played on your video. They, they offer you 50% of that revenue. Okay, so once you're monetized, once you hit 1,000 subscribers, which hopefully will be there soon, whoop whoop, um, you can start making money. Okay, there's people who I know who make $20,000 to $30,000 a month straight off of YouTube ads. Now, what would you do with that kind of money? What would you want to make videos if you knew you could be making that kind of money with it? So you could be making great profit, you could be helping people, you could be curating the audience that wants to watch you, that trusts you, and you can have a business model behind the doors that you can offer people to be a part of. So where they hit that link and boom, they're in. All of a sudden you have a monthly subscription, you have somebody buy your product, somebody signed up for your thing, somebody bought something from your business. Your conversion rate's out the roof with YouTube. That's why I'm going in all in on YouTube this year, and I will continue to go all in on YouTube because I still have videos that I've made 4 or 5 months ago getting views every single day. Now, Instagram videos that I posted, they haven't— like, they, they get views for like 1 or 2 days and then they're gone. They're basically gone from the internet. Nobody's gonna see them because it's all based on what you're seeing on your feed. Okay, YouTube is a whole different animal. You can search up things on YouTube, you can search up terms, you can ask questions, and it's basically a big search engine. And instead of words coming out, it matches a video. And then YouTube's really good about figuring out what you like and what you're interested in. And so your suggestion feed, your home page, is going to be filled with stuff that you're interested in. And it's like, how can you get your content on people's suggested feed that are your ideal client? That's what I want you to think about after today's video. Now, with all of that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up. Um, I do have a meeting here in a little bit, so I'm gonna have to hop off. But if you're interested in learning more, if you're interested in continuing this conversation, Um, there's going to be a link in the description to join our Howdy Media Insiders group. So basically this is a group full of business owners and creatives who come together, bounce ideas off of each other. We go live every single Friday at 1 o'clock. We do live Q&A. You can do it with me. Um, but yeah, get in the group, find the community. We're about to hit 200 members. It's exclusive. Only if you're part of the group, you can see what we're posting and you can be a part of these lives. If you're not a part of the group, you can't see any of it. Okay, you'll also get a free copy of my ebook. So let me know if you're in the Insiders Group and you want a copy of the ebook. It's about 14 pages, it's nothing long. It's genuinely a resource to help people because that's what we're all about. At Howdy Media. We're here to help you become successful and build your personal brand online. And we believe video and social media and YouTube are all the biggest contributing factors to building awareness of what it is you have to sell, who you are, how you communicate it, how you execute the videos, how you publish the videos. All of this comes into effect. Okay, so if you're, if you're wanting to start a podcast, we can also help out with that too. We started the Howdy Studio here in downtown Abilene, Texas. We, we took this 400-square-foot room, which is where I'm at right now, and we're producing podcasts for our clients where all they have to do is come in, sit down, talk, we record it We edit it and we distribute it all for you. So if you're, you're interested in that, let me know. We have one more member, um, membership available for this location. Maybe we'll have some more locations soon. Yeah, if you learned something from this video, make sure to comment what you learned, and we'll see you in the next one. Peace.