This month, Yess Yoga opened a new studio just south of downtown Minneapolis. For a business that officially launched just a matter of months ago, this is a huge step– and the result of incredible success in a short period of time. Our friend and client, Lucia Yess, has achieved that success because: she has a genuine passion for yoga, she works her butt off, and she has grown into one savvy businesswoman.
Painting the new YY studio, and loving every minute of it
Building a business from the ground up takes strategy. When you’re at square one, where do you even start? Social media is a great place. But content for Facebook and Twitter doesn’t grow on trees. You have to create it. You need to constantly and consistently feed the social media beast, in order to create buzz, to get people talking and build up a following. And that’s where video can be a valuable tool.
Part of Lucia’s strategy for growing a loyal client base has involved posting short videos on Facebook and Twitter once a week — a “pose of the week”. People eat them up! For potential clients, it is a free sample of her services that helps their yoga techniques. What’s not to love? So people “like” and “share” and “re-tweet” and spread the word. Because it is video, potential clients also get a glimpse of Lucia’s glowing personality and develop a personal connection to her. People get to know her and like her. When you’re looking for a yoga instructor, that kind of connection is key.
When it comes to driving traffic to her website, this strategy works like a charm. Every time someone on Facebook or Twitter clicks a link to a pose-of-the-week, he or she is directed to the YY website– where the video is posted. And while potential clients are there, they can learn even more about Yess Yoga– and figure out what classes best fit their schedules.
As for search engine optimization (SEO), video is tough to beat. According to a study by Forrester in 2010, a page with a video on it is 53 times more likely to achieve a page one result on Google. Now imagine 52 of those pages on your website– one for each week of the year.
It may sound like a huge undertaking to produce 52 videos. If you’re organized, it really isn’t. It took Lucia one day to shoot enough videos to last an entire year. And that was without sacrificing quality. Which is also key. If you want this strategy to really work, the quality needs to be top notch. Seriously, who shares a grainy video with their friends anymore? Unless that video is showing Moses parting the Red Sea, not many. But when a video is shot really well and looks like a movie, people perk up and pay attention. It adds to the buzz factor.
The possibilities for businesses interested in creating a video series are endless. Restaurants: recipe of the week. Retail: fashion secret of the week. Home and garden: weekly tips and tricks. You get the idea. The secret here– is to have fun with it. If it’s a painful process for you to produce a video, you better believe it is going to be painful for a potential client to watch it.
Now… after all that hard work, why not unwind with a class at Yess Yoga? Mention this blog, and you might just get a discount!