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You have the best coaches and fastest-spinning barbells in town. Great!
Unfortunately, your prospective clients can’t distinguish between your Eleiko competition bars and that stiff Sears special you used to rep out curls in your parents’ garage.
When it comes to explaining the “whys” of CrossFit (especially your affiliate,) content is still King. The affiliate that regularly puts out quality, shareable content becomes the beacon on the hill for all future clients.
Creating original content is hard. However, organizing your content platforms around a cornerstone can make this task much easier; especially for the novice writer still finding their voice.
Enter: Your Podcast.
At its core, podcasting is simply free, niche radio that can be streamed or downloaded to a mobile device or desktop. Anyone can do it and anyone can listen to it. And it’s become really cheap to produce. At CrossFit Memorial Hill, we’ve even taken the podcast a step further and used it as a hub from which all of our content emanates. Here’s a quick guide on how to use a podcast to organize & create content across all of your platforms. We also included a tutorial video below for more help.
Start off by recording a conversation you’d otherwise already have.
Do you have a weekly meeting with your head coach to chat programming? Do you feature an athlete in your gym every month? Do you chat with your competitive athletes about upcoming competition strategies? Do you have a training partner with whom you plan sessions?
Simply record these conversations and voilà: you’ve got a podcast that a) imparts some of your knowledge and b) allows listeners to get to know you a little better, building trust.
Play back & take notes.
Don’t worry. You won’t have to listen back every time. But at first, listen back and jot down important points; the broad strokes. Hang on to this outline.
Recycle, recycle, recycle
So now you have your first podcast recorded and you’ve shared it on all your social platforms (Facebook, twitter, Instagram, your gym’s blog, and your newsletter). Now, go back to that outline and use it to write a 300-400 word blog post. Make a 90-second video of you presenting what you talked about in the podcast and share that on your Facebook wall. Throw another 10-second video on your Instagram. Whittle down that 400 word blog post to 200 words and throw it in your newsletter as a “Coach’s Corner” note to motivate your existing clients for the week ahead.
In what amounts to an hour of work you’ve taken a 25 minute conversation that you’d otherwise already have, created a podcast to be shared on all your platforms, made an outline for a blog post, developed newsletter fodder, AND honed your communication skills.
Take a minute to check out Buzzsprout’s Podcasting 101. Start small and add to your hardware as you become more comfortable with the platform. It’s important to remember that your first dozen or so podcasts won’t be earth-shattering, but at first you’re just using the platform to organize and develop your digital footprint.
Check out Podcasting part II where we’ll discuss ways to use your podcast to get your name out to new clients.
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