Blog Categories

Considering the proper blog categories for my Manvolution Blog (I've renamed my Nate Scharff blog to Manvolution to better align with my business identity), I came up with the following categories that will fit my business:

1.  Nutrition posts.                                                                                                                                     

This is one of the pillars of the Manvolution product offering.  Nutrition posts will include:

• How to shop healthy.  
• How to eat out healthy
• How to cook healthy
• Alternate solutions for cravings

These posts will help my business grow by providing opportunities for affiliate marketing and cross promotional links with restaurants, grocery stores, and food products that align with this category.  

2.  Motivational posts.                                                                                                                       

Another pillar of the Manvolution product offering.  

These posts are targeted strictly at my core customer, mature men 45+ who are looking to get back in shape and fix their nagging health problems through a holistic, diet and exercise approach.  Motivational posts will include topics such as:

• Learning how to cultivate a positive attitude
• Developing discipline
• How to let go of negative emotions
• Improving time management skills
• Building Patience

These posts will help my business grow by using keyword strategies to link these keywords to my articles, so that potential customers that are searching on these topics will be directed to my blog, and to my business.  

3.  Stress-Reduction posts.  A third pillar of the Manvolution product offering.  Similar to the nutrition post category, I will be using this post category to cross-promote with businesses and services that align in this category.  Additionally, I will have my own individualized post content . Topics would include:

• Getting a good night's sleep
• Meditation - how to do it
• Yoga - why it helps
• Anger management techniques
• Eliminating caffeine and other stimulants from your diet

4.  Relationships / Life Balance. posts. The fourth pillar of the Manvolution product offering.  I will again be cross promoting with leading authors and content providers in these areas.  This will be an SMN rich category.  A sample of appropriate authors would include:

• Wayne Dryer
• Tony Robbins
• Deepak Chophra

I will also have my own individualized post content.

Personality and My Blog

As the lecture advised, the level of your personality that you should let come out in your blog depends on your business, your customer, and the desired identity of your brand.

WHERE IT IS APPROPRIATE FOR MY PERSONALITY TO BE INCLUDED IN MY BLOG:

For my business (Manvolution), I am in the personal training and motivation business.  As such, my personality is a big component of the business identity.  My personal stories, particularly when speaking about my own health challenges and the rigors of disciplined exercise while working and raising a family, make me human, make me accessible, and adds to my credibility.

Since my target audience is men over 45, they don't want to hear about fitness from a twenty-something who  doesn't have family obligations, hasn't had any health challenges, and simply hasn't had as many miles on the road of life as someone my age. As such, I see several content areas where I can add in my  personal stories that my target will relate to.

• Balancing family, work and exercise commitments (I am the sole income generator in my family)
• Eating healthy with kids in the home (I have two boys 11 and 14)
• Surviving health challenges (I'm a cancer survivor)
• Motivation and language (I use language specific to men, including an occasional F-Bomb)

Alll of these content areas will not only relate my personal experiences, but I will attempt to use personal photography throughout to further drive the credibility piece.  Clients will see pictures of me heading to yoga at 5:30 in the morning, looking groggy.  Not all my photography will be glamorous selfies of me.  They will see the behind the scenes work involved with balancing work, life and health.  As advised in the lecture, making sure these picture files are appropriately named is a great strategy.

With marketing, you cannot be all things to all people.  With my personal training business, it's better for me to let my personality show in my blogs, since ultimately it is my personality that my target is hiring.  Anyone can eat right and exercise on their own.  They want a fitness buddy, someone who is going to kick them in the ass and motivate them to achieve their goals.   A ripped and narcissistic fitness model is only going to alienate these men.  They want a real dude.

WHERE IT IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR MY PERSONALITY TO BE INCLUDED (IN FULL STRENGTH):

My blog content will be personality rich.  But if I am approaching corporate clients, I will be more conservative in my presentation to them.  The same goes if I am providing editorial content to publications serving my target.  No F-Bombs, and more information rich in content.

Twitter Followers

My twitter following strategy was similar to my facebook 'likes.  I wante,d people who are leaders in the holistic health category.  I started by searching 'men's health', but that was too generic.  Then I searched 'nutrition'.  Still too generic. Then I searched 'vegetarian', and got some ideas, but these were magazines.  I wanted actual people.

So I ended up going back to my facebook likes, and mining for names that lined up with these categories.  I found several robust health and nutrition 'celebs'.  David Wolfe, Dr. Mercola, Andrew Weil.  It was important for me to get credible men who were advocates for healthy diet, and not just muscle heads who were focused on workouts and protien.

Finding the categories that work (for example the Institute for Integrative Health lines up with my philosophy and has excellent content), and then letting twitter provide other suggestions based on those categories was helpful for finding popular individual tweeters to follow.

Nate.

Competitor's Social Media Activities - A Performance Review

I picked two local competitors to review - one being a personal trainer and the other a personal nutritionist.  Following is my review of the effectiveness of each business' SMN strategy:

Chris Keith - personal trainer in San Diego:

http://sdpersonaltrainer.com/

• Facebook:  1,055 likes
• Twitter:  No activity
• YouTube:  30 video clips; each with approximately 100 views
• Google+:  About half a dozen reviews - all positive
• Yelp:  Link doesn't work, but yelp reviews are all positive

Chris seems to have good cross-representation on the social media sites.  When googling 'personal trainers san diego', Chris comes up FIRST on the google page rank, without a paid sponsorship listing.  Chris's site is not high on actual content updates, other than the Youtube videos (which were posted awhile back).    

Based on Chris' google page rank, his facebook followers, and his positive yelp reviews, I would give him high scores on SMN results.  He appears to deliver as promised, and will be a good competitor to follow and emulate.

Sweet Beet Nutrition - San Diego based Personal Nutrition:

http://www.sweetbeetnutrition.com/

This personal nutritionist ( Amy Carson) focuses on special-needs based diets, such as gluten free and other dietary restrictions.  Her SMN lineup is as follows:

• Facebook:  193 likes 
• Twitter:  29  followers
• LinkedIn:  Informational only

Sweet Beet's results are not as robuts, and Amy's site ranks SIXTH on the google page rank.  However, the other sites are nutritionist centers, and Amy's site is the only real individual nutritionist that ranks in the top ten. 

In summary I think facebook is a required cost of entry SMN site for a business, as virtually every business I explore has a facebook page.  Additionally, for my business (Manvolution), I think Youtube would be a good site to add video training content. 

Visual Networks: A Comparison of the Big Four

What I found interesting while comparing these visual networks is the data about men versus women.  Men are more likely to watch videos, and women are more likely to look at static videos.  I personally have not found that to be true with the women in my life - all tech users, but for the sake of my business (Manvolution), I'm going to assume this data is still true.

Following is a quick comparison of each visual network, and then my recommendation as to which of the four would be best for my business (Manvolution).

Youtube:
Many companies are using youtube business channels to get additional exposure for their commericals (apple) or to provide product training and product ideas (apple, bed bath and beyond).  Being under the google 'brand', youtube's stability as a social media network is guaranteed.  Also, their user-base is very strong.  Men are more video oriented, so for my male-oriented business, this would be a good social media network (SMN) for me to consider

Instagram:
Instagram started primarily as a cell-phone photo app, and has expanded to be a photo-sharing site competing with other visually based SMN's.  Primirily user content (photos).  This could be a good site to augment my business content with on-the-go video posts related to the healthy lifestyle, with pictures of activities, food products, and restaurants.


Tumblr:
Tumblr is another blog site.  I would probably hold off using this site until some clear category leaders come forth in the blog arena.  There are so many choices here, and there is much crossover with most SMN's offering some type of blog platform (ex:  Facebook scheduled posts can function as a blog).

Pinterest:
Pinterest has been the fastest -growing media site.  Setup as a virtual online scrapbook and clipboard site, it is completely visual and the majority of the users are female.  Because so few men, particularly the mature health-focus males that I am focused on, are using this site, I would likely not use it as an active component of my SMN  strategy.  I would, however, have a pinterest page to improve my SEO.  For pinterest I would pin pictures of me exercising and healthy meal options, with the hopes of re-pins improving my SEO.  I don't expect to have male customers come in directly from pinterest pins.

Which one for Manvolution?

Of these choices, my top choice would be Youtube.  Men are more video-oriented, and Youtube allows me to post short exercise and cooking clips that can be used as a call to action to acquire email addresses of potential users.  I would use free Youtube videos as bait for addresses, and then market to those respondents.  Because Youtube links to facebook, this is a good SMN to work with.  Since I don't have a webpage yet and am focusing on my facebook page to drive business, Youtube makes sense. 

My second SMN that I would use would be Instagram, simply because it is such an easy and powerful tool to keep my content, particularly video content, relevant. 

Facebook Scheduled Posts

This is my first of three scheduled posts for 'Manvolution'.   My audience is men ages 45+ with household income of 75K plus, who are feeling burned out and want to improve their health and mental vitality.

This post is about how commtting to an upcoming 'fitness event' can motive one to exercise.  This post is engaging to my target because they KNOW how to exercise, but need new ideas on how to get MOTIVATED to exercise.  This posts will distribute on October 20 at 8 am.