Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
This seems like a good idea on paper. It helps with SEO stuff for Google. It gives you an outlet to write about floating and share information about the industry. And it seems to fall in line with something that other businesses do, right?
So what are the downsides? How much time and effort does a blog really take? What sort of impact does it have for a float center? Graham and Ashkahn lay out the pros and cons as well as things you may not initially consider about the responsibility of having a blog.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s question is: “Should I have a blog for my flippin’ float tank center?” It doesn’t actually say flippin’.
Ashkahn: Did you edit that in?
Graham: Yeah, sorry. Sorry whoever asked that question. I took creative liberties there.
Ashkahn: They should warn them under where they submit, “We might add flare to your question.”
Graham: We might Just delete your entire question. Make up something else that sounds better, yeah.
Ashkahn: What was the question?
Graham: Something about flips? Should I have a blog? Should I have a blog for my float tank center.
Ashkahn: That’s right, okay. Cool.
Graham: I would say probably not. But –
Ashkahn: Because –
Graham: There’s an exception to that.
Ashkahn: Because it’s hard.
Graham: Yeah, exactly. It sounds … Especially if you’re like, “I’ll just put up a blog post once a month. How hard could that be?” Whole internet graveyards filled of blogs that have about two posts.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s like the first one and then the second one came two weeks later than they planned on it –
Ashkahn: Welcome to my blog!
Graham: Yeah. I’m gonna be putting out a post every week and the next one’s every month and a half. There’s no third post, right? And I think that looks bad. I think that having a float center and if you have especially a big blog link at the top or blog posts on your homepage or something like that and you kinda got it all tied in at the beginning like you really planned on updating it. Then it just turns into nothing and they’re looking back and there’s posts from 2018 only now we’re in 2020. And that’s what they’re finding. It’s not a good … it doesn’t reflect well on your brand. It kinda says “I don’t maintain things and I’m unable to keep my promises”, right?
Ashkahn: And it really is not a small amount of work. Writing blog posts usually people try to put a certain amount of polish onto their blog posts and the process of writing it and editing it and all that sort of stuff is usually more work than people think it is. And we have a blog. We know how much work it takes. Our float tank solution site has a blog and it’s no small feat to keep content good edited content coming into that thing.
Graham: Yeah, the combined man hours per blog post that we put out through the Float Tank Solutions blogs are anywhere from about ten to fifteen hours. And sometimes for some of the bigger, more researched ones that can really easily go up to more like twenty hours of man hours going into a post. And you’re thinking I’m gonna set aside a couple hours every month to write one. It comes as a really big surprise, you know. You set aside those couple hours and you’re one-fifth of the way through having a polished post and you’re like “Oh boy, I have to go clean these rooms and check out customers”, right?
So understandably it’s one of the first things to get dropped in favor of bigger responsibilities you actually have towards your business.
Ashkahn: It’s real easy to let it slip.
Graham: Which is what makes me say maybe you shouldn’t start one to begin with.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Or be ready to axe it. Get two posts in, realize you’re not gonna do this, and just remove it from the blog. Take it down. Call it a failed experiment and move on, right?
Ashkahn: Or write ten posts before you even put it up.
Graham: Oh, that’s great advice. Definitely do that. Pre-stock If you can get to ten posts, then you’re allowed to have a blog.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Because it’s at one a month. That’s almost a year’s worth of content. Now you just have two more you have to write during the next ten months. Which probably won’t happen still because you’ll find other things you need to do, you know?
Ashkahn: So why do you have a blog then? Why does anyone even want a blog?
Graham: So the nice thing about blogs is … Google really likes fresh content on websites. It likes things that you’ve written yourself. And as you can imagine just reminding your customers that you exist, it’s really nice for a business, you know? Maybe someone hasn’t been into float in six months and it’s your blog post specifically on how floating helps anxiety or floating helps pregnancy that they see come out or that they get emailed to them if they got subscribed that reminds them how much they should come in especially if they’re pregnant or anxious in this case, right? So, it’s great for pulling on customers, it’s good for Google juice, and letting people find you in the first place.
Ashkahn: And Google specifically, for keyword searching. The amount of times you’re gonna use the word, “float” or “float tank” or all that sorta stuff. If you have a blog versus just a website is gonna be way, way more, right? I mean imagine the amount of times you’re gonna say “float tank” over the course of your blog versus how many times it would actually just appear on your website without a blog. And you can see why that can just up the keyword count a ton.
Graham: Yep, and one other thing I’ll add in, too, is I think that if you are able to keep it up consistently, you say you’re going to launch a blog and do a post every month or something like that. And you do and you’ve been doing this consistently for a few years. That also reflects really well on your business. It is really hard to keep up on a blog. So if you’re able to do something consistently and churn something out on this regular schedule, I believe that that actually gives you a few points in your customers’ eyes. Your prospective customers who are looking at your site.
Ashkahn: But it’s hard.
Graham: It’s really hard. It’s really time consuming. To do the Float Tank Solutions blog, to give you an idea, we actually had to hire on two people to help specifically just with the copy editing and take the content that Ashkahn and I are kind of churning out and put that into written form. Like we didn’t have enough time to just manage the blog ourselves, so.
Ashkahn: And we have an illustrator. Illustrate pictures for it. It’s a project.
Graham: So if you do decide to go that route it might be that you need someone to actually be your own copy editor to take things to format them in WordPress. Figure out the roles that you can outsource to someone else and just plan on actually paying money to get those blogs into reality rather than spending your own time on it might be the more sane approach.
Ashkahn: And it’s interesting, too. I don’t think it’s necessarily the type of business that would even benefit the most from having a blog. I think there’s in terms of bang for your buck in blogs … I think if you actually can pull it off and you’re writing good blog it’s gonna help your business. But, you see the type of business that really benefit from blogs and especially online informational sort of stuff. If you’re tryin’ to sell some sort of Photoshop product and you have a really robust blog covering all sorts of various Photoshop issues and stuff. Then when someone types in a very specific Photoshop problem, the chances that you’ll have a blog post that covers that, that leads them back to your website to where you’re actually kind of have different products for them. That is such a nice funnel in for people.
Graham: Yeah, the problem is it’s not broad in either of the directions that makes a blog post more universally applicable. Right? There’s geographical location, which is one of them. If you’re … if you run a geographically independent business, all of a sudden your blog posts can reach people all over the world and that’s really helpful for you.
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: If you’re writing blog posts in Boston and they’re reaching everyone all across the world … really only the everyone who happens to exist near you are the ones who are going to actually boost up numbers in your business, right?
Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.
Graham: And the other ones I see that are really useful are things to do in an area. All of the different things that you can do in Portland or somewhere else, right? And we’re not that, either. We’re kinda just talking about a specific activity in a specific region. Which kind of immediately makes you question what your maximum readership could possibly be, right? Who are the people who are into floating enough? They’re going to read a blog post every single month who also live in your area. Even if that’s a large portion of your customers, it’s still not a very large readership for the amount of time necessary to go into making it happen. Which again I think is why it’s difficult, why it gets dropped early, and why I don’t see many people who are only running float centers who successfully manage to maintain a long running blog.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s like unless you’re really enjoy it and you just constantly have stuff in your head. You’re like, “I gotta write this down and get it out and have this blog post.” Your time’s probably spent better doing some other form of marketing for your float center.
Graham: So there you go. Don’t start a blog unless you legitimately have a problem.
Ashkahn: Yeah, something in your head … you can’t shut it up.
Graham: Like I have with Ashkahn’s voice on a regular basis. Every morning wake up and it’s there.
Alright, so …
Ashkahn: Great, if you guys have more questions, you can hop over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
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Latest Blog Posts
What? Another Product Announcement? The New and Improved About Float Tanks Guide!
We’ve learned a lot since then, so has the industry and the rest of the world. Floating is no longer considered some obscure practice. The industry has become very well established the world over and is continuing to grow. As such, the About Float Tanks Guide in particular desperately needed updating.
There has been new research, new standards in manufacturing, and as an industry, we have a much better understanding of all things float tank.
Download the latest version today!
Announcing: The 2017 Float Tank Industry Report
In 2014 we started gathering answers to a survey that would eventually become the very first State of the Float Industry Report. We've released one every year since, and this year we (once again) have the most contributions that we've ever had. In total, 193 existing...
Working with a Landlord
If you’re planning on opening up a float center, it’s likely that you’ll end up renting and, therefore, working closely with a landlord. Like any business relationship, it takes communication, discernment, and openness to make a renter-landlord relationship feel truly comfortable.
Everyone involved is taking a risk and the reality is that, when it comes to floating, it’s probably more risk than your average small business – craft shop, bar, hair salon, law office, what-have-you.
This piece also includes a free download – a compilation of support letters from float center landlords!
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Part of what makes all of this so confusing is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all set of actions that differentiates a standard employee from an independent contractor. Your State regulators, the federal Department of Labor, and the IRS all have their own criteria for what constitutes an “independent contractor”. Here, we’ll just be using the IRS definitions as a sort of jumping off point to the issue. If the status of employees is ever challenged, the IRS determines the status on a case-by-case basis over several criteria by a panel of judges, very similar to American Idol.
Basically it comes down to who is in control of the work. How much control does the company have over the type of job being done vs. how much control does the person providing the service. This manifests in different ways, but to fit the definition of an independent contractor, a service provider really does have to be independent. Beyond just using this guide, you should always consult an HR lawyer if you feel like there’s any confusion or ambiguity.
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