How To Optimize Insight Timer Live Events for More Discoverability, Engagement, and Donations
Insight Timer Live is still the number #1 way to grow on Insight Timer. In this solo episode, I share my process for structuring Insight Timer live events to grow your audience on Insight Timer and attract people to your work. I hope you find it helpful!
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Podcast Transcript
Lou: If you're a meditation teacher or coach on Insight Timer and you're wanting to do your first live event or you've gone live a bunch and you're just wanting to figure out how do you do it better? Get more engagement, get more donations, get more discoverability. This video is for you. Insight Timer Live is still the best way for new and old teachers to grow their following on the app and attract people to your work. In this video, I'm going to break down how I structure my live events to optimize for discoverability, engagement and donations. And I'm also going to break down the new feature that Insight Timer just added to the live events, called promotional cards, and how I'm thinking about using using them before we get into it, if you're new to me or my channel, my name is Lou Redman. I've been on Inside Timer since 2016. I have over 2 million plays on my tracks, 75,000 students in my courses. I've netted over $200,000 in revenue from Inside Timer and I've been going live since it started in 2020. Before I get into it, know that everything I'm about to say you can do the opposite of and still have massive success. We're talking about a creative process, so there's no to do a live, but I hope the things that I have to share can at least give you some ideas that you can think of and try out in your own events. The first thing I want to talk about is theming your Insight Timer lives. This is the biggest marketing that you get to do for your event is in how you title it. And it's important to spend some time thinking about your title. Who is it attracting? What is it promising to deliver on? If you can have a theme that is clear, delivering a transformation to a specific type of person, especially if you're starting out, this is going to attract people to sign up to RSVP or to stay in the live. You are going to get people joining your live event just because you're scrolling through and seeing what's there. They might scroll through, see what's there, see the title of the live and automatically say this is for me or this is not for me. And then they're going to go over to the next live. So think about is your title promising and delivering a transformation, right? Transforming your relationship with others. Example, having anxiety around relationships in my life and your live event comes up and says transforming your relationships, I'm going to be interested in joining that live. And third note on Theming is thinking about theming your lives in a way that connect to a course that you have on Insight Timer. My friend Charles Freilide does this beautifully. He has his course, Dao Te Ching Mastery, and every week he goes live with a different theme from the course. And he has his own way of structuring that meditation. But it's a way for people who are interested in the dao, or maybe newer people to Charles, to then learn about what he's about out what this course is about, and then if they want to go deeper, they can then take the course. And if they wanted to go deeper, they would then find Charles and see what other things he has off the app. Again, it's delivering a transformative experience that allow people to want more of what you have to share. They're going to find more in Insight Timer and then of course, if they're ready, they can find you off of Insight Timer. But focusing on the quality of your events is going to help this process grow. The last thing I'll say about theming is that you can circle around a few core concepts. You might think of these as your content pillars. What are the core things that you love talking about and how can you just circle around those themes? Because I'm imagining if those are your core themes, then you can point people to courses that you have around those themes. For example, my friend Saket Rizvi, he does this really well where he has a few different themes, where he's talking about multiple times a week, he circles through Carl Jung, mysticism, Egyptian mysticism, things like this, and it aligns with some of his courses. For example, he has a shadow work course. So when he's always talking about Carl Jung and his philosophy on the shadow, he's able to attract new people that might be interested. And then of course, they can go on to courses if they would like. Okay, moving on to structuring your Insight Timer Live. Now, the benefit, the beauty of Insight Timer Live is that anything goes, that you literally can do anything, anything, and people do everything. And I think with that it's easy to set yourself apart if you actually prepare and have a little bit more intention with your Insight Timer Live. Don't get me wrong, it could be fun to just hop on, chat with people, hang out. That's totally cool. But when you're talking about growing your audience and growing people that are actually going to want to go deeper with you, having some intention here is important. And the way that I want you to think about it is if I were to Tell you tomorrow you have a class that you're going to teach. Teach in front of 50 people in person at your local studio or event center. What would you do? Would you just meander and show up wearing anything? Just. Just feeling like, well, whatever is going to be there, whatever the spirit's moving through. Maybe. Maybe you are tapped into that. I honor you if that's you. But you'll probably have a sense and the structure of what you want to do in that class, because there's going to be 50 people. You're going to feel their energy. That's what's happening on Inside Timer Live. There are more, sometimes, sometimes up to 300, 400, 500. If you're David Gandelman, you have like 10,000 people on your live events. But thinking about that, if they were in this room having some intention with the structure, another litmus test to ask is if I were to take the recording of your Insight Timer live and do some minor editing, could I easily upload it as a track? And if it's no, it's probably because you're meandering and there's not really a clear point or focus. And so this is how I think about my live. I don't want to do more work than is necessary. So if I'm thinking of a new track for Inside Timer, why not do it as a live and do some practice? Sometimes I will record it and just upload it and get it edited. Oftentimes, though, I'll want to do it again and just tighten it a little bit on my own recording. Still, it's still doing the same work. So important to just make sure that you have some intention with what you're structuring. You're about to go live, and I'm gonna take you through my whole structure as if we were on a live event and what I'm thinking in the background. So before I actually hit Start Live, I always like to do just a little bit of my own meditation to center myself. I do a little prayer. It sounds something like God, may whoever is meant to show up to this live, may they show up, May I have whatever they might need to hear may come through me. So just some sort of energy to open up the synchronicity of the moment that here I am, here to serve, and let me trust that the divine is going to bring the other people into this space that might need to hear it. So I just always love starting with that and then hit Start Live. You know, you feel some of the nervous energy and you begin People start trickling in. They say hi. I always like to just welcome people and encourage them to say hi. Many people will say where they're from. This is natural thing when starting to get connected with anyone, whether it was in real life or online. And I would invite you to think of what are some fun ways that you can create some engagement. Because it's that little bit of like that awkward time in the beginning where you don't want to quite start because people are still coming in. And you know, there's just this kind of awkwardness that creating some engagement for the people who are there to allow some more people to trickle in so that your message, your class is being received by the most people. So some fun ways that I've done more engagement is asking people, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you feeling today? And just simple. They can share a number and I can catch a vibe of the room. My friend Charles Feli, he said he does this that I really love is he just has people share an emoji about how they're feeling. I recently asked people to share what's your favorite emoji? And just kind of a fun way again to keep engagement and allow others to jump into the room. Last question I might offer is what's your favorite room in your house and why? And so keep it fun. Make it your own creative question and don't go too far on this. You don't want to start spending 10 minutes just asking these kind of engagement questions. I would say the way I think about it is three minutes tops. I want to be respectful of people's time and really get to the heart of what I'm there to share. I don't want people to have to meander for 10 minutes just to allow, you know, people that were late to it to come and then start. So honor people's time. As I start transitioning from the opening engagement to the beginning, I'll always lay out what to expect for today. I will tell people I'm going to start today. Want to share a little bit? Talk on the theme that we discussed. I'll name the theme. Often we're going to then go into a meditation and afterwards I'm going to have time for Q and A and just to hang out. So I set an expectation of what people can expect if they stay. I try to tell them, hey, we're going to meditate until about this time and if you have to go, no worries. So I'm just trying to create a little bit of a container because when we have a container. People feel safer, people feel like they can surrender more into the space, even though this is a weird virtual space where you're not seeing them. So expectations is helpful, I believe. And then I go into talking about whatever the theme I picked is typically for about five to 10 minutes, depending on how many things come that riff. I do have a prepared, not a whole script, but I have written a little bit on this. And then I might look to my notes or there might be different ideas that pop up as I'm talking. So I'll just kind of roll with that in the beginning. So as I transition from the talk to the meditation, this is where I'm going to do a little bit of a pause and ask for donations for the first time. And it's super relaxed. Just something like, hey, thank you anyone here who feels called to bless this work with the donation. It's really appreciated. So thank you so much for the sharing that if you feel called and are able to. And after that, this is a great time to share one or a few promotional cards. And I suggest starting with the simplest yes. The simplest yes is for people to click follow that you have a bunch of potentially new people in this live event. Now you share your profile and say, hey, before we get into it, you know here, if you're not following me, make sure you click follow where you can get updated on new tracks and meditations that I put out. And you can also then go into maybe just one other potential offer. Like hey, if you're not able to make it to the end, I might have this course on this thing that maybe you can, you know, if this calls to you, if you're not able to finish this meditation, we go deeper into this on this course. So maybe save this course for later and you can take it. I would not do donations yet. You haven't really done your class yet. And to just put like a $3, $5, $300 thing yet, it's a little presumpt think and I would just wait to the for the donation card to the end. My opinion, do whatever you want after you have done the promotional cards. Now it's transitioning into the core of your meditation. So however long that is, 10, 20, 30 minutes. If you need support on creating your meditation script, you can check out a YouTube video I have on how to prepare for a meditation class. I will link that in the description. Or you can sign up for my free course, Meditation Script Mastery. That's going to help you develop meditation scripts that really move people. So I'm trusting you have that support or you have that skill already. And if you don't, go check out those free resources below. Okay, you just finished your meditation, People are coming out. And this is where we're shifting into post class energy, where it's a little bit looser. And the way that I like to just start opening up dialogue is know a specific question that someone can answer based on the meditation that you just did. So if it was a meditation on overcoming fears, you might ask a question, what. What was the fear that you identified right now? And just to create some conversation around people having their experience and they're able to process it, you could just make it general, like what came up for you or what do you want to share? So some question that I will maybe write in the chat, but typically we'll just ask online and see, you know, starting this dialogue with people. And then pretty shortly after you ask the question, this is where I'll make the strongest donation ask of like, hey, thank you so much again for being here. If you got value out of it, if you enjoy this time, you know, it takes energy to put this work out there and your donations are really appreciated. This is probably a good time to use the donation promotional card, throw it up there, have people tap it and then maybe take it off because again, you want to then invite people into another course that they can go deeper with you on this topic. So after the donations, I encourage you to make another plug for people to go deeper with you, whether it's through premium content, a free track or a course course. And to do this shortly because again, people are going to be jumping off of it after you have them come out. And so you'll say, hey, I'm going to hang out for a Q and A a little bit. Again, thank you for donations. And as people donate, make sure you're naming them and saying, hey, thank you Jamie, thank you Dave, thank you whoever for your donation. So definitely just naming them as they do it. And then, you know, I'm going to hang out for a little bit in a Q and A. But before, if you guys really like this practice again, I encourage you to follow me on the app because I will be recording this practice and uploading it to Insight Time can do it again. And I have a course on 10 tools for healing and transformation where this is day four of the course and we go really deeper into it. So go check out that course. And this is where if you have that course promotional tab, you throw that up in the promotional cards, put it on there and then you're just hanging, then you've made it to the end and at that point I just relax and just say hey, what do you want to talk about? Asking questions and just make it fun. And I'll hang out till people keep bringing stuff up. I'll be in engagement. And as I do that I'm also noting different pieces of content that I have on Insight Timer that I can point people to. I might be like oh yeah, you know what, I have a meditation on that. Or you know people always do this meditation but they forget about this meditation that I have. And I always encourage people to go through my tracks and find something that calls to you, you. And so this is just the time for me to just keep building connection, hang out. Super fun post class vibes. There's nothing better than that. It's like the reward for the work of preparing. That's pretty much how I structure most of my Inside Timer Live events. There are some exceptions where I'm not doing as clear of a structure and again you could do a completely different structure. You could have no structure at all. Have the best Insight Timer Live. This is not the end all be all rules. The biggest thing that I want to do for you is for you to tap into your own creative spirit and bring that to anything that you put out on Insight Timer or in the world. Live events are just a great place to do that. One last thing I'll say that needs to be said is you can quickly set yourself apart on Inside Timer Live just by getting a good camera. I use a Sony ZV1 to have a 4K resolution and also a microphone. Now it could work fine with just ear pods or just using your computer, camera or a phone, but again you might. It might be the difference of people jumping into your live if you have really poor quality. If you're like too close to the screen, people might just be like ah, this is just off putting. They might not even give you a chance. So if you just want a foundation, make it better. Invest in a better quality camera, have your backlights have a background that is inviting. Just this is just video 101 and it's surprising how many people on Inside Timer don't actually just take the extra time to set a good background and a visual experience. Thanks so much for watching. Let me know what surprised you in the comments below. How you do your lives, how you do it that's different than mine and maybe are crushing it. I want to hear from you in the comments like and subscribe if you're not to the channel. And again, if you're wanting support on developing unique meditations that are powerful, that bring more people to your work, that make people want to go deeper and become clients, check out my free course Meditation Script Mastery in the description below. I would love to support you in crafting and creating powerful meditations. Chat soon and before you take off. If you like this episode or like this podcast, please consider taking a moment to leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow. And if you are someone wanting to use meditation to share your gifts, I have a free course called Meditation Script Mastery. You can click the link in the podcast description and get you set up with learning how to create unique meditations that you can share with your students, your clients, and you can share with your friends. So thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.