Technology Use at Roots of Yggdrasil
Before lockdown began we didn’t embrace the use of technology within our business properly, mainly due to being a small company with most of our work being based on grass roots exercise classes within impoverished and rural areas of North Yorkshire. Although we had a presence on social media we relied on intermittent posts and amateur videos filmed on a shaky mobile phone using video clips from our classes and still photos from local events to reach our audience. Instead we channelled what little resources we had into physical print and buying equipment for our classes. This meant we relied on networking to bring in B2B business to fund the continued expansion of our local level classes.
In the first week of lockdown our fight our flight response kicked, we knew we were going to have to adapt quickly to the new world, otherwise our fledgling company wouldn’t survive. Our first step was to establish a YouTube channel and we began to film daily exercise videos for social media to continue to support our community through a time of need which, on hindsight, was an astounding success. Happy Futures, one of our most loyal clients gave us our first tech challenge. They requested a bespoke relaxation video for their staff and within the week we delivered our first tech based product. We filmed using a mobile phone with a cheap tripod and the video, (now on YouTube), didn’t have a particularly high production value yet Happy Futures loved it and offered to buy us some professional camera equipment to help us adapt to the online world.
With our new equipment in hand we doubled down on developing online services and began experimenting with ideas to see what we could achieve. Overnight we managed to improve the quality of our social media posts, using them to learn more about camerawork. We also converted a spare room into a studio and managed to expand our organic reach to approximately 4500 people a week peaking at 20,000 at the height of lockdown. For a company just over a year old, in a niche market on the North Yorkshire coast this was a huge breakthrough. This was just the start though, as we also began learning how to produce podcasts, video presentations and used the time to produce a backlog of social media posts to ensure we would have enough content for the foreseeable future.
As restrictions begin to relax our fledgling business has emerged from the other side as a changed entity Technology is now beginning to form the backbone of our corporate and community services, something we would never have considered. Our podcasts are being revised, our social media is almost automated and we are about to release our first commercial video presentations on nutrition, the delay being us yet again awaiting more audio equipment. We have several more products in the pipeline all designed to add value to all of our other packages. Even our physical services are changing as we have found that the camera equipment allows us to increase the quality of our corrective exercise service.
The only thing that remains unchanged is our passion to provide the best service possible to our clients and our commitment to restarting our community classes when it is safe to do so and return to doing what we love.