Your Yoga Studio and Social Media
In the previous blog of this series you could read all about how to improve the ranking and visibility of your yoga studio in Google. In this blog we will focus on what social media can do for the promotion of your yoga studio.
Word of mouth is still the most powerful type of promotion. When your yogis talk about your studio with their network, this will help to grow your network without any effort from your side.
Nowadays this happens not only in person, but 24/7 online through e-mails, blogs, forums and most importantly: social media.
If you want more people to get to know your yoga studio then it is essential to use social media. Your target group is mainly using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (later in this article we will discuss how to register your yoga studio at these social networks).
By sharing relevant, fun and interesting information through these networks, your yoga studio will get noticed. Furthermore, it is very likely that your yogis will also share this info with friends in their network. This is great, because like this potential new yogis are now seeing your info and will read about your studio. Maybe they will even share it with their network etc. etc.
But what is relevant, fun or interesting information?
How do you register your yoga studio on these social networks?
And, how will yogis find your studio on social media?
Let’s explore this in the following chapters.
Also, do take a look at the Momoyoga Facebook page!
Relevant and fun information
Let’s take a look at a couple of pieces of information that you could share through your yoga studio’s social media. Key is to be creative. There are so many things about you and your yoga studio that you could share!
You could write about:
- The adventures of your yoga studio
- Tips and instructions for yogis
- Your expertise on certain topics
- Experiences from your members
- Events or specials
In the next blog in this series you will learn all about putting your yoga studio in the spotlights. We will focus on how to produce content of all sorts and how to publish this on your social media. For now we will stick we the above examples.
The adventures of your yoga studio
As a yoga studio you organize all types of events, open days and teach different classes. You meet new people, get inspired and share your story. So, lots of things going on and new adventures every day.
Capture this! Take photos, write it down, make announcements and give people a sneak peek into all that is going on in the meantime.
Don’t know where to start? Start with taking a photo at your yoga studio every day. Share this photo with a funny/interesting caption. Write about your favourite classes or about what you are trying to achieve with certain yoga poses.
Like this your yoga studio’s adventure may even become a trending topic in your local area!
Tips for yogis
During your yoga classes you probably share tips and instructions about how to safely get in and out of certain yoga poses or how to optimize posture alignment. This is always a great help for students.
Why not share this with a wider audience? You can share tips about yoga poses, relaxation, dealing with stress, diet, workout tips etc.
Writing about this can also be a great motivation for you to expand your knowledge about certain topics. Do it your way. Do your research, try it out and write about it.
When you can offer some (unique) information that is relevant for your target group, you can even write a series of articles or short blogs about it. For example, every week a new yoga pose, guidelines for athletes, how to improve your posture or a mini-course on mindfulness. You name it!
Try to think like your target group. How could you help them? Or, what would you like to learn from your social network?
Your expertise on certain topics
During your training, your life and your career you have gained so much experience and expertise with which you could help others. This could be specifically about yoga but also about other things that you have learned along the way.
You could write about these topics. For example a specific type of yoga that you have practiced for a long time, a theory or life lessons from a certain tradition, your favourite authors etc. You could write about any topic that moves you and that you have expertise on.
Experiences from your members
For new yogis it is really nice to read about the experiences from others. They can learn about your yoga studio at first-hand.
So it is a good idea to offer a platform for your members to leave their feedback. They might just have nice stories that you could share on your social media. However, do check if people are ok with you sharing their stories. Maybe they want to share how they experience your classes and how they fit yoga into their lifestyle etc.
Not all yogis are keen on sharing their stories, but since you know your members you can make an educated guess on who would be open to it. You can even make it a short interview and add a photo as well. This could be a really nice piece for you to share on social media!
So write about your yoga studio, give your followers an idea of what is going on behind the scenes and let your members share their stories as well.
Some other ideas: ask your members to send you photos that you can share, organize a fun activity with your yogis and write about it.
Events or specials
We’ve already mentioned it a couple of time: organizing events is a good strategy to increase your network and to get word of mouth going.
Before, during and after the event there is lots of information to share. The invitation, press release, pictures etc.
In a next blog we will tell you more about organizing events and getting local publicity.
Some ideas for events and specials: a special (theme-based) class, open day, open lesson, a special sale or promotion, classes in the park when the weather is nice, join a yoga festival, collaborate with a local organization, join local events etc.
Join Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
In general your target group will use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. So it is essential that your yoga studio is present on at least one of these networks. It is really easy to join them.
Do you have personal accounts for Facebook and LinkedIn? Then you can log on to these pages and create a ‘business page’. You are now the administrator of these business pages.
If you don’t have personal accounts for these networks, then that will be your first step. Register here for Facebook and LinkedIn.
A step by step description of creating a Facebook business page - also called ‘fanpage’.
- Login to Facebook
- Click on the arrow in the blue bar and select ‘create page’
- Select ‘Company, organisation or institution’
- Choose an easy name for your page without using capital letters or punctuation marks. For example facebook.com/youryogastudioname
- Start adding some information and posts to this page so that it is not completely empty. You can ask a friend to proofread this if needed. Only then start inviting your members to like and follow your page. When they accept your invitation they will receive updates about everything that you publish on social media.
How will yogis find your studio on social media?
When you share fun and interesting information on your page, more and more people will start following you.
You start with one group of followers, for example your current members. Every time one of them ‘likes’ one of your posts, people in their network will see that. Because you actively publish new posts with new info, more people will start following you.
But you can also speed this process up by doing the following:
- Refer to your social media pages on your website
- Proactively ask your yogis to ‘like’ your social media pages
- Refer to your social media in any form of communication, like your email signature.
- Use the ‘sharing’ setting on your website or blog, so that new content will be automatically shared on your social media.
- Tell everybody that they can follow your yoga studio on Facebook!
We hope you had fun reading this blog and that you have learned a thing or two about promoting your yoga studio. Do you want to know more about your yoga studio on social media? Let us know!
Want to know more about promoting your yoga studio? Read the next blog of our series! In our next blog we will investigate how to create interesting content for your potential new yogis: a blog for your yoga studio.
