Create your social media calendar

Create your social media calendar – Transcript

This episode is designed to be a one-stop-shop to create a social media calendar that is considered, with imagery, copy and hashtags, so that you can nail the best bits of social media, whilst avoiding the negative aspects; the comparison syndrome, the time suck, the energy suck, as much as possible.

We’ll be starting off with getting in the strategy mindset; what do you want to achieve from your social media? How do you see that happening? How do your ideal yogis use social media? Let’s get in to that mindset.

Then, we look at options for how you’ll create your calendar. Now, we have created a free social media calendar template for you which you are so very welcome to use – why not give it a go, it’s free after all!

Then, we brainstorm all the information and inspiration that your yogis need from you.

Then, we fill the calendar in. Together. Today. And don’t worry, if you’re on the move, keep listening, because it’s amazing how much your cogs keep turning in the background, so it’ll be so much easier when you do then sit down to fill it in. Filling in the calendar is super strategic. First off all, think, what do your yogis need to know, which is different to what you want to tell them. Then, think about what you want to tell them, haha. Then, have a sense check over what you’ve got coming up and check that that matches with what you’ve got planned to talk about.

Lastly, we’ll look at barriers to posting on social media like, lack of confidence, lack of inspiration, lack of time, and how to get around these.

Ok. let’s crack on.

We’ll start at the beginning – well and at the end. What is your goal? I’d recommend not just having ‘get more followers’ as a goal… Followers on your account in and of themselves don’t really mean anything. And also, I’d recommend not having a goal of ‘telling people what’s on’… A goal is, increasing attendance at your yoga offerings, your classes, workshops, courses etc

A goal is getting people on to your email list, or increasing enquiries about private yoga sessions or increasing traffic to your website. So, have a think – or hopefully you know already, what do you what for your yoga teaching business? What does your business need? You can have more than one goal, but of course, the fewer you have, the clearer your strategy will be to work towards achieving them.

Ideally, you’ll condense that goal or each goal down in to one word or short phrase, and write it in big letters at the top of your calendar, to help keep you focused. For the purposes of this episode, let’s assume your one goal is to increase attendance at classes. or increase attendance, just so we have an example to help explain through out the episode.

Ok. so with your goal in mind, let’s get cracking on this calendar. Note down what your yogis need to know from you in order for your goal to be met. So our goal is to increase attendance, so your yogis need to know; about you. Why should they come to your classes?

Your yogis need to know practical things, when the classes are, where they are, how much, where can they park, do they need to bring equipment.

Your yogis need social proof; what have other people said about your classes?

So put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and start noting down, or just be thinking about this in your head, what do your yogis need to know. We’re still in the gathering and formulating information and inspiration stage, so just get everything out of your head and down on to paper for now, as we’ll put it in to the calendar later.

Don’t be afraid of widening your focus here too; you don’t want all your posts to be just full of factual practical info. You can talk about yourself. About why you love yoga. About why you became a yoga teacher. You can talk about the studio that you work in, what’s it like? What’s lovely about it? You can talk about the styles of yoga you teach, what are the benefits of them? You can talk about resources that you’ve found useful like your favourite yoga book or podcast. (Ahem.)

So once you’ve had a good think about the information that your yogis will need from you, and any inspiration that you can give them, now it’s time to take that, and form it in to posts. Now I’ve purposefully not mentioned specific social media platforms up until now. From experience, most yoga teachers use instagram and facebook, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of value in other platforms too.  Each platform has its own demographics. So first of all, have a think about your yogis, your customers, and then compare that with the demographics of the different platforms, and that’s a great place to start determining WHICH platforms to use. There’s a lot of value in concentrating on one platform, getting that all streamlined and organised and sorted so you’re confident with it, and then expanding your efforts to include another.

Ok, for the purposes of covering all bases, let’s assume you need an image, some copy and hashtags. Then if you don’t need any of these different things for your platform, you’ll just dismiss them.

Before we pull the information in to planned posts, let’s think about some things to bear in mind.

1. You do not have to post every day

2. Don’t be afraid of repeating yourself. Your yogis are unlikely to see every single post, and if they do, they – no offence – probably won’t remember exactly what you’ve written. Especially don’t be afraid of repeating details like times, days, dates, places etc

3. You are you; and that is your superpower. Do you so very very best to not be dissuaded, distracted, beated down by content from others. They’re doing their thing, and you’ll be doing yours. Stay focused on your goal and your offerings and your yogis

4. Having a plan, having a social media calendar will – I’m so sure of it – save you time in the long run. Maybe pause here for a moment and daydream about what you’ll do with this extra time, that could be some extra motivation to do the work now!

5. Be open to trial and error. Sometimes you’ll post something expecting it to be so well received with a trillion likes and comments and it’s tumbleweed, and other times, you’ll not be sure, just try something and the reaction will blow you away.

6. Be aware of noisy times. A lot of business gurus and social media gurus say to start with your posts gearing up for Valentines Day, for black Friday, for Christmas. These are times when huge businesses with huge budgets will pay for advertising, which will fill your yogis’ feeds. Unless you’re willing to part with money to pay for advertising to go up against them, you might just take a couple of dats off social media at noisy, busy times.

7. Keep an eye on the analytics. Likes aren’t everything. Have a look at what you’ve posted that has been shared, saved and commented on, too.

Ok, so with that in mind, now we’re ready to take the notes, and put them in to posts.

Have a look at what you’ve written, is there anything time-dependant or urgent? if so, start with that. Write it up in to a nice post, then, pretend to be your yogi, read it and think, is anything unclear? Have a got any questions? Remember – people are busy, they usually can’t be bothered or don’t have time to go to your website to remind themselves exactly what time your class starts and finishes, make it easy for them, put the information right there. Make it tempting, make it sound great! Maybe send it to someone you trust, ask them, what’s clear, what’s missing, does it sound tempting, etc.

Now, choose a complimentary image. As a side note, I think there’s huge value in keeping. a list of ‘photos to take’ so that when you’re in a nice pace and you think ‘this would be a great back drop for a yoga asana photo’ – you have your list to work through rather than just banging out a tree pose, or a dancer pose! Now, your complimentary image, doesn’t, gasp, have to be you doing the most challenge asana you can master in as little clothing as possible! It really doesn’t!

And lastly, search for hashtags. On instagram itself, you can start typing hashtags and suggestions will pop up with an idea of how much they’ve been used. You don’t necessarily want to go for the ones that have been used the most, as they will have the most competition. Be savvy about this. If you’re class is in person, you yogis are limited to who can travel there in person – so you could use hashtags including your location, like Leeds yoga or Manchester yoga, or if your session is online, look for online yoga hashtags. If your session is quite niche, look for hashtags relating to the niche topic. This is all to get your message to your target yogis, to people who you want to know about your offering and to come to them, rather than getting it to people who won’t be interested or who can’t come.

So, you’ve done your first post! Maybe you make a lovely coffee or put on some music you love, and focus, you keep writing out posts that are led by your goal and by the information you brainstormed earlier on.

Ok, so you’re creating posts, which is hopefully easier than normal, because you’ve got your bank of information ready to pull from. Sometimes this is half the battle, just knowing what to say.

You’re adding images to the posts if needed, and you’re adding hashtags, you’re putting it all in you calendar, or in our template if that’s what you’re using, you’re reminding yourself you don’t need to post every day. Maybe every other day is fine while you get organised and get in to the swing of planning your social media calendar.

When you’ve run out of things to say, or you’ve planned two weeks, or a month, or an arbitrary amount that you’re happy with. Take a pause. read back what you’ve written, again maybe a friend or fellow yoga teacher will have a read?

Take a bigger step bask, re-look at your calendar of your offerings; your classes, workshops, courses coming up; does your planned social media calendar reflect what you’ve got coming up? Maybe you need to move some bits around to allow for specific events you’ve got on.

And then, there’s really some value in taking time away from it. Come back to the plan tomorrow to have another read, it’s amazing what you see with fresh eyes.
But now, it’s time for you to decide how you’re going to get it on to the platforms themselves. Are you just going to copy and paste it in? This is fine by the way, but remember! If you’re going on the platform itself, to NOT GET SUCKED IN TO THE SCROLL. Before you even open the app or website, take a deep breath and remind yourself, you’re posting, not scrolling. And post your content.

Maybe you use a scheduling tool – we talked about this in episode 10 – Useful resources: planning your social media, so do have a listen to that, it’s linked to in ht show notes.

And that’s it lovely teachers. You’ve got your posts, with images if needed with hashtags if needed al written out, planned, reviewed against your own calendar of offerings… and you’re coming back to it tomorrow with fresher eyes to check it’s all ok.

So, you’re done! Well well done. Remember your day dream about what you’d do with more free time? Go do that now if you can! And if and when you feel demotivated to crack on with your social media calendar planning in the future, you can remember your free time well spent, and that might just be the extra motivation to do your planning, at that point. Remember you can always come back to this episode to be guided along.

Before we finish up, let’s have a quick look at common barriers to posting on social media like, lack of confidence, inspiration, time, and how to get around these.

Lack of confidence. In our second episode, building confidence as a yoga teacher, we looked at how confidence comes from knowledge, and that expands out in to your social media offerings too. You wouldn’t waver in confidence posting about your name, age, where you live, because you know these. (By the way, I’m not saying you should do that, I just picked random things that you definitely know, that you’re going to be really sure of!) – so when you’re posting about your yoga offerings, try to remember how much you know about yoga, and how keen you are to share this, to help people.

Lack of inspiration can be such a huge barrier to putting stuff on social media, just thinking, goodness i do not know what to say today! Well hopefully you can see that this plan, this calendar, takes that away, it’s all planned out in advance. But one note on inspiration, it’s really good idea to have a dumping place for inspiration when it does hit, maybe that’s a notepad you always have on your, or the notes app on your phone. But next time to sit down to fill out your calendar for the next however long, you can check your inspiration notes then, pre-empting not knowing what to say!

Lack of time, is exactly why a calendar is such a great idea. You carve out time in your diary once a week / month / fortnight whatever works for you, write out your posts and then you’re done! Whoop.

And, as always, happy teaching.