Useful resources mini-series: Promoting your yoga via social media

Useful resources mini-series: Promoting your yoga via social media - Transcript

This episode is part of our useful resources mini-series, and we're focusing on useful resources for promoting your yoga offering via social media. And isn't just the blackest hole of all of the black holes that we can fall down as business owners! With promoting your yoga on social media, it can really feel like there's always more to do. I empathise completely. It can seem like other yoga teachers / other businesses have really got it together, they've got a plan which they're executing perfectly, and you're drafting out a post with one hand while cooking dinner with the other, trying to make sure you've spelt everything right and wondering what chuffing hashtags you're going to put with the caption... Well I would say that we've all been there. So, with that in mind, today we're looking at useful resources to help you save time and maximise your efficiencies when promoting on social media.

I think it's no secret that  a common approach to social media is 'oh poo, i haven't posted anything in a few days, i've got my class tomorrow night that i need to get more people to book on to, oh and i've got that workshop at the weekend, gah, better post something now. Ok i'm scrolling scrolling through my images, which one can I use? Erm that one, no i think i used that one recently, erm that one? Ah it's not really in focus. Ooh that one! Except that one is me relaxing and my class and workshop are both really energising. Argh! Ok just pick one. That one. Ok, what shall i say...'

At the beginning of this episode i said, where social media is concerned, it feels like there's always more to do, and there's that little voice at the back of your head; 'you haven't promoted this workshop, you haven't mentioned that studio in a while, does anyone even know they can book in for one to ones' etc. it's relentless! Absolutely relentless. And it's completely unsustainable. In order to run a thriving business, there has to be downtime; time you're not thinking about it. Time when you've shut down your laptop, and you shut down the business brain too.

So, let's look at resources to increase efficiencies, for social media.

A scheduling tool

The thing that has helped me so, so much, is a social media scheduling tool. Something like hootsuite, buffer, later, sproutsocial...

From experience, I would say that no scheduling tool is perfect,  as in, one tool won't do everything that you want and need it to do, so I'd recommend just choosing one and only changing if you really don't get on with it, rather than chopping and changing regularly.

So- why use a scheduling tool? Well, it'll help you see how many posts you have ready to go for the next week / fortnight / month / year. It means you can make a big cup of coffee, sit in front of the scheduling tool, choose or create images, write captions, input them in to the tool and then bish, bash bosh, it's done.

One of the time-sucking problems of creating posts on the go, is that you have to do it on the platform itself. Let me explain. You think, oooh this week, it's awful weather, everyone's hunched up running from place to place, so I'll focus my classes on heart opening, to undo this posture. You open your phone with the intention of writing this up in a lovely way to encourage people to book for your classes, you open - let's say - instagram, and before you know where you are, it's 20 minutes later, you've scrolled and scrolled, you've forgotten the post the post you were going to write and the inspiration, you close your phone and feel defeated. Sound familiar? For me, this is the mai, the biggest benefit of a scheduling tool; you're not actually interacting with the platform itself to write and to post, and so its ends up being way more time-efficient.

Some things to consider in terms of deciding which scheduling tool to use:

a. do you have a budget for this? Bearing in mind that promoting your offerings will make people aware of those offerings… so a tool with an associated cost might pay for itself in bookings that you wouldn’t have got otherwise. If you’re not sure, there's two sensible approaches; a) either go for a free tool and upgrade if you can see bookings happening from your posts - or - b) pay for something and after, say, two months, ask people how they found out about you and / or your offerings, and cancel it if it’s not paying for itself

b. How do you want to view your schedule? i.e. app on your phone / on a browser / on paper?

c. How do you want to find the right hashtags? Do you want a tool that suggests hashtags for you?

d. Do you need analytics, as in, do you want to know how many people have viewed / liked / commented on your posts, how many retweets / reposts? How many new followers, and unfollowers you've had, etc

e. Do you have the capacity to try to follow people's actions, from viewing your content, to visiting your website, to booking a class or event? There's no point paying for this if you're not going to use it, but if you will use it and learn from it, it can be really insightful as to what kind of imagery and tone of voice your audience likes and engages with

f. What is your reason for being on social media? It is because you feel you should / because you want to find new yogis / want to keep in touch with your existing yogis etc.  Our 5th podcast episode was 'find your yogis', so that might be a good listen after you've finished here, just to keep you focused and on track as to why a social media presence is important and useful to you.

A social media calendar.

This is a funny place for me to start my tips and advice, because having / using or creating a social media calendar was such an incredible barrier for me for a very, very long time. Let me just explain that a little more. Basically, I thought I would create / use / find something that perfectly extracted my social media requirements and tasks out of my head and in to a place where I could oversee it all, see how everything interlinked and worked together, it would link up with our events calendar etc and it would be clear, and beautiful and completely organised... Well I looked around for this magical unicorn calendar.. couldn't find one that was as magical as I'd hoped for, so i started to create one in a spreadsheet, that was really messy and unclear and was a complete duplication of the scheduling tool and therefore twice the work with no benefit. So I really struggled with this. I could see the value in an overview of what we'd talk about, and when, but I just could not figure how best to go about it.

In the end, i just used my actual calendar! I just created an event at the beginning of each day, every day for the next month, to say whether the social media focus for that day would be events, or our range of teacher training courses, or our offering for yoga in the workplace, or something else. That meant i could just look at my calendar, and the scheduling tool, and use the overview of those to decide whether to write up captions about this, or that, or the other. I could immediately see any gaps, or anything that's too densely featured, and works really well. For me. What I'm trying to say is, just make it work for you. It might be a paper calendar on your wall, or a granular diary on your desk, or a spreadsheet for each week, or as part of your scheduling tool. Don't worry about what others do, think about how you want to see an overview of your social media output and make it happen.

How often should you post?

Related to having a calendar, a common question, or worry is, how often should you be posting. Now in my humble opinion, I would say, don't worry about this. I know. Not a very popular opinion!! But let me explain. If I was to say - you need to post every day, but actually you teach two classes a week with the odd workshop and a bit of cover here and there, but you also have a full time job and friends to see, a house to run, etc etc, posting daily doesn't necessarily serve you or your yogis, but it is adding a lot to your workload and can feel mentally completely overwhelming to do this. But, on the flip side, if I was to say, well, you need to post twice a week, but you teach 14 classes a week with extra offerings here and there... that also doesn't serve you, or your yogis; you'll have more to say than you can fit in to those posts.

I would say, focus on what your yogis need to know from you; how you are, who you are, what you're offering, what the benefits are of joining you at those offerings, revelations you've had, etc etc, and see how that boils down and fits into your calendar.

You also need to consider how much free time you have. if you have loads, you can post loads, if you like! But if you have very little, you'll want to make sure that the time you do have isn't thrown down the black hole of creating content just because you feel you should.

Canva for creating your images

Ok, if you haven't stumbled across Canva yet, you must must must go and have a look when you've finished listening to this episode. Canva is designed and created and sent to us by all the angels in the highest heaven to allow us to make beautiful eye-catching images at the exact size for each platform at no cost, or a low cost. Honestly, it is so so so so so good. It's so useful and I think it's really useable. Its fab. Ok. I don't have shares in Canva. Promise.

Quick word of warning - that the day can actually completely disappear on canva, it's a real time sucker, so I'd recommend - honestly -

setting a timer and giving yourself that long to create what you need to create.

A process for naming and storing those images

Could do this within Canva... but realisically, you do need to download them to upload them elsewhere. So, set a naming convention and stick to it. Be aware that searching for images that you've created is - again - a real time suck. It's easy to duplicate images on canva which is great, but can mean that your images have a completely irrelevant name. So let's look at an example - let's say, last week you ran a splits workshop, you designed a beautiful image for it, all great. Next week you're running a philosophy workshop, so you duplicate the splits workshop promo image, and save it to your computer and its name is 'copy of splits workshop.

Then, a couple of days later, you want to use the image, so you search and search for philosophy workshop / you search by the date of the workshop  /you search by the pose name of the image you used. and nothing. So you start to search through canva... all this is wasted time. Set yourself a standard way to name your files, and you'll never lose anything again - including excess time!

Also, one last tip, for images that are promoting something on a specific date, i'd really recommend including the date of the offering in the file name, and then at the very least, you know that you can search by that.

Related to this, have a system for where you keep these files - whether its on something like dropbox or google drive, or your laptop - make sure it's backed up! - but not on your desktop! It's a couple of extra seconds now, to save you, what minutes? maybe hours! in the future.

Brand guidelines

In my old job, working for a Digital agency, we'd get brand guidelines for big brands, big companies, (or charities), like Channel 4, or Cancer Research UK. When I considered making brand guidelines for Yoga Hero, i thought, well it's nothing like those businesses, so not needed. But actually, since we've formalised the guidelines a bit, we've been able to make images and posts that are more Yoga Hero-y, and more recognisably us, and more interesting, engaging, etc. It also means that creating posts can - in theory - be done by others; in exchange for some yoga sessions, or if nice family members have free time on their hands, or if you employ an assistant for a couple of hours a week.... etc etc.

This will also help to create continuity and consistency in your social media output, so that people who want to hear from you don't miss your posts by accident!

Create set times in your calendar for responding to comments and messages on the platforms

Lastly, I would say to turn off notifications for social media, and set times to log on and respond to comments and messages. This is mega time saving. It really really is. It is really important to respond to people and to create relationships, but we just want to avoid the accidental thing of seeing a notification, optioning the app to respond, accidental scrolly scrolly and then you've lost a load of time!

So just a reminder that this episode is about saving time and increasing efficiency where social media is concerned.

The power of social media, the usage, getting more followers and interactions etc, is a whole huge entity that we'll hopefully dive in to one day, together, but for now, we're focusing on using your time well and wisely and ensuring that your social media usage, and output, is useful, beneficial and not accidental!

And, as always, happy teaching.