In the past ten years, social media has become essential to any marketing plan, and that includes for yoga businesses and yoga retreat leaders as well.
Getting on top of a social media marketing strategy as a retreat leader is key to reaching new customers and maintaining communication with previous retreat attendees. But what are the best social media platforms for retreat leaders?
Generally, yoga businesses and retreat leaders should try to find the platform where their usual customers are, so they can best connect with them. However, that often means being active across several social media platforms.
We’ve broken down the common social media platforms for retreat leaders and what you should do on each.
What to share - Instagram is a platform for sharing photos and short videos (15 seconds). It also has a live video component called Instagram Stories where you can film short videos or take photos that will disappear after 24 hours.
Post frequency - Once a day
Instagram is a place to share your best photos. The best accounts are carefully curated to have color schemes and photos that work together when you look at the feed as a whole. Users can like and comment on photos and you’ll want to encourage this by asking questions in captions. You can also provide value through tips and motivations in the captions.
You can use Instagram stories to connect further with your followers and give them an insight into life behind the scenes as a retreat leader, especially during the retreat planning and build-up.
Instagram requires a lot of engagement with other users, commenting on photos and following other accounts, to help satisfy the algorithm and have your posts reach further. You can sign up to an Instagram Business account that will allow you to see when your followers are most active and what times your photos have better reach.
Use hashtags on Instagram so that your photos can be found more easily. You can find hashtags by searching on Instagram and checking out what other popular yoga retreat leader accounts use. Look for hashtags that are not too popular (by the number of posts) so you can try and feature in the top 9 photos for that hashtag.
Instagram is a great social media platform for retreat leaders because they are often in beautiful locations, and the fitness and health genre is very popular on the platform as well. Take plenty of photos of the scenery, retreat center, yoga classes and yoga poses in beautiful locations.
Useful tools - Instagram is a great social media tool for retreat leaders but you need to stay on top of it to make the most of the platform. Tools like Later and Buffer help you schedule in advance and plan out your Instagram feed. They cannot automatically post for you but you can plan everything in advance and receive a notification that prompts you to then post what you’ve done.
What to share - Facebook is great for almost any type of content. You can post photos, links to articles, general tips and thoughts and upcoming events.
Post frequency - At least once per day. You should post frequently so that Facebook gets used to you posting and the algorithm continues to work in showing your posts to your followers. The more followers you have the less the reach of posts seems to be so you can actually post more.
When we talk about using Facebook as a retreat leader we don’t mean your personal Facebook, but a Facebook Page which you can create under your own name or your yoga business name. You’ll then need to build a following for the page which you can do by inviting your regular yoga students to like your page, putting it on your personal Facebook and website, and advising people who sign up to your retreats to follow your page.
As a Facebook Page, you can pay to boost posts to reach more of your followers, or to get new followers. If you target a specific audience then it can pay off.
The important thing in for retreat leaders using Facebook for marketing is to not make the page like an advertisement. You don’t want to continuously bombard your followers with things for them to do. “Click this article, look at this new retreat, come to a class” etc. It should be more of a conversation with your followers that also gives them value for following your retreat leader Facebook Page. In the marketing world this usually means 80 percent content giving value, and from other sources, and 20 percent sales based links or your own content links.
When you use Facebook as a retreat leader you should always remember to ask questions to encourage interaction. Use photo and video content to grab attention and spark conversation.
Useful tools - Facebook has an inbuilt scheduler which you can use to plan our your social media plan as a retreat leader. You can use BuzzSumo to help you find shareable content for your yoga retreat Facebook page, and use Bitly to shorten URLs if you post a link alongside a photo.
What to share - Pinterest is for sharing pinnable images created on a tool like Canvas or Photoshop, that link back to articles on your website.
Post frequency - Multiple times per day
Think of Pinterest as a giant series of pinboards. You can have your own themed boards where you can pin your own images that link out to your website, as well as pin images from other peoples boards. There are also group boards where multiple people pin images to them.
The main benefit of using Pinterest as a social media tool for retreat leaders is in getting people to click through to your website. It’s like a search engine made of images. You need to create vertical images which you can either embed on your website or you can upload directly to Pinterest and link to a specific page on your website. Usually, these images have text on that showing what they are.
Pins that do well are often listicles, motivational quotes, or tips. For yoga retreat leaders, this could mean creating some posts on your website about great retreat locations, tips for attending retreats, yoga poses, etc. The idea would be to then showcase your yoga business within the post as well and gain more exposure for it.
Useful tools - Use Tailwind to schedule pins in advance and Boardbooster to then repin from your own boards to popular group boards.
What to share - LinkedIn is a tool for showcasing your experience and connecting with other professionals.
LinkedIn is kind of like a Facebook for professionals. You can still share info, updates, and articles, but you can also connect with other people and see their previous work experience and showcase your own skills.
It’s not the most important social media platform for retreat leaders but it is worth having a page on there to help you develop business relationships with other retreat leaders, companies, and retreat centers, and showcase your knowledge and previous experience.
What to share - Twitter is a social media platform that allows you to publish short snippets of 140 characters. You can include a photo and a link to other articles or places if you like. You can reply and “heart” other users tweets.
Post frequency - Multiple times per day
Twitter is often used as a tool by businesses. As a yoga retreat leader, you can use it to connect with retreat centers or keep on top of trends in the yoga world. You can search hashtags to see what people are posting and take part in Twitter chats about things that are yoga or health-related.
It’s not an essential social media tool for retreat leaders but it’s worth having a presence in case any customers do try to find you there. You can also work on reaching new customers through motivational posts with hashtags that can be found by other users.
Useful tools - Buffer and Hootsuite for scheduling posts, so you can be posting 24/7 and reaching across time zones.
There is no one social media platform that is best for retreat leaders. Instead, you should focus on the ones that are the best for reaching your students and strive to have a presence across several others.
Now that you know what each social media platform is for and which is best for retreat leaders, check out our guide to making social media work for your yoga business, to help you to form a social media strategy as a retreat leader!