A Guide to Making Social Media Work for Your Yoga Business

Do you want to harness the power of social media to be a more successful retreat leader or yoga business owner?

While many of us practice yoga and lead retreats as a way to escape the stresses of daily life and constant connectivity, social media has an important part to play in retreat planning and marketing.

If you get your social media right, it can help to build and grow your yoga business in amazing ways. Here are our top tips to get your yoga retreat or yoga business social media in shape.

Choose the best Social Media network for your retreat or yoga business

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+… the list is endless! So how do you decide which social media to concentrate your precious time on?

Firstly, secure all the social media handles you can, even if you choose not to currently use them. You don't need to be active on all channels but never know where things will head in future! Have a consistent name across all social media sites so that you’re easy to find, or as close as possible if one of them is not available.

Then, concentrate your time where your audience is. In the yogi world, it’s likely to be Facebook and Instagram, but think about who your main customers are, and what social media they would use and want to engage with you on. Don’t be afraid to even ask a few of them!

Set it up right

When we talk about using social media as a tool for marketing your business, we don’t mean your personal accounts. You need to set up separate business accounts, or depending on the platform, treat your personal account like a business one.

For Facebook, that means setting up a page for your business. It could be under your name and refer to you as a yoga instructor or retreat leader, or it could be under a business name. You then need to get people to follow your business page. Unfortunately, the Facebook algorithm means that not every one of your followers will see all your posts, so you could also consider adding a group where you can build a community of your students. This is a bit more added work, so get your page sorted and then you can think about the value of a group based on the interaction you get.

On Instagram, you can have a personal or business account. Switching to a business account will give your access to analytics that allows you to see how well your posts are doing. Either way, you need to treat the account as a business account and post your best pictures and captions. This might mean having a second account just for friends and family if you want to post personal things all the time. That isn’t to say that you can’t get personal on your business account, but constant dog pictures or pictures of you with family and friends may not be the answer to growing your yoga business.

Have a schedule

If you want to use social media for your yoga retreat or business marketing then you need to be consistent with your posting schedule. Have a schedule for how many posts you need to do each day (or week) on each social media platform. Some social media like Twitter can handle more posts than others, like Facebook or Instagram, where it may be best to post only once or twice a day, or even 3-4 times a week.

Some social media apps have inbuilt schedulers, like Facebook, so use this to your advantage to keep on top of your posting schedule. Use other scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite for scheduling on other platforms, and apps like Later to plan your Instagram feed.

Post relevant content

A key social media tip for your yoga business is posting relevant content, but what does that actually mean? Your content should fall into roughly three categories:

• Inspirational
• Educational
• Promotion and sales

It’s useful to try and adhere to the 80/20 rule so that you’re not constantly spamming your followers with promotional content, and you’re also giving back in the form of educational and inspiring information and posts. Approximately 80% of your content should fall within the inspiring/educating realm and 20% in promotional/sales.

Know your hashtags

Hashtags are mostly important on some social media channels, like Instagram and Twitter, because they are searchable and allow new people to find you. While you can use them on Facebook, they don’t have the same effect and we would recommend trying to get your content in front of fresh eyes in other ways.

There are some hashtags that are regularly used, and they can be useful in helping you to plan content for your social media channels and linking into popular trends. The more people engage with your content the more will see it, as that's the general principle of social media algorithms.

Some examples of useful hashtags for your yoga business are:

#Mondaymotivation #TravelTuesday #TipTuesday #WorkoutWednesday #WellnessWednesday #WisdomWednesday #ThrowbackThursday #FlashbackFriday

Post relevant content and use one of these hashtags, especially on Twitter and Instagram, to be a part of the trending content that day.

Mix your own content with “user” content

If you lead a retreat, encourage your attendees to share their pictures and tag you in them. You can also let them know that you might repost some on your page (it’s always best to have permission). You could then repost these with credit.

“User” content could also be content from other influencers or great articles you’ve come across. Have a mixture of this and your own content, so that you’re giving your followers added value. This will help you with the 80/20 guideline as well!

Have a brand voice and story

What will people see when they look at your social media profiles? Is the story of your brand clear? Or what you do and what you’re about?

These are all questions you need to ask yourself when you’re creating content for your yoga business. Your customers will connect with your business more if they understand you and the story behind it, rather than seeing a faceless logo and information. Spend time thinking about how you want to present the brand and what your voice is. It is more inspirational, educational, friendly and casual or more informative?

Use calls to action

When you’re trying to build engagement and followers on social media for your yoga business it’s a great idea to include calls to action. These are prompts for the people who read or see your content to take an action. For example, ask for comments, shares, or tags. E.g. “tag a friend if you want to go on a retreat in Costa Rica” or “Share if you agree”.

Engage with the community

When people comment or share the content on your yoga social media channels comment back and engage with them. Be open to communication and build loyalty by being available and sharing information. Engage with other yoga social media accounts, especially on Instagram where you can comment and like from your business account. This will help to get your name out there within the yoga community, and you can build some great relationships through networking.

Use and understand analytics

If you have set up your yoga social media accounts with business in mind you should have access to analytics or insights. Use these to your advantage to check what does well and what doesn’t. See when your followers are online and find the best times to post.

Understand the difference between reach/impressions and engagement. Reach and impressions are how many people have seen your post, and engagement is people who interacted with it. If a certain campaign or type of post was a great success, then pay attention to that and try to replicate it. Be constantly testing different things to see what works best for your yoga business. You can also keep an eye on when the optimal time to post is.

Paid Ads

Social Media channels like Facebook and Instagram offer the opportunity to pay for ads that will have a further reach than your followers. This can be a useful way to gain more followers faster, and get further reach, however, we would recommend trying to build your social media following organically (without paid ads) in the first instance.

However, if you do want to spend some money on social media ads for your yoga business, Facebook advertising allows you to choose a very specific audience to target. Set the ad to target customers in a specific region, within a certain age range, who have shown previous interest in yoga or retreats, and you should see results for not a lot of money.

Social media can be a great tool for your yoga business, but you do need to work at it and put the effort in. At first, it can seem like a lot of work, but once you organize a schedule and get into a routine with it, you’ll find it becomes much easier to you.

Get more yoga business tips by checking out our top business tips for yoga instructors and retreat leaders, and steps to building a business mindset as a yoga instructor!