by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 22, 2017 | Blog, Business
Your brand does not belong to you. Your brand exists entirely in the minds of your audience.
Unfortunately, many yoga businesses don’t commit to establishing a brand, opting instead to post quotes from mismatched sources, stock photos found on Google images, and applying filters that don’t compliment previous posts (I notice this a lot in yoga studios). While your brand might be clear to you, social media clutter is confusing your clients and your potential customers.
At a glance, you want a social media presence that is consistent, quality-driven, and unquestionably yours. Set a timer and take the next 20 minutes to clean up your social presence.
Your Business’ Facebook Page – 7 Minutes
- Flip through your cover photos and profile pictures . Many yoga studios have tested or used more than one logo. Delete any logos you do not currently use (you should be left with one logo).
- Delete blurry, dark, and low-quality photos. Your cover photos and profile photos are not a family album or a time capsule. They’re more like your storefront.
- Make sure your business name, address, and website can be easily found for new visitors.
- Take 1 more minute to scroll through the top few posts on your page, deleting any broken links.
Instagram – 5 Minutes
- Make sure your profile picture matches the logo you are using on Facebook.
- Make sure your business name is clear.
- If you have a website, make sure your website is clear.
- If you are a studio or own a storefront, make sure your street address is clear.
- Quickly scroll through your feed. Don’t be afraid to delete posts that don’t fit your brand (think colour, font, and personality), or low quality photos. This could be someone’s first impression of your brand. Your clients aren’t going to go back to see what you posted weeks ago, but consider that the people most likely to see old posts will be new, interested, potential clients.
Twitter – 3 Minutes
- Make sure your profile picture matches the logo you are using on Facebook and Instagram
- Choose a high quality cover photo (preferably one that showcases your community, your beautiful studio, your clothing designs, etc.)
- Take 1 minute to scroll through the top few tweets and make sure they reflect your business’ personality.
Final Check-In – 5 Minutes
- Is it obvious to a potential client that you are the same business across all three platforms?
- Is it easy for someone who arrives at any of your social pages to find more about you (most likely through a website?)
- Do pictures of your product, service, or studio look the way you would want them to be remembered?
Big athletic brands like Nike, Under Armour, and Lululemon don’t post other people’s content, or keep old logo versions up on social media pages, because it dilutes their brand. Fortunately, keeping a clean and clear social presence isn’t just affordable for large brands like theirs.
Don’t be afraid to reclaim your brand, by stripping away those things that you are not.
Laura Fraser is a yoga teacher, digital media specialist & hand-lettering artist. You can learn more about Laura here.
by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 20, 2017 | Blog, Business
A couple of months ago, I took the plunge and started 2 online communities on Facebook. One is for my travel podcast, The World Wanderers, where people can get information about travel, living abroad, and working abroad. The other is for M.B.Om, where we talk about all things yoga business.
Although running an online community on Facebook is relatively new to me, here are 7 quick tips that I’ve learned that will allow you to be successful in growing your online community, keeping engagement up, and having members who are contributing and enjoying themselves.
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 19, 2017 | New Yoga Teacher, Show Notes
On today’s episode of the podcast, Dawn Mauricio is joining me from Montreal, Quebec to share her journey as a yoga and meditation teacher. Dawn came to yoga after a painful break up while she was working in marketing in a corporate setting. After having a really powerful healing experience through yoga, Dawn decided to do a yoga teacher training, and quickly became a teacher.
Dawn shares how she went from teaching upwards of 20 classes a week to teaching workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, and at festivals. We chat about her biggest learnings as a yoga teacher, how she has grown her yoga business, the power of a great mentor and cultivating relationships, and how professionalism can help you take your yoga career to the next level.
Enjoy!
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 13, 2017 | Blog, Lifestyle
Most people fall in love with yoga while working another job. For me, while I knew I liked yoga before fully diving into the workforce, I had started my career in advertising before I realized that I wanted to become a teacher. Some yogis choose to stay in their corporate roles, while others continue working until they are ready to commit themselves to teaching or to running another yoga business.
I fall somewhere in the midle: I still work in marketing half of the week, and I teach when I’m not in the office.
The advertising job that I left behind, while challenging and often interesting, was also fast-paced, demanding, time consuming, and very often stressful.
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by Amanda Kingsmith | Oct 9, 2017 | Marketing & Branding, Show Notes
Kelly McHugh is the founder of Digital Yoga Academy and Good Yoga Life based out of the UK. She is a yoga teacher, a digital marketing expert, and a consultant for yoga teachers to help them grow their businesses.
Kelly fell in love with yoga a number of years ago, and within the first year of teaching decided to leave her corporate job to become a full-time yoga teacher.
On this episode, Kelly and I talk about the teaching community in the UK, the struggles that she found that yoga teachers were having with their yoga businesses, the importance of digital marketing and being online, and why yoga teachers need a mailing list and a newsletter. Kelly also gives tips for creating an effective email list and newsletter campaign that your students will love!
Enjoy!
Business Lessons from this Episode:
- It’s becoming more and more important to be online – have a website, have your schedule online, being able to be found online
- It can be overwhelming and scary to put yourself out there
- Surround yourself with communities of yoga teachers
- Spend time to understand and learn about the different marketing platforms
- You don’t need to be on every single social media platform! Choose a few based on where your target market / audience / ideal students are and focus on that.
- If there is one thing to tackle, it is an email list and newsletter.
- It’s a privilege to be able to be in someone’s inbox and it’s the ability to create long-lasting relationships with your audience.
- The key with newsletter marketing is to get people to open up your emails.
- The people who come to your classes are your ideal subscribers. They already know and love you and would be interested in your other offerings.
- It’s easier to write a newsletter when you know the person who is going to receive it.
- Authenticity is key to a good newsletter!
- You can connect email lists through forms on your websites – they can be embedded into blog posts, they can pop up, and / or you can have a tab.
- Encourage your students in class to sign up for your mailing list
- Offer an incentive to encourage people to sign up! Make sure your incentive is relative to the student / your niche.
- Consistently offer value to your students
- Use Mailchimp for your mailing list
- Set up an automated welcome email that will engage your students
- Choose a schedule that you can stick to – weekly, bi-weekly or monthly
- Have conversations with your regular students to see what they are interested in learning about from you and what offerings they are curious to learn about.
- Creating an effective newsletter can be a lot of trial and error to see what people respond to and what they are interested in. You can check your MailChimp stats to find out more about this!
- Use Survey Monkey to find out what people are interested in.
- Have a goal when it comes to your newsletter and email list – how many email subscribers do yo want? What do you want to achieve?
- Share personal tidbits from your life. People love to read something that is very personal and that let’s them in on your life.
- An email list can convert people to your workshops and retreats and help you to cut down on marketing and advertising costs from other areas of your business.
- Treat your email list as a key part of your sales funnel.
- Create a two-way conversation between you and your email list subscribers.
- Put some time in your calendar to plan ahead so you can keep up with your newsletter!
Connect with Kelly:
Digital Yoga Academy
Good Yoga Life
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by bookyogaretreats.com! I used bookyogaretreats to book my very first retreat and loved it. It’s a great platform for people who want to book a retreat or training and for yoga teachers who want to lead a retreat. Check it out here!
I’ve also launched a private community on Facebook for yoga teachers who want to learn more about business. Join me here!
