I’ve been reviewing the contents of the chapters in my new book, “Stretched: Build Your Yoga Business, Grow Your Teaching Techniques,” over the past few days to give you an idea of what’s covered. We’re up to the last of the business chapters called “Using Your Website and Social Media to Create Brand Awareness.” In today’s world, social media has become part of the fabric of our lives, like it or not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other sites have become extensions of ourselves and for brands, businesses, individuals and small businesses, it’s a way to distinguish yourself, your brand, your company and reinforce the messages you wish communicate through your services and products.
In this chapter, I give you a strategy for building an online presence. I won’t go into all the details here but I’m going to start out by giving you the primary action ( just like in a yoga pose): Make your website the center of attention. Now, this may surprise you as you might think that websites and blogs are a thing of the past. Not true. Yes, it’s important that you have a presence on social media in order to get the word out about you, what you’re up to and to be able to express yourself in a meaningful way. But you need a central place that’s within your TOTAL control in terms of format, content and cost.
As many of you know, Facebook now filters the majority of what you post on business pages. This means that most of your posts won’t be seen by your followers anyway. Twitter has so much content in a rolling stream of information that the chances are slim that you’re followers will see your posts. In order to get your posts viewed, you could pay to get them promoted but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll see the posts either. And, keep in mind, this is only the latest change that Facebook has made. They will continue to make changes, many of which will result in fees to you to participate.
For this reason, having your website, which is only under your control, be your central place for people to visit. You’ll have links off this site to all your social media pages, but this, plus your mailing list, will be the primary way you keep in touch with your customer base.
There’s a lot more I cover in this chapter as well about how to build this aspect of your business. Let me close for now by saying that regardless of how fancy your social media strategy, nothing will replace quality teaching. It’s obvious but it’s important to point out. Also, if you don’t wish to have a social media strategy, that’s ok too! Build a website, use that as your primary source of communicating your schedule and leave it at that.
Next up: The start of the chapters on teaching- Essential Tips for Teaching.