Yoga, Pilates, fitness studio owners, managers, and marketing directors all ask me the same question:
Do I really need a blog?
I always answer this question with a resounding: YES! You do!
But then they want to know how they actually get results from their blog. Can you really get new clients from a blog?
You can.
And, here are six content marketing professionals who share their best tips for getting results with your yoga studio blog.
Serve First, Sell Later
Priyanka Biswas, Yogi Times
“Share useful information, not just discounts and special offers,” writes Priyanka Biswas, Social Media Marketer, Founder & Owner of PB’s Digital Marketing – Strategy & Services.
Useful information is key.
Whether it’s on your blog, your email newsletter, or your social media posts, you should always be thinking about serving your audience first.
Is what you’re sharing going to improve their lives?
Serve first, sell later.
If you’re always posting or sending emails with information about your latest promotion, challenge, or new yoga pants you have in stock, people are going to categorize your content as spam.
So, reduce the selling and increase the usefulness of your content.
In her post Priyanka says:
“…people want to connect with businesses on social for very specific reasons.
For a yoga studio, in particular, they might be looking for inspirational articles related to yoga, how yoga can benefit their mind and bodies, simple explanations of the various poses etc. and not just updates and announcements about discounts and special offers.”
This is crucial.
People are connecting to your business for specific reasons.
Why do customers buy from you right now?
Why do they come in your doors?
What do you offer to them?
What knowledge do you give them in your classes already that you could give them more of outside of class, or give them a taste of before they even step in to your studio for the first time?
Figure out why your people come to you.
Write about that in your blog and more of your people, your dream customers, will start walking in your door.
Ask For Input
Stefanie Flaxman, copyblogger
If you’re still struggling with what to write about to have an effective blog, ask for input from your students.
Stefanie Flaxman, Editor-In-Chief of Rainmaker Digital, was inspired by her yoga instructor asking her students which areas of the body they’d like to focus on that day.
She writes:
“Tailoring the asanas to her students’ needs would help ensure that they were satisfied and happy that they came to her class.
But did the requests from her students stifle her own vision of what she wanted to teach? Did the suggestions block her own creativity and passion for yoga?
On the contrary, I argue that her students’ input actually enhanced her creativity and passion for yoga.
The same thing can happen when you find out what your prospects hope to achieve by consuming your content.”
As a yoga instructor or studio owner, you already know how to do this.
You talk to your students, and I’m sure there are some classes that you do this exact thing: ask for input.
You can do the same thing with your blog.
Ask your clients what they want to know more about. This can be as formal (or not) as you’d like.
Send out an email survey to all your existing clients.
Post a poll on your Facebook page.
Or, just ask the regulars the next time they come in for class.
By providing the kind of content that you know your audience wants to hear, it will be more effective and reach more people.
You’ll know you’re helping your audience, because you’re giving them exactly what they asked for!
Be Intentional
Tommi, rockpaperbrands
“Content marketing is very much suited to the principles of yoga,” writes Tommi, the Co-Founder and Web Developer at rockpaperbrands.
He then lists three of the yoga principles, as stated by the Chopra Center, and relates them to how they apply to content marketing, which includes blogging.
One of these is the Law of Intention and Desire, which states:
“Inherent in every intention and desire are the mechanics for its fulfillment. When you become quiet and introduce your intentions into the field of pure potentiality, you harness the universe’s infinite organizing power, which can manifest your desires with effortless ease.”
Tommi translates this law to content marketing as follows:
“Content marketing is not about randomly posting pictures or inspirational quotes.
For it to work, it needs to be backed by a strategy.
You must take a moment to think what your intentions are for posting this or that.
What do you wish to accomplish? Is your intention purely self-serving? What kind of value is your content adding to your audience’s life?”
Content marketing needs to be backed by a strategy, or a plan, to work well.
Do you have a strategy for your studio?
Or do you just randomly post pictures of yogis on their heads and your latest class schedule on your Facebook or Instagram page (when you happen to remember to do that)?
Here’s an example of how some simple planning and strategizing before you start writing your first blog post can help you start creating content that helps you bring in new clients:
- Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on your current blog and social media content.
- Review and list out your best performing social posts.
- Review and list out your best performing blog content.
- What are the top problems, questions, and objections that you hear from your customers?
- After reviewing all the information you’ve collected, come up with three main categories for your content.
- Start coming up with headlines for blog posts that fit in those three categories.
- Pick one post that excites you the most and start writing!
You know that setting an intention for your yoga practice is crucial to your success as a yogi.
It’s no different for your blog, if you want it to be successful and actually help you to bring in new clients.
Set an intention, or a strategy, and you’ll be set up for success.
Stay Organized
Heather Hartmann, Mindful Studio Magazine
“In terms of competition, the fitness industry is fierce,” writes Heather Hartmann, Editor at Mindful Studio Magazine.
She asks several yoga studio owners how they stand out from the crowd with their marketing efforts.
One of those studio owners, Larry Santiago, co-owner of three studios, said, “There’s so much competition out there, not only among yoga studios, but we’re also competing against every other lifestyle and fitness brands. You have to get your message out there. Otherwise, you get lost in the clutter.”
Heather writes in her post:
“Marketing can be a useful tool when it comes to making noise in an already loud industry. To stay organized with his marketing efforts, Santiago creates a yearly content calendar that breaks down monthly promotions and establishes certain benchmarks. The calendar enables him to utilize social media and plan events in a way that flows together.”
Planning ahead and creating a content calendar are key tools to successfully marketing your studio with content.
Not having a content calendar is like if your studio didn’t have a class schedule planned out ahead of time. Wouldn’t that be chaos?
That’s what your content is like without a calendar too — chaos!
No wonder it’s not helping you bring in new customers.
Repetition Is Key
Carrie Dagenhard, Relevance Content Promotion News & Insights
“The other day, while rolling out my mat and preparing for some quality asana time, a thought occurred to me: Yoga really isn’t that much different from content marketing,” wrote Carrie Dagenhard, freelance content marketer specializing in health and wellness and contributor to Relevance.
She then went on to say, “OK — it’s actually a lot different. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t several lessons businesses can gather from a little time on the mat.”
One of these lessons is: “Repetition is Key.”
Carrie writes:
“You can’t simply jump into a perfect bakasana on your first day of yoga any more than you can expect 100 new leads the first time you publish an eBook or a new blog post. The key to deepening your yoga practice — and growing your audience — is repetition.
For an aspiring yogi, this may mean stretching just a little further each day until you achieve your desired form. In content marketing, though, it means staying the course and continuing to fill your arsenal with well-written, well-researched and highly relevant content. It means regularly publishing blog posts and developing a long-term marketing plan.”
You can’t put up a new blog post every couple months and then expect it to get any traffic.
Consistency and repetition is important with content.
You need to continue to stay front of mind with your audience, and keep putting yourself out there.
To really start getting traffic from your blog posts, you should post at least weekly, and then also plan on sharing those posts everywhere you can!
Hang Out Where Your Students Are
Kelly McHugh, DOYOUYOGA
“It’s about being found in the places your students are hanging out online and delivering value outside of the yoga studio,” writes Kelly McHugh, Yoga Digital Marketing Expert, Founder of Digital Yoga Academy & Yoga Teacher, on DOYOUYOGA.
Being found in the places your students are hanging out online. That’s important.
Go to the places that your dream customers already hang out.
Sometimes that may be a local coffee or tea shop where you can hang up your flier, but you’ll probably be able to reach a whole lot more people online.
Did you know that 68 percent of U.S. adults report that they are Facebook users, and about three-quarters of those users access Facebook daily? (Source: Pew Research Center)
Your audience is hanging out online, so you should be too!
Kelly lists 10 digital marketing tips to fill your yoga classes in her post, and they are all great suggestions.
#9 is “Get Blogging” and she says:
“If the idea of this scares you, fear not! You definitely learnt something about yoga, philosophy, postures and anatomy during your yoga teacher training that you can share in words.
Blogging has so many benefits from creating content for your website packed full of relevant keywords that search engines will pick up, to driving people to your website from social media to read your posts.
You could also submit your work to other yoga websites as a way to increase your visibility and gain new traffic to your website. It’s a win-win.”
Submitting your work to other yoga websites, or guest posting, is a great way to be found online by your dream customers and to start getting more traffic to your blog.
Also, just by sharing your blog posts on your Facebook page and then boosting those posts to share with the people that like your page plus their friends, you can start to get more traffic to those posts and find new customers.
Your customers are hanging out online.
Figure out where they are, and then make sure you’re sharing your content there too.
Key Takeaways From Our 6 Experts:
- Serve first, sell later. Share useful, valuable information on your blog, not just offers and promotions.
- People are connecting to your business for a reason. Figure out those reasons and then share content that speaks to that.
- Ask for input. If you don’t know what to share on your blog, talk to your customers and ask them what they’d love to know more about from you. They’ll have lots of ideas you never even thought of!
- Be intentional. Look at your past content, your strengths and weaknesses, and plan out your strategy for your blog and the content you are going to share with your audience. Set your intention for your blog, just like you do for your yoga practice.
- Stay organized. Planning out your blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters on a content calendar keeps you organized and can make sure that you actually follow through with your marketing. Stay ahead of the pack by being organized.
- Repetition is key. To have a successful blog (just like if you want to have a successful yoga practice), you have to do it over and over. Consistently, every week. One of my yoga teachers always says, “It’s a yoga PRACTICE, not yoga PERFECT.” It’s the same with a blog. Keep at it if you want it to be successful.
- Hang out where your students are. Share your blog posts on Facebook, Facebook groups, on other yoga websites, and other places you know your students are hanging out online. You can’t just post a blog and expect people to find it. Go to them.
If this all still seems a little overwhelming or you just don’t have time to do this all yourself, it might be time to ask for help.
If you’d like some help implementing these ideas or getting more ideas for your business, I’d love to chat with you.
I help health and wellness businesses, like yoga and fitness studios, consistently bring in new clients every month using Omnipresence Content Marketing.
If you need help, let’s schedule a call.
