Yoga teachers struggle to be authentic in their yoga marketing and have trouble finding the balance between promoting what they truly believe in and not coming across as salesy.
As a yoga teacher, you want to build your community. You have to constantly put yourself out there and be visible online. It’s so important to be authentic in your yoga marketing to really allow your personality to shine through.
Your students are hanging out in all of these different places online. And for you to build your community, you need to be in those places where they are hanging out. So whether that’s on Facebook or Instagram, you need to be there.
You might create content to put on social media and maybe you’re sending out your email newsletters every week. You might be writing blog posts as well for your website. When you do these things, you’re being visible in your business, you’re showing up as you!
You’re showing up but maybe you’ve not quite found your voice yet and you’re showing up as someone else.
That might be another teacher that you aspire to be. Maybe you’re impersonating someone else and not meaning to. This may be because you’re just starting out and you’re still finding your way.
There is no yoga teacher that is for everyone and you shouldn’t even try to be everything to everyone – you should focus on being authentic in your yoga marketing.
When you get into this mindset that you have to show up a certain way, what you do is you lose your uniqueness because you’re trying to be something else or someone else. This means you end up not being authentic in your yoga marketing.
You have something amazing to share with a community of students that are going to connect and resonate with your message and how you share it.
Being a yoga teacher, you also have to be a marketer. You’re always marketing your yoga business and you want your personality to shine through everything that you create and put out there online.
Brand personality and authenticity
Think about the brands that you follow online. They all have unique personalities and their tone of voice and how they put themselves across lots of different channels is unique to their brand.
All brands have their own personality and it’s exactly the same for you because essentially, as a yoga teacher, you’re the face of your brand or the face of your business.
And rather than just find a voice for your yoga brand, you should make your voice and your personality, the brand. The brand is your personality and that’s the one thing that you have a monopoly on because there are lots of different teachers out there.
It’s quite a crowded space! But when people want what you’ve got, then you have the ultimate edge because they want it from you.
There’s a real benefit of putting your personality into your business because it lets people know you. It lets people like you and it lets people trust you.
Mindset blocks
Here are three mindset blocks that might affect the way you show your authentic self in your yoga business:
1. The fear of looking unprofessional
It’s important to have a look at what your background is. Is there anything that’s been drilled into you from your work life and the environments that you’ve been working in for years?
How does that affect you now in how you communicate what you offer as a yoga teacher and how authentic you’re being in your yoga marketing?
It’s also worthy to note that generally, communication style over the last years has changed with social media and technology. You’ll see from the brands that you follow that the way they communicate has changed.
Communication style has moved away from that very formal business tone to a more conversational tone, especially on social media.
So how do you think about some of the brands that you’ve followed? Go and check them out. Look at their tone of voice, look and see how it’s become more conversational.
Conversational is the new professional.
2. The fear of putting people off
Quite often you can be afraid to put the real you out there because you’re afraid of turning people off or alienating people. Maybe you love a burger, but you don’t want to share that because you’re afraid of alienating vegans.
The truth is: you can’t be the yoga teacher for everyone.
So have a think about that. You just need to give that up because the reality is absolutely no yoga teacher is there for everyone. So trying to appeal to everyone is actually how you end up blending into the world and not standing out.
3. You don’t have a personality that is unique enough to share online
Perhaps you might resonate with some yoga teachers that you follow and therefore you want to sound like them. You might think that their personality is what you need to be able to share yourself online. But really as yoga teachers, we need to find our own voice.
You’ve got a personality that can shine through. Surely your friends love you. The students that turn up to your classes they all love you too. And the reason for this is because you’ve got personality and you just need to share it.
Share what makes you happy, what you want in life. Your journey to achieving what you want and the journey that you’ve had with yoga and the frustrations that you’ve had along the way.
All those things are part of your personality and make you authentic.
Recognizing these mindset blocks and understanding what your personality is and letting it shine through is really, really powerful.
You might be thinking: “I don’t really know what makes me different or unique”.
Ask your friends about what is their favourite thing about you. Ask them to sum you up in three words. You could even put this on Facebook as a little challenge.
Look at all their responses and then write down the ones that resonate the most for you. You can also try out some online personality tests. There are lots out there.
There’s the Myers Briggs, which you may have heard of. And there’s another good one called the How to Fascinate test.
You can also use your horoscope! Have a look at all of these things and have a play around with them.
It can open up the floodgates for you and you start to realize that there are lots of different sides to you which you can share and people will connect with.
Tips to help you to inject your personality into what you’re sharing online:
Tip number 1 to be authentic in your yoga marketing: Use stories
People connect with stories! Your story doesn’t have to be really long, with a beginning, middle and end. It can just be an element.
You can share a slice of a story that your students relate to and transitions into you sharing your main yoga offering with people. It can just be a snippet to lead people into whatever it is that you want to promote.
Think a bit deeper about what you can share personally. Maybe it’s just a snippet of an experience with someone or a conversation that you’ve had that you can add to your social media content or to your emails.
Tip number 2 to be authentic in your yoga marketing: Give everything a point of view
A huge part of your personality actually comes from your point of view and how you see the world. A good example of this is to put green smoothie posts on Instagram.
People post pictures of their green smoothies on Instagram day in, day out, but what makes it unique is your point of view. Take the time to tell us what that smoothie means to you.
Maybe you’re telling people that you religiously drink your green smoothie and you’re listing out one of the benefits and how it makes you feel. Or perhaps you’re telling people it’s a total scam and it’s full of sugar and there are better ways to be healthy.
What is your point of view? Because both of those points of view are completely different and they’re going to come from two different personalities.
So find your point of view and don’t be afraid to share it.
It doesn’t matter if some of your followers don’t agree with you. Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone.
Tip number 3 to be authentic in your yoga marketing: Use plain english
You want to use relaxed language. You want to keep it conversational with plain-spoken words. Use the apostrophe: Instead of saying, you are, use you’re.
Think about the copy on your website. Your about page might say something like, “Hello, I am so happy that you are here. I am going to teach you x, Y, z”. It sounds really robotic.
Instead what you could say is, “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m going to teach you x, Y, Z”. So we just cut everything down and use an apostrophe. It’s a really, really simple thing to do.
Read your copy out loud before you post it up or upload it onto your website.
After you’ve read it out loud change things around so that it sounds like how you would naturally speak. Because if it sounds like writing, then you need to change it to relax your language.
You have your little characteristics and your little quirks that make you special and unique. Tap into those things and let your authentic self shine in everything that you do online! Your students deserve to see the real you.
