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How to use Instagram stories to connect with your yoga students!

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Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Instagram stories are a fantastic tool that you can use to connect with your yoga students, share your message and build your email list! 

If you’re using Instagram, then you’ve probably either recorded an Instagram story or you’ve viewed several stories because they are completely addictive! As a yoga teacher, you should be using Instagram Stories because it allows you to create more solid and real connections with your community.

Continue reading to learn how you can use Instagram stories to create better connections with your yoga students!

What is an Instagram Story?

An Instagram story is a piece of content that you share on Instagram itself and it’s typically photos and videos. You could also share text-based images if you’re sharing a photo or a graphic. It lasts six seconds and if you share a video, it lasts up to 15 seconds. 

Instagram stories are different than posting on your Instagram feed. The content on Instagram Stories disappears after 24 hours unless you add it to your highlights. The interesting stories you post that you don’t want to disappear can be added to the top of your profile where they will stay forever or until you delete them. 

Instagram now has over 800 million users worldwide.  There are 500 million in the app and 300 million using Stories every day making Instagram stories the perfect place to connect with your yoga students.

Most people now are using Instagram to view stories more than to scroll through their feed.

Think about your own behaviour. If you’re an active Instagram user ask yourself now, where do I spend my time when I open the app? Is it looking in feed or am I watching stories?

Here are 9 tips on how to effectively use Instagram Stories to connect with your yoga students! 

Tip no. 1: Create stories that have purpose and intention

Think about the purpose and intention behind your Instagram Story before you post it. You should put a little bit of planning behind your stories. 

What do you want your viewers to do? What do you want them to get out of it?

You can use Instagram Stories with the intention of growing your email list.  Growing your email list will help you grow your business by getting direct access to your students’ inbox. You can use Instagram Stories to connect with your yoga students and then nurture that connection. 

One of the best ways to grow your email list is to offer free content. You can provide your students with free content through Instagram Stories and direct people to your website which will help you grow your email list. 

Tip no. 2: Use a mix of personal and business stories

You can show some of your life behind the scenes, people love that! It’s a great way to be more authentic and to show your personality.

Put a little bit of planning in place, and ask yourself these questions:

What do I want my followers to get out of this Instagram story? How will I introduce the story and keep them engaged? What is the best way to conclude the story? 

At the beginning of the story, you want to be setting the tone for what you’re sharing by introducing the topic or idea you’re going to be talking about.

You can use stickers and text on the screen. If you create new content every day you can post the time or even a countdown on your story to tease people with what is coming up. 

Mix up videos with photos using different filters. There’s lots of different tags and gifs and all sorts of features that you can use in that to make it more interesting.

You can get really creative with ways to keep your followers engaged with your stories.

Tip no. 3: Offer value

With every piece of content that you create in your yoga business for your potential ideal students, you want to be giving value all the time.

You want to be telling stories, inspiring people, entertaining people and most importantly being yourself! 

Tip no. 4: Make stories with a beginning, middle and end

Wrap up your story at the end. Never leave your audience hanging! Help them to understand what you want them to do next. 

Is it to consume more of your content? Have you been talking about your blog posts and you’re sending them to your website? Are you asking them to send you a direct message? 

If you’re planning ahead for the next day, you can build up anticipation. If you know what you’re going to be talking about, make a little mention of what you’ll be showing the following day. 

Tip no. 5: Never let the dashes turn into dots

When you watch an Instagram Story, you can see at the top you’ve got the dashes and that’s the number of stories. You never want those dashes to turn into lots of dots because that is just creating a painfully long story. 

People’s attention span doesn’t last that long so you want to keep it engaging and snappy. Have a strong but quick impact.

Remember,  the videos are 15 seconds long for a reason.

Tip no. 6: Use natural light

 Get outside as much as possible when you do your Instagram Stories. Instagram stories look better in natural light and are more interesting when you’re outside! 

Tip no. 7: Use all the tools that Instagram provides

Within Instagram, there are lots of little editing and engagement tools that you can use. You can ask questions, post polls and even quizzes. There are many video effects and filters plus different fonts and colours you can play around with.

If you speak into the camera, use some captions on your videos so people who aren’t using audio can still follow along and see what you are talking about. 

Tip no. 8: Get feedback

Getting feedback from your potential ideal students is a really great way to use Instagram Stories.

You can use the question features and start to understand what your audience really needs. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get thousands and thousands of people responding. 

For instance, you know from the feedback that your students want to start a daily meditation practice, but are struggling. You can then talk about that in your stories! 

You can say, ‘I’m coming on here today to share with you some tips on how to start a meditation practice because I know that a lot of you are struggling with this’, then talk through your tips. 

At the end, you can direct them to your meditation course or opt-in freebie. You can say, ‘If you’ve watched with me to the end, I would love to help you more with this. I’ve created a five day guided meditation series to help you. You’ll receive a short meditation every day into your Inbox to help you to get into the habit of a daily meditation’.

 It could be something as simple as that!

You can finish by encouraging then to start a one on one conversation with you by saying, ‘To get your hands on my meditation series that I’ve created for you, please direct message me now and I will send the meditation series to you’.

Use this in your business, even if it feels like there may be too many messages for you to deal with. You might find that you get more engagement than when you direct your followers to the link in your bio. 

Tip no. 9: Swipe up

For Instagram to unlock the Swipe up feature you have to have 10,000 followers.  

But don’t let that put you off because the link-up can be less engaging because you’ve lost that connection with the person who’s speaking to you.

What you can use is a direct message instead. Encourage people who are watching you send you a direct message and start a conversation. 

It’s a great way to start a one on one conversation with someone where you can actually start to build a stronger connection. You can dive deeper with them by asking them about their yoga journey. Ask them where they need help and where they need support.

All of this feedback will help you down the road with all the things that you want to create. If you start to get feedback from your potential ideal students you can use that to create new programs, courses and events.

Think about using Instagram in a way that will help you to grow your business. Use Instagram Stories to connect with your yoga students in a meaningful way. 

Further training

There is a training saved in the video section on the Digital Yoga Academy Facebook page. It is all about how to create one piece of content every week and share it in multiple ways. It’s about repurposing your content and dedicating time in your week to new create content.

Watch the training and then create a blog post and share it in different ways. You need to be creating content in your yoga business. 

Use Instagram Stories to connect with your yoga students, build your community and get more people practising with you either locally or online, you need to create content!

Stories are just another channel because once you’ve created your one piece of content, you’ll have a ton of stuff to share on your stories.

If you’ve already got content on your blog going, think about it in terms of how you could share that content on stories and how you could break it down into little snippets or goals.

>> Video Training: How to use Instagram stories to connect with your yoga students!

https://www.facebook.com/digitalyogaacademy/videos/141063726843289/

 

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