Using Social Networking to Spread the Word
Social networking sites provide yoga teachers opportunities to define and share their work.
Social networking is a great extension of the yogic ideal of community and connectedness. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs all represent diverse communities of current and prospective yoga students. By engaging in authentic conversations in these communities, you can create more outlets to develop relationships and awareness about the practice of yoga. If you ever thought about becoming a blog writer now is the time!
In establishing an online teaching presence, however, it is important to keep in mind the nature of the Internet, what is appropriate online content, how to interact well with others and how your online presence relates to your teaching.
Be Mindful
While you will need to provide some information about yourself to make online readers feel more comfortable and connected to you, be mindful of what kind of information you share. Check your account privacy settings to be sure they are set to your comfort. Keep in mind the fact that any images, audio, video and text you put on the Internet (depending on the settings of your account) can be seen by any person at any time.
Provide Quality Content
Try to focus on providing quality content. Capture media in a way that is easy for you to describe your practice or business through. You can write an essay about one aspect of yoga philosophy, create a slide show showing a specific yoga sequence or provide a brief guided meditation.
Select a medium for your social networking materials that captures your greatest strengths - in a blog if you enjoy writing, a podcast if you are good at speaking or in a video format if you are better "live in person." Make sure to provide useful and engaging content to establish both credibility and quality connections.
Courtesy
Remember to be polite in your online interactions. Approach your content with the spirit of serving your readers. Maintain a positive tone by crediting and respecting other people's intellectual property and cross-promoting other members of the yoga community, including other yoga teachers. For example, if you use Twitter, you can "retweet" (or repeat) useful information to create a deeper sense of community by providing full credit to the first person who shared the information.
Social Networking Presence
There are several tangible ways to create an online presence through social networking sites. You can choose to do a one-way broadcast of your class offerings through a directory listing under Yoga.com, YogaFinder.com or the Yoga Alliance website. These listing opportunities are free, give you easy registration options and help students find you when they look for yoga classes in specific areas.
Group Discussion
Group discussions through online forums are another way to establish an online presence. More than 500 yoga-related groups are present on Facebook. I Love Yoga and Yoga and Meditation are two quality groups associated with Yoga.com, that have active discussions and over 25,000 members. Being part of group discussions can help you make others aware of your classes as well as provide you a way to ask questions about what has worked well for other yoga teachers.
Become an Expert
You could also create a teacher-student social networking presence through establishing yourself as an expert on a particular yoga-related subject, either through serving as a group moderator or your profile. You could just post content on a certain topic that students can find and engage in conversation about.
Online Identification
You can establish an online presence through making a Facebook page for yourself as a yoga teacher and include on it all your classes and information about yourself as a teacher. You could also use platforms like KickApps.com or Ning.com to build and customize your own yoga-related social network.
YogaTag.com is a free site that enables teachers to post their profile, teaching schedule and related media to foster a community of students and teachers. Regardless of the social media you choose to use, be sure to point your potential community members to the site by mentioning it in your newsletter, class, website or blog.
