If you’ve lived in the same place for a long time, you’d probably know your neighbors like they’re family. You find yourself often leaning on them for support, and the other way around as well. This is because you have a sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger than yourself, of being a community.
This sense of community is not restricted to your home alone. Even in your yoga studio, you will find that people will perform better once they have a sense of community. In this short read, we’re going to discuss why building a yoga community is important and how to build a yoga group or yoga community from scratch.
Why build a yoga community?
There are two aspects to look at while answering this question. Let’s first look at building a yoga community from a sociological standpoint.
Yoga is based on Hindu spirituality, and the word itself is derived from the Sanskrit word “yuj”, which means “to join.” The practice of yoga is beneficial to both the physical and mental wellbeing of a person.
When you build a yoga group that learns and practices together, participants develop a feeling of oneness with each other. As a result, they begin to help each other become better at their practice of yoga. The process will also build strong bonds between you and all your yoga studio members. Very often, this bond carries beyond the yoga studio.
From a business perspective, building a strong yoga community paves the way for positive customer experiences. This sense of belonging will encourage members to talk about their community outside of their yoga family as well. As the community grows, your business will thrive.
The ideal yoga community is not limited to the classroom alone, but online as well. An online yoga community is a place where yogis get to connect with each other, share tips and tricks, and thrive on their mutual love for yoga.
How to build a yoga community from scratch
Here’s a quick overview of what it takes to build a yoga community from the ground up.
- Get active on social media
- Create helpful content
- Start a newsletter
- Create engaging challenges
- Collaborate with community leaders
- Set up meetups
- Drive conversations
Let’s now jump into the deep end of building a yoga community from scratch.
Get active on social media
Considering the vast amount of time people spend online, it is only natural that social media platforms are going to have a large role to play in building a yoga community. The platforms that you ought to leverage are Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Here are some ideals to grow your yoga community using these platforms.
- Use them to create awareness about yoga by posting relevant content. Pictures, words and videos all have their place in social media marketing. However, video content has 2 times more engagement than the other two.
- Use these platforms to promote online and in-person events that you’re hosting. These events could be yoga retreats, free sessions at the local park or even online free yoga sessions.
- One of the primary tenets of a community is to be inclusive. Don’t limit your community to only your students. Create a private yoga group on Facebook, and invite yoga practitioners of all ages, genders and races from around your city to become a part of it.
This could become a great platform for yogis to share knowledge, learn from each other, and build a bigger, cooperative community. Keep in mind that there may already be similar online groups, so make sure what yours offers is unique and adds value.
Create helpful content
The type of content you post online also makes a difference when you’re trying to build a yoga community. An important part of being part of a community is to be helpful.
Use this as a ground rule while creating content aimed at building a yoga community. This content could be blogs about the wellness benefits of yoga, instructional videos or even interviews with other yoga teachers.
Start a newsletter
Your email database is among the most handy tools to help build a yoga community. Create a periodic newsletter that focuses on all things yoga. Send these newsletters out at regular intervals that you decide based on your convenience.
Add a feedback section to these newsletters, so you can gauge what your readers are more inclined towards. And always keep in mind that the objective of this newsletter is to build a yoga community, not bring in sales. Be sure the content is more informative and less about selling your yoga studio.
A good ratio is to send one marketing mailer for every five informative emails that you send. This will help build your community because your subscribers are not overwhelmed with marketing CTAs all the time, and will look forward to the informative nature of your newsletter.
Create engaging competitions
Competitions and challenges are a new trending way to get people to take notice and participate. Leverage this trend and create engaging competitions of your own.
Now, a lot of these challenges are online, with Tiktok being the platform that hosts most of them. So look for challenges hosted for other yogis and participate in them before creating your own and inviting the yoga community at large to participate in it.
When you participate in these competitions yourself, you get a great idea of what types of challenges have traction and which ones don’t have takers. Use these learning to create your own challenges.
Similarly, you can host in-person challenges at your studio, and reward people with things like branded merchandise or free sessions. A great example would be to invite people to do certain easy asanas for 21 consecutive days and reward those who stick through the whole challenge.
At the end of 21 days, even those who hadn’t been actively practicing yoga are likely to be interested in it. This makes it easier for you to grow your yoga community.
Collaborate with community leaders
Collaborating with other leading yoga practitioners in your area is another effective way to grow your yoga community. When you collaborate with each other, both of you open your communities up to intermingle.
Keep in mind these collaborative efforts work best when both of you bring a different skill to the table. For example, if you specialize in Bikram yoga, balance it out by someone who specializes in meditative yoga.
These collaborations could be workshops, instructive sessions at the local park or even video demonstrations.
Another great idea is to tag team with other wellness brands, such as organic plant based food manufacturers, and have a co-branded yoga demonstration with a food giveaway or sampling session.
Set up meet ups
Creating a strong yoga community has to involve people interacting with each other even when they’re not practicing yoga. There are multiple ways you could facilitate this.
To begin with, spend time talking to every student at your yoga studio every day. Encourage them to spend a few minutes talking with each other as well, whether it is before or after classes.
It is also a great idea to encourage these interactions outside the studio environment. This could mean getting all of them to try an outdoor workout at the local park, or taking everyone out for a meal or a cuppa.
Drive conversations
Remember that interactions are the only effective way to get people to become a part of your yoga community. Lead from the front and drive conversations.
Make it a point to learn and remember the names of all your students. This will make it easier for you to interact with them yourself, and to drive conversations between your students before or after classes.
How Bookee can help you grow your yoga community
You now have a fairly good understanding of what it takes to build a strong yoga community from scratch. Bookee is not only the most complete fitness studio management tool in the world today, we can also help you build your yoga community.
We can automate your email campaigns, and give you complete control over your social media platforms from a single dashboard. This means promoting events you’re hosting or creating a buzz around your Tiktok challenge is now a breeze.
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