It’s raining hard enough here that nobody’s walking any dogs for a while, so.
The question we get asked is usually some version of what should I be posting? For me that’s the wrong end of it. Before you decide where the effort goes, it’s worth knowing where the last twenty people actually came from — and almost nobody has looked.
Ask most teachers where new people come from and you’ll get an answer about social media. Ask them where the last five people who joined actually came from, and it’s usually somebody who already comes.
That gap is worth a bit of your attention, I’d say, because a lot of unpaid evenings live in it.
Think about what you’re actually asking someone to do. Walk into a room, in a body they may not feel great about, and be visibly the worst person there for an hour. In front of strangers. That’s a real barrier, and it’s much bigger than deciding what to have for tea.
Almost nobody clears that barrier because they saw a nice photograph. They clear it because someone they trust said come with me, it’s fine, she’s lovely. Or because they’d already decided to try yoga, searched for something near them, and yours was the one that looked like it would have them.
Which tells you where the effort goes.
When to use this
- If you’re posting a lot and it isn’t filling classes
- Before a new term, when you’re deciding where the effort goes
- When you’re starting a new class and want it to have people in it
- Any time marketing has started to feel like a second job
The three ways people arrive
Somebody brought them. The strongest by a distance. They arrive already half-committed, they stay longer, and they bring other people later. Most teachers’ classes are largely built this way and most teachers have never thought of it as something you can influence.
They looked for you. Someone decided to start yoga, searched for a class near them, and found yours. High intent, because they’re already past the hard part. What matters here is being findable and being clear about who the class is for.
They saw you somewhere. Social, a poster, the venue’s own list. Real but weaker, and it works differently from how people assume. It rarely creates the decision. It confirms one.
That last point is the one worth sitting with. Social does one genuinely useful job for a local teacher: it reassures somebody who has already heard your name. Someone’s been told about you, looks you up, sees that you exist and seem like a real person, and turns up. That’s valuable, and it doesn’t need volume. It needs you to be findable and to look like yourself.
What social almost never does for a local class is create a new student from nothing.
Do the audit
This is the useful bit and it takes about twenty minutes.
Write down the last ten or twenty people who joined your classes. Against each one, write how they actually arrived. If you don’t know, ask them — people are happy to tell you, and it’s a nice conversation.
Then count.
Most teachers find the split is heavily weighted to somebody brought them, with a decent share of they looked for you, and a small number from everything else. And most teachers find their effort is allocated in exactly the opposite proportions.
What to do about it
If referral is doing the work, make it easier. Not with a scheme, which gets awkward fast. Just say the thing out loud occasionally: if you know someone who’s been meaning to start, bring them along, first one’s on me. Most people would happily bring a friend and have simply never been invited to.
If search is bringing people, make sure what they find answers the question they’re actually asking. That’s a separate piece and it’s mostly about writing plainly.
And if a lot of hours are going into posting that isn’t returning anything, you’re allowed to cut it back. Not to nothing, because being findable matters — but to something that fits in an hour a week.
Action steps
- List your last ten students and how each one actually arrived. Ask the ones you’re unsure about.
- Compare that split to where your effort currently goes.
- Say the invitation out loud in one class this week.
- Move one hour a week from the channel that isn’t returning to the one that is.
Related resources
- The words people actually search for
- The teachers who send you work
You might do the audit and find social is genuinely working for you. Some teachers’ is. Then you’d know, and knowing is the only thing that changes here.
Most teachers do this audit and find their classes have been built by word of mouth for years, quietly, while they felt guilty about not posting enough.