Teachers ask us what they should be posting. For me that’s the second question, and answering it first is why so many people end up on a treadmill they never chose.
We get asked it constantly. The first question, though, is what social actually does for a local yoga teacher. Because it does one thing well, and almost everything else badly, and knowing which is which gives you most of your week back.
When to use this
- When posting has quietly become a second job
- If you’re producing a lot and filling very little
- Before committing to a content plan somebody has sold you
- When you’ve decided to stop entirely and want a smaller version instead
What it’s actually for
It reassures somebody who has already heard your name.
That’s it. That’s the job. A friend mentioned you, or she saw a poster, or her sister goes on Tuesdays — and before turning up she has a look. What she wants to know is that you exist, that you’re a real person, and that the room won’t be frightening.
That is a low bar, and I’d say it does not require volume.
The treadmill comes from using a reassurance channel as an acquisition channel, then measuring the wrong thing and posting harder when the number doesn’t move.
The part I’d want you to hear
There’s a reason teachers under-post rather than over-post, and it isn’t laziness.
Most yoga teachers are uncomfortable talking about money around yoga, which turns into not treating the work as a business, which shows up worst of all in marketing. It feels like showing off. It feels like the opposite of why you started.
So here’s how I’d turn it round.
If you genuinely believe you have something that helps people — and you’d not have trained for it if you didn’t — then I can’t think of anything worse than somebody who needed it never finding out you existed, because you felt awkward about mentioning it.
Put like that, it’s closer to a duty than to self-promotion. You’re not selling. You’re making sure the thing reaches the people it was for.
The one-hour week
Four things worth saying. Nothing else.
That the class exists. When, where, who it’s for, how to turn up. Boring and the single most useful thing on your page.
What actually happened in a class. Not a philosophy. A real thing: what you worked on, what surprised you, what someone said afterwards.
Something useful, on its own. One idea she can use without coming to anything. This is where you serve past what you’re paid for, in public.
Occasionally, who you are. The dog. The wet Tuesday. The reason you started.
Post when there’s one of those. Not on a schedule. If nothing happened this week, nothing goes up, and nothing bad occurs.
What to stop
Stop the daily posting. Stop the reels made because everyone says reels. Stop the quotes over sunsets — every teacher within twenty miles is posting the same one.
And stop checking the numbers. They’re measuring reassurance, and reassurance doesn’t show up as a like. It shows up as somebody walking in.
Action steps
- Cut to one hour a week and put it in the diary as a fixed slot.
- Keep only the four. Delete the content plan.
- Write the next four posts in that hour and schedule them.
- Wait a full term before judging it, and judge it on who turns up.
Related resources
- Where students actually come from
- The words people actually search for
You might do this for a term and decide social was doing more for you than I’m giving it credit for. Some teachers’ genuinely is. Then you’d know that, which is more than most people posting daily can say.