Instagram for Yoga Teachers: a Business How-To for Building Your Online Community

Why Instagram? It’s visual, it’s easy to navigate, and all your students us it so you should too. Whether you want to gain private yoga clients or you want to attract more customers to your local studio, Instagram has powerful tools to help yoga business owners succeed.

But I have a personal Instagram! I have a website! Great!—But not good enough. Here are the top benefits of getting Instagram for business:

• Analytics & stats. This is a convenient way for you to get a quick look at stats and demographics on likes and follows.
• Promote posts. Once you understand your target audience, you can pay to promote your posts.
• Free marketing. Your yoga clients are sifting through photos in your area, making it the perfect platform to attract more clients to your yoga business.
• Engage with your students. Clients are more likely to interact with your brand and even book classes with you because you’ve given them simple contact buttons to reach out to you.

Don’t get overwhelmed. You can go from zero-to-go in less than five minutes. I’ll show you how. First, let’s take a look at @lucas.yoga.teacher. I’’ll be using this dummy account used simply as an example.

Set up your account.

1. Go to Instagram to sign up. Instagram will lead you through these steps in a matter of minutes.
2. Add a bio. Be yourself, but be straightforward here. It should be clear you are a professional certified yoga instructor.
   We recommend something like this: “I help average people discover optimal health with yoga. Diplomaed Yoga Teachers College® Instructor.”
3. Add a profile photo. Something of you doing yoga.
4. Add your name. This could be your name or your business.
5. Find people to follow (optional). Instagram will give you a list of suggested people to follow based on the contacts in your phone and based on your likes on Facebook (if you’re connected there).

Already have an account? Switch it to a business profile.

If you already have people who follow you and love watching you do yoga, you can leverage that by simply switching to a business account directly, as opposed to creating a new account.

According to Instagram: “80% of people on Instagram already follow a business. Switch to a business account to reach more customers.”

Who is this for? Private yoga teachers, yoga teachers who travel, instructors working at multiple companies. Who is this not for? Local yoga studios. We recommend creating a separate account for your business.

1. Log in > Press the top-right icon > settings.
    
   
2. Press “Switch to Business Account.”
    
   
3. Choose a category. We chose “Local Business” here, but choose what suits you best. You can change it whenever.
4. Confirm your email address. Make sure that it’s correct, ideally being your business email for when potential customers reach out to you.
5. Connect to Facebook if you haven’t already. That’s it! You’ve now unlocked the business features such as Insights in your Instagram settings. Here’s what it can look like from the backend:
    
   

Optimize your profile with Yogabody.bio

Yogabody.bio is a free tool for neatly storing all the links any potential customer would need to see such as Linkedin, PayPal, your local studio website, and more. Plus, it’s quick to set up and can be added to your bio link. Let’s tap the yogabody.bio/lucasrockwood link placed in Lucas’ bio (see photo above).

It’s customizable. So, these are the links we recommend using:

• FREE! 30-Min Discovery Class.
• Teaching Schedule. (This can be a simple Google doc with your time and dates available.)
• About Me. (This can be a YouTube video, your website, really anything that showcases your mission, your personality, and the value you bring as a yoga instructor.)
• Purchase Classes. (This is a PayPal.me link. This makes it super simple for students to purchase classes directly from Instagram.)
• Facebook. (This should link to your Facebook Business account. Yes, we recommend you have one, too.)
• Instagram. (Please add your Instagram Business account here, too, because you can use this Linktree URL on multiple platforms.)
• CV/Resume. (This is a link to your LinkedIn profile or a downloadable PDF of your resume.)

What content should you post on your feed?

Now that the “hard” work is done, you’ll need to post some photos—at least enough to beef up your profile.

• Always post valuable content, ideally giving the user yoga tips with each new photo.
• Not all posts should be sales-y, but don’t be shy when you have something to sell.
• Keep this account focused on yoga topics (i.e. no pets, kids, miscellaneous).
• Hashtags: Add geo-specific hashtags to drive local traffic such as #YogaLosAngeles #YogaLA #YogaOrangeCounty… etc, as well as yoga-specific hashtags such as #VinyasaYoga #Poweryoga #YogaStrength.