Often times, yoga instructors and studios simply want the opportunity to share their practice with new students. However, it’s important to consider how your goals may evolve over time. Perhaps your studio will eventually want to create an inspirational newsletter. Or, maybe you will develop new health supplements or yoga props. Examples of Facebook marketing goals might include:

Take time to develop a strategy that encompasses not only your immediate goals, but future goals as well. Be specific as possible, and write down your goals to force yourself to remain mindful of them with ever Facebook interaction. To learn more about developing SMART goals, visit this article on Social Media Marketing for Yoga Studios and Professionals.

The key to building your Facebook audience is to make it easy for your page to be found. Put your best foot forward by following the 5 tips below:

In addition to your website and blog, a Facebook Company Page makes an excellent channel for content marketing. Facebook’s media-rich interface makes it easy for both Fans and Friends-of-Fans to see your newest blog articles, infographics, press releases, videos, and other posts. Moreover, sharing your content on Facebook is the first step toward forging genuine relationships with new prospects (See Step 4 below).

However, the best Facebook Pages are those that are carefully curated. No single professional or brand can produce all the content that their audience needs. As a rule of thumb, Facebook marketers often post in a 3:1 ratio—for every 3 posts that promote a self-made piece of content, make 1 post to share content from an authority your audience will find valuable. For yoga professionals, those authorities might include well-known spiritual leaders, like Deepak Chopra, or sustainable food providers, like local grow-ops. Refer back to your strategy (See Step 1 above), and align yourself with causes, public figures, and brands that will help you attain SMART goals.

So, what kind of content should you produce for Facebook? For specific ideas and strategies, visit the following article on Content Marketing Strategies for Yoga Studios and Instructors.

Next, remember that Facebook is a social media. By providing great content, you will eventually build a captive audience that will proactively return to your Facebook Page to check-in and see what you’ve been up to. One of the best ways to encourage this kind of audience relationship is through educational materials. In a Facebook marketing eBook for HubSpot, Social Media Manager Brittany Leaning (@bleaning) explains:

“When we post educational or entertaining content about inbound marketing as a whole, we generate tons of leads, because we reach more people, and give ourselves the opportunity to warm them up to the idea of doing business with us without shoving our software down their throats.”

For most yoga professionals, this approach should sound familiar. Create a safe space to learn, and students will return. To be successful with Facebook marketing, yoga studios and instructors must take that same philosophy online. Focus on building long term relationships—through educational content, or other curated media—and your audience will stay engaged. Engaged audiences are the best audiences because they are home to the types of people who will Like, Comment, and Share your content to Friends. Over time, your audience will steadily grow.

However, there are limitations to the organic (non-paid, unsponsored) growth you can expect from Facebook. In Step 5, we will see how Facebook ads can further share your content with a vast yet highly-targeted audience.

As we learned above, the organic reach of Facebook posts fell to about 6% in 2014. To put that into context, imagine you spent 1 year building an audience of 100,000 Fans on Facebook. In 2014, you would reach just 6,000 of your Fans with a single post. Today, that percentage is likely to be even lower.

Using the Facebook Ads Manager, yoga instructors and studios can find their ideal audience using the following targeting methods:

Keep in mind:

Facebook will automatically adjust its estimates for Total Reach as you specify a different location, gender, age, and interest parameters. Take notice of how this reach changes, and use this data to learn more about your potential audiences. For example, how does the Total Reach (audience size) of New York women who like Yoga compare to men in that same region? Which is more popular among men and women in Brooklyn, Yoga Journal or Mind Body Green? Be curious, and toggle the settings in the Ads Manager to learn more about different region-specific audiences. Take note of the most popular people, brands, and causes. Ask yourself: What can I learn from the things that are already popular (and unpopular)?