It’s possible to understand social media marketing better when you draw parallels to yoga. Both social media marketing and yoga require balance, flexibility, patience and the ability to introspect.S
If you’re in social media marketing, you know how hectic your job can get. There are parallels between social media marketing and yoga, however. There are many ways the principles of yoga can apply to social media marketing.
Building strength
As simple and low-key as the exercises in yoga may seem, they are able to greatly strengthen the body. Just as it takes strong core strength to successfully perform a pose to tone your back or your stomach, your social media campaign needs a strong core to be successful. You must determine what your core goals and objectives are before you venture into social media.
Ask yourself why you’re getting on social media, what you wish to accomplish, and what kind of audience you wish to reach.
Making sure that you have alignment
It’s important to pay careful attention to alignment in yoga. Not only does alignment help you receive the full benefit of each pose, but it also keeps you free of injury.
When you perform social media marketing, you need to pay attention to keeping a number of different things in alignment: your goals, the voice of your brand, audience expectations, and content. It can hurt your brand’s image if you don’t pay attention to achieving well-aligned marketing thrust.
Achieving balance
Many yoga positions like the tree pose require that you develop a great sense of physical equilibrium and balance. Balance is important in social media marketing, as well. You need to achieve a balance of the promotional, the educational and the entertaining in your content in order to make sure that your audience remains engaged. It can take considerable effort to make sure that getting the conversation around to making a sale sounds as natural as possible.
People are more likely to buy from a company and become loyal to a brand if they identify with the brand. It’s okay to put out promotional content; you need to make sure that you achieve the right mix and balance with other kinds of content, however.
Maintaining flexibility
The ability to perform yoga positions requires flexibility. It comes with years of practice. Flexibility is important in social media marketing, too, even if marketers rarely have years to perfect it. Whether a product is suddenly popular on social media or is the target of consumer anger, it’s important for marketers to possess the flexibility to quickly move into action. They need to realize how current consumer sentiment affects their brand, and put out a meaningful response.
Practicing patience
If you’re new to yoga, you may struggle to get your poses right even as you watch others effortlessly move into the right positions. It’s important to be patient as you gain the expertise needed.
It isn’t very different with social media marketing. It can take a long time to learn the right mix of organic and advertised reach to get your audience to engage with you. With perseverance, however, anyone can get the hang of social media marketing.
Practicing introspection
Self-awareness is an important part of yoga. You often need to contemplate whether you truly understand the meaning of a pose that you wish to perform. Personal reflection is an important quality for the social media marketer, as well. You need to carefully consider whether your social media moves are in keeping with the goals of your company. If the analytics don’t have the numbers that they should, it’s time to reflect on what you may be going wrong.
In yoga, as in social media marketing, you don’t strive for perfection. Instead, you try to get a little bit better each day. As long as you don’t allow yourself to become complacent, you’ll get closer and closer to your goal.
