If you’re just starting a yoga teaching career and you want a yoga job, chances are you’re short on cash, yet you need to market your services and get your name out there. Even if you’re looking to get hired, it helps if you establish yourself as keen, knowledgeable, and experienced. There are many ways you can do this in a short period of time for free.
How To Get A Yoga Job On A Shoestring Marketing Budget
Here are 18 free and very low-cost ways to quickly and effectively promote yourself on the internet, in your town, and in the yoga community to get your first yoga job or build clientele:
Website / Blog
Sign up for a free WordPress.com blog and create a website/blog for your yoga teaching business. Even if you don’t have a studio, you must set up a site.
Cost: $0
Keywords
Use Google AdWords to research the important keywords to put throughout your site and blog. Don’t forget to use location-specific keywords in the areas you teach.
Cost: $0.
Publish blog posts elsewhere
Sign up for a free account at Free Traffic System to publish posts on other blogs which give you a link to your website and/or blog.
Cost: $0.
Testimonials
If you’ve taught classes, ask for testimonials.
Cost: $0.
Write articles
Write and publish articles online and in print publications. I publish on Ezine Articles, but there are many free article directories. Some of the more popular article directories are Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Buzzle, iSnare, Article City, and Article Dashboard.
Press releases
Publish free press releases on the internet. Search for free press release publications. PR Web costs $80, but it does a wide distribution.
Cost: $0 to $80.
You may also want to pay for a press release in a local newspaper. Let the world know you’re looking for a yoga job and are ready to teach.
Write a yoga e-book/manual/guide and publish it (as a PDF) on your website and/or blog
Cost: $0
Social bookmarking
Get friends and family to bookmark your website and blog posts. Don’t have them go nuts. Just get it started.
Cost: $0.
Blog commenting
Follow some yoga blogs and comment – get active in the online yoga community. People notice. Cost: $0.
Forum participation
Same as yoga blog commenting – get active online. However, don’t only self-promote. Really contribute to the discussion.
Cost: $0
Online directories
List your website and/or blog with free online directories (for the links and the searches).
Cost: $0.
Yoga conference/workshop volunteer
Help out at yoga conferences, workshops, seminars, etc. You’ll get to know the people that hire yoga teachers.
Cost: $0.
Squidoo
Set up a Squidoo lens. This takes time to get promoted, but many people have success with Squidoo.
Cost: $0.
It’s a corporate networking site, but guess who looks for yoga teachers? That’s right, corporate folks.
Cost: $0.
Low-cost, high-impact video
(1) Get a free video editor product; there are several available. Microsoft has a free movie maker, (2) Take a series of photographs of you doing yoga poses, (3) Insert the photos in a sequence in the video editor, (4)Voice over as if you are teaching the class, (5) Let each pose display as long as the pose should be done.
Upload shorter videos to the free video hosting sites such as YouTube. Your longer video routines you can upload to your website and/or blog. Be sure to promote your videos with article publishing and by publishing articles, press releases, and bookmarking.
You end up creating a yoga routine your audience can follow and cost you $0.
Flyers around town
I think this is still a great grassroots method to market locally. Print on quality paper – I like using photo paper and then post your classes on public bulletin boards. Think about health food stores, coffee shops, music stores, etc.
Anywhere you can post up your flyer. Again, make the flyer look really great. Invest in quality paper and printing.
Cost: $100 – $300.
Cold call businesses/schools/nursing homes
Approach organizations that may want yoga classes taught. Cost: $0
Seek out online yoga job boards
Cost: $0.
Get that yoga-teaching experience and market yourself to get that first yoga job. Be sure to measure your marketing results. Ask new students how they found out about you. Do the same with yoga employers if they contacted you. Do the activities that deliver the best results.
It also helps if you like the activity. For example, if you hate writing, you probably don’t want to focus on publishing articles. Maybe Twitter will be more your thing.
Get involved, participate, engage, teach, network, learn…get a yoga job.