Online Fitness – How To Run A Digital Yoga Class With The Help Of Social Media

In recent times, every domain has shifted its activities online, be it business, socializing, education, or pretty much any other domain. People across the world are getting used to connecting with other humans over the internet using cameras, and the teacher-student relationship has also seen this change. 

Institutional educators, as well as private teachers, have started taking classes online. One of the challenging jobs in this regard is for a yoga teacher, who traditionally has always been with his/her students to teach them various poses and exercises. How do you take yoga classes via Zoom or Skype? 

4 Things to Try Out in an Online Yoga Class

1. “How-to” Videos 

The closest you can get to step-by-step instructions that you can give in a regular class is the instructional “how-to” videos. These videos are primarily meant to make the viewer follow some guidelines or procedures. Since you cannot electronically monitor every step your students do, you can record videos of each stage separately and stitch them together using a video editor. 

This way, viewers can get a clear idea of what they should do. You can further enhance the clarity of the instructions given using additional elements like text (described later). 

2. Picture Slideshows 

Slideshows also serve as excellent templates for how-to videos. Each slide can be an image or a small clip to illustrate one step. The advantage of slideshows is that you can time the slides to run automatically after a preset time limit. 

So, if you are supposed to do each step in an exercise for a fixed number of seconds, you can time the slides to change accordingly so that the viewers can also follow suit. 

3. Sound  

Sometimes, pictures may not be enough to instruct the viewers, and so need to narrate what exactly they should do or feel. You may also give additional commentary or anecdotes that are necessary to appreciate the exercise. 

It could be challenging to perform an exercise and narrate at the same time since controlled breathing is an essential aspect of yoga. So, it is better to record the audio separately using a microphone (and not the webcam recorder) and sync it with the video clip using a video editor. Recording separately also preserves the quality of the sound. 

You might want to play a mantra or chant in the background for meditation or related exercises. For this, you can use an audio or video editor to trim or adjust the sound and video settings to erase all the background noise and overlay the chant on the video clip. 

4. Text and Graphics 

Text can be handy in videos, especially when you want to covey something more than what the video shows. If you don’t want to use audio, you can convey information like the names of the postures, benefits, and other details through text displayed on the screen. 

If you wish to share the video on YouTube, you can expect an international audience, and adding subtitles can boost the views. You then cater to a broader audience by eliminating the language barrier, which can get you an excellent response online. Captions and textual instructions also provide to the people who prefer to watch the video muted.

Using text to add appropriate hashtags and captions makes your video social media-friendly. Using these four techniques, once you have put together your final video, you should now know how you can take advantage of social media to reach your existing and potential audience. 

How Social Media Can Help

Instagram Stories 

Instagram stories are 30-second clips that you can share on the platform, which will appear on top of the newsfeed. IG stories are the most effective way to get your followers to view and like the content you share. For example, you can use a free Instagram video editor and upload one new posture every day by making it into a 15-second clip, or if you want to make longer videos, you need to upload them as regular posts. 

Challenge Videos 

Challenge videos have the potential to become viral quickly. These videos challenge the viewers to repeat or perform a task and share photos or videos of them doing it. 

As a yoga instructor, you can give your students daily tasks and ask them to upload videos of them doing that task. This way, you can check your students and also widen your outreach on social media.  

YouTube Channel 

The best place to share video content is YouTube – the site with over 2 billion users is the second-largest search engine after Google. YouTube is useful if you want to make your videos public, but if you are going to share content only among your students, you can make the videos unlisted. One strategy to get more subscribers – and more students – is to post selected clips or highlights on YouTube, and ask the interested viewers to join as students. 

When sharing videos, make sure you categorize them properly with the right titles and hashtags. The YouTube search algorithm prioritizes videos based on the average viewing duration of the video and click-through rate. If you add catchy intro and outro sequences using free intro/outro maker no watermark, your viewers are more likely to watch the video for a longer time. 

Blog 

A critical concept behind becoming a popular online personality is the number of ways people can find you on the internet. So, most online celebrities also have blogs in which they cater to a variety of related topics, which makes them more prominent in searches. 

Alongside the videos, you can maintain a blog where you write about your insights on yoga, or a new exercise, or some fascinating book you came across, and many more topics. At the end of each post, you can add a CTA for people to subscribe to your channel or join your class.  

Let’s Do Some e-Yoga!

As a yoga practitioner, these techniques will help you continue your classes and interact with your students electronically. Social media is a powerful tool, especially in this digital era, to spread a message. So make the most out of the software tools available to make an awesome video today!