As someone that has over 100 favourite blogs in my cache that I visit weekly, I guess you can say I’m a huge proponent of blogs. I think they give a great personal flair to an organization’s website and are a fun way to hear from the people that keep an organization running in an entertaining and authentic manner. Yoga blogs in particular are helpful for charting personal journeys and experiences and can be very educational for people that may just be starting the practice or are curious to try a new method.
As a Vancouverite, the first thing I associate with yoga is Lululemon. The company itself is pretty social-media savvy, so they naturally already have a blog going that is regularly updated by their staff.
With that said, a quick look at their blog reveals that most of their posts actually aren’t about yoga; they are instead more focused on healthy eating, staying active outdoors and announcing new store openings. Thus, my recommendation for Lululemon’s blog would be to:
1) Include more videos on their posts—particularly educational videos of people practicing yoga while wearing their products. These videos will be useful to readers while also showcasing Lululemon clothing and accessories.
2) Organize their posts better into categories—their layout currently looks a lot like Pinterest, but there is no true rhyme or reason to the topics that are featured on the main page. Instead, posts about recipes are scattered amongst posts about biking shorts, making it a bit cluttered and overwhelming. Even though there are ways to sort through the posts to find what you are looking for, I think better main page organization will provide readers with a good first impression and will motivate them to continue reading more.
3) Host a blog contest to get readers more engaged with the platform. Motivating readers to post comments or to submit their own blog posts for a chance to win something and/or to be featured on the site would help build brand loyalty and make the blog seem more approachable and engaging.
I personally think most organizations can benefit from a blog as long as they have the resources to update regularly with interesting content. The more engaging the better!
I have yet to try it, but I’ve always wondered what all the fuss is about Bikrams Yoga. Personally, the idea of being in a sweltering hot room full of other sweaty people doing flexibility and strength training exercises doesn’t necessarily appeal to me but I can be swayed by a good argument.
In my quest to find out more about the practice and why people are so obsessed with it, I decided to see what I could find through a social media statistics search via HowSociable and SocialMention.
Unfortunately, HowSociable doesn’t have a lot of options for the non-paying customer, so all I could get from there were a number of seemingly arbitrary scores related to Bikrams and various social media networks.
Here are my findings:
Yeah, they don’t make much sense to me either…
SO, I ventured onto SocialMention which gave me significantly better results (and for free too!)
What I found was:
Bikrams has a 6% strength, 6:1 sentiment, 44% passion and 26% reach. There are an average of 58 minutes between mentions of Bikrams, and from when I checked the last mention was 24 minutes prior. There are 102 unique authors writing about Bikrams and the sentiments are divided into 44 positive, 192 neutral and 8 negative.
This was still a tad confusing so I figured I would analyze a few conversations myself and determine the sentiment reflected in them.
Without further ado, here is my analysis of 10 conversations about Bikrams Yoga (in no particular order at all, I just really enjoy countdowns):
“I thought Bikram might help me manage stress but I was very nervous about trying it. It involved going to a place I had never been and staying in a room for 90 minutes with people I didn’t know. This is a terrifying prospect for someone with panics like mine. I literally had an entire therapy session dedicated to discussing if I could survive my first Bikram yoga class. I did survive. In fact, I thrived.” Sentiment grade: +1
“Over eighteen months, I saw slow progress.The miracle happened when I started practicing two times a day. It took me 10 days of doubles to be pain-free. PAIN. FREE. As in, no pain. I could sit without a back support. I could roll over at night. I could put my pants on standing up.” Sentiment grade: +1
“There have been many classes and moments throughout my years of practice that have brought me to tears of both joy and frustration. There have been days where I have spent the entire 90 minutes of a class hating the class, postures, teacher, heat, etc.” Sentiment grade: 0
“It’s no BS in the sense that doing yoga in a hot room gives you a heck of a workout. Every once in a while you’ll hear somebody say that hot yoga “sweats out toxins” or something like that, and that’s most BS, yes. But the big idea behind hot yoga is that it’s a strenuous form of exercise that’s easy on your muscles and joints and makes you feel great for having done it. So in that sense, it’s not BS.” Sentiment grade: 0
“Hi Reddit! Like the title says I am a little over half way to becoming a teacher of Bikram Yoga. For those of you who have heard about this process and want to know more, I would love to talk about it. This is the hardest thing I have done in my 22 years, and yet I am still loving every minute of it.” Sentiment grade: +1
“Bikram yoga does acknowledge the chakras and subtle energy bodies, and all the “spiritual” aspects of yoga, they’re just not taught in the classes. It’s kept simple and people can learn about it outside of the asana practice.” Sentiment grade: -1
“Apart from possible injuries arising from over-stretching, intense sweating also brings about the risk of heat exhaustion and dehydration. Furthermore, those not used to exercising in a hot and humid environment may experience sluggishness, dizziness or nausea during their first initial lessons.” Sentiment grade: -1
I remember watching the Grammys in 2010 and being completely awed by Pink’s Cirque du Soleil-esque performance (which you can enjoy below). I told myself in that moment that I would at some point in my life try out aerial silks.
Fast forward to 4 years later, and, low and behold, I found myself at a local fitness studio about to embark on a yoga journey featuring (what else?): AERIAL SILKS!
The experience was… unique… to say the least. I’m not the most coordinated of human beings and even less so when I’m upside-down, so I could feel the teacher watching me with hawk eyes for fear that I would break my own neck.
Luckily, I didn’t, and I actually quite enjoyed the class.
Here are the top 10 reasons why aerial yoga has now become my new favourite type of yoga:
10) It’s ridiculously fun. This type of yoga is not for the yogi that takes things seriously and likes to get “in the zone.” This is for yogis like me–who like to goof off and get distracted.
7) It does a better job of calming my mind than other yoga. Maybe this is because I’m so distracted by the potentiality of getting tangled in the silk and sliding to my death, but it definitely keeps my mind off of other silly thoughts.
6) Anyone can do it. The silks are designed to work with your body. You control the silk. If that doesn’t make you feel like a Jedi master then I don’t know what will.
5) You get to go upside down! Screw theme parks and roller coasters, just strap me into a silk for the whole day!
4) Classes are faster paced than regular yoga so you don’t run the risk of falling asleep. Just saying.
3) You work muscles you never even knew you had. Did you know you had muscles in your lower abdomen? Neither did I. I thought that space was reserved for food babies and cushioning.
2) There is a pose called the vampire. Enough said.
1) The final pose in every class calls for you to cocoon yourself in the silk and just lie there suspended until you’re ready to emerge like a beautiful butterfly and gracefully go about your day (albeit with sore muscles and a permanent head rush).
I decided to start my practice off with an easy sequence of poses, so I just typed “yoga for beginners” into YouTube and managed to stumble across this wonderful video:
Overall, it was pretty simple and was definitely helpful in grounding me, but I felt like I wasn’t given enough time to settle and relax into the poses. The instructor’s style of teaching was a little more energetic than I’d prefer for yoga practice (I was expecting something a tad more zen), but I think I’ll try a few more of her videos because she’s great at explaining things.
Which brings me to the concept of transparency. This video was a great example of the clarity and genuine-ness that is helpful in creating an authentic connection between audiences and a brand. At one point, the instructor stumbles over her words and corrects herself. I was impressed that she didn’t just re-shoot that line and cut it together to make it seem like she hadn’t made a blunder at all. I found it endearing and incredibly human.
As a business, I think it’s inevitable for customers to look at you a little wearily. After all, you are essentially trying to take their hard-earned money. With that said, when businesses lose the facade of being an untouchable organization and are able to show who the people are behind the company, in my eyes they become more likeable, approachable and ultimately, more trustworthy.
Trust is an important outcome of being a transparent business as it will lead to happier customers that are more willing to engage authentically with your brand via social media. Since the point of social media is to start conversations, you want your customers to feel comfortable enough to post their honest thoughts about you while knowing that you will respond in a similarly truthful manner.
Graham Kingma mentions in his article Why Transparency is Important On Social Media that 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know in regards to products that they purchase. When a company is transparent on social media and shares their trials, tribulations and successes without hesitation, customers will view the company as one that is trustworthy enough to take ownership of their actions. In that way, the business is building a a loyal following that will stick with them through ups and downs and will bring their friends and family on board through positive word of mouth.
With that said, you don’t want to sacrifice your brand’s entire image for the sake of transparency. If someone in your organization has a very strong opinion on something controversial, it may be best to keep that under wraps. While showing customers who the people behind your business are is important, there are still the overall brand values that need to be adhered to. Sometimes keeping quiet about certain employees’ interests or affiliations can be in your best interest.
I think in the case of social media, it’s a continuous process of gauging what’s right or wrong to share. Feedback from previous interactions should always be assessed and noted to see what works and what doesn’t in terms of being honest, transparent and building a strong, supportive brand community.
Now it’s time for ME to be honest with myself and stop gorging myself on kettle corn so I can do some more yoga! Looking forward to your responses 🙂
Despite having lived in Vancouver for essentially my entire life, I haven’t allowed myself to succumb to the yoga obsession rampant in the city…until now… (dun dun dun).
Recent occurrences in my life (the loss of a loved one, a health diagnosis and just general everyday anxieties) have left me with one strong desire: to slow down, relax and become more grounded. My moment of clarity came when I was sitting on the bus, so absorbed in an array of anxiety-provoking thoughts that I realized I had missed my stop, about 20 stops prior. If I couldn’t even focus on getting to where I needed to be, I thought, how could I be successful and happy in my everyday life?
Thus, I am challenging myself to explore the world of yoga, to try different forms and methods to see which suit me best, and whether the practice will help me stay cool, calm and collected even when things aren’t necessarily going my way.
My journey will be documented here and I welcome any and all insight and input that might lead me towards a balanced and joyous lifestyle.
Yogi In Training 
