Why is Man Flow Yoga Popular?

Why is Man Flow Yoga popular on Facebook?

I have a couple meetings every month to talk with people about how I was able to build a Facebook presence, so I figured that I should go ahead and type some of it up for everybody to read. This blog is appropriate for anybody in any industry who is looking to build their social media presence on Facebook. Here are six tips that I have learned over the past year that have helped me organically grow my brand on Facebook and YouTube to over 20,000 people.

First off, let me say that this is not a “toot-my-own-horn” article. I think that there are people much better than me at expanding their social media presence and retaining an audience, but I also don’t think that the thousands of ‘likes’ and subscriptions are that I have gathered are solely attributed to posting decent shirtless pics. Here are a few tips that I have to get you started.

1. You can’t please everybody.
You will never, ever be able to accommodate the preferences of everybody who “likes” your Facebook page. Inevitably (and especially when you get to the point where thousands of people are seeing every one of your posts) you will alienate somebody with something that you say. Most of this will occur silently. Loyal fans will become lukewarm fans as they lose the enthusiasm or support that they once had for you. Some people will even “unlike” your page. Here’s the thing: That is completely okay. Just keep on doing what you’re doing, promoting ideas and content consistent with the interests of either yourself or your brand. That brings me to my next point…

2. Be consistent in your messaging.
You have to make sure that the posts that you are creating are giving a consistent message. You can’t say something one week and then backtrack on it another week. Specifically for MFY, I focus on the physical fitness aspect of yoga, which means that I consistently post on the physical benefits of yoga, rather than the meditative or spiritual aspects of yoga. I do not post content that relates to these two other aspects of yoga because it is not part of my message, even though it might please some of my followers to see that other message. This is also tied into the “you can’t please everybody” rule. Even if promoting multiple messages helps you retain the attention of multiple audiences, ultimately you want to have a strongly devoted following, rather than multiple lukewarm followings. Quality is definitely more important than quantity.

3. Collaborate.
When I first started Man Flow Yoga, I realized that it was going to take a lot of work to get likes on Facebook, and that there was no way that I would be able to do it all on my own. I reached out to blogs that were doing similar things to what I intended to do, and humbly requested that they give me a shoutout. Yoga for Men, now the largest yoga page for men on Facebook with an astounding 50,000 + likes, was kind of enough to give me a shoutout when I only had 93 likes (and they, at the time, only had 2500 likes). However, make sure that you can offer your potential collaborators something in return. Nobody likes people who are only out to help themselves, and ultimately I believe this mentality will cost you in the long run.

4. Post regularly.
It might seem like nobody is listening at times, and you will have posts that garner no likes or clicks. That is okay. Not everybody who looks at and appreciates your posts will ‘like’ it. Quite often, they really enjoy it, but may not want to publicly say so. The crowd mentality applies to Facebook posts; sometimes people need to see other people liking or commenting on a post in order to feel safe or comfortable doing it themselves. More than that, if you are not posting regularly, your posts will not show up as often on people’s newsfeeds, so even if you have a GREAT post, nobody will even see it because you were neglecting to post other content.

5) Be spontaneous.
People can often tell when you are posting scheduled content. Quite often the most engaging and creative (and therefore effective) posts are ones that come spontaneously, so don’t be afraid to to deviate from your social media plan in order to post something that is relevant with current events.

6) Be personal.
Perhaps the most important tip that I can give you is to be personal in your posts. People want to see emotional and human characteristics in your posts because they want to be able to interact with you. Social media is ALLLLLLL about engagement. My responses used to be definitively emotion free, use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’, and signed ‘Man Flow Yoga Team’. After a while, I realized that everyone knew that it was me behind the computer screen, and that people wanted to hear directly from me anyways, so I stopped ending my posts with ‘MFY Team’, and began signing my name on the last line.

These tips that I have provided are tips that can be applied to ANY Facebook page. I acknowledge that a lot of people on the MFY Facebook page are only here because one of their friends shared a photo of me doing Warrior 2 with my shirt off, but those types of pictures alone would not get me the audience that I have today. They would not have helped me gain personal training clients, sell MFY t-shirts, or plan and sign people up for international retreats. Be yourself, play nice with others, and remember that you can’t please everybody. You’ll be on your way to a successful page soon.