Yoga Outreach

Communications Strategy

Brand awareness is tough when your worksites are prisons and addiction recovery centres. Here’s how I used digital strategies to build an active online community for this nonprofit.

Illustration of a large bodied woman doing a standing yoga pose. Illustration reads: Teach empowerment before alignment.
Polaroid picture of two women with light skin and long hair showing off their nails. Text reads: Volunteers make change possible.

Challenges

Yoga Outreach was well-respected for its work in prisons, addiction recovery centres, and mental health facilities with all who had come in contact with it. However, awareness was low outside this circle for a few reasons: 

1) It lacked social media engagement, 

2) The website wasn’t SEO-optimized, and sometimes lacked clarity  

3) There were few public-facing events, due to the confidential nature of its work in service settings 

My Approach

First, I developed the following objectives in collaboration with the executive director.

 

  • To be known as the top educator in trauma-informed yoga in Canada, the number one provider of service yoga in BC, and a community builder
    • To amplify voices from historically marginalized communities, including racialized, LGBTQ2Sia, Indigenous, disabled, incarcerated and those with experience of mental health challenges and addictions. 
    A nurse wearing scrubs sits on the ground in the hospital leaning against the wall, her head in her hands. Text reads: This is Yoga.
    Image of a large bodied light skinned woman using a block to do a forward fold. Text reads: Your students don't really care how well you do asana.

    Audience

    Then I audited past results and studied audience. When I started, our audience was assumed to be people or family members affected by trauma, addiction, or incarceration.

    After observing engagement, I realized the prime audience was actually yoga teachers and other social and healthcare professionals who wanted to understand how to better support their clients and students. 

     

    Shifting focus lead to a huge rise in engagement. This strategy increased trust and made Yoga Outreach feel more personal and approachable online – just as it was in person. 

    Tone & Content

    Instead of inspirational or instructive, I took a personal narrative tone, sharing common struggles and mistakes as a yoga teacher.

    Rather than epxlaining trauma-informed principles, this voice showed them in action. For example, sharing how staff learned from mistakes demonstrated the nonprofit’s belief in disrupting power dynamics between experts/teachers and readers/students.

    It made Yoga Outreach feel more personal and approachable online – just as it was in person. 

     

    A woman in shorts and a tank top sits on the floor cross legged stretching her neck. Text reads: I invite you

    Images

    Finding suitable images was a major challenge.

    There wasn’t enough budget to hire a photographer, and snapping photos in prisons and recovery centres would violate students’ privacy. Stock images usually depicted a white, cis-gendered, thin, wealthy stereotype. 

    But the nonprofit’s prime message was that yoga was a way to become comfortable with inner experience, regardless of appearance or ability.

    Big red X crossing out an image of a blonde thin rich woman doing yoga
    Illustration of a brown skinned woman in chair pose. Caption reads celebrate when students ignore your suggestions

    Solution

    I commissioned illustrations of “regular” folks doing yoga from Joss Frank, a Metis graphic designer and Yoga Outreach volunteer – meeting the objective to amplify historically marginalized voices. I wrote briefs asking for: 

    • Images of people with larger bodies, rumpled clothes, and from diverse ethnicities. 
    • People feeling peaceful or energized, showing that inner experience was not dependent on outer aesthetic.

     

    Results

    Five social media posts for yoga outreach

    Engagement

    Shifting the focus and tone of our digital communications lead to a huge rise in engagement – more comments, more shares, and more emails thanking us for our work and sharing their personal experiences too. 

    The cartoon images by Joss Frank were so popular that we commissioned dozens more. 

    Yoga Outreach’s Instagram account grew by 500% in four years. Followers increased from 475 to 2,900! Engagement increased from 2% to over 10%. 

     

    A graphic showing an arrow pointing diagonally up to the right. Text reads: Followers increased by 500%

    Fundraising

    Fundraising promotion for Social media. A picture of four people in downward dog. The banner reads: 25 Day Yoga Challenge. Let's make yoga accessible.

    25-Day Challenge

    In honour of Yoga Outreach’s 25th year, I developed a new promotional strategy for its annual yoga challenge: 

    • Offered an EarlyBird Bonus week featuring four popular guest speakers events. Speakers addressed “non-yogic” topics such as the power of money to produce change, and how to ask for what you want.
    • Created a Facebook group as a special benefit for early birds. Used it to encourage participants and remind them of free sessions.
    • Shifted from social media to email as primary promotion channel before event.
    • Sent daily emails to participants during challenge  
    • Hosted 10 online events

    Results

    The intensive email strategy lead to more than 100 participants, double the usual.

    Early bird speakers motivated participants to ask for donations more confidently. Raised 2.5 X more money than prvevious years

    Received numerous emails thanking us for for “wonderful” and “inspirational” early bird speakers, and for the “warm and personal” daily check-in emails. 

    A graphic with an arrow pointing diagonally up to the right. Text reads: Two times more registrations, 2.5 times the funds raised
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    I’m curious….what message do you want to communicate?