Stop Wasting Time & Money On Social Media For Your Retreat Business
To be on social media or not when it comes to promoting your retreats, is the question! For many, myself included, social media feels heavy and is not aligned with our values. It can cause serious internal conflict.
This article will lay it all out for you, give you insights into running your business without social media (because that’s what I do), the pros and cons of using social media in marketing your retreats and give you clarity on whether to include it or not.
It is ultimately your decision.
I decided to quit social media
It has been 2 years since I decided to quit social media in my personal and business capacity.
It was consuming me, taking me away from spending quality time with my family and causing me endless anxiety.
You can read about when I finally took the decision in Leaving Social Media and what pushed me over the edge.
It was one of the pivotal moments in my life that paved the way for more peace, tranquillity and freedom and I haven’t looked back!
Let’s start with the pros and cons of using social media to promote your retreat:
Pros of social media for promoting your retreat
- Reach people who otherwise would not know about you and your retreats
- Engage with people who interact with your posts and videos – you can get really close to them
- A space to share what it’s really like to experience your retreats using amazing photos and videos
Cons of social media for promoting your retreat
- Extremely time-consuming having to constantly create for social where a post might live only for 5 hours
- You never get off the hamster wheel of creating posts
- Not everyone (me included) likes to share personal stuff on social
- Addictive nature
- Can affect your mental health
An alternative system to social media for visibility, reach and leads
Note: This is my personal insight and system. Yes, there are some extremely successful retreat businesses using social media. I just want to show you an alternative way if you feel being on social media is not for you. It’s not for everyone but it works for me.
After being off social media for so long and not including it in my own marketing, I know it is not a necessity. As a way to generate visibility and leads, I have developed an alternative system and it looks like this:
Create a powerful lead magnet that your ideal client needs and wants.
This is critical to get right. Mine is the Retreat Marketing Master Checklist and people are downloading this daily. Don’t know what a lead magnet is? Check out my video and blog post.
Create a thank you page that encourages people to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
This is a great little tip, when someone downloads your lead magnet, they then see a thank you page that encourages people to take another action. To subscribe to my YouTube channel. I get an email subscriber and a YouTube subscriber!
Run social ads to promote my lead magnet
(yep I use social for this because there are still so many people on it, and I know my target audience really well.)
I spend 150€ per month on social ads (imagine paying someone to do your social media for this price! Not possible) and I get on average:
4 new people to my email list per day + 2 YouTube subscribers per day
Annually that is:
1440 new email subscribers + 720 YouTube subscribers
1800€ spend on ads
I focus the energy and time I would spend posting on social media on creating long form value packed content for my YouTube channel and blog.
This happens weekly. Why? Because if I want to get traffic to my site for free for years to come I need to make sure I have content that people are searching for on Google and YouTube. Check out the free workshop I hosted Secrets To Ranking High In Google | Learn SEO For Retreat Businesses if you want more direct organic traffic to your website.
TIP: The videos I create get transcribed and converted into written blogs using a transcription service such as otter.ai. I am doubling my chances of ranking on Google and YouTube.
I also engage weekly or monthly with my email list.
Depending on their preference (yes I ask them) by sending value packed content that I know my audience wants to know about.
My email open rate is over 40%, compare that to social media:
“The current average reach for an organic Facebook post is just 2.2%, but could be as low as 1.1% for some brand pages.
To put this in perspective, if I have a Facebook page with 1500 followers, my posts may only be shown to as few as 33 people.”
https://studio93.ie/facebook-organic-reach-how-many-people-actually-see-your-posts/
With this system I do not have to worry about algorithm changes or the low reach I might have experienced with social media AND I can leverage 2 search platforms, YouTube and Google. This sends me organic (free) traffic for years to come!
My audience is ALWAYS my source of content ideas, so I listen to their conversations at ALL times. As a result, I spend 80% of my time in my business creating content that is relevant and useful to keep this engine oiled, efficient, and automatic.
Conclusion
Social media can be a useful tool to promote your retreat online and some people love it! And that is great. But for some, the thought of having to post regularly causes anxiety and panic.
The good news is that there is another way, as I have demonstrated in my own business, to retreat clients and students. If you are that person I hope I’ve put your mind and heart at ease and lifted that weight off your shoulders. You just have one decision to make – will social media be part of your online marketing for retreats or not?
